Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 90.

I Rode the A Train to Eternity (a garden conversation at The Cloisters that stirred my soul)

Hello human.

Last week I jumped off the Buoy with Hebrews 7:25.

Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

I said that Jesus saves into infinity, for eternity. Jesus keeps interceding for me. So completely.

Solus Christus. In Christ alone. That I am not alone.

Today is the first of a two-part episode (e90 and e91) about two people who died too young in my life. I have no idea how this could possibly be what my witness is right now. It has caught me quite off guard, spiritually. How can my witness be centered in how God teaches us, connects us to what it means to be mortal? This is some of the deepest water I will share with you human.

I’m not obsessed with death. But I do think when it gets so close I can feel its breath, it is a wise teacher for how to live.

My witness about Solus Christus last week led to this. That embracing the power of “in Christ alone” redeems me from being alone.

But earthly life has its own lessons. Harsh assignments. And somehow the essence of aloneness lingered in my thoughts this week.

Earthly life teaches us what part we each have in the story of God’s Genesis. How we work through our mortality in God’s story about His eternity.

And the one most jarring earthly collision with the soul, that feeling of spiraling isolation when death is at someone’s door. Someone you love is leaving you alone in this world.

That “deep knowing” we gain. A painful epiphany that cannot be debated. Being mortal is a solo act. For everyone.

On June 25, 2018 my “knowing” got deeper riding the A train, headed to The Cloisters in Washington Heights, NYC. It was a 30-minute subway ride from Columbus Circle, the 59^th Street entrance to 190^th Street Exit. Then a decent nature walk to Fort Tryon Park. This day was also my wedding anniversary (33 years). It was the kind of day when the temperature went unnoticed it was so perfect, so still, and the sun cast divine light on pretty much everything. Nature’s living creatures were chattering.

I was walking with Christine, the wife of my former employer’s CEO in California. I was a Major Gift Officer and I worked with him on developing and managing his CEO donor portfolio. He was one of the best at incorporating vision, best practices and processes into his relationships with donors. A joy to work with. I am grateful.

At the time my husband and I had just moved back to New York City in January, and Christine had joined her husband in NYC for a June conference he was attending. We had enjoyed a wonderful Saturday lunch at Il Violeno, arguably our favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant. On the corner of 68^th St and Columbus Ave, a couple of blocks from Central Park West.

It’s pretty amazing when you connect with those you respect and love in a different life setting, and God honors that by giving you more memories together. However many, it’s a powerful thing because it honors what you are to each other beyond the work environment.

During the lunch Christine mentioned she was debating going to The Met Cloisters on Monday. With some hesitation. Christine had been diagnosed with a cancer that had returned after 5 years. The prognosis was not good, and her days were increasingly less predictable. I am sure she wondered if she could manage it alone. I said, “that will be beautiful. It is on my list.” She said, “would you want to come?” I heard God’s call. I responded, “I would love too.”

 A little quick history:  The Met Cloisters, is a museum in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. North of Harlem. It is situated in Fort Tryon Park, specializing in European medieval art and the architecture of French monasteries and abbeys. Financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. led the funding and vision for this historical treasure. It holds about 5,000 works of art and architecture, including the early Renaissance periods, mainly during the 12th through 15th centuries. The objects include stone and wood sculptures, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings. And of course the architecture, the buildings, the grounds.

I took hundreds of pictures. Look it up if you want to pursue this. I share a minute’s-worth of its beauty on this week’s promo reel on Instagram and Facebook.

Learning About Eternity on a Museum Bench

I felt like I knew Christine better than she knew me. She had a cancer blog that documented her physical and spiritual journey through her health prognosis. What an inspiration to me. She shared scriptures, how she was feeling and reaching for God. And so powerful, how she was hiding scriptures in her heart for when she lay awake in the cruel, dark hours of night. She did it because she knew there would be a day she needed to draw only from her heart.

Psalm 119:11

11 I have hidden your word in my heart

    that I might not sin against you.

 

Yet, enjoying a museum with someone is no small challenge. There has to be a comfort level with silence, pace, economical conversation as you navigate through the experience together. A comfort with wandering off, with pointing something out, with mutual trust in letting the aesthetic experience have room to do the work.

The rhythm of how we navigated this treasure—the art, the cloisters, the gardens, the view of the Hudson River—led us to a conversation in one of the intimate garden courtyards. For a few moments we were the only ones there, and there was a turn in the dialogue to bring the harsh parallel reality into this lush, green, living context.

Christine told me how her cancer journey was progressing, the options that had been exhausted, the stillness of not feeling the familiar and reassuring pull toward the next step (my words). Then she paused, with the kind of silence that signals. God saying, “do not jump in, Kathryn. She is owning this silence.”

And then she said, with the contemplative resonance of saying something out loud for the first time. “I just can’t get my head around not being here in October.”

It was the most powerful out loud I had ever heard. I felt like I had intruded on a confessional prayer, then I panicked because my brain said “uh, you got nothing.” I didn’t know what to say. I knew by God’s grace that I couldn’t say, “I understand. I know how you feel, I am so sorry, I feel for you, I will pray for you, keep the faith, God is in control…  Nothing seemed right. None of that was right. And it wasn’t about me. Of course she knew, being the spirit-led warrior she was, that my response would be prefaced by more silence.

In that silence I turned to gratitude, because gratitude never fails me.

I said: “Thank you for sharing this with me, Christine.” And the words flowed.

After a few minutes of sharing the presence of a mighty God, a God who brings peace, comfort, wisdom, and all the promises of His heavenly kingdom, somehow—and to this day I do not know how we went from mortality to moving—somehow we found the timing to get up from the bench, and continue walking.

My soul was stirring. My soul was spinning. My soul told me what I knew in that moment.

Mortality is when someone whose terminal illness is imminent tells you they can’t get their head around not being on earth in a few short months. We just don’t get the end of earthly life. We just can’t mentally write the end.

Christine’s response was embedded in God’s Word. She was seeking wisdom.

James 4:14

14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Psalm 90:12

12 Teach us to number our days,

    that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 144

Of David.

1 Praise be to the Lord my Rock,

    who trains my hands for war,

    my fingers for battle.

2 He is my loving God and my fortress,

    my stronghold and my deliverer,

my shield, in whom I take refuge,

    who subdues peoples[a] under me.

3 Lord, what are human beings that you care for them,

    mere mortals that you think of them?

4 They are like a breath;

    their days are like a fleeting shadow.

God tells us who we are. How we think. Yet we live by an assumption mortals make. That we will evolve into older age. The younger we are the more like forever it seems. And it is not until we get where “older” is in our own head, that we give it any decent soulful thought. That we begin to claim it.

Unless a life-threatening circumstance demands our attention.

Not everyone, maybe. Just, yeah, everyone.

What was spiritually sobering for me in this conversation was hearing a human accept mortality in the only way possible. Personally. A given. With an estimated time. The time at hand. And it is not that realization that was of eternal value to me, it was sharing that moment, that moment when being mortal AND being eternal held us together.

The Eternal Bond of Sisterhood In Christ

When I meet another believer in Christ the bond develops immediately, spontaneously, and with an enduring quality no one questions. That was my relationship with Christine. Good, but mostly defined by brief occasional conversations during work events, a scripture, a thought. But we had, as I would call it, a day to bond for eternity. We tightened our grasp on each other’s souls on that day. Maybe I should say, she made the first move in that direction out of her amazing wisdom.

I think about that bench, that sun, that café sandwich she bought for me, that conversation, that moment facing toward the garden, and how I learned something enduring about being mortal that day. It has served me so well, spiritually.

Christine passed on October 30 of that year, age 57.

I joined her Celebration of Life service in California online and burned a candle for her all day in our apartment at 101 West End. It was an amazing gift, a service that gave others the opportunity to accept Jesus. She never stopped witnessing. Her final blog entry posted on that day offered two scriptures.

It is finished (John 19:30). 

My work is done (Psalm 39:4-5). 

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Now I have the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, has awarded me —and not only to me, but also award to all of you who long for his appearing (2 Timothy 4:7-8).

And she asked these questions:

• What legacy do you want to leave to your family, your friends, your kids?
• How about to the world?
• What kind of a legacy do you want to leave for the kingdom?

Honor the People Who Have Walked with You

Our legacy will live through the people we connect with, share life’s path with… we should spend our lives honoring the good in others, honoring the amazing memories we have shared. Honoring what God shared with you through that person’s life of struggle, wisdom, and the mortal nature that passes into eternity.

Be prepared to learn from what death of a loved one teaches you. God has wisdom for you. Christine prepared the people she loved for her earthly ending. By God’s grace, by God’s faith, by His vision for her earthly witness.

I embrace our journey to The Cloisters in how I approach others. I do this often.

I ask this of my relationships:

• What train am I on with this person?
• How can God prepare me for our next garden bench conversation?
• What is my response, my contribution to this person’s “knowing’ about this life, and eternity?

It’s a powerful way to witness.

I am at peace with what Christine and I shared as earthlings. I can’t wait to see her. Thank you Jesus, for that day with her.

And this is where you would think I jump off this BUOY, yet my human nature is stingy with spiritual lessons God is teaching me. I work through them over and over, hanging on, holding out for something more I can learn.

That is where I am with someone I lost twice and I am not done loving. Episode 91.