So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. (Romans 12:5)
There are people who are so much a part of ourselves that it is hard to imagine ourselves without them, and it is hard even to think about them without also thinking about ourselves. On 18 October, then, I lost a part of myself, my beloved Jean.
Jean was one of those precious adults who loved this awkward child into being. Each Saturday morning, my sister and I were dropped at her house to play. My memories from that time are of a brown corduroy couch, easily pulled apart and reassembled into a cubby, and endless dress ups and music and stories. There was my Adult Birthday Party, when Jean and other favourite grown ups came to the bumpy slide park to celebrate with me; Christmas stockings, handmade by Jean and shared at her place after the Christmas service (and still used by my family today); and our first trip to McDonald’s to celebrate Jean’s and my sister’s shared birthday.
As I grew and became more and more miserable at school, Jean began recommending authors. ‘Have you read Susan Cooper?’ she’d ask, pressing a book into my hands. She introduced me to Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine l’Engle, and a host of other writers whose misfit characters saw beyond the ordinary and journeyed into the depths.
We moved overseas, then I came back for university. My mother died excruciatingly slowly, I fell in and out of church, I married and had three kids. In the chaos and grief and darkness, I had no idea who I was or what shape my life should take. In desperation I began to blog, and Jean quickly became my biggest fan. She read everything and emailed regularly, encouraging me to write.
Somewhere in those floundering years, with her husband Bruce Jean invited me into the PhD program in public health at LaTrobe. I spent a year or two reading, thinking, talking and writing alongside them, and contemplating the postcards Jean sent me mirroring my most important stories.
Eventually I concluded academia was not my thing and that I was called into ministry. Despite her concerns around the limitations of ministry, particularly for women like me, Jean encouraged me to do whatever I needed. I began writing in new ways, posting sermons, reflections and prayers on my blog, and still she kept reading, engaging, encouraging. She sent texts and postcards remarking on this or that, and offering her own musings in return.
Jean was a visual person and a great photographer. Many of her postcards were her own pictures, published under the name jayview. For years, she was the church shutterbug, and she put together a series of photo albums celebrating the gatherings, the conversations and the people which told the story of our common life. At morning tea after the service, the albums sat on tables. Often people would pause in conversation and flick through them, prompted to re-tell an old story or remember a shared moment.
Looking through our family photos now, I see there aren’t many pictures of her; she was usually behind the camera. Instead, we have her pictures telling our family’s story, so intertwined with her own and the church’s.
Not long ago I preached on Job and human suffering (here). I said that, in the face of Job’s anguish, ‘God grants him a vision of the beauty and terror of the world. It’s a world where the lioness pounces to feed her young and the vulture tears flesh with delight, and predators and victims are locked in a vast and amoral dance. In this world, which is so much greater than the human, suffering is inevitable and has its own strange dignity, and everything is suffused with joy.’
As she celebrated the beauty of the world in the midst of her own suffering, Jean embodied this. ‘What lifts your spirits?’ she asked, and posted her own response in photographs to her Instagram account every day. ‘I think of my condition as a wolf,’ she said to me last year. ‘Naturally, because that’s what lupus means. But I try to befriend it.’ For many years, she found ways to live alongside the wolf, eluding it with shockingly cold showers, sidestepping its pounces, healing from its careless nips and wounds.
Eventually, however, the wolf became ravenous and began to devour her. She sent me a postcard in August. ‘I wonder if I’ve ever thanked you for your blogs?’ she wrote, and I realised it wouldn’t be long. Because of course she had, often, but I think she wanted me to hear it one last time. Again, she thanked me for my writing; again, she told me that she frequently forwarded it to others. ‘You certainly have a ministry to the shut in and isolated,’ she wrote. Then, ‘I guess postcards have been a form of ministry for me, too. I like reminding people they are not forgotten.’
Re-reading that postcard now, I reflect that in all my years Jean never forgot me. Not when I moved overseas, or disappeared for a decade, or was slow to answer a letter. Instead, she kept remembering me, kept bearing witness to my life, kept helping me see myself through loving eyes. She helped me come to know that I am a writer, a pastor, a minister to those who are marginalised, isolated, forgotten or dismissed; that I am someone who has a unique perspective on the world, a perspective worth sharing. An aliview to her jayview, perhaps.
Throughout September, we exchanged texts and photos; in October, she was admitted into hospital. Too late perhaps, the day before she died I sent her a message. I thanked her for how she had always showered me with love and delight, and prayed she would know the ‘light so lovely’ (Madeleine l’Engle) in these days.
I will never forget her light so lovely, her delight in the world, her constant encouragement. She saw me so clearly, as a misfit, perhaps, but as a misfit who sees beyond the ordinary and journeys into the depths. I am beyond grateful for the way she helped love me into being, and so utterly wished me well.
Others will tell much more impressive stories of her life and achievements, of her passions and interests, of her. But she has been so much a part of my story that I cannot find the distance. Indeed, there are people who are so much a part of ourselves that it is hard to imagine ourselves without them, and it is hard even to think about them without also thinking about ourselves.
So I will leave the last word to her, from her final postcard to me. It’s a simple blessing from someone who knew the importance of small good things: like being remembered, the glint of light on water, ordinary stories, a sunset with clouds like stippled trout, a wheelchair ride round the cemetery on a warm winter’s day; things we used to share with each other. She sent it in response to a letter I wrote about a rainy week in Perth and how it was too early for wildflowers and no, I didn’t have a church yet. But perhaps it is a blessing for everyone. So from the part of Jean that is now a part of me, then: ‘Wishing you sun and flowers. And communities that value you. Love, Jean.’ Ω
Reflect: Who are you a part of? Who has been integral to your own faith and formation? Tell God about it – and maybe send that person a postcard!
A reflection for All Saints © Alison Sampson 2024. Photographer unknown, but possibly Ruth Sampson. This reflection was prepared on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation in Poorneet Tadpole Season. This week, Melia azedarach – an invader from northern states – fills the air with fragrance and its lilac flowers are alive with bees.
Alison and the whale 