Despair
Seems like I’ve blogged about this before, but no matter, its relevance keeps popping up over and again across life's years. I don’t remember what scripture we were worrying over in our Sunday School class that Sunday morning twenty five or thirty years ago, probably Paul enumerating virtues and vices, but Kristin allowed that the greatest sin is despair. Despair. That caught me up short at the moment, but the years we knew her and enjoyed her arriving from Wisconsin and settling in our magical community where the Apalachicola River flows into the Apalachicola Bay, Kristin always showed keen Yankee wisdom, ponderable thoughts and wise words. An entrepreneur, artist and goldsmith fashioning exquisite and unique jewelry, she has many talents, but in our years as priest and parishioner, her intelligence and wise words were most helpful to me. Clouds were a feature of some of Kristin's jewelry, and Linda and I both think of her everytime we exclaim over magnificent clouds we are seeing in the sky over the Gulf of Mexico.
Just so: despair is the greatest sin. And I think she added one time, "... and ingratitude."
She's right, correct. Her wisdom comes to my surface each time a loved one is ill, or in danger, or threatened. Each time I officiate a funeral after suicide, and see its effect on loved ones left behind. Suicide is tails of the coin whose obverse is despair. For all that those left behind can never understand, taking one's life is the ultimate sin against them, irreversible ingratitude for all we meant to them and all their love for us. Why am I writing this on a day of summer vacation?
Years ago, George, a parishioner, came to me to say that he was contemplating suicide. He was alcoholic and his life, marriage, family, were in shambles.
She's right, correct. Her wisdom comes to my surface each time a loved one is ill, or in danger, or threatened. Each time I officiate a funeral after suicide, and see its effect on loved ones left behind. Suicide is tails of the coin whose obverse is despair. For all that those left behind can never understand, taking one's life is the ultimate sin against them, irreversible ingratitude for all we meant to them and all their love for us. Why am I writing this on a day of summer vacation?
Years ago, George, a parishioner, came to me to say that he was contemplating suicide. He was alcoholic and his life, marriage, family, were in shambles.