Taize Homily by Matt Jarvis.

Sunday, May 31, 2009 

I lived with my dad until I was 7. I lived with my stepfather from the time I was 10 until I left for college. Last July, I gave a Homily about my stepfather's death, which was one year ago on Friday, but after three and a half years of coming to St Thomas, I have never spoken to anyone, publicly or privately, about my real dad... What I'm about to say is very personal to me. Its a difficult reflection for me and I struggled forming the thoughts to write it. I'm sharing it because St Thomas has been, and is, a true venue for the Spirit of God to speak to me...For me, this place is a safe place where I can be my true self, and not be afraid to express my true feelings, because its here that Truth is always spoken. That was certainly confirmed for me this morning in Nancy Lee's Sermon... Its here where I hear what is essential. And that gives me the confidence to talk about a part of my life I keep close to my heart.

My dad...

My dad could have been a great Architect.

He could have been a great painter. He could have been a great carpenter. He could have been a Master Builder. People tell me sometimes there wasn't anything he couldn't do with his hands. The say anything he touched became beautiful. They say his skill and talent was the real thing. They tell me he could estimate the cost of a house down the price of a single nail exactly. They say he was the best.

Those stories make me happy, and proud. For me, they are true.
 
But he didn't use what God gave him. He had the all the promise of God's great gift, but none of the Spirit in him to use it. He chose a less effort-ful life and has consequently had to work very hard in manual labor jobs that have worn him down over the years. He's had a hard life instead of what was intended for him to be true. I can't imagine how that feels. My dad's a complex man, with a rave intellect, but he's not a dreamer. He's a cynic. He critiques. He points out what's wrong with the world because he is intelligent enough to understand the big picture. He sees the glass half empty. And he doesn't believe in God.

The one time though he did use his talent. He made a drawing... To my knowledge its the only one he ever did. It still hangs in my grandma's house twenty-five years after he and my mom divorced. Its a drawing of my mom's graduation picture in pencil. Next to my mom he drew her brothers and sisters' graduation pictures like they were all there graduating together even though 15 years separates them. Its the only picture of all five of them together that exists because her brother had died several years before. Every time I've gone to visit my grandma since I was a boy I've quietly studied that drawing while everyone else is talking and chatting and catching up... The way he captured the light shining in her hair, the way you can see her smiling even though she's not smiling... with the faintest little twinge out of the side of the mouth, like the Mona Lisa I used to think. Its perfect. Its art. Its the only tangible evidence that he and my mom ever loved each other. By shear virtue of that fact that he did it, and it exists, and there is so much love poured into it. And that its so beautiful. Its the only thing I've ever asked to have in my life that belongs to someone else.

I used to stare at that picture and feel like I knew him. I didn't know him, I hadn't even heard from him in years when I was a teenager, but I knew that drawing. I knew it backwards and forwards...Every line in it. And so I knew him.        

But the story that drawing has told me all my life, is all I have of the true him.

My mom and my brother and I left when I was 7.

I remember it very vividly... The years before that night are a blur and and the years after it are too, although less so, but I remember every detail of that moment like it was yesterday... My mom came into my room. It was late and I was sleeping... I was just a boy. She knelt down beside my bed and turned on the lamp on my dresser and whispered to me softly.... She said we were going away. She said I could take one toy with me, but that we had to go now. I remember looking at my closet doors from my bed... I had a 4x4 Polaroid picture of the Statue of Liberty on those doors. It was the only picture in my room, I don't remember whose it was or how it got there, I just remember I stared at it then for what seems like forever... And then the memory fades.

We left in the middle of the night. I never got to say goodbye. And I never went home.

That was the last night I had a dad.

I was 7.

I can tell you from my own experience though, its true when Jesus says, "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you."

The truth of my life is that I didn't hear from my dad for years after that night. I've only seen him a dozen or so times since... And there is much more than time and distance between us now.

What's between us now is the knowledge that when he left my life, something else entered and filled the void... Not immediately, not apparently. But I believe with my whole heart it was the Spirit of God to help guide me. It has never left me, it has never failed me, it has never ceased to be my True Father... It has never ceased to tell me the Truth... The truth that is my foundation upon which everything else in my life is built. That I have a purpose. That its not enough to be born with our gifts, that we must use them and not see them wasted, because that is what is intended, that is my purpose in this life,... to rectify and redeem a great life that was given to my father and not lived, a great gift that was given and not opened. I give my life freely to God, with a glad heart, to use as He will. Everything I am I am precisely because of this. When I was a boy my mom would tell me, "God is your true father. I promised your life to Him before you were born, that it would be spent in service to Him if He would send you to me." Had I had a dad here, I would be simplier but I would be less. I'd derive my being from a man and not from the Spirit.... Not from nature or from people who are connected to Truth....or from the sounds the trees make on my walks in the woods, or how the light on a Rembrandt dances and comes to life and stirs in my soul, or how I can almost somehow feel my destiny before it happens like a road map that's laid out in front of me I have no ability to understand but I trust completely... or how the sun sets in the Alps late in the year and colors the snow pink at the peaks and how The Spirit of God is there.... Or the indescribable feeling I feel when I'm making something new, or how the clouds come to the ocean from their long journey east just to shed all their inertia all of the sudden and stop-cold at the gentlest breeze when they meet the water, and obey it freely, and sail south. Or, if we had not left, I would not have come to this wonderful place of St Thomas, where I was meant from the day I was born to encounter the Truth of Jesus Christ here through the Word that is spoken in this place, the one that echoes true through every fiber in my being. 

These moments, and the body of St Thomas, are where I encounter the Spirit of God. For me they are the voice of the only Father that I've ever known... That voice has never led me wrong. The One that leads me down a path I will continue to follow with the trust of a boy until the the very end. Thank God for the Spirit. Thank God for the Spirit.! It has all my love and loyal devotion.      

Where I am on my journey is the point at which I'm turning and facing my Truth. Boldly. And that's that I don't have to be the best. I don't have to be right. I don't even have to understand. But by God I have to believe that what I'm hearing is the Truth. That its alive. That its real. On my journey, its asking me,

"Will you.?"

And I answer, "Yes."

Amen.