The Unclad Soul

While on the walking/bike trail this morning, Billy Joel’s “The Piano Man,” began playing through my earbuds. This was one of my late brother Jim’s favorite songs. We often talked about it. So, when it started playing, I raised my index finger to the sky and said, “This one is for you, Jim, wherever you are or aren’t.” Death has always been a mystery to me. Eternal life, the idea of immortality after this life, is something I can’t explain or even comprehend. As a minister, I was, over the years, with many people who were dying and, in some instances, who died in my presence. There is a profound change in the body at death, an emptying of life. The human spirit leaves, you can almost see it happening, and disappears into the inscrutable and is gone forever. Where does that spirit go? I’m not certain. As a Christian, I want to believe our essence, our spirit finds rest somewhere beautiful. But, in spite of those classic Bible verses and the long history of Christiani...

There is a beautiful line from poet and author Wendell Berry, “We hurt, and are hurt, and we have each other for the healing. It is always healing. It is never whole." That sums up quite nicely a large part of our purpose on earth. After the passing of time and the living of life, we know too well that we hurt others and they hurt us. Life is an ongoing process of learning how to navigate this uneven path we are all on. And in the midst of our hurting and being hurt there are those who are there for our healing. This is a fundamental part of parenting. Our children, if they are to be themselves fully alive, emotionally healthy, and self-directed, must never doubt they are loved by their parents. And that whenever they fail, or get in trouble, or suffer illness, there will be healing at home. This, too, is the core work of marriage, of spending life with a partner, of committing oneself to another person in a relationship of trust, intimacy, and love. Being a s...

The Syrian conflict defies reason. What is it about? No one knows. The Syrian government, the Russian government, the US government, and ISIS terrorists—we are all a part of a bloody, inhumane slaughter of innocents. Our news sources are unreliable. We really have no idea what is going on. We see the devastation and the carnage, the heartbreaking chaos, and suffering. But it all goes around in vicious cycles of obscene violence and endless death and no one has any explanation or solution. Other than who can be the most ferocious in war. Our entire political leadership, from President Trump and the full Congress, all the way down to state governments, Texas most notably, are so arrogantly polarized, so consumed with indifference to real life and death issues, to actual living people, that they have nothing helpful or in any way substantial to offer a warring world. Yes, someone is responsible for the chemical explosion in Syria that brought horrifying misery and excruciatin...

Novelist and poet, Heather Sellers has written, "I think everyone has one day like this, and some people have more than one. It's the day of the accident, the midlife crisis, the breakdown, the meltdown, the walkout, the sellout, the giving up, giving away, or giving in. The day you stop drinking, or the day you start. The day you know things will never be the same again."  The death of my brother Jim became one of those days for me. I knew his situation was deteriorating. I knew his body was shutting down. But when his daughter Natalie called and said he had just passed away, I suddenly felt I was floating off in some moment of bewilderment. Could he really be gone? The past months had been difficult, watching his rapid decline. And yet, I had somehow become attached to that scene of him in his room in the nursing home. His big screen TV. The stack of videos on the counter beside it. The small serving tray at his side that held his reading glasses, the ever read...

Note: This is the eulogy I delivered at my brother Jim's funeral, Tuesday, February 28, 2017 In Memoriam Rev. James C. Moody August 7, 1956 – February 24, 2017 Jim loved the movies. There was nothing he enjoyed more than sitting in a dark theater watching a great movie, with a bag of popcorn, a soda, some cheese nachos, a slice of pizza, a hot dog with chili and jalapeños, and a big candy bar. Going to a movie was like a family reunion for him. It was a meal. An event. He didn’t just watch movies, he looked for insights from them, for life lessons that he carried into his ministry, his preaching, and his own living. That’s what movies are supposed to do—teach us, move us, transform us—take us out of our lives for a couple of hours and then put us back in them wiser and more human.  Come to think of it, that is what church is supposed to do, as well. Jim understood that. We had a debate over the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” It’s one of my favorites. Aud...

I visited with my brother Jim yesterday and, as always when I see him, I left deeply reflecting on life. “The world,” Helen Keller once said, “is full of suffering; but also, the overcoming of it.” It is difficult to watch the news and see the horror in the Middle East. There is so much suffering and death there. And yet, people somehow survive it. Refugees walk hundreds of miles, pile their families and a few belongings into small boats to cross treacherous waters in hope of finding safety. They enter strange countries where now they are often unwelcome, mistreated, harmed or sent back to the nightmare they fled. How do they do it? How do they go on? The human spirit, though fragile, often shocks us with its undeterred courage. And here, in our country, minorities still struggle to be free. Free of discrimination, injustice, abuse, and hate. That our black friends still, after all these years, have to fight for basic rights is a stain on our democracy. Yet, they carry on,...

There is an error in how our country is seen today. We appear to be a nation of angry, bigoted, mean-spirited, violent people. The picture is one of weakness and ingratitude, of people holding endless grudges, of crooked cops killing minorities, of shallow selfish Christians demanding everyone obey their beliefs, of incompetent predatory politicians desecrating democracy. It’s true; the country has its fair share of these people. And the dishonorable behavior and the loud voices of all of them overwhelm the good Americans everywhere. We are not well represented to the world. However, every day decent Americans do their jobs honestly, competently, and well. They care for their families. They follow the law. They respect the diversity of our country. They get along with their neighbors. They worship regularly and attempt to live by their beliefs; they don’t cram them down the throats of others or assume they alone own God. They are concerned about the environment and appreci...

There is a scene in the first episode of the Showtime series "Nurse Jackie" where she consoles a young unmarried girl whose boyfriend, a bike courier, had just died of injuries in a bike accident on his way to work in the crushing traffic of New York City. The girl—poor, pregnant, wearing a stained t-shirt and asking what she is going to do, that she doesn’t even have money to get a cab home—sits on a bench in the hallway outside the chapel in All Saints Catholic Hospital. Jackie, a morally complicated, fiercely dedicated nurse but who is herself addicted to pain killers and whose personal life is a disaster, stands next to the girl and gently puts her hand on the girl’s head and draws her to her. Nothing is said. Just that moment of tenderness. As the scene ends and the camera pulls away from them, we see behind them at the end of the hallway set into the wall, a beautifully sculptured figure of Jesus with his arms extended.   I don’t know what Christianity is anymore....

This comment is the best I've seen so far regarding the Boston tragedy. It comes from retired Anglican Bishop the Rev. Steven Charleston. It was posted on my friend Dale McNeil's page. "Why? Why the pointless cruelty, O God? Why the premeditated evil that comes to bring death, pain and sorrow to innocent lives and leaves us stunned to imagine a heart so cold it could conceive such an act? We cannot understand it, God, we cannot make sense of the senseless. And how should we respond even if we did understand? Tooth for tooth, eye for eye, would it end the madness or return the lost to live again? Come, Spirit of God, come stand with us in this darkness. Hold the fallen in your arms. Heal the injured. Comfort the broken-hearted. And if you cannot tell us why we do this to ourselves, show us how to love more deeply, that such pain will never be the final word, but rather mercy that needs no explanation."

I have thought lately about Louis L’Amour’s novel, “The Proving Trail,” the story of a young man who goes off to find his father’s killer.  The journey becomes more about him proving himself than it does proving who his father’s murderer was. Life is often a proving trail. I have a good friend who recently went in for a kind of routine brain surgery, if there is such a thing, only to be told the tumor the doctor thought was harmless turned out to be malignant and the prognosis not good.  A loving husband and father of a darling young daughter he now faces challenging treatments and involved medical procedures.  But his spirits are high and he is determined to beat the odds.  He is a tough, smart guy who loves life and he is walking his proving trail with remarkable courage.  I cheer him on and find in his faith, hope for my own feeble beliefs.  Another dear friend recently came to the awareness that perhaps in her childhood she was sexually ab...