Some Thoughts of Home

Memorial Day Weekend: it’s one of those holidays when thoughts of home bubble up from the recesses of my every day world.

Today I preached at UCC Bayberry. Pastor Mark Lawson needed a break and I was willing and the schedule was open. During the service folks were given the chance to light a candle for a loved one and then we prayed for all those named. I lighted a candle for my Mom, Erna. I could have lighted many candles: for my grandmother, Ethel Churchill; for former parishioners, Martha Gray and Charles Jones; for a dear mentor, Bill Fox.

Memorial Day forms perhaps the longest of my family’s traditions. My grandfather Neal Churchill died in 1922, when my mother was just a year old. He was buried in Plymouth, Massachusetts. On every Memorial Day my grandmother traveled from Springfield, Massachusetts to Plymouth to lay flowers on the grave. Not able to drive herself (she didn’t own a car or have a license) she would take whatever public transportation was available. My father started driving her and my mother after my parents started dating in 1938. I can’t remember how young I was when they started taking me along (with my older sister, Sue). But it’s been a lifetime.

My grandmother joined my grandfather in 1974. I was recently ordained by that time and took part in the service. My aunt Ruth and her husband, Bob, are also there, along with their daughter Sarah who died in infancy.

Now I take my father to visit the graves. We visited there in early May. The cemetery is ancient. Oak Hill cemetery is in the western outskirts of Plymouth. It is replete with a knobby warren of hillocks, covered with giant oaks. It’s impossible to maintain. But it’s wonderful. If there were enough room there, that’s where I would want to be.

My father has been remembering more of his life recently. He has missed my mother terribly and has spent a good deal of the last three years reminiscing about their life together. But in the last few months, he has been remembering other parts of his life. He's been telling stories that I swear I’ve never heard before.

During this last visit with him, he told me about how Bill Hale invited him to attend Faith Church, Springfield. Dad had been raised in Hope Church. But when we moved from one section of the city to another, it was less convenient to worship at Hope. (I love to tell how I was baptized in Hope and confirmed and ordained in Faith.)

Bill Hale was my seventh grade Sunday school teacher. I don’t know how saintly he might have been, but I do know that it takes a special kind of person to teach a class of seventh graders year after year!

I remember one bleak mid-winter Sunday when only three or four of us made it to class. The other “students” mostly meditated (read: they were sprawled across the tables resting their heads on their arms). Only he and I were talking. I think the subject was the Creation. He asked me how I could reconcile Genesis with evolution.

I can’t remember what either of us said. I do remember that I knew that he was actually interested in what I had to say. It continues to be one of the most important moments in my formation as a person of faith. And now I know that he was the one who also invited our family to join that community of faith.

There are many saints along the pathway of our lives: those who nurtured us, who guided and chided, who laughed and cried with us, who pulled for us whether we knew it or not. I’m grateful for all of them.

Memorial Day is precious…very precious.

Blessings,

Rick Cowles