Friends and family

During most of the pandemic Fr. Kevin has offered a daily reflection as part of Morning Prayer. Today was about marriage and friendship. I first knew Kevin and Ron at Trinity, Seattle when Kevin and I were priest associates and Ron was responsible for adult formation programs.

The Lesson -Ruth1:6-22

6 Then Naomi started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had had consideration for his people and given them food. ⁷So she set out from the place where she had been living, she and her two daughters-in-law, and they went on their way to go back to the land of Judah. ⁸But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go back each of you to your mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. ⁹The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.’ Then she kissed them, and they wept aloud. ¹⁰They said to her, ‘No, we will return with you to your people.’ ¹¹But Naomi said, ‘Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? ¹²Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, ¹³would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.’ ¹⁴Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.

15 So she said, ‘See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ 

¹⁶But Ruth said,

‘Do not press me to leave you
   or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
   where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
   and your God my God.
¹⁷ Where you die, I will die—
   there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
   and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’
¹⁸When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.

19 So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them; and the women said, ‘Is this Naomi?’ ²⁰She said to them,
‘Call me no longer Naomi,
   call me Mara,
   for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.
²¹ I went away full,
   but the Lord has brought me back empty;
why call me Naomi
   when the Lord has dealt harshly with me,
   and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?’

22 So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

 Father Kevin’s Reflection

Ron and I had a conversation very early on that while marriage was extremely important, it was also important that we not put all our eggs in one basket. We both had deep friendships of many years with others who were important parts of our lives and those friendships continued understanding that those friends also met the needs of each of us.

While we both held marriage as sacred, we also understood that our friendships were also sacred in a different but similar manner. These were people with whom we had established trusting and affectionate relationships going back, in some cases, for decades. These were people to whom we were committed though maybe a bit differently than our commitment to each other. We needed them and they needed us and in some cases fulfilled a need neither Ron nor I could fulfill for each other. One example is that Ron loved opera. To me, Gilbert & Sullivan is high opera. Wagner bores me to tears. So, he had his opera buddies and off they’d go for dinner and lots of women in horned helmets bellering at the top other lungs. And we were both content.

The point is that friendship is also sacramental. Friendship is an outward and visible sign of God’s gift to us of each other – people with whom we can journey through life, shares life’s ups and downs, its joys and sorrows in trusting affection. The key to both marriage and friendship is not taking the other for granted and caring for one another. Both require hard work which pays off. Both require forgiveness and reconciliation when things go wonky. And, for Christians, friendship acknowledges that Christ is present in the mix, the source of love and affection, of trust and forgiveness.

Make a list of your real friends today – maybe just the first name or the middle name. Set it in a place of honor and light a candle next to it. Your spouse or partner might even be one of them if you have one, either living or departed. Offer a prayer of thanks for these people who grace/have graced your life. Give thanks that you and they have been put together to experience life together and in so doing have experienced a slice of the abundant life which Jesus promises us.

The Rev’d Kevin Corbin Smith

Rector, St. Clements Parish, Seattle

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Keeping death before our eyes

I’ll add one Benedictine thought to Kevin’s reflection. Our friends and family  become even dearer when we listen to Blessed Benedict, “Keep death daily before your eyes.” Here’s an additional source of reflection from The Dispatch.

Longtime Boston journalist Jack Thomas recently learned he has inoperable cancer, which his doctors say will kill him within months. In the Boston Globe, he wrote a remarkable reflection on his life in response. “Does the intensity of a fatal illness clarify anything?” he asks. “Every day, I look at my wife’s beautiful face more admiringly, and in the garden, I do stare at the long row of blue hydrangeas with more appreciation than before. And the hundreds and hundreds of roses that bloomed this year were a greater joy than usual, not merely in their massive sprays of color, but also in their deep green foliage, the soft petals, the deep colors and the aromas that remind me of boyhood.”

And

It becomes clearer every day that we will all be suffering with the physical, economic, psychological and spiritual consequences of the coronavirus for some time. We should be willing to learn the lessons God wants to teach us. A great temptation is to demand that God return what we have lost. In the field of tragedy, God sows seeds of new life. We all must water them with our prayers (both seen and unseen), our sacrifices and, perhaps, even our lives. But death does not have the last word.  The entire posting

​Very Rev. Dom Benedict Nivakoff, O.S.B.
Prior,  Monastero di San Benedetto in Monte