Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Homily for the Requiem Mass of Michael Ramsey-Perez
May 5, 2007
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
John 14: 1-6
“Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.
As he was leaving Liz Caldwell’s Requiem Mass last month, Michael stopped to say something to me. Liz had chosen the same gospel passage we just heard and in the homily, I had focused on the idea that for Liz, life with God had been like living in a house with many rooms, enough rooms to hold us all and to hold all of who we are.
Michael, the poet, had loved that idea and had stopped to say so, urging me to get the homily up on the website because he wanted to think about it and work with it. Well, sad to say, I haven’t yet gotten it up on the site and as far as I know, Michael did not produce a poem taking the idea and working his particular magic on it.
And so after the shock of hearing that Michael had died (and it was shocking, still is shocking), our conversation about that homily buzzed in my brain. What was Michael’s interest in the roominess of life with God—where was he going to go with that? Then a few days after his death things gelled as I stopped thinking about what Michael may have wanted to do with that idea and as I started thinking, really praying, about Michael, himself, and the particular quality of his life I had come to know in the few years I had known him.
Roominess, spaciousness, the fullness of life with God here and now and after death, a roominess that can house all of us and all of who we are in our richness and in our complexity.
So here’s a contradiction for you: Michael’s life lived here in this neighborhood, in this parish, with the job he had in downtown and in his relationships with his Port Angeles friends had a kind of particularity and narrowness to it that was the key to its fullness, its roominess, its depth, and, I believe, his joy. And there is something for all of us to learn about in this.
And so let me name some of the particulars that were a part of what I would call Michael’s narrow way.
Living in the particular place of uptown that is lower Queen Anne: St. Paul’s, the little antique store over on Roy, the market, coffee shops, the ballet. These things were not incidental to Michael but were treasured, were savored, were sources of reflection and joy.
Living in relationship to a particular and limited group of people—to his Port Angeles harem, to some (not all) of his family members, to a small group (not the entirety) of people within St. Paul’s, to Gil Levy whom he worked for. These were relationships intentionally created and nurtured, relationships which he gave himself to even when it was difficult for him to do so. But for the most part, my sense was it was not difficult for him so much as it was rich, enlightening and energizing for him.
And finally, doing particular things—coming to mass, working in the law office, going to the ballet, working on his writing, volunteering in the feeding program at Sacred Heart, being in touch with and involved with his circle of friends and some family. Again, these were activities to which he gave himself, in which he found himself.
In all these things I think Michael discovered and lived out something essential about life with God. God’s roominess is not about being constantly on the move wandering from place to place, grasping at this life or that life, these people or that people, this job or that job, this spiritual path or that spiritual path. It’s about saying yes to a particular home, a particular neighborhood, a particular faith community, particular friends, a particular workplace, particular activities and people you give yourself to, giving yourself to them and allowing them to form you.
And so early Christians talked about their faith as “the Way,” the same way Jesus mentions in our gospel. In the tradition some also refer to this as “the narrow path” because it is a path walked in relationship with a particular Lord, one who took on particular flesh and lived at a particular time and in a particular place.
In Benedictine thought this is the idea of stability—that all personal and spiritual transformation comes from having thrown your lot in with a particular community and staying there even when you may have an impulse to run.
Writer Scott Sanders puts it this way in a chapter entitled “Fidelity” from his book describing what gives him hope as he looks at the future.
“If your goal is to find a center, a focus, a gathering place within your life, then you would do well to practice fidelity. By slowing down, abiding in relationships, staying in place, remaining faithful to a calling, we create the conditions for paying attention, for discovering depths, for finding a purpose and pattern to our days. Fidelity enables us to orient ourselves, to know with some confidence where we are….If we would only be still and look about, we’d realize that we already have what we seek. We don’t have to rush after it. It was there all the time and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us….Monks who follow Saint Benedict's rule take a vow to seek spiritual transformation…but they also take a vow of stability which means a commitment to the grounds of their monastery as well as to their community. The second vow is a condition for the first: outward stability provides a framework for inward change” and transformation.
But what was this transformation in Michael? And how might his inward transformation tell us something about our own?
All that I know about this is what I experienced in the two years I knew Michael and what I heard others say about him. What I and others saw in him was a deep appreciation for the everyday, a compassion for and benevolence toward others, and the internal transformation that is the artist’s way—a quiet, dark, even subterranean waiting out of which poems emerge or spring or drag themselves into the light.
Back in 2005 when I first came to St. Paul’s, Michael sent me some of his poetry. He and I had had tea together and after finding out that he was a writer and poet, I had asked him to send me some of his work. After learning that he had died I realized that these were still in my e-mail and so went to them and read each one, hoping to find one that captured some of how I had experienced him. This is one entitled “Lauds” the term the church once used for early morning prayer and praise. For me, it expresses Michael’s spirit of appreciation for everyday life and for particular people, Michael’s wide benevolence and, of course, in that it is his poem, it is an expression of Michael’s creative process.
These things do not just belong to Michael. They are ways of being that can belong to us as well when we follow the holy and human one along his narrow path into a life of stability, a life that surprisingly causes us to dwell in a house with many rooms.
Lauds
by Michael Ramsey-Perez
My mother
Is snoring in Tacoma.
My neighbor,
Two doors down,
Is dreaming his baby
Is flying away
With a family of towhees,
Is riding away on a bird.
His wife, also asleep,
Does not know
Why he turns to her
At this time.
My friend in Denver,
Who is not dreaming
At this time,
Will wake in two hours,
More tired than he was
When he went to bed.
Anemia will not occur to him.
The women’s soccer team
Sleeps hard these days,
And my students confided themselves
To their dormitory beds
A scant half hour ago.
This is finals week.
Their stomachs are sour
With hope.
The whole world is sleeping,
And I have pulled
Back the drapes,
Have left the room
Deliberately dark,
So that I can guide
The United pilot
Safely past the stars,
Safely through
The twisted blackness
That is bare birch by day,
And wish him well;
Wish the steward,
Who is giving him
One more coffee,
Well;
Wish the stewardess,
Who’s coming down
With a flu
She caught in Oahu,
Well,
And wish well the passengers,
Safe in their fretsome seats,
All us tired travelers,
Sleeping now,
Preparing now,
Well.
Works Cited or Consulted
Scott Russell Sanders, Hunting for Hope: A Father’s Journeys
