Version of Remembering Mary Lou Cousley

We had a service for Mary Lou Cousley and her family and friends on Friday, the 3^rd. For four hours people came to offer condolences and pay respects to a grieving family.

I was thinking that she was part of an in-between age group: younger than those who remembered the Depression and WWII vividly. She was roughly the age of the Beatles. So she came of age with Elvis. Vietnam was her age group’s war--in between age cohort- she obviously saw many changes in our country. Our service started with a countercultural announcement: A memorial service gives permission and a stamp of approval to grieve. One of the more noxious elements of baby boomer culture is its insistence that we should not grieve even at a funeral service but that we should only celebrate a life to forestall tears and grief. We should grieve; we need to grieve when a light form life is gone, when a loved one is gone. Then in time peace may emerge instead of a series of unfinished unresolved loss.

Ash Wednesday was a few days ago, though my guess is that Mary Lou preferred Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras parties. It is a reminder of mortality, ashes to ashes. In the physical realm, we are born dying and in baptism are dying to the old self in order to live

Every week, we read a section of a creed. Toward the end, we read of the resurrection of the body, the communion of saints, and the life everlasting. Resurrection in Greek means to stand again. The resurrection of the body continues to bedevil us. Resurrection points us toward a suspicion I have about God. God cannot bear to see all the traces of a life wash away t like the sand on the beach she loved. A person who attends here said that Marty Lou greeted people with sincere interest, as if she thought well of you. The traces of a life are integrated, broad, and straight. Lent season passes into Holy Week into the season of Easter. Resurrection of the body-we resist the separation of life into components of body, mind, heart, spirit. Yes, her remains are being cremated, broken down into their constituent elements. The creator of the universe can arrange and rearrange energies so that her life is engaged in a new dimension, beyond some sense of a spiritual piece floating about aimlessly.

Communion of saints-Mary Lou loved a good party said Steve.  Love does not respect boundaries, even the boundary of death itself. The bonds of love do not disappear with a death. Further, we maintain that she lives with us; her continuing bonds link her to us. So she continues to dote on Steve, her children and grandchildren. Our bonds with her do not reach a cutting off, but they continue.

Everlasting life- Her life her loves, her memories persist, perdure in a new way. The bible is reticent, properly so, about the conditions of the afterlife, but we get a hint of h it in our readings today. Jesus speaks of preparing a place for us where there is plenty of room, but I suspect Mary Lou would prefer the KJV in my father’s house are many mansions. In worship John’s vision expands and he sees beneath the lid of reality, a revelation. One fine day death will be no more, tears will be dried. . One fine day the tears will be spent and no need to replace them. John’s vision includes a new Garden of Eden where the leaves of the trees are for the healing of nations. She wears immortality like a new outfit