Love’s Price

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

That’s what Queen Elizabeth said the day after 9/11, quoting the British Psychiatrist Colin Murray Parkes. These words come back to me today as I greet the news of the death of my mentor, colleague, foe (at times) and almost life-long friend and fellow pilgrim Rev. Richard Lucco.

I first met him at the free-throw line at after-school basketball at North Park Covenant Church when he was a seminary student and I was seven years of age. As I tried to launch the ball with might I didn’t have in my little body, he pushed me aside and said, “watch and learn!” with his characteristic whole body laugh. That day began my relationship with my first coach. In many ways, my journey followed his. Later he was my camp counselor, and a fellow covenant pastor who was present at my ordination interview in 1995. After the interview, while I was nervously waiting out in the lobby as the board deliberated, Dick emerged from the room to call me back in with a somber face, and said, “We’ve denied you because you’re a cubs fan!” And the whole body laugh came again, he a Cardinals die-hard.

He went on to be a conference superintendent and then ECC Vice President, and here for a season our collegial relationship was strained by the hard discernments of our pastoral journeys. Never, though, was there a question about our friendship filled with deep respect and love. In the midst of it all he came and found me one day and said, “I love you very much.” Just at the right moment, a kind of hollow, grieving moment (I’ll spare you the details), he came and loved me. There’s that connection again.

Today it’s holy grief that shows up and knocks at the door. After five years of a mighty struggle with an aggressive and unrelenting cancer, Dick Lucco has died. Our chances at life together, at least according to our mortal frames, are gone. Our continued work at healing is over.

Losing those you love really does lead us into grief. I’m learning as I grow older how true that is.

Yes, yes, our faith gives us hope. We greet the glad news that death has been swallowed up by life. We ask the defiant questions of the early church: “Where, O Death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?” But we shake our fist at death as at least for now, it gets the best of us. I don’t know about you, but I’m longing for the promises of God to come into clear view when these dreaded sufferings and sorrows are no more. On that day we will be able to say together, to sing together, “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

For now, these things still sting.

Love (and grief) from here,

Peter Hawkinson

“Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Richard Lucco. Acknowledge we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive Richard into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

All Together, Now

As I’m writing this morning, I am sitting on my screened-in porch at my condo, staring at several dozen plant pots.

When I moved in here, almost a year ago, I had a vision: that I could make this little space up on my third-floor deck into something lush and green. I would hang planters from the ceiling, and mount boxes on the railing, and fill them with flowers and herbs and maybe even try for something ambitious like some tomatoes and spinach.

And it’s finally coming together.

I about wept when I hung up the first planter, and started to see the thing I had dreamed up come true; to see it become reality.

But it wasn’t without its hardships.

There was a long and difficult house hunt, trying to find what I wanted where I wanted it, learning what to compromise on and what to insist on, figuring out what I could afford. There were hard conversations with loved ones, who had their own vision of where I might live. And worries about being too far from church, or too far from friends, in too quiet of a neighborhood for a single woman, or too loud of a street for someone who doesn’t love city living.

I questioned myself a lot, and I cried more than I would care to admit. And maybe that’s what makes this moment, when I feel so clear in my choice and so grateful for my space, extra precious.

But while I am at this lovely moment of clarity and assurance in one small part of my life, admittedly I am still experiencing doubt and turmoil in other areas.

I imagine the same might be said for you.

I hope that in some parts of your life, you are enjoying great peace and contentment. But I am sure there are areas where you are not. Maybe it’s a relationship that you struggle with, including a relationship with yourself (don’t all of us have some thoughts about our bodies, here on the cusp of “swimsuit season”?); maybe it’s a professional concern, or a financial one. Maybe you are in a new and unexpected chapter of transition, or in the midst of a long grieving.

I know this is true for our church. I know that at the same time when we are getting back in person, eating meals together, celebrating confirmation, cheering on graduates, having Easter pancakes again, and cleaning out long-neglected closets, that we are also saying some goodbyes. We have lots of exciting momentum and some grief and loss, as we mark the transitions of Dimitri, Jason and Josh from our staff.

We have new seasons of possibility coming up, as we hope to welcome a new youth pastor later this year, and we will be blessed with the music ministry of Mary Gingrich as our new choir director. But we might also yearn for the “before COVID” times, when we didn’t have to hold all our plans loosely, and church life continued to go on much as it always had.

All of these feelings are hard to hold together – but we must try.

Try, to create space for the joy and the sorrow. The hope and the disappointment. The energy and the fatigue.

Try, to give ourselves and each other more grace, more patience, more tenderness and love.

Try, not to deny the complexity of this time, but to live honestly into it.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time for mourning and a time for dancing, a time for weeping and a time for laughing. Sometimes those times come all jumbled up together.

There is no secret, no quick fix or easy button for living well when they all do; when grieving and celebrating aren’t linear but tangled up as one.

But I do think part of the answer is to lean in, towards each other. To divide our sorrows by carrying them with friends, and to multiply our joys in the same way. Galatians 6 reminds us to bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. But the Bible also talks repeatedly about celebrating, with big tables and generous invitations to join in – to share our joys as well as our sorrows.

So I am making this my goal, in this beautiful, difficult, complicated season. And I hope you will too.

Yours,

Pastor Jen

All Together, Now

As I’m writing this morning, I am sitting on my screened-in porch at my condo, staring at several dozen plant pots.

When I moved in here, almost a year ago, I had a vision: that I could make this little space up on my third-floor deck into something lush and green. I would hang planters from the ceiling, and mount boxes on the railing, and fill them with flowers and herbs and maybe even try for something ambitious like some tomatoes and spinach.

And it’s finally coming together.

I about wept when I hung up the first planter, and started to see the thing I had dreamed up come true; to see it become reality.

But it wasn’t without its hardships.

There was a long and difficult house hunt, trying to find what I wanted where I wanted it, learning what to compromise on and what to insist on, figuring out what I could afford. There were hard conversations with loved ones, who had their own vision of where I might live. And worries about being too far from church, or too far from friends, in too quiet of a neighborhood for a single woman, or too loud of a street for someone who doesn’t love city living.

I questioned myself a lot, and I cried more than I would care to admit. And maybe that’s what makes this moment, when I feel so clear in my choice and so grateful for my space, extra precious.

But while I am at this lovely moment of clarity and assurance in one small part of my life, admittedly I am still experiencing doubt and turmoil in other areas.

I imagine the same might be said for you.

I hope that in some parts of your life, you are enjoying great peace and contentment. But I am sure there are areas where you are not. Maybe it’s a relationship that you struggle with, including a relationship with yourself (don’t all of us have some thoughts about our bodies, here on the cusp of “swimsuit season”?); maybe it’s a professional concern, or a financial one. Maybe you are in a new and unexpected chapter of transition, or in the midst of a long grieving.

I know this is true for our church. I know that at the same time when we are getting back in person, eating meals together, celebrating confirmation, cheering on graduates, having Easter pancakes again, and cleaning out long-neglected closets, that we are also saying some goodbyes. We have lots of exciting momentum and some grief and loss, as we mark the transitions of Dimitri, Jason and Josh from our staff.

We have new seasons of possibility coming up, as we hope to welcome a new youth pastor later this year, and we will be blessed with the music ministry of Mary Gingrich as our new choir director. But we might also yearn for the “before COVID” times, when we didn’t have to hold all our plans loosely, and church life continued to go on much as it always had.

All of these feelings are hard to hold together – but we must try.

Try, to create space for the joy and the sorrow. The hope and the disappointment. The energy and the fatigue.

Try, to give ourselves and each other more grace, more patience, more tenderness and love.

Try, not to deny the complexity of this time, but to live honestly into it.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time for mourning and a time for dancing, a time for weeping and a time for laughing. Sometimes those times come all jumbled up together.

There is no secret, no quick fix or easy button for living well when they all do; when grieving and celebrating aren’t linear but tangled up as one.

But I do think part of the answer is to lean in, towards each other. To divide our sorrows by carrying them with friends, and to multiply our joys in the same way. Galatians 6 reminds us to bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. But the Bible also talks repeatedly about celebrating, with big tables and generous invitations to join in – to share our joys as well as our sorrows.

So I am making this my goal, in this beautiful, difficult, complicated season. And I hope you will too.

Yours,

Pastor Jen