“Wherever you are, you’re walking on holy ground. Whenever you are, you’re living in sacred time, Whoever you’re with, you’re in the presence of the divine So whatever you do, keep that in mind.”
I like the simplicity of the lyrics; in four lines it sums up my belief that all people, places, and times are holy, if we take the time to notice. This song makes me think of an experience from Maine that happened about two years ago.
Down the street from us was the Blue Moon Farm Stand. For six years it was one of our favorite places. The crops grown on the land included tomatoes, squash, snap peas, string beans, corn, pumpkins in the late fall, cucumbers, and fresh eggs from a half dozen chickens. Patty, the woman who ran the farm stand also bought produce from other farmers to offer at her stand, so we could pick up all of our fresh produce in one stop. My son loved visiting the farm stand. Patty had taught him to call to the chickens, “Hey Ladies!” so that they would come clucking to the fence. The farmhouse and the land had been in Patty’s family for at least three generations, and before that, with a different family for some time, going all the way back to the early 1800’s. Patty and her husband lived there along with her parents, and their 3 kids who were grown but had not yet left the nest. Their middle child, the only daughter, had married a scientist who got hired by NASA. The whole extended family was preparing to pack up the farm, sell the house and property, and move lock, stock and barrel to Florida.
How strange it was to visit them that spring when they were not planting, to see them selling their equipment, and dismantling the workshops. They did not seem to have any sorrow over their decision to move, or fear of changing their lifestyles. I asked her about leaving her beloved garden, and she said that it was time to move on, just as my family had decided that it was time for us to move to Virginia. Patty told me that she hoped the next family loved the land, but that once it was sold, she would never come back to visit because that would be like having regrets, and she had none.
One day she called me, almost in tears. While dismantling one of the old barns, they had found a tombstone. It was not set into the ground and in fact looked as though it had been used as a cornerstone to build the little shed. She knew I was a minister and asked if I could come over and help her decide what to do. Patty’s family never went to church, but had a very integrated spirituality with the cycles of the farm. This family embodied the Hebrew word, hesed, or loving-kindness. From giving away food to hungry families, to their delight in everybody’s children, Patty’s family was a blessing on our community. I went to the house the next day to find that they had cleaned the tombstone and investigated it as best as they could. It was from 1814, before Maine was a state and there were no records for the town of Brewer.
It was a baby’s tombstone, for someone named Arthur who had died right before his first birthday. I shared with them the reading in our hymnal from Sophia Lyon Fahs that reads in part
“Yet each night a child is born is a holy night Fathers and mothers, sitting beside their children’s cribs Feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning,
They ask, ‘Where and how will this new life end? Or will it ever end?’ Each night a child is born is a holy night, A time for singing, a time for wondering, A time for worshipping.”
We grieved for the baby Arthur and his parents. None of us would ever know the circumstances of his life, death, or how his grave had been so carelessly disregarded. It was agreed, though, that we should mark it and make certain that the next owners knew that it was on their land, a somewhat common occurrence on these old Maine homesteads. Once it was decided that we would have a small service in two days, we realized it would be on the anniversary of Arthur’s death some 190 years before. As we were discussing the ceremony, Patty looked at her daughter, and said, “Maybe we should bury Clyde, too, what do you think?”
Clyde came into Patty’s family life about 20 years ago. Patty found some letters in a corner of the attic from a civil war soldier. When she had them authenticated, the local paper ran a story on them and she had become a minor celebrity, with people bringing her old things and asking her how she might research their origins. Although it is a farm, Pat, her husband, and children, are also great researchers, and with the rising popularity of computers and the information technology industry, they have all stayed well ahead of the curve. But, 20 years ago, before the computer days, a woman had brought Pat a metal container that sort of looked like a pitcher or a vase, saying that she had found it while planting her garden. It had some junk in it, which she had emptied, and it had writing on the bottom, which was unintelligible, and she gave it to Patty asking to let her know if it turned out to be worth money. What Patty found is that the writing referred to a funeral home that had closed.
The jar was for cremains.
The woman had unburied somebody’s unmarked grave and unceremoniously dumped the remains in her garden. There was no way to find out who had been in this urn, or when it had been buried. The woman would not take it back, because she was so appalled at what she had done. Patty tried to find out who to give it to, but there was nobody who would claim the few ashes and the urn. Out of loving kindness, Patty had named the remains “Clyde” and put the pitcher with other beloved antiques in her home. She said that since Clyde’s eternity had been disturbed, the least she could do was to offer company to the lonely soul. And so Clyde had dwelled on the farm unbeknownst to most people for 20 years, as Arthur had for almost 200. We had a tombstone with no grave, and an urn with no history, and a family who wanted to move on with no unfinished business or regrets.
Two days later, a small group of us gathered to put to rest a baby we had never known and a person of unknown gender, identity, age, or circumstance. And yet these two people were remembered, loved, respected, and prayed for. Each of us brought a reading to share, from the Bible, from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, a poem, and an apology. Patty and her daughter apologized to these two souls whose paths had crossed theirs, on behalf of people in our generation who had been so reckless with history, and with eternity. We stood on that holy ground, consecrated by tears of people who wanted to do right by those who came before. Looking around the circle of mourners, I realized that within three months none of us would live in Maine anymore. These two life stories, Arthur’s and Clyde’s, would not die completely because of this family and their deep understanding of each person’s dignity and worth—of the divinity in each person. . Perhaps insignificant to the rest of human history, our work that day was important to us, and maybe to Arthur and Clyde. As I presided over the ceremony, I held up the ideals of holy ground, and that in claiming this urn and respecting its inhabitant, naming was indeed a holy act. In remembering the brief life of this baby, we hold up the hope of future generations and pledge to walk with those affected by tragedies in every age.
“Wherever you are, you’re walking on holy ground. Whenever you are, you’re living in sacred time, Whoever you’re with, you’re in the presence of the divine So whatever you do, keep that in mind.”
May Clyde and Arthur rest in peace, and may we all be grateful to the people, who, in every age, notice the divine everywhere.