COMMENTARY: Remembering a `Pillar’

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.) (UNDATED) A friend died last week. Today people are telling stories about her – warm, loving stories, the sort of story I suppose we all wish to leave behind. She […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

(UNDATED) A friend died last week. Today people are telling stories about her – warm, loving stories, the sort of story I suppose we all wish to leave behind.


She was a person of power. Not powerful in the usual sense, for she was of that generation whose women typically didn’t pursue professional or political power. Her power was more personal, more like authority and less like control.

The word “goodness” comes to mind _ not “sweetness,” for she was too crusty and direct, too much the”steel magnolia,”to seem sweet.

She had two passions, her family and her church. To each she was a “pillar,” in the best sense of pillar. In her church passion, which I knew, she was the sort of member whom every pastor wishes he had a hundredfold. You could build the kingdom of God on people like her. She did it the way Jesus did.

First, she was willing to suffer. Not just work hard, for churches have many hard workers. Not suffer in the sense of complain, for churches have many complainers. Not suffer in the sense of getting hurt, for churches are a magnet for prickly people whose feelings are easily hurt.

She suffered as Jesus suffered: feeling passion for her congregation _ not its facilities or its furnishings or its history, but its people, its present status as a gathering of the broken and sinful. She wasn’t the least nostalgic for a “better day,” some “golden era” when the church was as it should be.

When her church revised its prayer book and new wording stumped her family, she told them, “If you don’t know what to say, say `Merry Christmas.”’ To church friends who couldn’t stop bickering over new liturgy, her message was, in effect, “Get over it.”

I suspect she lay awake many nights, not stewing about getting her way in church battles, certainly not plotting revenge or fomenting rebellion against church leaders. She lost sleep because she cared about people who were going astray, as she understood astray, and she wondered how to help them.


Second, she understood repentance. Not as forced groveling, not as admitting someone else’s superior knowledge. I never heard her say, “You are wrong, and I am right.” She was never that small. She seemed to understand that we are all trapped in thoughts and ways that we know don’t serve us well but we can’t easily escape. She seemed to understand that true amendment of life comes from being loved and treated with respect, not from being beaten down.

She knew that repentance is a change of mind, putting on a new garment, as it were, not because someone has demolished your logic or flattened your ego or overwhelmed you with political maneuvering, for such victories simply produce losses. She made one want to do better, because she conferred hope and belief in oneself.

Third, she was quick to forgive. Churches are dying daily from the long and bitter memories of people who catalog every error and demand of others that which they would never expect of themselves. She saw the humanity of even the loftiest person. She seemed to know that inside every suit, inside every pastor in resplendent finery, inside every hard-charging professional, inside every whining wannabe, is a little boy or girl who needs to be loved.

In my ministry, I fell short on many occasions, as do all pastors. I never lacked for people who saw my failings, commented on them, kept a scorecard, and used them against me.

If you are the pastor or child or co-worker of a fault-finder like that, you learn to be wary, and you’re sorry to hear their voice storming down the hall. When they die, the hole they leave behind is a small one.

The steel magnolia who died last week leaves a large hole. Her funeral overflowed the church. Many who attended were relatively new members, whom she had welcomed. And at least one former pastor whom she had firmly but gently guided while serving sweet tea and abundant care.


Stories about her will be told for years to come by people whom she loved.

DEA END EHRICH

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