Rector's Message.

Father Geoff called me today, asked me to look this over and give him my thoughts. I gave it an A+ and now I want to share it with you...

LOVE AND LITTLE LEE

October 12, 2010

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

One of the wonderful by-products of writing these letters each week is that I occasionally get e-mails and notes from parishioners suggesting topics. Most recently, someone asked me to explain what love is.

There are, of course, all sorts of love (philos, eros and agape in the Greek tradition), but it is agape that I have chosen to address as it is the word for love that Jesus used when he gave his disciples the new commandment, to love one another as he loves us. Yet, I can no more define what that is than I can define any of the deepest mysteries of theology or of the human condition, and this word exists in both of those realms. I can however, illustrate it, giving you, I hope, a small hint of what I think that word and the concept of Christ-like love means to us.

Only a few days before leaving Georgia to come to St. James, I was called by a woman to be with her as she removed her son from life-support. They were not parishioners, per se, but I had been involved in a pastoral care relationship with them for some time. It sounds slightly odd to say, but I was honored to be asked to be present at the time of his death, and I shared in officiating and speaking at the son’s funeral at the First Baptist Church.

The man who died was known as “Little Lee,” to differentiate him from his grandfather, Lee, who was a well-known doctor in the small town. Little Lee died of complications from Down syndrome, but he had lived to be almost 45 years old, beating by a large margin the prediction of all the specialist who had treated him over the years, most of whom thought he would not live to be thirty given the severity of the health complications with which he struggled his whole life.

It might be assumed, and it might be assumed with some potential for accuracy, that a child with Down syndrome growing up in a small town in rural Georgia in the 1960’s might have had a hard time of it. But this was not the case for Little Lee. He was cared for by his mother and his younger sister in a way that ensured that he was never treated as if he were any different from anyone else. One of the blessings of a small town at that time was the Little Lee was relatively free to walk the few blocks from his home to the modest downtown area of the village. He became a fixture in the community, an outgoing young man who enjoyed being with lots of other people. When his sister was in high school, Little Lee was included in all her social activities and the circle of care that enveloped Little Lee continued to grow.

I heard many, many stories about Little Lee during my time in that town, and I shared three of them at his funeral – all were based around his desire to have a job. One day, he walked into the tire store and car repair shop downtown and announced that he needed a job. The owner of the store hired him on the spot, and told him to come back the next day. Little Lee showed up for work the next day, looked around and said “Where’s my shirt?” It turned out that his expectation was that he, like all the repairmen, would have a shirt with his name on it. That night the owner of the store took a blue work shirt home and had his wife embroider Little Lee’s name on it. The next day he put it on and said “Now I have a job.” He helped out around the store as he was able, and spent as many hours there as anyone else in the store did.

A few years later, Little Lee decided that he wanted to be a truck driver. He was, however, unable to drive, which in his indomitable fashion did not see as a particular obstacle. His deep desire to do that was learned around town, and one morning a local gravel truck driver pulled up to the house and told Little Lee to get in. The tire store shirt story was already well-known in town, so the driver had a shirt waiting for Little Lee. Off and on for years afterwards, Little Lee would ride in the gravel truck, helping out as he was able, and loving the life of a trucker. (After telling this story at the funeral, a couple of men the same age as Little Lee took me out for dinner and told me the story of the times they had tried to teach Little Lee to drive – unbeknownst to his or anyone else’s parents. Sometimes, I think, laws were made to be if not broken, at least ignored for a few minutes).

Finally, Little Lee’s interest turned to law enforcement. It then became the daily habit of the local police chief to pick up Little Lee every morning on his way to work (providing him now not with just a shirt but a full uniform) and letting him ride along on police calls when appropriate.

It was not long after that that Little Lee’s health complications made it impossible for him to leave the house very often. But it is a testament to the people of that small, rural town that during his active years, Little Lee was able to be a car repairman, a truck driver and a police officer.

At the end of my remarks at the funeral, I told the gathered community that Christ gave us the new commandment, that we love one another as he loves us. And I told them that if they ever found that difficult to comprehend or to live, then they should simply love one another as they loved Little Lee, and it would be the same thing.

That, brothers and sisters, is what I know about love.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Geoff+