Renewal
Roger Fritts
April 7, 1996
Cedar Lane Unitarian Church
Bethesda, Maryland
The Gospel of John attributes these words to Jesus:
. . . You will weep and mourn, but the world will celebrate. You will grieve, but your grief will turn
to joy. A woman suffers pain when she gives birth because the time has come. When her child is born,
in her joy she no longer remembers her labor because a human being has come into the world. 1John, 16:20-21, Jesus Seminar Translation
As this passage from the Gospel of John suggests, Easter is more than one story. It is many stories
of personal struggles.
I remember a friend. Born in Chicago, he had moved with his mother and sister to Arizona because
he suffered from asthma. His name was Jim. We first met in a high school speech class. What I liked
most about Jim was his outrageous sense of humor. We gave a ten minute speech each week in class
for nine months. Jim's speeches were a weekly satire on life in America. One week he spoke on his
experiences working in a fast food restaurant. His title was "How to pack a taco with grease."
Another week he spoke on "Why Lyndon Johnson should wear a wig," which included Jim modeling
several wigs that he felt the President should consider.
We both attended the same university and saw each other from time to time. When Jim was twenty-three years old, doctors told him he had cancer. I remember visiting him in the hospital. He wore
a cap to cover his head. The words "bottomless despair" do not begin to describe what he was
feeling. We talked, but I felt an air of unreality in the room, an inability for either of us to deal with
his illness. Shortly after this visit I went away to graduate school.
When I returned home for Christmas vacation, I called Jim. He was out of the hospital. When we got
together, he presented me with a small book. He explained, "After I found out about the cancer, the
news overwhelmed me with fear. It drained me of energy. Still, I thought, I may be seriously ill, but
I am not dead. For several years I had dreamed of publishing a book of poetry sometime in my life.
I thought to myself: all I have is right now. Now is when I need to live my life. I can no longer put
up with things in the hope that some day in the future I can do what I want. So I published my book
of poems."
I opened the book. It was a collection of love poems. They were snapshot images of relationships.
For example, one short poem described two lovers listening to the rain fall. Jim wrote:
As you sat
intensely listening
to the rain
about us glistening
I thought each drop
was softly christening
dreams as they were born.
He said to me, "My encounter with death has brought my life into a sharp focus. No longer do I feel
an obligation to be anything but myself. I am working on a novel and on a movie about my experiences with life and illness." The last time I saw him was about ten months later, shortly before he
died. He said to me, "Roger, remember those discussions we used to have about religion?" I nodded. "These last few months dealing with this illness have led me to the conviction that there is a
spiritual side to life. I am sad, but I am no longer afraid."
It was an Easter moment. In the last year of Jim's life, new creations and a new peace of mind had
emerged. The spirit of life had pushed the rock away from the door of the cave.
I remember a church usher in New Bedford, Massachusetts. His name was John. A graduate of
Harvard and MIT, John's degrees were in architecture and city planning. He worked restoring old
homes and buildings. However, all did not always go well.
In the late 1970s John worked for two years to painstakingly restore a nineteenth-century building.
Two days after John completed the work, a leaking pipe filled the building with natural gas and exploded. Luckily, the building and the streets around it were empty and the explosion injured no one.
John's next project was to restore his own nineteenth-century home. So that the exterior of the house
would be more attractive, he took the television antenna off the roof. Unfortunately, the previous
owner had grounded the antenna. It had served both as an antenna and as a lightning rod. A month
after John finished the restoration, a lightning bolt crashed through the roof and set the house on fire.
Shortly after this, John and his wife divorced.
John's next project was to open an authentic old-fashioned ice cream store. The ice cream was
extremely good. However, the location he picked for the store was a back street near the harbor,
plagued by crime and by the smell of a polluted harbor. Business was not good.
However, this did not dampen his enthusiasm. Concerned about the smells from the harbor, John decided to run for mayor. For him a key issue in the campaign was sewage. He pointed out that the
EPA required the city to stop dumping raw sewage into the harbor. John said that if the city added
a small sewer tax to the water bills, the EPA would give the city $20 million to build a new sewage
plant. The cry of his opponent in the election became "No sewer tax."
It was a bitter campaign. His opponent attacked John for being a homosexual (which was not true),
for being a Republican (which was not true), and for being a Unitarian (which was true). His opponent even attacked John's two children for attending a private school instead of a public school.
Each day for several weeks John walked the streets knocking on doors, talking about sewage and
asking for votes. Although physically exhausted, Sunday mornings he continued to fulfill his commitment as an usher at church.
Election night I stood with John and his parents watching the results come in. He lost the election
by a large margin.
In the months that followed John continued to usher each Sunday at the church. However, the
election loss had drained him of his energy and enthusiasm. The ruthless personal attacks on his
character had left him dejected. Months passed. Then one day in the middle of the summer the city
closed its beaches because of raw sewage. The new mayor announced that a cruise ship dumped the
mess on its way up the coast. However, investigators traced the sewage to the city plant. When I
saw John in church, he did not look as dejected.
When the city held the next election, the people voted John mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
He emerged out of the cave of defeat, out of the cave of personal attacks, to serve the community
in which he lived. It was an Easter experience.
I remember a wedding. The groom was a member of the church I served. Living alone, his hobby
was listening to music and to radio programs. He was proud of his recording collection of the Garrison Keillor radio programs. He was quiet, shy and lonely.
He met his bride through his work at a local social service agency. She was a big woman, reserved
and modest, with an introverted, reclusive life. She was also lonely.
They held their wedding on a cold gray day in March. The groom wore a brown suit, a blue shirt and
a green tie. The bride wore a simple white dress and no make up. A flower in her bouquet fell on
the floor. They were not young. They were not pretty.
Yet as they exchanged their vows, appearances were not important. Both the bride and groom were
blind. They could not see the architecture of the church, or the friends and relatives who had come
to support them. They could not see the face of the minister, or even each other.
Nevertheless, they felt each other's touch. They smelled the flowers and listened to the sounds of the
words and the music. On either side, in place of a bridesmaid and a best man were two seeing eye
dogs, lending their support to the new relationship.
They had worked through the pain and anguish of their disability and found each other. As the
ceremony ended, they kissed, embraced and rejoiced. On that cold gray day, the human will of two
people had overcome the pain of blindness and given birth to a new relationship.
I remember driving a friend to O'Hare Airport. It was a dark evening, and rainy. Earlier in the
week I had gotten a call from a couple in the church. For years they had wanted children. Finally
the baby they had been trying to adopt was to arrive. Unfortunately, the new father had to be away
on an essential business trip. Could Leslie and I come to the airport and videotape the arrival of the
baby?
We were happy to oblige. A few days later we were waiting with dozens of other families at the
airport gate. Eighteen babies were arriving on the same flight.
Having been present for the births of my own three children, I noticed the differences. Our children's
arrivals had been private. Now we were in the midst of the world's busiest airport. Hurried travelers
were moving in every direction. In one small corner of the vast complex about fifty people gathered
to greet the babies.
Inside the airplane each infant waited, strapped in individual seats. After the flight emptied of its
regular passengers, which seemed to take a very long time, the airline people permitted one person
from each family to go aboard. There they met their new baby and carried it out of the plane.
I will never forget watching as parent after parent emerged carrying their infant in their arms. Dark
eyes looked out from chubby faces. Before me I saw lives suddenly and dramatically change forever.
It was Easter at O'Hare!
Years have passed since each of these events. The book of poetry of my friend Jim still sits on my
bookshelf. I refer to it from time to time and my memories of him renew my spirit. John, the church
usher, served as mayor of New Bedford for several years. When I last hear of him, he was working
for the Commerce Department help unemployed workers in the fishing industry. The blind couple had
a healthy baby born to them a year after the wedding. And the couple who adopted the baby from
Asia now live in Bethesda with their two adopted children.
The Christian Easter story is a reminder that out of deep and profound loss, renewal can arise. The
Christian Easter story tells us that life is not solely decline and devastation, but also fresh beginnings
and new growth. Remember the words found in the Gospel of John:
. . . You will weep and mourn, but the world will celebrate. You will grieve, but your grief will turn
to joy. A woman suffers pain when she gives birth because the time has come. When her child is born,
in her joy she no longer remembers her labor because a human being has come into the world.
Easter is more than an old myth. It is many contemporary experiences. It is an authentic and ever-current prospect for all people.
When we expose our thinking to fresh directions of knowledge and reflection . . .
When we expose our souls to fresh ways of caring and affection . . .
When we expose our lives to fresh avenues of development and meaning . . .
Easter will emerge! It will give us strength and transport us on exhilarating quests. It will deliver us
from arrogance, sorrow, and lethargy. It will encourage us to feel a new happiness, faith, and love.
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