Lately I’ve been pondering death and its relationship to life. It’s not a preoccupation that should have you concerned, but the coincidence of Holy Week with the decline of a friend offered the opportunity to consider death more deeply than I usually do.
Perhaps you remember a couple months ago, when I wrote about the profound sense of belonging I experienced at the Square Halo Conference, hosted by Ned and Leslie Bustard. Maybe you don’t remember, and that’s okay, too, especially since I struggled to find the words to articulate my experience and said very little about it at the time. Here is what I wrote:
“I felt like I was being welcomed to a feast where there is always room for one more chair and having someone pull up a chair and invite me to sit in it, that together we might taste the goodness of the Lord. The Bustards crafted such a hospitable gathering that at no point was I the awkward imposter in the corner. I was just greeted, welcomed, and accepted for who I was, no matter who I was. Leslie’s ability to carry a sense of belonging with her and extend it to whomever she encounters permeated the weekend. It felt like such a beautiful form of hospitality.”
I had arrived at the conference not knowing anyone, though I had interacted online with a small handful of people prior to the conference. In an odd turn of events, I found myself walking through the rain to the conference with Malcolm Guite, who was kind enough to share his umbrella with me along the way. We arrived a few minutes early, and I took in the art in the Square Halo Gallery while waiting for things to get started. It was in this window of time that I first met Leslie Bustard. She made a point to introduce herself and welcome me, which was my first clue that hers was not a superficial hospitality. Because we shared a couple online communities, I knew that her first poetry book was debuting that day, so I congratulated her. She gushed and gave me a great big hug, and thanked me for remembering. Her delight was effervescent and contagious, and it was impossible not to get caught up in her joie de vivre.
We had several brief interactions throughout the weekend, always punctuated with her radiant smile and shining eyes. I had purchased her book on its release date, hoping to have her sign it if she had a moment. That evening, I didn’t even have to ask. She saw me with her book in hand, smiled, and said, “You want me to sign that for you, right?” We had an oddly beautiful conversation about poetry and illness and medication-related hair loss and the goodness of God in the land of the living. She shared that she was disappointed at the prospect of losing her hair again due to upcoming cancer treatments, especially since it had just begun to fill back in. I shared my own struggles with thinning hair due to medication and asked how she handled it. She recommended hats. When I sought to ask her for a moment of her time, I didn’t know how few moments she had left.
This morning, shortly before dawn, Leslie found herself in the presence of the Lord, transformed.
This morning, shortly before dawn, Leslie found herself in the presence of the Lord, transformed. And still, the sun rose, though she did not. For all her radiance, she was not the Sun, only a brilliant reflection of it, growing more brilliant and more radiant as she drew closer to Him and reflected His light more clearly.
Death, if you’ll allow me to personify him, is clever. He points out the threshold to Life at the end of our time and calls it “death,” then teaches us to fear it. In doing so, we find ourselves in a constant state of avoiding the threshold to Life, clinging to the realm where Death, and his minions, sin, hold sway, calling it “life.” Father of lies, indeed.
I am not at all suggesting that we hasten to escape this realm for the next. On the contrary, I wonder if this realm is like the soil, dark and damp, and we are like seeds planted in it, germinating according to the gardener’s plan, waiting for the moment when the time is right for the sun to call us forth. It is then that we stretch beyond the soil, into the sun’s bright rays, to become what we were always meant to be: beauty in the garden of God. It would do no good for the seed to escape the soil before its time.
I think of how radiant Leslie became, the closer she drew to her final transformation, as her roots reached deep and she sprouted toward the sun, and she feared neither darkness nor light any longer. Even in her dying she ushered in beauty and the grandeur of her Maker, in ways I cannot fathom. There is a wonder to death and the mysteries it holds that she knows and I do not, and it has transformed her.
Invitation: Mourning with Those Who Mourn
I have found myself praying and processing through poetry these last few weeks, from the day of Leslie’s brain surgery to her Holy Week in hospice. I find these poems do a better job of encapsulating my thoughts on life and death than my prose can right now, so I’m sharing them with you. Feel free to skip over them if poetry isn’t your thing, or if they get too long. But I’m convinced we don’t hold space well for grief or for the painful parts of other people’s stories, so I’m offering them below as an invitation to walk a portion of this road with Ned and their three daughters as they learn to walk this portion of the road without Leslie. As Douglas McKelvey so eloquently wrote in his Liturgy to Begin a Purposeful Gathering, “May we in our joys find grace to enter the sorrows of others.”
Poetry: Processing the Journey
Leslie's Odyssey
Like Penelope, unweave
the shroud that makes its progress
on the loom of Leslie's life.
Untie the strangling knots;
You are making all sad things
untrue; You are making
all things new; for Leslie,
Lord, please do. Reweave
hope and wholeness
in the secret, darkened places
as in the dark, in the secret
you once wove her whole
with hope for how she
would shine bright as yellow;
we are not ready
to lose that hope,
nor to wear the shroud
that weaves itself in her.
A day will come when her beauty
will be shrouded by death;
Today is not that day, we pray.
Today, evict the shadows
that wear her beauty
like a disguise, masquerading
as what is real in the land
of the living. Like Penelope,
weave light from this tangle
of darkness; turn mourning
to joy, the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
The Brightest Sun
Even the brightest sun sets
(from our perspective,
though it shines bright as ever
from heaven's).
But here we turn
into the night,
dark without the light
of the sun.
Give us moonlight
in our hearts
to guide the path
we walk 'till dawn,
reflections of a sun
that has not diminished
but burns brighter
than we know
as it sets on the horizon.
The Radiant Ones
It's the radiant ones we grieve,
the ones who clearly belong
to a brighter, better world,
whose very presence
disrupts the darkness
and shows us there is light,
true light, on distant shores.
The closer they get
the brighter they shine,
the clearer it is they belong
in that far kingdom, and that
makes them harder to let go.
How dark the world will be
without this light in it!
Holy Saturday
How fitting that as she rests
in the liminal, between life and death,
Christ rests with her on this Holy Saturday.
Having brought Life to death.
shining light on the darkest corners of hell,
we wait for Him to rise like the dawn - and her as well.
But first we wait in hope,
while darkness does its work.
This is hell, and we are being harrowed, too.
A Moment
When I asked if she had a moment
I didn't realize how few moments she had left.
How precious every moment is
and how generously she sowed them
like seeds in the ground,
a garden that will continue to flower
long after she herself is planted deep.
How beautiful the self-sowing nature
of these seeds that ripple through time
like tiny waves lapping at the shores of eternity,
all because she dove in to be present
with those who asked
for a moment.
"Holy Saturday" is a beautiful reflection. I am amazed at how well it holds death, rest, and life in the same place, acknowledging each of them and binding them together (much like the image of Christ resting with Leslie). Thank you for sharing the gift of poetry!
Elizabeth, thank you for this stunning reflection on life and death, our hope and Leslie. It was a tender way to spend my Sunday morning. Thank you.