Chapter 28: Heaven is a Place on Earth

Around Thanksgiving I was packing up to leave for the day when a woman I didn’t know called the church.  Her voice was hard to make out.  She was crying, in that choking way that garbles your voice. She said she was looking for a place for her mother. For her mother to…? I thought maybe they needed to have a memorial for their mother, or she was looking for an assisted living referral, but she said no, it’s harder than that. It’s stranger than that.

She said “I can’t say it, can you call my brother?” I penciled down the local number and thought “How did I get into all this?” I called her brother, he was teary too, he said that their mother had attended an event at the church, a concert or something, he couldn’t remember the details.  Anyway, she thought our church was beautiful, she thought what we believed was beautiful.  Anyway, that was a year or two ago, and now she was in her 90’s, in assisted living in a place nearby, and she was really suffering. She was in constant pain, unrelenting agony, nothing could relieve it. And she wanted to die.

In Washington and a handful of other states people can petition the court for the right to choose the time they depart this life. A person has to be very ill, usually very old, and in sound mental health to be approved. So this woman went through the long and complicated authorization process and got the go-ahead: yes, you may end your life.  But her nursing home, a Catholic institution, wouldn’t allow her to swallow the handful of pills that constitutes assisted suicide. She wanted to go to her son’s home, just blocks from here, but he lives in an old apartment building that isn’t handicapped accessible, and she couldn’t sit upright, much less walk up the stairs. So Compassionate Choices, the nonprofit who managed this Death with Dignity procedure, said the other option was a cheap motel, the kind that rented by the hour, the kind that wouldn’t ask questions about all the medical equipment that would need to be hauled in, wouldn’t care what was going on. But her son said this was just too sad- yeah, they didn’t have any money, but did that mean that their mom had to die in a cheap motel room?

So he called us. The social worker representing Compassionate Choices said he had never heard of euthanasia happening in a church, but it didn’t think it could hurt to ask. So…the son paused and took a deep breath…so I guess I am calling…to ask if my mom can…well, die in your church. She really likes you, he rushed in, you mean something to her, even if you don’t know her….

We talked for a while. The procedure needed to happen soon, because his mom was in agony, hurt crushing her body every second. He explained that if we were willing to open our space to this procedure a nurse and a social worker would come and administer the medicine, that his mother would arrive in a medicab and a hearse would take away her body, that he and his siblings would be there in her final moments. That the procedure would take between two and four hours. That all they needed from us was space- a place for his mom to make this last choice.

I didn’t commit either way, just let him know I would call him back, and hung up the phone. I had so many emotions, but first sadness for his mother’s suffering. Anger that natural death wouldn’t come for this elderly woman in constant pain,  but did take away babies in the NICU and happy twenty-somethings with cancer. Death was close at hand for a young man in the congregation whose cello-playing brought us all to tears, who was gentle and kind and had two small children. But no, death couldn’t take this elderly lady instead, this woman who was so ready to go.

 I felt confusion over my role in these stranger’s lives- I don’t even know this people! I closed my office door and sat on the floor- when the world is spinning uncontrollably, when there are literally life and death decisions to make, I find that meditating is the only way to slow life down to a manageable speed. And in meditation I found that I keep coming back to my anger- why me? I’m not proud of this, but to be really honest I kept thinking- why did they have to call me? I am in my very first year of ministry, I haven’t written Sunday’s sermon yet, I am already this close to overwhelmed. Why a huge moral decision like this when I am so unprepared?

It’s not pretty, but it’s what I was thinking in those panicked first moments. Fortunately a greater force prevailed, a deep source of universal wisdom, available to any who seek a cosmic truth- Facebook. I remembered that a friend had posted a Thomas Merton quote online that morning, a bit of wisdom that was just what I needed. Merton, our modern American mystic and monastic said “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business, and in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy, if anything can.”

Ahh yes, love. Love, the reason we do church. Yep, I don’t know this woman at all.  I don’t know whether she is worthy, whatever that means.  But my job in this life is to love her. My job is too love her at this moment when she is so fragile, so vulnerable, so in need of love.

In my life I have received this big, engulfing, no-questions-asked love. From old church ladies who winced at my blue hair but loved me anyway, from my “do we have to talk about feelings?” little brother when I was shattered into depressed, weeping shards on the kitchen floor and he sat beside me. From seminary friends after I told them, terrified, that I wondered if a person with my mental health history could be- should be- a minister, and they said “hell yes!” From church board members after I shove my foot halfway down my throat, from nurses in the pych ward- I am broken yet beloved. In all the moments when I needed love but didn’t deserve it, hadn’t earned it, couldn’t appreciate it- love enveloped me, a bounty without end.

I saw this bounty in my congregation. Fearless, unshakeable love for each of this world’s broken souls. It’s why I fell in love with them. Every Sunday we say “Whoever you are, wherever you came from, whoever you love, wherever you are on life’s journey- you are welcome here.” It knocks the wind right out of me- I didn’t know the human heart could hold so much love, before I met this congregation.

Was my congregation’s love big enough to house this biggest of transitions, this move from our reality into the great mystery, for this fragile woman?  Could we embrace this stranger without stopping to inquire if she was worthy? We didn’t know what she believed in, how she lived, if she was kind or cruel. We didn’t know how she voted or if she was a good parent. We had to embrace our own First Principle: she had inherent worth and dignity. Not because she did or was anything. She was born precious and holy so with that in mind we would help usher her out of this life. Yes, I thought then and I deeply believe now, yes- our love is big enough to include this stranger.

I e-mailed the board with “Urgent- SOS’ in the subject line, and told them just that- this woman needs shelter, she needs a place to die, and I think we should be that shelter.  Our love is big enough, our love is strong enough. I asked, “What do you think?” Reflecting now I think this must have been a heck of an e-mail to receive at work, in the midst of a busy day- hey, is it okay if this woman that we’ve never met comes to the church to take some life-ending drug cocktail? Hey, can you put aside all your complicated feelings about life and death and think over this super weird, no-precedent question that literally determines if an elderly stranger, suffering in unimaginable agony, can end her life in our airy, bright sanctuary or has to go to a by-the-hour roach motel?  And no, I don’t know if press will get word of this, I don’t know if there will be protestors. No, there is no legal precedent, yes, we could be sued. And please let me know by 5 PM.

The board quickly and unequivocally agreed- the congregation’s love is great enough to encompass this suffering woman. This is our chance, several members said, our chance to walk our talk.  Several years ago many congregants advocated for Death with Dignity legislation, they went door-to-door, they worked phone banks. “This is our chance to live what we believe,” they said. “This is what we learned in our faith community- to love other people without stopping first to see if they are worthy.”

And so, the week before Christmas, on a chilly afternoon with the weak winter sun shining, an ambulance brought a suffering older woman to our church.  A nurse wheeled her tiny body inside on a hospital stretcher.  Her children nestled her into a bed with familiar, worn-soft linens and her favorite quilt.  Pictures of family surrounded her, sunlight slipped in the back windows, and her son and daughter held her as she took first some anti-nausea medicine, than an hour later drank a concoction that ushered her into sleep and then death. A nurse, social worker, and her children were present. I waited next door, out of the way but available.  Within that second hour I saw the hearse arrive, and her son walked over, red-eyed but smiling, to tell me she was gone peacefully on her way.

 “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.” I am grateful that my church family taught me radical love- love strong enough to shelter a stranger.  To let her last act be a deliberate one. It’s a strength I wouldn’t have without religious community. It is too easy for me to focus strictly on myself, to be the center of my own universe. Part of this is social media, part of it is the human ego, some of it is that we live less communal lives that ever before in history. From birth we are angled to gaze only inward. Life in spiritual community is a corrective to that self-centeredness. I spend an hour a week in the sanctuary and I am reminded that I am one being among billions and that through the great questions of faith we are connected. Why are we here? Why do we die? Why does this life matter? We search for meaning together and as a side effect our self-absorption is reduced. As a side effect we recall that we are called to love others, without first inquiring as to whether they are worthy. And even if we ourselves are not worthy, because God knows I am not, in spiritual community we get to experience that tidal wave of love wash over us. Broken but so loved.

I don’t know what will happen when I die. I have no creed regarding the great beyond. But here in this reality my life is deeper, kinder, and more interesting because I am a part of a congregation. A chance to think deeply about life’s big questions alongside people older and younger, who I have grown to love, brings me back every Sunday morning, despite how late the concert went last night, despite my friends inviting me to brunch, even though I love to sleep late. Spiritual community gives my life a shape and a meaning greater than just me thinking about myself. The chance to be loved not for who I am, but sometimes despite who I am. I don’t know if there is a heaven, but the blessing of spiritual community is paradise right here, on this earth.