I’ve been thinking about legacy.
I’ve been thinking about my friend who died, and about the legacy he leaves me. What prompted my musing on this was President Obama’s eulogy last Friday for Clementa Pinckney, the South Carolina pastor and statesman who was shot to death while conducting a bible study in his church. Though probably not as dramatic as his death, I’m guessing that you, too, might carry the legacy of one or more of your soul-mates who’ve left you behind. How shall we remember them?
Our friend Clarke Oler died two months ago, half way through his ninetieth year and four years after the death of his beloved Wendy. We gathered on a recent Saturday afternoon to celebrate his life, and theirs. I was asked to speak; so I focused on what I still carry from him, how he still lives in me. Here’s what I said.
“Whose legacy lives like this in you? ”
“I met Clarke over three decades ago, when we both limped into this congregation, wounded from our previous pastorates. We became friends. Soon, we became colleagues in a group of six psychotherapists; five of us are here today to give thanks for his keen insights and his therapist’s heart, which he shared with us every Thursday over lunch.. For the past twenty-five years we’ve been two of a dozen men who meet early Monday mornings to open our selves to one another. We’re here today to give thanks for the spirit and the soul of our beloved friend, our priest, our brother.
The poet Jack Gilbert wrote this about the spirit and the soul:
‘The spirit dances, comes and goes. But the soul is nailed to us like lentils and fatty bacon lodged under the ribs. What lasted is what the soul ate. The way a child knows the world by putting it part by part into his mouth. As I tried to gnaw my way into the Lord, working to put my heart against that heart.’
- “The spirit and the soul,” in THE GREAT FIRES, pp. 24-25
Clarke Oler had a guitar-playing, Whiffenpoof, yodeling spirit that lit him up, and lit us up. But more, Clarke Oler had a soul lodged under his ribs from gnawing his way into the Lord who gnawed his way into Clarke, the two of them putting one heart against the other for a lifetime.
He was a child of privilege: The Hill School and Yale, a lucrative business career laid out in front of him. But the Lord gnawed at his heart until, much to Wendy’s initial consternation, they left the life of privilege and wealth for the priesthood and devoted themselves to the care of souls rich and poor.
Clarke went to war, saw death up close, brutal. In a story he told hundreds of times, he lay in a Pacific jungle night and realized that the moon he saw was the same moon every human being saw that night, and each night. If we recline under the same moon, he realized, certainly we are bound to one another in the same family. He came home from war to be a peacemaker, to live out for the rest of his life what the Lord gnawed into his heart on that dark night. He laid down his warrior’s sword and reached out his hands in peace to the whole human family.
Clarke Oler was a great soul.
And Clarke Oler was a great soul-mate.
We must be clear about this. We have friends and lovers with whom we share an intimacy that is mutual and thrilling. But none of these is necessarily our soul-mate. For your soul-mate is not one you walk the journey with. Your soul-mate is one – usually THE one – who introduces you to yourself, who gnaws their way so deep into you that you discover who you are and why you’re here. This one is your soul-mate.
And Clarke Oler, this great soul, was a great soul-mate.
Look at his children and grandchildren. Not the perfect sons and daughters of the perfect parents of the Oler family myth. But genuine human beings: bright, curious, full of imagination and a capacity for wonder. With Wendy, he called all of this forth from them, called each of them to their own soul’s greatness. He didn’t cling to them, nor they to him. Both spiritually and geographically, he set them free, which is what love does. And they went their way with more than his blessing. They went their way with their own souls enlivened because he had gnawed his way so deeply into them.
Look at his congregants. He pressed himself into them, led them and sometimes followed them as they made their way together toward whatever it means to be a community in which love is not language but a way of life, in which peace and justice are not merely goals but today’s agenda. He gnawed his way so deeply into the men and women he served as priest that they found the selves Clarke introduced them to, the selves God created them to be; and they gave themselves to the work of the Lord who gnawed his way into them through their compassionate priest.
Look at us: friends of this complex, curious man who crept into our souls and helped us to discover the complex, curious people we are and what we can be at our best. To be sure, we will carry our memories of Clarke – the conversations, the meals, the music, the prayers, the raucous fun– we will carry him with us for the rest of our days. But more: we will carry our selves, the person we are whom Clarke helped introduced us to by gnawing his way into our souls. We will remember him. But more: we will live out our task of turning the human race into the human family, a task made clear by Clarke’s witness in his own life and by the ways in which he made clear to us that this is our task as well.
Clarke Oler was a great soul. Clarke Oler was a great soul-mate. Thanks be to God that this gracious man gnawed his way into our hearts forever.”
Whose legacy lives like this in you? Who gnawed their way so deep into your soul that they live in you day by day? Please share in the comments below. Whoever it is, we’re so fortunate to have loved such people, and to carry them with us forever.