+ The Reverend Larry L. Meyer - my friend and mentor

It just doesn't seem possible that a year has passed since we said goodbye to Larry, our friend and pastor for so many years. How the days do fly sometimes.

I'm realizing more and more the impact Larry had on who I am as a pastor and as a Christian. The issues that seemed so very important to me when I first started seminary have faded into the background, while the issues and ideals that seemed so very important to Larry have continued to rise in my heart and my mind until they begin to crowd out all other things. Ideals and issues like the community that is the church - how we are at our best when we are living for each other. Ideals like a worship life that transforms and comforts people where they are - and doesn't make them feel like God is waiting for any of us to 'get it right' before we are worthy of experiencing God's presence. Issues like the core beliefs of Christian discipleship - and not the esoteric differences over non-essentials into which the best of us Lutherans sometimes get dragged.

It's been a tough year for Krisin & me. Not only did we lose Larry, but we lost our grandmothers, we've struggled with other, more personal things, and we've watched some of our friends say goodbye to their loved ones also. But in all of this we have our hope in Jesus Christ, who has overcome the world, and that hope does not fail us. Larry was one of many who planted the seeds of that hope in me, and I am forever grateful. See you soon, my friend - and you'd better have a beer ready for me when I do. Shalom.

"Four Poems in One"
Anne Porter

At six o'clock this morning
I saw the rising sun
Resting on the ground like a boulder
In the thicket back of the school,
A single great ember
About the height of a man

+ + +

Night has gone like a sickness,
The sky is pure and whole.
Our Lady of Poland spire
Is rosy with first light,
Starlings above it shatter their dark flock.
Notes of the Angelus
Leave their great iron cup
And slowly, three by three
Visit the Polish gardens round about,
Dahlias shaggy with frost
Sheds with their leaning tools
Rosebushes wrapped in burlap
Skiffs upside down on trestles
Like dishes after supper.

+ + +

These are the poems I'd show you
But you're no longer alive.
The cables creaked and shook
Lowering the heavy box.
The rented artificial grass
Still left exposed
That gritty gash of earth
Yellow and mixed with stones
Taking your body
That never in this world
Will we see again, or touch.

+ + +

We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than even with lover and friend
And once we're within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain.