Nancy’s mother lay dying in a nursing home. Years of mental and physical anguish, enduring life in the shadow of her domineering husband, had drained her belief that life has meaning. Despite having witnessed and endured her mother’s suffering and now her desolation, Nancy’s faith remained strong. When her mother questioned, Nancy replied, “You can lean on me now; I have enough faith for both of us.”

One day after her mother had come back from the edge between life and death, Nancy reached out further, saying, “Mother, there has to be more than this or nothing would make sense. I want to make a covenant with you. I want us to promise that whoever dies first will do everything possible to let the other know if there is More.” Her mother laughed, “Anyway I can, I will.”

Weeks later Nancy’s mother died. After the immediate relief Nancy felt empty, then angry. Several months later, now in despair, having had no sense of there being More after death, Nancy was walking on Duxbury Beach, that five mile spit of land jutting out into the Atlantic just north of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Meaning had dissipated. All she believed amounted to nothing; what she had put her trust in was not there.

Sobbing, she stopped walking, raised her arms toward the sky, fiercely yelling, “God, you’re a phony; it’s all fake! Mother, if there is More, you have to tell me NOW!” Nancy looked down. Through the blur of her tears, a bit of blue sea glass partially buried in the sand caught her eye. Sea glass, once sharp and dangerous, now tumbled and softened by waves and sand, cobalt blue a rare find. As she picked it up and brushed the sand away, Nancy felt smooth, slightly curved glass the size of a communion wafer. Running her fingers over the satiny surface, she detected embossed letters near one edge. Wiping away her tears, she slowly made out the letters M-O-R-E, then, in an instant, the word: MORE.

Immediate disbelief and harder sobbing. “It can’t be!” Then awe and gratitude.

~~~~~~

Nancy did not put this blue seaglass in a frame or safe deposit box. She tells the story to anyone who will listen and shares the sea glass with people who are dying. Eventually she had it mounted in soft silver on a thick chain making it easier to hold or wear.

©joy anna marie mills

There is MORE!

MORE, the essence of life. MORE questioning, reflection, seeking, envisioning, openness, reaching out, living fully.

MORE is not static; it is not accepting life as passed on or proclaimed by others. MORE is mystery, awe and wonder, an awareness of life unfolding before us as we follow where the Spirit leads us. MORE: mindfully, shared in loving relationship with others. Taken so seriously that it is held lightly, lovingly.

MORE is the supple luminous thread intended to weave through each reflection on my website and in each of my blog entries. This thread encourages you to recognize that there is MORE to your life than you have yet imagined, dreamt of, or hoped for. Like Nancy, MORE may seem far away until, because you are seeking, struggling and questioning, suddenly it is right beneath your feet waiting for you to look down, pick it up and treasure it as its meaning unfolds.

I identify myself as a white, western, middle class woman, privileged to have earned an undergraduate degree and taught high school English for ten years. In my thirties I attended a weeklong conference which introduced me to the work of Carl Jung in relation to Christianity, discovering that there are more expansive and profound aspects of faith than the beliefs proclaimed during religious services.

Simultaneously, I became passionate about exploring the impact of traditional God language. This led to my questioning why men are the center of attention in discussions of scriptures, thereby, obscuring the crucial roles of Biblical women.

I also knew that to move forward in my life, I had to deepen my understanding of my family legacies, particularly my mother’s. As I did this therapeutic work, I experienced the psychological journey to also be a faith journey. Uncovering my history and heritage revealed a fuller sense of who I was created to become as well as the old patterns that stood in the way of my developing spiritually and psychologically. Over the next seven years I pursued in-depth psycho-therapeutic work with a Jungian-oriented therapist.

During these years, I also developed my thinking as I pursued a Masters in Pastoral Ministry, a Masters of Divinity, certification as a Fellow of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church. I have continued to re-imagine and re-image the Sacred as well as to reflect intentionally upon this sustaining opening out of my faith.

These reflections are under the heading “DARING Faith.” Although some of these pieces were initially written from a Christian perspective, just as our culture has encompassed wider faith perspectives, so have I. Many of my Biblical explorations can be used to expand understanding within other faith expressions.

Questioning and searching drew me close to several people as they were dying. Nancy’s story turned me not only toward pondering what MORE there might be after death; I turned toward what MORE there might be during this life.

Nancy’s telling me the story of finding the blue seaglass coincided with my daily visits with a woman who was dying of a terminal cancer. Unusually late one evening, I was drawn to visit this woman, taking with me A New Zealand (Anglican) Prayer Book. I turned to the alternative version of the Lord’s Prayer which begins “Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,…”; then realized that the prayer was imbedded in the “Night Prayer” service. As she lay in the hospital bed in her bedroom, the morphine pump delivering closely timed injections for pain relief, I began reading this short service with her. Absorbed into the gentle rhythm of the words, stopping often to reflect together, it was an hour later when I read the ending prayer “Blessing, light, and glory surround us and scatter the darkness of the long and lonely night.” As we both dried our eyes, she said, “If only I could memorize all those words to carry with me.”

I began to know the MORE of the mysterious process we call dying. As a priest, I want to share some of my understandings and experiences of this mystery so that living into our dying can become a conscious process for more people as well as for those who journey with them to the threshold between life and beyond. This is the focus of reflections under the heading “Living into Our Dying.”

© Joy Anna Marie Mills, 2015