Ten-Finger Exercises

I was a Pagan among them

Today I went to a very unusual Christian funeral. (Not unusual like, say, having a clown do the eulogy or a hot air balloon carrying off the coffin. Hey, what good ideas!)

It was unusual in that the "assembly" does not call itself a church, and all the women wear skirts and dresses, and even head coverings in the funeral home. I felt very pagan, having not remembered it was a funeral day; and not only did I not have a head covering, I had on a tee shirt, sweater, and pants. Most of the attendees were members of this same assembly, and had their Bibles with them, to which they were sent often to flip through for one verse after another.

The officiants were not clergy; there are no clergy in this group , and only men spoke. Three men spoke eloquently and from the heart for over an hour, without the usual sounding phrases that an evangelical church would use. One man quoted parts of verses of scripture that were not well known to make his point, giving us examples of nurses in the Bible. He cited a translation by the letters, like the KJV (King James Version which most people carried) but the letters didn’t mean anything to me and I can’t remember them. The social worker who went with me commented that she couldn’t make sense of the words to the hymns, none of which we’d ever heard. There was nothing familiar about them, even though the theology they represented did not appear unusual.

The person whose funeral it was, and all her family, have no television sets or newspapers in their homes. I don’t know if other members of the group follow that tradition also, or if it was a personal choice.

I do know that I wish I could have melted through the floor when my cell phone went off, loudly playing my husband’s special ring, Love is a Many Splendoured Thing. If it had been a grenade, I could have fallen on it. Since it was not, I had to decide between trying to muffle it in my purse-arms-shirt, or trying to get it out of its little sock and fumble for the control to turn it off. I did the latter, because it didn’t sound like the first choice was working. Terrible. In the second row, too.

I wish I could have written down the Bible verses and version, but I was busy muffling my other cell phone, just in case. I haven’t any idea what he was translating as “nurse.”

The service was very moving in some ways; I guess it was the complete devotion evidenced by the people there. They all sang heartily, by heart, by the way.

The woman who died was extraordinary, in that, even though she was barely 60, she seemed so at peace with dying, and so looking forward to being with the Lord. She told me about the many meditations and devotions she had written, particularly on the subject of being "the bride of Christ." That phrase usually refers to the church in general. I've heard nuns use it too, in the sense that when they take their vows, their are wedded to Christ. This woman took it personally for all women, it seems, and had formed quite a theology around it. She had found seven women in scripture who she identified as "types" of brides of Christ. It sounded like she was talking about archetypes, but she ignored my suggestion/question. She said she had tried to link the seven "types" to the letters of Paul to the seven churches, but her husband had not agreed with that idea.

I came away from this funeral thinking about the elephant and the blind men. We all only get a little piece of the truth about who or what God is, and whatever piece this group had, it didn't feel exactly familiar. (That's heresy, by the way. In order to make the analogy less heretical, I'd have to make sure that every blind person had full access to the entire beast, rather than just the little part in front of him. I guess I could agree to that. Everyone would still describe the elephant in different ways, with emphasis on the part that stood out most in their memory.)

Here's a sample verse of one of the hymns:
With mercy and with judgement
My web of time He wove,
And aye the dews of sorrow
Were lusted with His love.
I'll bless the hand that guided,
I'll bless the heart that planned
When throned where glory dwelleth
In Immanuel's land.