From the Rector

Dear Friends,

Thanks to all of you who supported me and our family with your prayers and encouragement at the time of my mother's death in Missoula, Montana. That certainly contributed to the funeral being a powerful experience and to the extended family gathering being so fruitful. After much reflection, I did decide to preach the homily at the service, and I have reprinted a portion of it here to give you a flavor of my mother's life and of the funeral liturgy.

...Perhaps no one can be more grateful for the gift of another person than one to whom she has quite literally given the gift of life, her beholden child. While I certainly have found myself experiencing deep grief at my mother's death, especially in that hospital room at St. Patrick's where she painfully struggled with yielding the last ounces of breath within her, the predominant response in me since then has been one of gratitude.

I am grateful for the unique personhood of Agnes Mary Cope Williams. No one has been or will be created in the image of God in just the same way. I am grateful for her long life. Living to the age of eighty-nine, she was given to us as support and stability and affection for much longer than we had a right to expect.

I am grateful for her adventurousness. She not only set up household for my father and our family in many different locations in many different states until we finally settled permanently in Missoula in 1957; she later traveled extensively throughout the world to all the continents except Antarctica, first with Dad and then on her own. At the age of 57, after 32 happy years of marriage, she courageously faced the challenges of widowhood, vigorously living yet another 32 years. Among other adjustments, she learned and got rather good at golf, bowling, and cross-country skiing. After her stroke five years ago, she made an amazing comeback and managed quite well with the support of assisted living. Even though in her final years her adventurousness grew dormant, she claimed, along with one of her sisters, to have been in the early 1930s the first young women in their hometown, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, ever to wear pants downtown! An early blow for women's liberation...

I am grateful for Mom's devotion to baking! Not only throughout our childhood, but even during our college years and for many subsequent Christmases, she kept us children and later her grandchildren well supplied with generous amounts of her nurturing, affection-filled, great-tasting cookies. Her care packages were always dependable and always welcomed!

Most of all I am grateful for her nurturing in us, her children, the gift of faith. Faith in God was the highest value for her and through her personal example and faithful participation in the Church, she imparted that spark to us. The collect used toward the beginning of our service certainly applies to her, Lord "look kindly upon a mother, Agnes, who sought to bind her children to you."

... All of us who gather around this altar this morning have come to give thanks to God... Most of all we are all grateful for the gift of renewed life that God constantly gives us. No matter what the losses and the pains and the separations we are suffering, God's generous grace is larger. "The favors of the Lord are not exhausted," we heard in the first reading from Lamentations. "His mercies are not spent. They are renewed each morning, so great is his faithfulness." "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" Paul wrote in our second reading to those suffering in Rome and to all of us. Nothing, he proclaimed unequivocally "will be able to separate us from the love of God." That is true for us and for Agnes, even in death. Nothing separates us from God. Jesus promised in our Gospel reading, "I am indeed going to prepare a place for you, and then come back to take you with me, that where I am you also may be." Today we gather to declare our faith in that promise and to give thanks to our bountiful God, who blessed us with Agnes Mary Williams...

- Stephen