A Long Lament that I Wrote in the Cemetery, as Thanksgiving Approached, as I Sat in the Shade of a Tree near the Grave of my Parents, Turned into a Hymn of Praise and Thanksgiving when the Lord Bade Me to be Still. 

Last year, as Thanksgiving approached, I went to the cemetery and sat in the shade of a tree near the grave of my parents to quiet my heart and consider the times and write a lament for my country and the church I had left.  For my county, I lamented, and wrote of how it is beset with and constantly assaulted by lies and deceit, and how it is in danger now of succumbing to and embracing mindlessness, injustice, and violence.

For my former church, I lamented the effects of the church’s continuing political support of the ex-president and the injustices he supports and proposes, its dismissal of the reality of the insurrection as an attack upon our democracy and nation, and the resulting great diminishment of honoring the two great commandments of loving God with our whole mind heart and soul and loving our neighbor as ourselves.  I lamented the continually growing Christless spiritual misleading, mis-shepherding, and spiritual oppression that this has brought upon the current church members, including dear and close friends and their families who remain at the church, and upon the thousands nationwide through the church’s vast and constant media reach. 

As I sat at the cemetery, I wrote pages and pages of a long detailed narrative of the issues and troubles of this country and within the church.  Later at home, over a number of days, I began to rewrite and weave all the paragraphs together, working towards a coherent and flowing narrative.  I processed all my notes and planned the time to perfect the writing and…  Then the Lord stopped me and erased within my heart the focus of my writing, the lament, and He bade me rather just to be still.

Then slowly, again over a number of days and then weeks, the lament faded and, instead of all the chaos and noise that swirls constantly around us all, in my heart and mind, I began to revisit my time in the cemetery by my parents’ grave and the impulses and reasons that had carried me there in the first place.

As the Lord calmed my heart and mind and I began to reconsider my time at the cemetery, what I first recalled was the peace and quiet of the cemetery and the view from my parents’ graveside.  As a soft droning in the distance, I heard the traffic on the dreaded 405 freeway just a few blocks to the west and the 5 Freeway not much farther to the east. And for some reason I thought of the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, not at all similar to the land between the 405 and the 5, except for a deep inner response within me to both.

For the land between the two rivers has always had a large fascination for me since my ancient history lessons in fourth grade, and the land between the freeways is a land of family historical and emotional significance to me. For the land I sat upon and saw around me, is populated with significant reminders and remains of my past. Within sight are the few remains of my high school, damaged beyond economically viable repair by the 1994 earthquake, and the space where the old Holy Cross hospital once stood wherein my father died, also a casualty of 1994, on which now stands the new hospital. And the cemetery itself contains the burial place of my parents, a sister, grandmother, a number of aunts and uncles and cousins, and a best friend from grammar and high school days. A space of my life, a place of my roots, a land of my history and breathing.

And the softness of the freeway droning, was accompanied at times by cars on the nearby streets running alongside the cemetery, their sound, liked stringed instruments in a symphony, helping to define with sound the cemetery’s physical limits.  All of this a soft cushioning, comforting, noise of life. And within this, I remember the birds in the trees twittering and calling to each other – and to me – as were the bells of the mission striking the hours, its sound a reminder of the time passed and yet also of the hours still remaining to come, like a blessing over the entire cemetery creating and maintaining a timeless quality to the landscape, reminding the living still of the presence of time and gently proclaiming the fact of our mortality within each tolling of the bells.

I then came to ponder and consider the lives of my parents and what their lives had instilled within me, and within my five sisters.  My initial goal of writing a well-written, well-constructed and detailed lament changed, and the Lord began to fashion it into an understanding and thanksgiving for who and what my parents were – the parents the Lord had given me as a blessing for His purposes of good in my life – what they gave me, what I have become, and even where I was now in my life.  This posting now is not a lengthy dirge and lament, but, much shorter than originally planned, it is now a meditation of thanksgiving.

As I considered and meditated upon my parents, a deep thankfulness came over me.  For my parents – good people – had a much simpler but harder life than I.  My Mexican-American father, was a man only able to attend school up to 8th grade before having to move with his family to work on the huge Tagus Ranch in the California Central Valley to help feed his family during the depression. He was a WWII veteran, and a target of discrimination and dishonor, which I remember even as a small child. He was also kind and generous to all.  My English mother, a British war bride, was dutiful and organized in her love and care for all six of us, doing the best she could with the limited amount of money we as a family had to live on.

I am thankful for the Catholic faith in which my parents raised us, and their simple faith in the church, in Jesus, and in the goodness toward others that they taught us by their words and example.  I am grateful for my twelve years of Catholic education that my parents managed to pay for, where I learned of, and grew to love, the narrative stories of the gospels.  And the Presence that first revealed itself to me when I was three, before I even had names or words to identify or describe it, was loving and caring, and the Jesus I grew up knowing, was kind and gentle, and took children in His arms and blessed them.  This is still the Jesus I know and understand and to whom I pray, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

My parents weren’t perfect, as no one ever is, and they had their struggles, as we all do.  But I must confess that they were truly more perfect as persons and in their faith, than most of the pastors and the elders of the church I left.  My parents’ faith was simple, but always centered on goodness and kindness to others.  For my parents, because of their faith and basic understanding of Christian teaching, would not have honored or supported an evil man and his godless political ways as either good or Catholic, nor would they have thought of or trusted a gospel which was not centered on love and kindness which was not extended freely to all.  Neither did they ever reject Christ by minimizing His teaching of the two great commandments, nor did they ever attempt to persuade others not to be concerned or care for the poor, the needy, the hungry, or oppressed, for empty political gain.  They would not have even understood this concept or believed it.

I will not go into or dwell again on all the reasons I left the church I had attended for forty years, other than to say it still grieves me how easily and thoroughly a pure devotion to Christ was abandoned, and how it burdens me still that among most of the leadership a spiritual blindness to the unrepented sin of leading thousands away from the simplicity of the gospel for political purposes, seems to still hold sway over their hearts and mind. For the one leader I know who did speak up, was told to leave from being an elder, and the silence of those remaining, I must assume, is either a wholehearted agreement with the political pollution of the gospel, which has now enslaved the church, or is a silence conjured by a pathetic fear of man and corrupting spiritual intimidation, which is then a doubly condemned sin.

And I now offer thanksgiving to the Lord who used all the circumstances of my life since conception to bring me to the cemetery, where regardless of the present circumstances and conditions of the nation and church, the Lord eventually used my time of rest by my parents’ grave to fill me with hope and joy – a renewed and settled conviction of His constant love and care over my life – and with the peace of heart and mind alive in defiance against all the chaos, lies, and deceptions, and their evil intent, which now constantly swirls assaults us still. 

And all this brought about when the Lord bade me to be still and know deeply that He is God, and that just as He moves His clouds silently and surely across the expanse of the heavens with power, He will indeed bring about His Kingdom of peace, love, healing and restoration, as He has promised, and is even now accomplishing.

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Family Non-Fiction – Writing In The Shade Of Trees

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Letters, Correspondence, & Dialogue with Church & Friends on Christ, Faith, & Christian Living – Writing In The Shade Of Trees