Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Faith's Confidences - Saying Goodbye. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith's Confidences - Saying Goodbye. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Empty Spaces


Empty Spaces

I woke this morning to the empty spaces of a lingering, personal, numbness  much like a grey, misting fog stubbornly refuses to lift to an early rising dawn; finding myself groping for what thin, vanishing support remained within the disembodied promises of hope and healing I had heard all week long. I was feeling both a deep, personal loss, and that feeling of a general disorientation that was trying to make sense of everything that had come to pass.

For it was on Tuesday last that I stood over my father's dying body to embrace him long and hard, then begin gently cradling his feverish head between my hands to breath final words to ears that were no longer listening. Believing that touch was the only sense of connection left between a dying person with the land of the living, the body having become dissociated from the spoken words it was hearing so engrossed it was in its impending death. And as my dad laid within a borrowed hospital bed provided by our hospice group, I wetted his face, dabbing his temples with a wet cloth, then compressing drops of cold water into an open mouth that could no longer speak or swallow. Like so many of the previous months before, I felt helpless against dad's long illness and suffering grief. I could only pray the Lord's tender mercies upon a beloved father laboring under diminishing breaths and wordless whispers. As the day wore on dad fought valiantly to the end against a lingering illness that would keep its promise of certain death and final rest.

Six months earlier I had carried dad's broken, feverish, body into the hospital's emergency ward to revive him from a deep, aspirated pneumonia misunderstood and left undiagnosed. My previous visit two weeks earlier, and succeeding daily calls, never informed me of dad's declining health until receiving my mother's call for help on a careworn Thursday afternoon (I was to visit that weekend). Late into the evening the ER doctors worked to stabilize dad's shaking body, all the while asking the inevitable questions of whether the family wished to resuscitate him or not. Afterwards, each of the next eight days and nights revealed to the family how deeply serious dad's chronic condition had become, causing each of us to rethink final preparations for his care. And during this time, as dad laid within yet another hospital bed - this time in the hospital's intensive care ward - his words can still be heard ringing in my head, asking me, "Am I going to die?"

How does a son answer that? "No, you aren't going to die?" "Yes, you are going to die?" How does one respond when, with each passing day, we learn of the many new ways that my father's body was beginning to fail? All the while struggling to educate ourselves as a family how to care for dad's wasting disease known as Parkinson's. Our next steps were to place dad's recovery into a nursing facility's sub-acute unit where we could stall for time while preparing and educating ourselves how to successfully care for dad at home. If we were to honor dad's wishes to go home and die in a place he found comfort and peace, than we needed to somehow prepare for bringing him home without returning him to a nursing home to live out his final days. It was what he wanted,, and what the family would attempt to do, without any medical training behind us. It required teaching my mom, who would become dad's primary care giver, what to look for, and how to effectively help him when he needed it. In effect, at 81 years of age, mom would have to become dad's full-time nurse without previous training or experience. And it is to her credit that she did such an amazing job far beyond anyone's expectations.

We next had to figure out what outside agencies could assist us with the task of bringing (and successfully keeping) dad at home - along with a backup plan in case all failed and came crashing down upon us. After countless days of interviewing nursing homes and agencies over the next several weeks I finally came upon the helpful offices of the Veteran's Administration (VA) and quickly came upon a viable, long-term, solution that soon found me housed within the offices of Hospice of Michigan (HOM). There, under the consult of one of the organization's regional directors, I spoke of my dad's condition. And as I spoke, my confidant's soulful eyes glistened with tears listening to my concerns of medical ethics and personal guilt while asking questions of when is enough, enough, after seven long years and a failed double heart attack? When do you quit? At what point do you stop trying? Are finances sufficient reason? How do we avoid ignorance and ineptitude in dad's care? Questions I needed to ask as I looked down the road to dad's inevitable end. A disquieting end that troubled me as much as it inflicted him with its wasting pains and growing physical dilemmas.

During the next few days I prepared the nursing home staff, and then my family, for the fatal resolution of bringing dad home to die under the care of hospice (even as we entered into the care of the rehab unit, the floor doctor had spoken cautiously weeks earlier of dad's survivability beyond the next several weeks. And to have looked at his depleted condition in the face of his lingering pneumonia one would think the good doctor to be right). We next met with HOM and had the nursing staff meet with my parents and family for a final examination, consult, and patient exit. After eight long days of hospitalization, and another thirty days of rehab and recovery at the nursing home, we transferred dad home to begin preparing a mobile staff of nurses, aides, doctors, social workers, chaplains, medical devices, and equipment around him. Forty days had passed since dad had laid on death's door in my arms, and in the emergency ward, and now he was back home to prepare both himself, his spouse, friends and family, for a slow, wasting death which would come some nineteen weeks later - more than twice the length of time that I actually thought we really had, and none had confidently predicted.

During dad's remaining days we were able to fly in a nephew from South Korea who had recently been released from overseas duty and was coming home on furlough. At his visit hospice thought to honor both dad and grandson for their military service in Korea (it was appropriately timed and thoughtfully suggested as we would later find out). Before a grandson dressed in military blues, a former navy veteran to administer the honorarium, and a news reporter on hand to headline all of the proceedings, each were duly honored and awarded. To which proceedings dad dryly observed that while his grandson served in a clean, dry, warm, barracks far removed from the DMZ, he (at the tender age of 19) was stationed sixty-two years earlier near the Korean front lines in active combat with only a sandbagged hole in the ground for lodging. Above his head stretched a wet, snow-bound canvas that held within it a potbellied stove to stave off the long, cold, wintry months of the Arctic winds. More fortunate than most, dad became the company supply sergeant when the Army found he could type. His duties were to provide warm clothing, boots, blankets, food, armor, and bullets, to the front lines. Fifty years later, in 2003, he would meet some of his frontline buddies for the first time since those days of his youth at a military reunion held by his company's regiment in St. George, Utah. That was ten years ago against a dithering will as to whether he should go or not, but to then happily discover lost war-time friends when he did decide to go with mom. Those were happier times.

Over the ensuing weeks and months, mom and dad slowly allowed hospice to increase their personal services to the family, each thinking dad's days would last forever but finding in reality that his body was beginning to shut down, no longer able to withstand the chronic disease wasting away at dad's muscles and nerves. In dad's final weeks, we would learned just how desperate his end would become... at which point my greatest fears were beginning to haunt me as I witnessed my mother's emotional decline against a strong resolve to not succumb against the daily strain of keeping dad alive. Her mind was beginning to wander, and her unfailing stoutness was beginning to break, under the stresses of seeing her beloved husband becoming more and more diminished. With each new realization came mom's mounting irritability amidst a growing emotional tension within our close-knit family (most easily witnessed by every intrusive visit by son or daughter). At the last, I had hospice meet with the family to discuss dad's final, impending stage while attempting to prepare private-duty nursing for him - and especially for mom in great need of help. Nursing that I was to find out was generally "more in name than in function," when finding agency after agency that would take our money but not lift dad off the floor when he fell (which he did often). Their solution was to call 911. Nor would they help administer medication because of the liability (though a second set of eyes would make me feel better at the behest of mom's continued administration). Hence, the difficulties of making dad's death at home successful were beginning to mount up. Even so, there were a few agencies that would provide for dad's physical care and lifting, although it most generally would go under the name of "aide" of some kind, thus requiring two sorts of people at the house instead of one.

To help reduce some of the tension, and to get mom out of the house so her "batteries might recharge," I took both parents downtown to the city's art festival not long before dad died; my brother would bring dad outside to the wood pile to sit beside him in the sunshine while he split and stacked wood; and my sister would sit with dad while mom took a nap in her favorite swing on the porch; a grandson would stop by to help in the morning - and then my brother again in the evening - with dad's lifting and dressing; and family friends came by to cheer and to pray. By placing dad into hospice's care we found a tremendous resource of help even as we found a reasonable way to prepare everyone for dad's impending death. Though it seemed cruel to begin it so early, it actually began exactly when it should have. From the time when I took dad into emergency, until his death this past Tuesday evening, nearly six months had passed... far longer than I actually thought we had... and far shorter than anyone was actually prepared for.

Which brings me to Tuesday last as I embraced my father, placing my hands to either side of his feverish face, telling him my love for him and what a good dad and friend he had been to me, between gasps for air and fingers that could only squeeze in response. And as I placed my hand on his emaciated breast to pray for the Lord's merciful removal from this life, tears rolled down my face thinking of the grand memories dad and I had shared over so many long years. From working the fields together on the dairy farm as a kid, to hunting, camping, hiking, ball games, and the celebration of Christmas. Even as recently as a week ago my father had asked mother to bring up a few Christmas decorations so he could hear the Hallmark displays sing-and-play over-and-over again one last time. It was his favorite time of the year. Soon, dad fell back asleep under a medicated stupor and I left the room to watch a stream of people troop through the house knowing that he was passing against the prayers of many belatedly entering. I finally decided to leave as the hospice nurse began issuing her final instructions of care. My heart had become overwhelmed and I did to wish to stay for my father's final passing. My sister however, had elected to stay the night, along with a niece, an aunt (my dad's final remaining sister) and mom. As I left I wasn't sure I would see dad again but needed to leave for my soul's sake. And as I left I found myself driving over to my grandmother's childhood farm where dad's cousin resided with his wife and cried with them for a time. Both cousin and father had farmed together and had actively served as firemen together (95 years between the both of them). They knew each other well and I wanted to bring my relatives up-to-date because no one else had called them of late. We each hoped to yet see dad one last time the next day and made plans to meet at the house in the early morning. But that day never came as I steadied dad's cousin at the news of his death earlier that night, helping him into a receiving chair in the family home where he had come to pay final homage with his wife of many years.

On the night before, between great sobs on the phone, my niece had called me, then my sister, to tell of dad's passing. They had briefly left his bedside for a few minutes to get ready for their night shift when they noticed they no longer heard dad's desperate breaths for air. Rushing back they found dad gone. Departed his broken body and with the Lord above. In the space of five minutes dad died to the tears of all. And on a day once joyfully marked on our calendars as the opener for Pheasant season - for dad loved to bird hunt. And the date of October 15 was always marked in red when we would set off across the family farm to traipse through field and brush, rain and snow, mud and wet, with uncles and cousins, to closely watch our sporting dogs working the scrub ahead of us with their snuffling noses to the wet ground. It was upon this the glad day that dad died to go hunting for departed friends and families in the great beyond. A mere ten days before his 83rd birthday as his family sung to him around his bedside when last he awoke earlier in the evening the refrains of "Happy Birthday." And it was but a short week later (yesterday), that I would witness dad's burial under dirt and spade to lie with his son and parents.

And so it was that I would find myself before dad's open coffin on yesterday's pages reliving the rapidly escalating events of the week before as each day blurred into the next. Causing me to react by trying to live normally without feeling too much for fear of never recovering. But it was also on yesterday's autumn morning that I stood with mom receiving friends and family against an honor guard embracing my father's coffin ahead-and-before, locked in time-and-space, and changing out to the regular beat between city and county police, and fire services, as they honored dad as their own family over four long decades of faithful service. It was but brief moments earlier I had stood before dad myself to rest my hand one last time on his stilled breast breathing my goodbyes while I had the time alone before the church opened its wide, glassed doors. To find myself, shortly thereafter, embracing a fireman stepping off the city's fire truck sobbing in my arms in the parking lot, even as I did in his, as he relived his son's unfortunate death two years ago. This was not an uncommon experience over the past two days as mourners came one-after-another to express sympathy and perhaps painfully relive the deaths of lost loved ones yet bereaved. Even so, did my dad carry my brother's untimely death to his grave, in sorrow and in grief. And thus do we bear one another's sorrows. For if we do not, who will?

Soon, family and relatives were somberly ushered to the front of the church. Accolades and sermons were made-and-given. Mindful songs were stirringly sung a cappella, and by weeping grandchildren in disquieted testimony. And all concluded before a lengthy military procession past dad's flag-draped coffin. Away in the distance could be heard the dying echoes of a soulful refrain of taps played on silver'd bugle from somewhere outside. And beneath its hallowed reverence  came the reverberation of a 21-gun salute fired before a flag flown at half-mast. And all the while soldier-after-soldier presented long, slow salutes of personal respect and military reverence by an honor guard at my father's military service to his country when but a boy taken from the farm to become a man overnight. A carefully folded flag was next placed into my mother's arms with the spent casings from the volleys in respectful tones of farewell and goodbye. Then under the escort of my father's steel-gray casket, we, his pall bearers, rolled dad out to the awaiting hearse to witness one of my final, lasting images. That of dad being driven away, out-of-sight, clutched between patrol cars and firetruck, to be laid to rest in one of the city's oldest cemeteries. Many with street names for last names. And many of which I too often had buried with my dad in childhood's youth.

There, today, this morning, and last night, lies my father with his wept parents and beloved son. Quietly at peace with his Lord and Savior. "Hail, my dear father, and goodbye. Now rest to await that further day when all will be resurrected to a new body without sickness and death in its bones. Without want or need except for relationship with the dead and living soon to come. And soon to pass. Fair morning has arisen with its exhaustion of tears, its want of lament, and last rays of autumnal sunshine. Worn out, disoriented, we must fumble forward even as you had, searching for the wise use of our remaining days. Seeking the help and goodwill of friends and family. Providing service where needed and prayer for all. Vade in pace."

R.E. Slater
Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Deputy Chief of Police, Russ Slater, age 82
Mlive.com










Wednesday, October 16, 2013

My Father's Final Passage and Continuing Voyage


A Family Trip to Mackinac Island where we love to bike
its wandering routes and paths


A short note to my readers:

My father's great struggle with Parkinson's ended early last night and with his passing I will suspend any blogging activity for a very short while through this week and perhaps the next. My apologies to you, the reader, while I complete the transition from hospice's helpfulness and any necessary family obligations that will be arising. And thank you too for your understanding and patience. My father was a South Korean war vet in the early 1950's, a public school bus driver of 22 years, a volunteer fireman, full time policeman, and public civil servant for 40 years, a dairy farmer, faithful husband, and grandest of all fathers, dads, and friends. He will be dearly missed even as his blessed life has been completed into the awaiting hands of our loving Father God. In his passing I have found a great sense of relief and God's holy peace. Especially knowing that dad's trial of suffering has finally ended its aftermath of wasting disease and heartborne tragedy.

In the meantime, there are many sections within this website that await exploration. It has been built purposely as a reference site from the many hands-and-hearts of God's servants: each topic lending help and support to the next in an intra-connected web of thought and expression. Hopefully my writing has improved since its first inception from the several years ago when I started under the name skinhead (though I cringe when reading some of my earliest articles). I began writing of my great personal transformation under a massive Spirit-led conviction to leave the once hallowed halls of contemporary evangelicalism in which I grew up, having held a great love and respect for its traditions and passions, preaching and ministries. I then explored for several years the more hopeful lands of emergent Christianity's broader expressions of God's love and grace, and to this end I believe I have successfully navigated the breakwaters of this turbulent expanse. And having written of that experience am now transitioning yet again to the broader planes of a fuller, more postmodern and post-evangelic, perspective of doctrine and worship, mission and ministry, amid a Jesus-centered proclaim and an approach of a multi-vocal bible redux. Overall my burden is to re-connect God's Word with our lives, and to leave the next generation of exegetes with a simpler, more refined idea of doctrinal truths, missional witness, and a generous Christianity.

To the several recent topical series that remain unfinished know that I will not leave them undone but intend to shortly continue their exploration as I have time and strength to research and write. These areas can be found under the following topics of "Science and Religion," "Calvin v. Wesley," and "NT Wright's Vol 4" series. Each discussion will naturally lead to past areas of theological thought which has already been expressed within the pages of Relevancy22 should the reader wish to refer within its backlogs (as I hope you would).

And with that, thank you again for your patience and prayers. I leave you with the great peace that can only be found in Jesus' wonderful name and the holy convocations of His wonderful calling.

R.E. Slater
October 16, 2013



In an earlier life of love and family


The Wasting Disease of Parkinson's,
August 2012


Grandfather and Nephew,
South Korean Vets Reunite, August 2013



  










Thursday, May 23, 2013

Cometh the End-of-Days ... Too Soon Lived, Too Shortly Over ...


Tonquin Valley, Jasper National Park, Alberta


Sometimes a picture, or a song, seems to fit us. Today's picture and song seems to fit me by their emotional moodiness and abject honesty before God as to our fit-and-frame, our wonder-and-encouragement, against each day's sometimes too heavy challenges. It is not often we find ourselves so alone with God as at the times in our lives when momentous change comes.... The kind of change you have been prepared for all your life and must now cross over to its withdrawn boundaries. Boundaries of mortality and death; of health and good keep; of bright pasts fading into the dimming lights of lengthening futures marking finality's end; of beginning and start.
 
These past many weeks I have been making peace with my dad's steady decline held within Parkinson's unfeeling grip. It began late one Thursday afternoon when called home by an aged mother unable to stand him up and move him to the bathroom. Arriving I saw immediately the heavy grip of pneumonia raging through his body, his fever, shakiness, and delirium having lain too long unrecognized. Unable to do no other, I picked dad's painful body up and carried him through the house's too-narrow hallways and doorways. First undressing, than cleaning, and finally re-dressing him in preparation to leave the home he loved and wished to stay. Then giving him some few minutes to say goodbye as we packed to all that he once knew - to his past and to his even more distant memories - before driving both dad and mom to the hospital many long miles away. This same trip had been made many years ago when dad had had two separate heart attacks on the same night. But this illness was different. It held a finality to it that I couldn't shake nor wished its interminable end.

Even so, that night proved to be the watershed in a life that clung bravely to health even as his body wore away through loss of muscle control, weakness, and failing health. Dad's self-imposed dignity was lost years ago as he fell down hard repeatedly when become unbalanced in motion, standing, or stooping. Through hot tears he stubbornly clung to life as he remembered it - even through the dark dismay of knowing that with each fall the disease within his body increased its unholy presence. First came my brother's purchase of a Kawasaki Mule for dad to run around the property as he lost the ability to operate safely his tractor, car, and truck. The lawn mower was the next to go because of the pain that jarred his pain-whacked body over the bumps of the uneven ground. Then came the lift chairs, canes, and walkers; the wheelchairs, medicines, diets, and strengthening therapies. And with each event came more loss and a greater personal conviction to endure bravely under God's presence and love what 'ere may come. As it surely would.
 
So that even now, as my dad continues his steady decline within Parkinson's unfeeling grip, he bravely lives each passing day in the hope of God's sustaining mercy for a finality no one ever seeks until, at the last, it can no longer be refused. To this has come my family's deep sense of loss and inability to do anything but face with dad his own resolve knowing life has passed and that eternal life will shortly begin. It is a common ending all know and are faced with - some with a greater degree of loss and fate than others less blessed by challenge, suffering, and struggle. For myself, it is working with an institutionalized medical system to help make dad comfortable until the end. Nor to give up too soon despite his languishing spirit. And yet, even this does little to comfort me as I watch dad's unending pain-and-loss mount against a pneumonia that comes-and-goes, filling his lungs with unwanted fluids unable to swallow properly, while watching other parts of his body cease in their functioning, and knowing that at some point even I must let go my stubborn hope of dad's comfortable survival.
 
At some point we each must rethink our life, its accomplishments and failures, its disappointments and steady challenges, knowing that all we are, and have done, is in our Lord's faithful hands to do with as He will. Mine is to let go of a father who always had my best interests at heart. And to visit an area hospice agency this week seeking answers to medical ethics questions I felt too guilty to admit... realizing that dad's time is drawing to a close. Asking the question, at what point does one reframe the present so that a love one's life can be accepted as worn out, and coming to its end. That it is no longer able to be lived out to the satisfaction of its owner. To tenderly speak to a father's heart and not his head. To speak words of assurance, of comfort and love, of truth and loss. of life and death. Words which might not be heard in the weeks or months that lie ahead. To prepare a soul even as he had prepared mine own many years earlier for life's hardships and joys.
 
Worse for me, is to watch my family work through their various emotions of grief and loss, meaning and well-being, as I contemplate how to negotiate and coordinate dad's care from sub-acute nursing services to in-home care and palliative services. Or when to bring in hospice once all curative hope has ended so that we might prepare for the tough times ahead without feeling as though we were giving up. Part of the solution has been in allowing dad's growing medical instability to be shared and known to the family from the doctors and nursing staff. By sharing the finality of his medical tests. And by admitting the sheer volume of tell-tale signs lying everywhere present except within the hearts of those who would deny their harsh realities. By sharing medical findings, temporary solutions, paperwork, and financial considerations. And in allowing quiet, timely conversations, to unfold with a sister or brother, a mother and relatives, one's own son and daughter, nieces and nephews, as they can be bourne within weary hearts and minds coming to similar conclusions in their own separate ways.

For it is to the Lord's mercies we are driven at such times. To whom we pray mercy for a father once too busy for family because of work and bills when raising a young family. For a dad whom my brother and I would wade out through the morning clovered dews to watch plow up fallow ground bowed over a chilly, steel tractor's frame. Whom we'd listen to on harsh blizzard mornings held within the rusted, unyielding whines of a decaying tractor pushing its plow through high snowy drifts into heaps while we played and tumbled underneath it all. Who raced across the fields to a fire siren's call or answered the pleas for help as a duty-bound police officer. Who taught us to handle a gun safely even as he was instructed by his father and uncles. And to hunt sure-footedly in the tangle of undergrowth and viney fencelines that we trampled across even as he learned it soldering along the Korean DMZ. All the while telling us to follow alertly the trace of our German Shorthair with his nose to the ground before setting into point. To enjoy the art of travel and adventure as we explored all parts of North America from its southern Texan borders to furthers Canadian reaches each summer for the four to five weeks that we would spend on the road camping along the nation's infant highways and lonesome, wild byways. To listen to his patient coaching and instruction on the ball fields. And to love the time we spent in playing catch with dad in the backyard. Or out in the nearby mown fields of the family's farm as we hit his lofting pitches. To be at his side at large family reunions meeting distant relatives he knew well. Or at marital celebrations. Or in church. Or the too many family burials we seemed to endlessly attend. And sadly, to bury a torn brother ripped apart by the angry delusions of bi-polarism - whose untimely death tolled upon the heart of his beloved father consumed in grief.

Life has its cycles of despairs and happiness. And it is to each of these that we must pass as best we can, relying on God's wisdom and judgment against our own frailties, emotional upheavals, failures, and wandering hearts. It is at such times that I wish to feel intensely the losses and gains, the miseries and successes, even the very heart of God during life's untimely storms and griefs. To not abandon these very difficult times but to listen, watch, and live through them as they were meant to be under sin's penalty and life's enduring hardships. To find within death the beating heart of life's redemption knowing that nothing is lost to a God who sovereignly reigns and wishes to recreate. Who loves with a burning heart of passion even as we would. Who by His Spirit tells us of His risen Son's victory against death's greedy hand. Who raises the dead to life even within the very sallow lives we live thinking ourselves beyond God's mercies and kindnesses, His grace and compassion. Ignoring all but the vanity around us thinking these only compose a life made for the grave when they were really made for eternity's unfurling eons of renewal and reclamation. Nay to life's cycles of despairs and happiness we each must look into the heart of God to see its truer end and everlasting promise.

For it is in this Almighty God that we rest and find our peace to the hard questions we cannot discover. Nor to the deep answers that would elude us as we helplessly watch the hot, living agonies experienced by a loved one suffering so tragically within the strengthening grip of consuming disease. At the last - even as in its beginning - our hope ever rests in Jesus' resurrection and all that His atonement means to living life fully and completely. Jesus is our Rock. He is the sure ground upon which we tread. Whom we must abandon ourselves unto, and to nothing less. Both now as always. For it is to God's wisdom and faithfulness that we rely - and not upon our own feeble devices. We live in God's creation as His own rebirthed creation. It is how He has made us. Even as we would hold onto a temporality meant only to slip into eternality's permanence by His guiding, all-suffering heart of compassion and mercy. For such a one who knows these things, and believes with his heart, will come the blessing of God's steady assurance and all-consuming Spirit. A Spirit far larger than any disease we may bear - even that of sin's curse. So then we are to be at peace, and know that our end-of-days are held within Him who is, and has become to us, even our own End-of-Days. Forever and always. Life without end.
 
R.E. Slater
May 23, 2013
 
 
ESV
 
14 For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15 from whom every family[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
 
20 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Published on May 10, 2013
Music video by Lana Del Rey performing "Young and Beautiful"
from the Great Gatsby soundtrack: http://smarturl.it/GatsbyMusic

Produced by Daniel Heath
Video Director: Chris Sweeney
Shot By Sophie Muller
Video Producer: Adam Smith, Jacob Swan-Hyam

(C) 2013 Lana Del Rey, under exclusive license to Polydor Ltd.
(UK). Under exclusive license to Interscope Records in the USA





My Father's Final Passage and Continuing Voyage