The Musical Priest

I heard this morning from a college friend who informed me that a mutual acquaintance of ours had recently died. Well, I should say, the deceased was actually an acquaintance of mine was friends with my friend. I certainly knew him fairly well and was always happy to see him, but I would be hard pressed to call him a "friend" in any meaningful way. For my friend, on the other hand, the deceased was a true friend and confidant. One thing my friend recounted to me was the number of people who have said, "Nothing will ever be the same." The cynic might hear this and say, "Of course it will. You will all grieve and move on and, pretty soon, everything will go back to normal." I should like to think that the cynic is desperately wrong. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that each death alters the very fabric of history. A person who has left his or her mark on many people has died and there is now a vacuum in many hearts and lives. Indeed, and far too oft...

The other day, my mother sent me a quick email asking me to call her as she had some "theological questions" for me. When my family members raise "theological questions," they tend to be things like "Can I see a psychic to have my Tarot cards read?" In this case, her question was startlingly simple: What do you say to a parent who has lost a child? Mom had just come home from a funeral for a young woman - just 17 years old - and was grappling with this question. Interestingly, she did not want me to answer over the phone. Rather, she asked that I blog about this in hopes that I may say something that is helpful to others. So here goes. To the Parent who has lost a child, Allow me to begin by acknowledging the depth and breadth of your loss. No words of mine can fill this void and, to be sure, this is not my intent. Your heart is breaking, nay, it is broken, and there is nothing that I can say or do that will change this. I have no delusion of dispelling y...