snow dancing with Mary Etta

February 28, 2008
I spent the afternoon with Mary Etta yesterday. We sat on her back porch and watched the snowflakes fly and talked about everything and nothing. She wanted to talk about her eulogy and funeral. So we found her blue folder that holds her important words and began to talk about her final poem, the poem of her funeral. We began at the beginning place for us both, our Bibles. A search turned up several forms of our holy book and we looked up the passages she has marked.
We read First Corinthians 13 and Matthew 5 from the inclusive language New Testament, the love passage and the Beatitudes. But I found the Psalm and Isaiah readings in Mary Etta’s NSRV Bible. As the pages fell freely while I turned to these ancient texts, I saw where Mary Etta’s hand had marked her Bible with brackets and underlining. I could see the dance of her soul as I turned the pages of that book All the important words of faith and belief and hope and assurance and grief and anger and loss were marked so that I could follow the road map to God that Mary Etta has created in her Bible.
I needed those words of faith yesterday from the Bible and from Mary Etta. I have two friends walking through the valley of death now. One friend is dying surrounded by her sons and one friend is bringing her son home to die. Mary Etta and I remembered how our southern farm families used to quote the phrase "In the midst of life, there is death." And Mary Etta and I know the reversal of that phrase is equally true, "In the midst of death, there is life."
Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
Restore us O God; let your face shine that we might be saved.
Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
So I will play the prelude for Mary Etta’s final party. She wants our favorite old hymns, the ones with bounce. I will play the old time rhythms, crying and laughing appropriately as Mary Etta has instructed me, giving thanks for life and death and life again. It will be my gift to Mary Etta, who springs from the same southern rural root stock that gave birth to me. Sister Mary Etta, thank you for being the face of God for me while sitting on the porch yesterday watching the snowflakes fly.