Sacred Joy

by Lorrie Lesher

Dear Doug,

We all have pants on our heads, thanks to you!!

Here's how. I have recently started as the chaplain at Warwick Forest senior living community here in Newport News, VA. Warwick Forest is a facility with about 200 residents. There are three sections: independent living, assisted living and an Alzheimer's unit. Perhaps you are familiar with the concept, since I think there are similar communities across the United States. Three times each week I lead spirituality groups open to all residents.

The groups at the end of October were hard. For example, in one we talked about anger. The women in the group didn't want to leave - they wanted to ask and ask what really was the use of this anger stuff. And in the other two groups we honored All Souls Day by talking about death and our losses. Here, we broke up into groups or 2 or 3 and there was a lot of conversation. My residents are aging and have experienced many intimate and personal losses - losses of long time spouses, of houses and possessions, of children, of Status, of health, of lifelong friends, of their own memories, of self. At the same time, there is remarkable resilience and liveliness in each and every resident. They express their resilience with a diversity of individual reactions as wide as the world.

Anyhow, I was ready to lighten up some after that week. So, instead of moving on in the books we're using in our group, I took a break. I brought in the fall 2003 issue of Faith at Work magazine, and we talked about playing. Did these women, some of them over 90 years old, remember playing? Well yes, they nodded. But their faces were a bit skeptical. Then, I read your article, Doug, about playing. I paused and asked if they remembered playing with their own parents. Hesitantly, a couple women nodded yes. I showed them Isabel's picture. Everyone wanted to see her picture. "Isn't she precious!!" I read all about Isabel putting pants on her head. We laughed out loud over the sentence: "How important can you be if you have a pair of pants on your head?" And we talked some about playing.

Now, playing seems to me to be similar to prayer. Talking about it isn't at all the same as doing it.

So, I reached into a paper bag I had brought along, and pulled out a pair of my own Bermuda shorts. I said, "What a hat!" and put them on my head. I had another pair in the bag. Daisy wanted them, and she plopped those pants on her head. Mabel laughed at my red hat with the price tag still on it, and she doffed that one. Agatha liked the piece of lace - which looked quite regal on her coiffed white hair. Anne reached for my Caffta from Jerusalem - and I wrapped it all around her head. Shrieks of laughter were coming from the decorous second floor study of Warwick Forest, as we made up hats out of the odds and ends in my paper bag. Then, I offered everyone bubbles. Even the hatless wanted bubbles. We sat with pants on our heads, blew bubbles and laughed out loud. Playing together was great fun!

Laughing, we were putting our props away, when two more women joined us. One was a resident who usually participates in our group, and the other was my lovely predecessor, Carole, who had stopped by for a visit. The women in my group, happy to see Carole again, bombarded her with eagerness.

"You missed it. We had pants on our heads!"

"We were all blowing bubbles!"

"You should have seen her. She had a table cloth on her head and she was blowing bubbles."

"I got a lot of bubbles when I blew slowly."

"You missed it!! You should have seen us."

Carole looked at me. "Really?" she asked, "pants on your heads?" The group pointed at me: "Oh yes. You should have seen her. She had green pants on her head." Yup. I did. And then, Carole asked the summary question. She looked at me and said, "And the point is?" With great enthusiasm, this group of women rattled off point after point - Let's not be too self-important, God has fun too, we are beloved and we play with those we love. To tell you the truth, I didn't catch all the points. I was basking in their enthusiasm. I felt terrific, knowing that these were THEIR points, from their own lives, not points they heard from me or you. I smiled, we all laughed, and I asked Carole to conclude by leading us in prayer. She prayed in gratitude for playfulness, for bubbles, for sacred joy.

As we left, Daisy said, "I'm going back to my room and find my own pants to put on my head." Josephine tried to bargain with me for that red hat. And Agatha said, "I needed this. This morning I got the last check on our house - that house was the first thing Bill and I bought in 1952. It's really gone now. And, then, at 2 in the afternoon, I'm blowing bubbles."

So, thank you Doug. Thank you Isabel. Thank you Faith at Work.

Daisy and Agatha and Josephine and all of us with pants on our heads are blowing bubbles in the name of sacred joy, thanks to you.

Sincerely,

Lorrie Lesher