MY CONSUMMATION
Tune: Danny Boy
Life beckons me to wonder and humility
To journey into deep reality
To live for e'er within the realm of mystery,
Forever bound in aweful ecstasy.
Apostasy, the doubt that comes as certainty
I'm seized by dread and vanquished, hopelessly
And I submit to given, fearful history
This perfect love transforms the wonder that is me.
Life beckons me to freedom and lucidity
To be the self that shapes futurity
To bear the weight of painful, conscious rhapsody,
Inventing all that I am doomed to be.
Morality beyond my own integrity
I stand amidst my fate and destiny
And I must ever, always, my own conscience be
That final judgment dreads the wonder that is me.
Life beckons me to service for humanity
To spend my life as solidarity
To be the burdened one, with man's dark tragedy,
This suffering world compels my sympathy.
Humanity, my sole responsibility
The past, the future are for all, I see
And I am called beyond my possibility
The awefull gift flows through the wonder that is me.
Life beckons me to live complete and joyously
To dwell in showers of blessing, ceaseless!,
To peace that comes from love of dreadful mystery,
In realms of wonder, I will ever be.
Tranquillity, no burden, no hostility
I live with strange, unseen community
And death and I do now embrace, eternally
My consummation, 'tis the wonder that is me.
MYSTERY IS EVERYWHERE
Tune: Desert Song
The Myst'ry is everywhere I'm trapped in awe for e'er and e'er
And I must roam through life with all its care
Grasping nought for certain except my dying.
Why should I so driven be
To bear with such absurdity?
Still I shall die yearning Lost in the wonder
Of mystery.
The Myst'ry is everywhere
I'll ne'er escape its awful stare
Destroyed, unveiled, within a searing glare
Doomed to live transparent within my dying.
Why am I condemned to see
The pow'r of this finality?
Still I shall die yearning
Lost in the wonder Of mystery.
The Myst'ry is everywhere
And changes all beyond compare.
It runs to breathe surprise into the air
And I find a strange new life in my dying.
Why should I the chosen be
To dance with this vitality?
Still I shall die yearning
Lost in the wonder Of mystery.
The Myst'ry is everywhere
Yet I must doubt this one so fair
For none can ever know its secrets rare
And I'll ever be lonely in my dying.
Why's this awful love in me
Become my sole reality?
Still I shall die yearning
Lost in the wonder Of mystery.
A PRAYER: THE TIME IS COME
Tune: Waiting, for the Sunrise
O God, the world is waiting for resurgence
Every heart is waiting for you
The hopes of man, the spirit deeps are crying,
Now, O God, the time is comer
And young men see visions of hope
The prophecy from daughters all is rising
Now, O God, the time is come!
God, pour out a portion of your spirit
Give a sign of what is to come
Send down the fire of power and repentance
Now, O God, the time is come!
God, be with us on our journey always
As we serve the anguish of men,
Save us unto thy everlasting glory
Now, O God, the time is come!
AT THE CENTER
Tune: Try to Remember
When you encounter the light at the center
The final dawn of worlds converging,
When life's illumined by light at the canter
Assured by wisdom's swift emerging,
When knowing's ended in light at the center
And life's sacred meaning is in you surging,
Then at the canter, in blinding encounter
You be it.
When you encounter the peace at the center
Where earthly hopes are all transcended,
When life's unburdened with peace at the center
Where worldly cares are all suspended,
When you're delivered to peace at the center
And for mortal foes your hatred's ended,
Then at the center, where no problems enter
You be it.
When you encounter the joy at the center
Your tingling deeps in animation,
When you're possessed by the joy at the center
All things received with affirmation,
When you are speechless in joy at the center
And each moment brimming with wild vibration,
Then at the censor, in wonder filled rapture
You be it.
When you encounter the life at the center
Condemned to be a dead man waking,
When you are boundless with life at the center
Compelled to live on water waltzing,
When you are risen to life at the center
A man who is ageless with hist'ry walking,
Then at the center, while dancing forever
You be it.
GOD MOVES IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY
God moves In a mysterious way his wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.
Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.
THOSE WHO WAIT ON THE LORD
Those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up on wings as eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint,
Help us, Lord, Help us, Lord, in thy way.
Those who love the Mystery
Shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up on wings as eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint,
Help us, Lord, Help us, Lord, in thy way.
Those who live the risen life
Shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up on wings as eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint,
Help us, Lord, Help us, Lord, in thy way.
Those who serve the suffering world
Shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up on wings as eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint,
Help us, Lord, Help us, Lord, in thy way.
Those who die on the march
Shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up on wings as eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint,
Help us, Lord, Help us, Lord, in thy way.
Those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up on wings as eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint,
Help us, Lord, Help us, Lord, in thy way.
JOHN DONALDSON MATHEWS
I have always been very hard on my three boys. A
part of it, as you know, comes from the neuroses that God has
been trying to whip into some kind of disciplined form for his
honor and glory. That did not help the boys much. I wanted my
boys to wake up early, not to wait until they were as old as their
father. I was finally, after great reluctance, persuaded during
the spring that John had awakened, and that he had become a religious.
I was harder on him than ever. He would come night after night
to talk with me and I would send him away saying, "As long
as you ask silly intellectual questions, you have no right to
my time. You set up some bull session of your own." But he
did not give up. He kept coming back until he got the question
out that was worthy to be asked in my presence about such matters.
And, with reluctance, I decided he was a religious.
Now he died two weeks too soon. For in two weeks
he, on his own, not as the son of anybody, was going to join the
order as a full member. I do not know whether in moments of sanity
I have ever executed any authority around here. I have at times
had outbursts. But now I am going to take authority I do not even
know whether I have and receive John in as a full member of this
order. And then, in the Council, I am going to suggest that everyone
who is in good standing in the order, if they die upon the march,
shall be promoted, if you please, to the final class of the order.
Right now that is a friar. And so, he would have others join him.
To symbolize that, we are going to bury with him
the ring and the cross, and because he was not in our summer here
and did not have a cross, I am going to bury my cross. And then
we are going to bury with him what up to this moment is the closest
thing we have to a uniform, the blue shirt. This will symbolize
his detachment, his engagement and his chastity. Amen.
Joseph W. Mathews
The memorial discourse of Joseph W. Mathews at the
celebration of the death of his son, John Donaldson Mathews:
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I probably do not have to acknowledge in this company
that for about three years I have been under something like the
doom of death. Little did I suppose that that would come to fruition
in the death of my son John. As a memorial to him, I want to talk
a little and offer the memorial I promised God I would give a
year from the day Betty Glassner died: that in some way or another
I would be responsible to see that we found a way to articulate
to ourselves what endlessness means, or, to use the traditional
category, what immortality would mean in the postmodern
world.
So I thought this would be a memorial to Betty too.
But then it occurred to me that on the march, up to this moment,
six of us have died. The first one (I am going to call them brother
and sister) was Brother Warren, infant child of Don Warren, and
then was Sister Hockley, and the next was Brother Eming, and the
next was Sister Glassner, and the next was Sister Greene, and
the most recent was John.
Now I have tried recently to bring into focus the
last category in the other world chart, "Endlessness."
I have been more and more convinced that actually there are sixtyfour
lectures and not sixteen. I am not sure that I am going to be
ready for several months to get inside and spin it outward the
way it ought to be, but I thought perhaps I might now, for the
sake of clarity for myself, just deal abstractly and intellectually
with it to try to get the target located. But I sense that all
of us know more about this from the inside than at the moment
we know that we know.
Living in the postmodern world as a onestory
universe and you have to put your foot down hard
here or you get lost we know and acknowledge in gratitude
to God that when you die, you die dead. There are no if's, and's,
maybe's, or but's; you are dead. You do not even raise that kind
of question. That is part of having lost any upper story of the
universe. Death is death.
But the next thing you have to begin to work with
is the transparency within the one world that you have left. It
is within the transparency that you are going to find the reality
which you are searching for when you use a category like immortality.
In beginning to try to look through humanness, it is pretty obvious
to us and to any man, although he may not have the
name that what happens is that the Mystery comes
or, in terms of your interior being, the awe. You
are located, as you begin to try to think about this, over against
the Mystery, which you are aware of only in and through frightening
dread and scintillating compulsion at the same time.
Once situated there, as I look back, the first big
"think" that comes is something we have talked about
many times. A man never finally lives his life until he lives
his death. That is to say, John is now one step beyond me. I have
yet to experience the unbelievable, wonderfilled dread and
fascination which is the experience of death, and until a person
has, he is not fully human. If you bracket everything else and
think only of this, at this moment when you look through the transparency,
John is now more human than his aged father. I think that is probably
the first awareness that comes.
The next one, as again I go back, is the awareness
that life is as mysterious as death. It is pretty clear that anybody
who says he knows anything about the dark domain of death, except
that it is death, is selfdeceived. Death comes at you as
just sheer mystery. You do not have to do a doubletake.
If you are looking through to the center of things, there is just
sheer mystery. But you have to do a doubletake to grasp
the fact that life is just as mysterious as death. If somebody
would ask me to say what life is, finally I would be as hard put
as to say what death is, except for one thing which I will get
to in a moment. I do not know what life is. It is exactly as mysterious
as death. It is exactly as wonderfilled, both with dread
and fascination, as death is itself.
The exception I mentioned earlier is that if somebody
asked me what life is all about, I could easily rattle it off.
Life is mystery, life is freedom, life is love, and life is fulfillment.
The interesting thing is that if somebody would ask me to say
what death is all about, I could do it. Death is all about mystery,
and freedom, and love, and fulfillment. That is what you mean
when you say, as Saint Francis did long ago, Brother Life, or
is it Sister Life? I do not know which, and Brother Death, or
is it Sister Death? That is, you are in exactly the same hands,
in the hands of the same final reality, in life as in death.
When you get pretty clear about that, then I think
you are ready for the transparency to become transparent. I do
not quite know how to say this yet, and I have to start something
like this rather slowly. As you live in the Land of Mystery, this
was true long before we had the categories), and the River of
Consciousness, and on top of or down underneath I
do not know which the Mountain of Care, and since
you have waltzed on the Sea of Tranquillity, you have become increasingly
aware that you are your being. When this becomes intensified (I
do not know whether it is sudden although the last jar of it I
think is sudden), you become aware that you are simply the rolledup
ball of all the awe you have been. This is what you are.
Here you bracket the metaphysical questions and do
not even raise the question of immortality, whether grossly or
subtly in relationship to man's attempt to define himself, whether
it be with the ancient pharaohs who were going to maintain the
human drive of immortality by building pyramids that nothing could
wipe away, or whether it be the more subtle and more crude personalistic
philosophy of foreverness as the continuation of personal existence.
You can even remember hearing people say, "If there is not
a continuation of myself on my basis in death I will have none
of it." That is crude. You wipe that out.
You are dealing with states of being. You are dealing
with the phenomenal in life that brackets the metaphysical, that
brackets a rational explanation of the numinal. (I am on a bit
of a tangent now, but not too much.) And when you see that, then
you become aware that when a word like immortality, or endlessness,
broke into history, it broke into history as a phenomenological
state, as a state of being. Men became aware of endlessness. That
is what you are trying to break through on when you say that you
experience yourself as being.
But you can only understand that if you put it negatively.
No longer are you aware of yourself as living. No longer are you
aware of yourself as dying. You are aware only of your being.
You people from India will have some understanding of this. That
is to say, in the other world I am no more alive, and I am no
more dead. Categories of living and dying do not apply to the
other world. There are only categories of being.
I was very irritated with the verse of the song "Come
and go with me to that land" which said, "There is dying
in that land." There is not any dying there! But what I was
not bright enough to see was that the song was theologically incorrect
even beyond that verse. Another verse said, "There is living
in that land." Well, there is not any living there! In the
other world there is only being. Therefore, the rubrics of life
and death have no significance.
Only the rubrics of being have any significance.
There is only being there. This is what Saint John means when
he talks about eternal life. Eternal life is not something that
is going to happen after you die; it is not something that is
going to happen before you die. It is the eternal moment which
is beyond the rubrics of both the living and the dying. In the
other world there is only being.
It is only when you get that far that you can even
begin to understand what Kazantzakis means when he talks about
"Saviors of God." Oh, that is offensive to anybody who
is sensitive. It is extremely offensive to me. Did you ever think
you are a savior of God? In this experience, when you grasp that
you are beyond life and death, in this terrorfilled awareness,
you know that the mystery, which is beinginitself,
has no opportunity to be except through your being. Now, you think,
God is finally present in this world, not through sticks and stones,
although your being touches sticks and stones. The Aboriginal
people in Australia and the African people long ago understood
this, although they had no words for it. God and
if this sounds next to sacrilegious to you, that is the way it
should sound or Being is dependent upon my being.
And although you never lose the sense of your own distinct being,
you know there is no being without your being. And, since everything
but beinginitself, the mystery, is contingent and
temporal, that means that my being is everlasting. And, if I may
put it into poetry, God and I in this state come to terms with
one another. It is as though I were to say, "God, I will
be your being, in my living and dying. I will be your being."
And God says, "All right, all right, and I will let you participate
in my endlessness." Do you hear that?
This is why Sartre's play No Exit is quite different than if you were going to write the play that I was writing here today. There are mirrors there, but in this play when you look in the mirror, you see the face of the Son of Man. Lela Mosley, that means that you and I and John up there, in heaven, all are going to look somewhat alike.
THE OBITUARY OF JOHN DONALDSON MATHEWS
We are here to mark the sojourn through life of John
Donaldson Mathews. John was sent by God to live in this world,
and now he has been called from his station. He was sent to be
a part of the family of mankind. He was born January 19, 1952,
in Hamilton, New York and died his death August 8, 1972, near
Rawlins, Wyoming.
John was a son and a brother. He was a son to Joseph
and Lyn Mathews. He was a brother to Joe and Jim and Gloria. All
of these now survive him. John was a citizen of Chicago, a full
member of the order within the Church of Jesus Christ and the
People of God. He was currently assigned to the San Francisco
Religious House where his assignment was to be a student in the
City College of San Francisco. He was also a teacher in many of
the courses of the Ecumenical Institute.
In becoming a global servant, he spent over one year
of his life as a student on the continent of Latin America. For
three years he was on the faculty of the summer camp of the Emerging
Generation of the order. His deeds are hereby rendered up to history,
as a sign of a life expended on behalf of all men.
John was anchored in the historical Church of Jesus
Christ. At age nineteen, he was baptized into the Methodist Church
to signal his decision to be the Church. He was raised and nurtured
by the Church as a member of the families of the order. By his
own decision, he chose the order as his life vocation. At death,
he now claims his place among the congregation of the faithful
and the triumphant.
John, finally, was a solitary. He lived his life
in joyous sobriety, and now in awesome tranquillity is living
his death. His life is complete and will remain forever as part
of the eternal mystery that shapes and creates the world.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Ecumenical Institute, Chicago
August 11, 1972
Context: Throughout her history the Church has born
witness to death as a fact of life. Only in recent decades when
the Church forgot who she was has she lost the profundity of the
experience of death. Death can neither be glossed over nor hidden.
It is the one fact of life that is most profound. Precisely in
death does man find his significance. Death is the most lively
experience of life. In death being death and nothing more 1s it
eternally significant. Death is death to all of life.
1. It is death to all humanity. No single death is
simply the death of one person. All humanity becomes different
when one life ends. In death therefore there is no division between
the sexes or cultures or classes. Humanity simply loses some of
its humanness in a death.
2. Therefore at death we grieve. We grieve without
shame or guilt. Shame is present at a death, but because of the
loss to humanity shame is irrelevant. The shame that is present
is shame over life, not death. It is shame over past deeds and
misdeeds. Anger is also irrelevant. The anger is at being itself,
at one another, at ourselves. But this is anger over the loss.
There is no going back in death. There is only the grief over
a loss to humanity. There is also loneliness at death. But we
do not grieve because we are lonely. We grieve over the lost humanness.
The loneliness in fact produces only fear and fascination. Loneliness
is a foretaste of that final peace we all enter, the peace that
is utter separation and utter unity simultaneously. Grief at death
has nothing to do with shame or anger or loneliness. It is the
stunning loss of an invaluable, unique life.
3. Death is also a death to the Church, the universal
community of the people of God. At birth every human being is
born into some community of faith. He is nurtured by that community
until he reaches the day when he has the option of choosing that
community. In the community of the people of God it is no different.
We are born into it; we choose it; we sustain it by our lives.
At death a spirit life is lost. The Church loses an unrepeatable
element of her ministry. The Church grieves that loss. Grief in
this context is disclosed as an aspect of Christian joy. It is
a part of that aspect that makes Christian joy unspeakable.
4. Death is death to a city. Every man is a citizen
of some city. Maybe it is not the city of his birth. It is the
city where he acts out his citizenship. He shapes and is shaped
by this city. At death all the returns are in and we grieve the
loss of that citizenship.
5. Death is death to the family, the family we are
born into. Some day we choose it or choose to leave it. The family
we are in we grow within, and we give life to the community. At
death we grieve the loss to the family.
6. Death is death to the solitary. Each man is a
uniqueness. As an individual he shapes civilization. In fact it
is only the solitary dimension of individual lives that creates
civilization. From the solitary we create the family, the city,
the church, and humanness itself. At death we grieve the loss
of the solitary. It is the loss of a creational spirit, its mystery,
its freedom, its service, its oneness.
7. Death is death to all relations except the relation to the mystery. In the celebration of a death we acknowledge the coming to be and the coming not to be of a life. Every human being has only one thing to know, only one thing to do, one thing to be: his death. Only at death therefore do we know, do and be our life.
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TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
As of this date, JOHN MATHEWS , born 1/19/52 has completed all of the requirements for graduation from this school.
Please accept this letter in lieu of a diploma which is now being printed.
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Joseph W. Mathews
3444 West Congress Parkway
Chicago, ILLINOIS 60624
Dear Mr. Mathews:
I am informed that you are the father of John
Donald Mathews who was killed in an automobile accident here in
Carbon County, Wyoming on August 8, 1972. The Administrator
of the Estate of Joseph B. McMurdo, deceased, has sued the undersigned
as Administrator of the Estate of John Donald Mathews, deceased.
According to the suit John Donald Mathews was the owner and operator
of a 1963 Volkswagon automobile bearing 1972 Washington license
No. ORJ946.
Do you know whether your son had liability insurance on said automobile?
Thanking you kindly in advance for your assistance,
I am
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One hour before the service the four watchers went
to the family apartment for the box and with members of the Order
posted along the way walked to the Great Jall. In the Great Hall
the box was placed on a small table at the end of the center table(opposite
the East) . It was covered with a linen napkin. Then, the four
watchers took their positions at the four corners of the chairs.
The watchers were: Sarah
Buss, James Wiegel, Frank Hilliard, and Anne Slicker. They remained
standing throughout the service.
The Community entered and sat in chairs with the front row on each side left empty.
After the family entered the singing began with:
My Consummation Mystery is Everywhere
Following the singing, the Daily Office began
The liturgists were: Joseph Slicker Fred Buss James
Campbell Phil Townley David McCleskey Aimee Hilliard
Then there was the singing
At the end of the
Old Testament Lesson: Job
New Testament Lesson: Romans 8:
Witness
of THE TIME IS COME
Creed the Community was seated
Joseph, Joe, Jr., and Jim Mathews came forward and stood in front of
the first Liturgist, facing the table.
They read:
Joseph: "I Am the resurrection and the life" from the Book of Common Prayer
page 324
Joe, Jr.: the 23rd Psalm
Jim: Prayer from Methodist Service
Then Joseph talked on ENDLESSNESS with Joe, Jr. and
Jim standing Then he asked Lyn and the rest of t 1 e family to
come forward. They stood behind the table with the ashes, facing
East. There was the singing of AT THE CENTER
Joseph then talked about John and declared him a Prior, a full member
of the Order in his own right. Lyn and Joe then removed the lid of the
box and placed inside John's silver ring, Joe's cross and blue shirt. They
then closed the box and covered it with the napkin and returned to stand
with the family.
Frank then came forward and read the eulogy, after which there was the
singing of GOD MOVES IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY
Then Slicker and Buss brought dirt from the altar
and Slicker read the lines "ahses to ashes, dust to dust"
They both put hands full of dirt on top of the napkin
Then there was the song THOSE WHO WAIT ON THE LORD
At the second verse Joe and Lyn came to the table, touched the dirt, then the whole family left.
At the close of the song there was a prayer and Benediction
At the gong the Community knelt as the Liturgists
recessed.
The Community sang THOSE WHO WAIT ON THE LORD on
leaving the Great Hall
After the Community recessed, the liturgist were posted along the way and the watchers brought the box from the Great Hall to the car.
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