Mary's Song

Today, Kara and I will attend the funeral of one of Kara's lifelong best friends: Dr. Mary Morris. Kara has known Mary since she was a little girl growing up in the shadows of the mountains in Morgantown, WV. Mary worked and taught at Lipscomb University and had been battling colon cancer for well over a year.

When Kara and I moved from ACU back to Lipscomb to finish graduate school, we decided to move directly across the street from Mary's condo. Kara and Mary had a Wednesday night tradition of watching (and critiquing) "American Idol"--along with many evenings watching movies together.

One night, Mary's mother (Lois) called in a state of panic: "Mary's real sick. Could you take us to the ER?" Kara and I got out of bed and spent the next five hours in the Vanderbilt ER with Lois and Mary. We were watching our friend die right before our very eyes.

Seeing Mary's body yesterday was a numbing experience. There are no words in the English language to capture the overwhelming sense of confusion when one sees the body of a person they knew so well. A body that can no longer sigh, laugh, snicker, snap back...nothing.

The first blog I ever wrote (last year) was about Mary. Here's what I wrote.


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I spent time yesterday evening with my friend who has stage 4 cancer. We talked about the parousia/heaven (coming of the Lord) and what eternity "will be like." I told her my struggle with the Platonic dualism that's invaded Christian thinking (body-bad, spirit-good) rendering many incapable of seeing the Genesis announcement by YHWH of Creation " made in his own image," and "very good."

We talked about heaven as a return to the Garden, the shalom (peace) in which God intended for us from the very start. We talked about God's longing to redeem all of Creation-leaving us fully in his presence and fully aware of ourselves. And we talked about how in this very moment we are only slivers of our true selves; that God sees us from every moment in the past and every moment in the future. This is who we are, our total identity.

"And then I saw a new heaven, and a new earth..." I'm grateful this morning for John's picture of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel in which Jesus' new body demonstrates our own pending ressurection (not reincartion) and the breath which brings forth new life (the Johannine Pentecost and Genesis 1 poetic description).

The Book of Isaiah declares that God will make all things new. This is hope for one whose body is ravaged with cancer and for her friend trying to make sense of the divine rumors seeping into our suffering world.

I have little time for theology which boasts "God needed another angel" (As if God is a child who doesn't have a sufficient amount of toys) or "Her soul has left her body and is now in heaven" (ignoring Jesus and Paul's witness of bodily ressurection).

Just before Mary died this week she came out of a coma and sang a few of her favorite hymns which declared the presence of God, not the provision. Mary, if only for a brief moment, came out of the tomb to declare something only she could see.
All of creation is in bondage, longing to be restored and remade.

I am anxious to watch Mary dance in New Jerusalem.