When John asked me about tranquility, at the end of the coffee hour that
Sunday, he was six months out from death, max, maybe less, according to his
doctor. Lung cancer, we all knew, was going to take him this time. He wanted to
know why some people have a personal relationship with God and others, like he,
do not.
He wanted "no more days." He was seventy something. Tired, whipped. He still gets to church almost every Sunday and some times his oxygen tank buzzer goes off during the prayers. I think of the tank as intercessory: keep John alive. Give John air. Keep him going. Please.
Most of the time, though, both he and it are very quiet.
Love and Worry
After church that Sunday, he asked me about peace and tranquility. He wanted to be free of worry about his wife Charlotte, whom he loved with all his heart. He had taken care of her and her bad knees for years -- now the role was reversed and he wasn't so sure he could stand to see her manage. She was managing well. He was still worried.
I fumbled around. "So love is robbing you of tranquility." He, being the oppositional type, said "No, that's not it."
"So what is it? Is it about heaven?"
"No, that doesn't bother me."
"Is it about pain?"
"No, pain is pain."
"Is it about…" Before I finished my last fumble, he said with vigor which resulted in a coughing fit, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S ABOUT AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM." When he finished coughing, he said, "It's about tranquility."
"It's about tranquility," I repeated, mostly because I didn't know what else to say.
Deep in fumble, I began remembering these things called "verbatims." While training for ministry, we had to record, to the best of our ability, every word the patient said and every word we said. Then the supervisor would read them and show us how ridiculous we were. I sincerely hoped no supervisor ever got a hold of this conversation.
So far, I had completely managed not to understand John, who was asking me some very simple spiritual questions. I knew what he wanted, and I even knew why he wanted it. And I also knew why he couldn't have it.
Absence
He really didn't have a personal relationship with God and thus genuine suspicion blocked his peace. Also he genuinely loved his wife and family and he worried about leaving them and them leaving him.
A combination of genuine suspicion and genuine love resulted in a loss of peace for John, after church, at the end of his life.
In Clinical Pastoral Education, we are told that the safest place is to say soft "I" statements. Not preachy "I" statements. So I resisted some asinine definition of tranquility and said, "I have a personal relationship with God and I don't know where it came from, John. It's a place in my belly."
That got his attention. "Yeah, I don't have any place in my belly. What I have is the absence of God in my belly."
Things were deteriorating. We both knew it. Charlotte had gone to get the car and mercifully returned to our stumbling spiritual mumbling and groping.
I am writing now to see if I can find a way to speak of tranquility. Of course, it is calm -- the absence of worry. Of course, it is peace, the absence of fear about pain or God or meaning. And of course, it is time free from doctors and coughing and oxygen and the details of dying.
Presence
But tranquility is a presence as well as an absence. John wants to feel the breath of God in his breath. The soul of God in his soul. The time of God in his time. And he doesn't.
Imagine, at his age, in his condition, still hoping that he will. I think of chapter 40, in Isaiah, "Comfort, comfort ye my people, cry to her that her warfare is over…….." Or the strong words of Psalm 23, "I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." And I know John would quip something like "I am not a sheep."
Tranquility is repeating the old words, though, even if you can't fully believe them. They carry the tranquility in their belly even when we don't carry it in ours. That may be what other people are for-- to carry the words we can't believe when we need them. And then we lean towards each other, stretch towards each other, mirroring the leaning and stretching that John is doing towards God. Right now, I'm just praying for his tranquility.
The Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper pastors the Coral Gables Congregational Church in Coral Gables, FL. Several of her books are available through Faith@Work.
Of particular note is her book of Lenten/Easter sermons for Lectionary Year B: The Culture of Disbelief.
Read each of Donna's writings: