My heart is heavy and my mind is clouded today as I sit in my office wondering how to adequately comfort people in grievous loss and tragedy.  The best of words sound tinny and cheap.  I am reminded of a quote from the “Cowboy’s Guide to Life”,

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Maybe that’s the best thing I can do.  I could, on the other hand, record a few thoughts in case they might hold meaning at some point.

I felt like I knew Phil for a lifetime but in reality it has been a couple years that we have brushed past one another and normally it was a funeral that brought us together.  He had that ability to make people feel as though they were long time friends … not just casual acquaintances.  I don’t think any of that was superficial … I just think that some people love well.  They are fascinated and intrigued by others and they believe that there is some very special attribute that they can identify and call forward.  To be able to see the best in others and in circumstances is huge.  I want with all my heart for there to be more of those kinds of people in the world … not less.  I want to be like that.

I’ve been looking at the pictures on Facebook today and thinking how unreal it is that he is gone.  I can’t believe it.  I look at those pictures and part of me wants to cry but then that million dollar smile just lights me up.  I find myself smiling right back at the pictures.

How in the world does that happen?  But it does … at least it happens to me.

I need to smile more.

Not a plastic, pretend smile but the kind that happens when we can count our real blessings.  Not possessions and achievement, status … those kinds of things are knock-off’s, like the Rolex that one of the kids in my youth group bought in Chinatown, in New York city.  He brought it back on the bus and waved it in front of our faces.  I held it just in time to see one of the counterfeit hands fall off.  To have a perma-smile like Phil’s I think you need to be in touch with the things that really matter. Maybe that’s one of the benefits of working around death all the time.  You know what is real and what isn’t.  You know what you can take with you and what you have to leave behind.  Most of us have to live longer than Phil did before we discover what those things are.

Was there anything that this guy didn’t have a hand in?  Was there anything that he gave his time to that didn’t help to make our community just a little bit better?  You could lose weight standing next to Phil … that’s how good his metabolism was … the Energizer bunny.  His life spoke to me about the necessity of pitching in and getting your hands dirty … doing what a person can to make the world better than you found it.  God knows there are enough people mindlessly messing it up, and messing other lives up in the process.  How about a few more champions who make life more about others than themselves?

Was he perfect?  I am certain that he was not.  It’s not about perfection but about being real enough to live transparently, authentically despite the faults that we all have.  It doesn’t take anyone special to find the fault in others.  Someone said,

Any jackass can tear down a barn but it takes a real carpenter to build one.

The most saintly of people have faults, idiosyncracies, eccentricities … you name it.  The silliest of people believe they have it all together, that their perspective on life is normative.  The most spiritual of people that I have met are those who would not consider themselves to be abundantly spiritual.

At some point all of this becomes extraneous … it is just enough to say thanks Phil, for all that you did.  Thanks for the dear family that survives you and reminds us of you.

I hope I don’t say anything stupid that complicates their grieving and their pain.  I honour it because I feel it myself.  Not like they do but enough that it makes me stop and think, and write, and pray with all my heart for God’s grace and comfort to meet their deep heartache in the days and weeks to come.