[Dialogue] Spong Celebrates a life

[KroegerD at aol.com]

July 26, 2006 
Emily Jane Failla: A Special  Life  
The community of St. Peter's Church in Morristown, New Jersey, where my  wife 
and I worship, gathered this week to celebrate the life of Emily Jane  Failla 
and to bid her farewell. Most of my readers will not know Emily but she  
illustrates so many of the realities that plague both our humanity and our  
religious faith that her story has the potential to be a universal story.  
I first met Emily on an August Sunday morning 21 years ago. She was an  
absolutely charming little girl of 3. She and her family were newcomers to our  
church on that particular Sunday, so as a member of the congregation and  
therefore quite anonymous to this new family, I simply greeted and welcomed  them. 
Her father Frank had moved to New Jersey as part of the management of a  
pharmaceutical company. Her mother Kay was a lovely young woman with a southern  
accent that probably warmed my transplanted southern soul. Emily had a little  
sister named Lauren, who was only a few months old at the time and seemed not  
terribly interested in church or strangers. Emily was, however, adorable,  
vibrant, friendly, responsive and ever smiling. As the father of daughters, she  
elicited the warm feeling of my early years as a parent and stole my heart at  
once. Forever afterward, in some strange way, she occupied a special place in 
my  affections. In time my anonymity was blown and she came to know that this 
man,  to whom she was always warmly responsive, was also her bishop.  
I watched this child grow up over the years. She engaged life with great  
gusto. Her whole family became part of the core of St. Peter's Church, serving  
in every conceivable capacity. Emily was herself deeply involved in Sunday  
school, the youth group and starred in the girl's choir. That church was this  
family's second home.  
When Emily reached confirmation age, my assistant was scheduled to be the  
confirming bishop at St. Peter's. However, a shift was made so that I could lay  
my Episcopal hands on the head of this special young lady who, by then, had  
become a budding adolescent. It was her choice, her family's choice and mine.  
Bishops can manipulate their schedules to do things like this, you know. They 
 just don't admit it publicly!  
Life goes on after confirmation and Emily became an outstanding student and a 
 superior athlete in high school. Tennis was her sport of choice and her  
proficiency and popularity were such that she was chosen to be the captain of  
the Morristown High Girls' Tennis Team in her senior year. Emily was an outdoors 
 type and a wide variety of athletic activities attracted her. She graced all 
of  them with competence, great zest and enthusiasm.  
When she graduated from high school and headed for Vanderbilt University,  
just six short years ago, a great sense of vitality disappeared from her church, 
 except at Christmas and during the summer when Emily returned for holiday  
visits. A junior year abroad in New Zealand only served to round out this  
spectacular person who grew into a stunning young adult. She was as pretty as  she 
was kind, gentle and loving. She had the ability to wring from each day  
every ounce of sweetness that it possessed. She scaled life's heights and  plumbed 
life's depths, missing very little of what life had to offer. I remember  
kidding her about moving to Nashville, Tennessee, for her education. Nashville  
is a city that I know well and enjoy greatly, having lectured there on several  
occasions. "Nashville is a schizophrenic small city," I told her one Sunday 
when  we met in church. "It cannot decide whether it is best known for 
Vanderbilt  University or for Minnie Pearl and the Grand Ole Opry." However, Nashville 
was  right for Emily and she graduated with full honors, to accept a fourth 
grade  teaching position in the State of Washington. She was drawn to the 
northwest by  its outdoor beauty and by mountains that she enjoyed climbing, 
becoming quite  expert in this activity.  
On Sunday, July 2, Emily and friends were rappelling down a popular climbing  
spot in Central Washington known as Condor's Pitch on Icicle River when  
something went terribly wrong two thirds of the way down. She fell 400 feet to a  
quick and certain death. The news broke over Morristown like a clap of 
thunder.  The grief that engulfed the congregation of St. Peter's was palpable. Emily 
had  not only been special to me, I discovered, but to a very large segment 
of church  members. Her high school principal described exactly what I had 
experienced.  "She had incredible social skills," he said, "the sense of how to 
talk to almost  anyone."  
As people tried to make sense out of this tragedy, they ran the gamut of  
emotions and reasoning. There was anger at God and at the unfairness of life.  
There was resentment that such a thing could happen. Hundreds of people, I heard 
 one person say, live out their lives in nursing homes with various levels of 
 dementia and Alzheimer's disease and each day seems like an eternity with 
all  meaning in life lost. Yet here was one whose vibrancy and vitality was 
snuffed  out before she had really entered fully into adulthood. Others lapsed 
into pious  language depicting Emily as dancing on the clouds in some external 
heavenly  setting. Perhaps that helped momentarily but ultimately that kind of 
religious  imagery means very little to most people today.  
The eternal question of 'why' was asked in a thousand different ways, all of  
which assumed that a heavenly parent figure is in charge of the world, so 
there  must be an explanation. The only proper response is to listen in the face 
of the  tragedy. Whatever provides the cushion to allow grieving people to 
walk through  what surely is life's deepest pain is simply accepted. There will 
be time later  to pick up the pieces, process the pain and embrace the hardness 
of reality. The  great temptation of the professional clergy in times of 
tragedy is to seek to  explain it, to provide answers where there are none, and to 
state in some  authoritative way that God still reigns. No one, however, in 
the trauma of grief  hears these words and they are better left unsaid. The 
only ministry anyone  really has to offer in such times is the ministry of 
presence and availability.  If the bereaved ones want to scream in anger at God, 
listen, accept and absorb  it. If they want to retreat into silence, let them and 
be silent with them. It  is the power of loving relationships that will get 
them from today into  tomorrow, not words, not explanations, not piety indeed 
not even prayer. Prayer  ofttimes meets the needs of the one praying more than 
the needs of the bereaved.   
I have never lost a child. I cannot even imagine what that is like. I have  
lost a father, a mother, a wife, a brother, a rector and countless friends. 
Each  grieving experience was different. My father died at 54 when I was but 12. 
My  wife died after a long and debilitating illness at age 59. My mother died 
at age  92 when her body simply wore out. My brother died peacefully in his 
sleep  without any visible sickness at all. My rector died on an operating table 
 undergoing what was called "a routine and minor procedure."  
What I learned in those quite diverse circumstances was that the deeper and  
more interdependent the relationship, the larger was the aching void in the  
heart of the survivors. Those who love little, grieve little. Those who love  
much, grieve exceedingly. Would any of us then choose to avoid grief by 
avoiding  loving? I would not. The very depth of life's meaning is experienced in 
giving  yourself in love to another person even though that opens each to pain at 
the  time of separation.  
I have never felt that assurances of life after death brought comfort to  
grieving people. It comes across as a kind of panacea that seeks to deny the  
depth and reality of the loss. It is not that I do not believe in life after  
death, for I do in a very deep way. However, it does not affect how I live. I  
make no decisions based on that conviction. I also do not know how to  
conceptualize this hope or even to talk about it without sounding sticky and  pious. I 
believe that God is real, though I do not envision God in traditional  
theistic terms as a supernatural being, dwelling somewhere outside this world  and 
intervening periodically in miraculous ways. That God feels more like Santa  
Claus than God to me. I experience God rather as the Source of life, calling me  
to live, as the Source of love, calling me to love and as the Ground of Being  
calling me to have the courage to be all that I am capable of being.  
I serve this God by seeking to build a world where everyone in it can have a  
better chance to live, to love and to be who he or she are in the infinite  
variety of our humanity. I am a disciple of Jesus because I see in him the  
fullness of life, the completeness of love and the uncanny ability to possess  
himself so completely, that he can give himself away totally. That is why I see  
God in Jesus. Since I experience this God as a breaker of those barriers that 
 diminish our humanity, including that ultimate barrier of mortality, I live 
each  day in the confidence that I am part of that which is eternal. I cannot 
talk  about it. I can only live it out. In the living of this kind of life, I  
experience God as my ultimate truth.  
Is life fair? No! Is God in charge? If you mean a God who like Santa is  
making a list and checking it twice in order to make sure that reward and  
punishment are fairly distributed, then my answer is also, 'No!' But is God  real? Is 
life holy? Can I find the courage to be? Can I discover the ability to  allow 
others to be who they are? My answer to those queries is yes, a thousand  
times yes. In that God I believe I touch eternity.  
Emily Failla knew the reality of this God experience and she lived it out.  
Those who loved her grieve with aching hearts but, because of her, all of us  
will live again and love again. In that conviction, we can walk today through  
the valley of the shadow of a wrenching death, but we find the strength to 
keep  on walking.  
John Shelby Spong  Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Bob Waldo, via the Internet, writes:  
Why not refer readers both Christian/Church alumni/and non-Christian readers  
to the recent publication of James Robinson's "The Gospel of Jesus." It is a  
very well written account of how the New Testament came to be but is most  
effective in isolating the meat of the coco, his account of Jesus' own gospel as 
 opposed to that of Paul and Rome. He paints a picture of what I truly 
believe  the man Jesus was about that can only be described as "awesome!" But mostly 
he  points me, a retired minister, to the tremendously exciting truth I could 
have  been preaching.but sadly, I just didn't know.  
Dear Bob,  
I am happy to recommend James Robinson's book along with many others. Marcus  
Borg's "The Heart of Christianity" and "Meeting Jesus Again for the First 
Time."  Robert Fink's "Honest to Jesus," perhaps even my own book, "This Hebrew 
Lord"  may be helpful to others.  
The sad truth is that the scholarship present in the Christian Academy for at 
 least 200 years has not been shared with the people sitting in the pews. 
This  conspiracy of silence has been carried out quite consciously for fear that 
these  biblical insights might destroy the faith of lay people and make the 
minister's  task more difficult. I have always believed that any god who can be 
destroyed  ought to be destroyed. If one's faith has to be protected from 
truth, it has  already died.  
If the clergy would accept the fact that lay people are not dumb sheep who  
cannot learn and stop insulting their intelligence with the theological drivel, 
 masquerading as a sermon, and would take their educational task seriously, 
there  might be some excitement in the Christian Church.  
Instead we are offered a choice between hysterical fundamentalism and vapid  
liberalism. In my opinion both are dead end streets. There is a hunger in the  
church for truth, not illusion; for education, not propaganda; for the 
honoring  of our questions rather than the pretense that the clergy have all the 
answers;  for a journey into the mystery of God, not the memorization of creedal 
formulas.   
Across America and Canada and perhaps the world, there are some local  
churches awakening to these possibilities and the response is heartening.  
If your claim of atheism means that you know all there is to know about God  
and the world and have decided that there is no room in the universe for God  
understood in any manner, then you are as closed-minded as the most rabid  
fundamentalist.  
It takes courage to risk. However, the alternative is to die or to try to put 
 a face-lift on the corpse of yesterday's religious system.  
For you to recognize this, even in retirement, is a beautiful thing.  
John Shelby Spong  

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