Here is a continuation of THIS POST UPTHREAD.

Today we laid Kelt's wife Claire to rest.

This here is a matriarchal culture. The men are the muscle and sometimes the heart, but the women-- ah, they're the glue.

At Claire's beside a few nights ago that strength of that matriarchy was evident. The matriarchs-in-training of the generation that followed Claire and Kelt... and the "girls" her grand-daughters. Again, family was gathering.... saying last goodbyes of amazing gratitude. Praise for the woman who had helped to raise them all, under a strong, intact umbrella of loving strength. Words of intimate memory and appreciation for all she had given, all she had been. And it was evident how well-suited to their too-soon roles of leadership are the excellent young women, the grand-daughters, whose lives are beginning to bear adult fruit. Breathtakingly fit for assuming Claire's shoes, and not thinking a thing about it yet because this was a time just to wish Claire upon her journey. Such is the privilege of ministry-- to see all this implicate beauty and watch it begin to unfold.

Ah well, so she passed, "surrounded by family" as the sparse obituary language put it. Such wondrous love that it makes 'most any witness want to tell it.

And today, in due course, the funeral. The family spent the morning preparing a gracious and welcoming reception for all Claire's friends and family. And then we all went into the big ole church to say our prayers together.

And inside all the things I did to "work" the "event" as one little molecule among the many molecules that make life happen here in this mountain-town culture, there was another tiny molecule containing all the love there is, this one miniscule glimpse, that held my attention in the middle of the service. The bulletin guiding us through the prayers simply said "Ave Maria, Sherri Bodine, Liszt." BINGO. I guess they call it a "backstory" in today's news-speak.

Sherri is a well-know, well-loved local woman whose roots here are so deep she sometimes has difficulty articulating what it means to be "from here." She's a friend, a parishioner, and the glue that holds a local home-hospice program together. She's a "social worker" whose joy in lay ministry is to go to the homes of the dying and love the dickens out of them, with a waitful, watchful strtength that knows how fine huiman beings really are when the chips are down. She's the lady who drives over and around our crazy-hilly roads in all seasons-- whether they're dry or iced-- to share the rpivilege of allowing death to take its course when the time comes to do that with dignity. She's the one who organizes a Grief Camp for local, equally-inarticulate kids, a place to come togehter to feel and express the inexpressible loss of a parent, a brother, a close young friend. And she sings. She SINGS. She could have left this community at any time in her life to become a world-class opera singer, but she stayed.... and she sings.... from the heart, songs she learns by ear.

Sherri, to make a long story a bit shorter, sang the arrangement the family loves, for Kelts' funeral. So of course she sang it for Claire..... of whom I had had a bedside vision that she was waiting before passing, not only for the 2 grandkids who live farther away, but to "put on her wedding dress" for Kelts. Who, like the lady she was, was getting ready with joy to walk into her life with Kelts. Who had waited thse long years, to do it again, and this time, REALLY forever. Who, in her casket last night at the local funeral hiome where somany families take their turns greeting and being greeted by friends, had the most adorable small smile around her eyes as her earthly remains lay before us.

But back to Sherri. I had wondered, as the service progressed, where the heck she was. I had not seen her before the servoce got iunderway. "OPh LOrd," I worried, what if everyone assume dsoeone else was goiing to call her to ask her to sing, but no one DID?" But my worry was to no avail. At the right time, she snuck up behind the organists' postion, took her place, and sang that Ave Maria the way only she can sing it. And it struckj me then-- for all I knew, she may well have zoomed into the parking lot, miracullously finding a
space open, in between house calls. She may have gonr from one bedise, to church, to the next. She's that immersed in her ministry, and is so well-syuited for it, that she'd be able to do that, completely relaxed, with no worries.

The point is not that she DID do that, but that she so easily COULD. That's the kind of ministry to which I aspire-- that ability to be the right molecule at the right place, at the right time, to be used as God calls someone to be willing to be used.

And THAT, again, is