This Matters

Bill looks out at the audience, holds his arms wide, “This matters.”

“And this,” as he points to the wall.

“This,” pointing to the floor.

“And this matters.  This is holy,” he says, pointing at us in the audience.

“You.  You.  You. You matter.”

“And sometimes”, he says, now sitting on the floor, “I get it.  This matters too”, pointing at himself, resting his hand now on his chest.  He breaks into tears.

Bill is the narrator of Bill Cain’s autobiographical play, “How to Write a New Book for the Bible” which I saw last night at the Rep.  Bill’s taking care of his mom in the last months of her life, and the house full of the ghosts of his dead father and absent brother.

And as he eventually tells us, Bill is also a priest.  “I waited to tell you that after you got to know me as a person first.”

“Priests point.  That’s what we do,” Bill remarks.  “They point out that ‘this matters’ and ‘this’ and ‘this’, ‘you’ and ‘me’.  It all matters.  It’s all holy.  That’s our job.  And that’s why I became a priest.”

“Priests” show up all the time and may or may not have formal titles, robes or stoles.  But the priests in our lives are those who point and remind us that “this matters”, and especially this unfolding taking place inside us.  It matters.  It really does.

We all “got” that somehow or we never would have lived to this point in our lives.  And we all have “got” it from many people.  And some of us are fortunate to be able to name the priests in our lives who have been there with us and for us time and time again and reminded us,“this matters, you matter”.

Coleman Brown has been that priest for me.  I met Coleman my freshman year at Colgate University at a critical juncture in my young life when it seemed like what really mattered was being popular, being a ‘success”, getting a fancy job and title, and three Matt’s beers for a dollar at the “Hour Glass” bar on Saturday nights.

Coleman was the Protestant chaplain and professor of religion at Colgate.  I went to the worship service that first Sunday in pursuit of friends and instead began a journey that I never would have planned that has helped me find my soul.

Every Sunday Coleman reminded us that we gathered as a community of believers, seekers and doubters.  There was room, in other words, for all of us here and all that was in us.  And in the words of the confession we said each week, we reminded ourselves that we had come “from anguished moments in the night and betrayals in the day.”

Coleman reminded us that what really matters is wrestling with the questions at the heart of life:  “What does it mean to be a human being?”  “How do you live a life that is worth living?”    Coleman never let us wiggle out of listening to what was there in us, stirring in us.  He reminded us again and again that it matters, we mattered.

As I dared to venture into his small office over the years and spill out the turmoil of a young man’s heart, Coleman would sit patiently and hear me out.  And then pull out of all those words and tears what I was trying to say but didn’t know how to.  He reminded me again and again, “This matters, Peter. You matter.”

When that happens to you, when you begin to get an inkling of that truth and long for more of it, it changes your life.  It changed mine.  It led me from my plans, my ideas of what I thought I wanted to do, and the important job that I wanted to have, to a profession I was not sure I wanted and the beginning of a walk to learn to be a priest myself.

That was 32 years ago and over the decades Coleman has been there for me again and again in times I have been lost and needing to find my way.  He has listened patiently to my phone calls and long letters, and in my many visits back to see him over the years.  In his deep listening to me he has reminded me again and again, “This matters, Peter.  You matter.”

As my priest and mentor, I always had out my red notebook to write down what he said.  I poured over his sermons and the notes I took after our conversations searching to get, remember, that “something” I knew from his presence with me.

Several years ago, I sat in Coleman’s living room, looked across the room at him,  “Sometimes I don’t need anything but just to be in your presence.”  I put the notebook down for a bit, less in need of taking down all his wonderful turns of phrases, his pointed way of putting things, just sat there silently with him.

Over the last years, Coleman has been living with Parkinson’s disease and had a number of small strokes.  At a visit two years ago, we no longer walked down to the Colgate Inn for lunch as we always did but I drove Coleman and his wife Irene there.  We sat and had lunch.  It was completely different.  No more pointing, no more naming.  Just an incredible time of being together, all of us.

Then this past November, I visited Coleman and wheeled him into the Colgate Inn and after lunch took him to physical therapy.  On this visit instead of his telling me what he was reading and thinking about, I was the one to look at the books on his small desk.  I told him that the two books he recommended to me last year I had not only read and loved but had used to lead a class.  He looked up at Irene, “I guess I can still make a difference.”

Coleman, how could you ever stop making a difference to me and the many, many others you have been priest and mentor for?  You have reminded us we matter, and you have heard us, walked with us as we have dared to listen and believe that what you have seen and said of us might actually be true.

As we part, he looks me in the eye, “God is with you”.

I say, “Thank you.”

He says, “That is not a prayer.  That is a statement of fact.”

I really don’t know what he means by that until this morning as I sit and write this after reading an email from Irene that Coleman’s health has declined dramatically and that he is now in a nursing home.

Through all the turmoil, changes, transformations in life, Coleman, you have taught me that God is indeed with me.  Taught me, in fact, to become the priest of my own life.  Which is the point, after all.  To be the priests of our own lives and know that indeed we matter, we really do.  Particular, longing, broken, impermanent as we are – we matter.  We really matter.

And so today, I am the one who points across the continent with a hand on my chest and say, “God is with you, Coleman.  God is with you.”  Any “thank you’s” to be said are finally beyond all words but held in the love of these tears.

“In the end we are measured not by the things we did but by the things we loved”, the poet David Whyte said.

Thank you Coleman for loving me into my life.