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Spiritual Sunday
Last Sunday Julia and I attended church service in the new Coventry Cathedral, which stands next to the one that was bombed by the Germans in 1940 and that now stands open to the sky. I think of that as I write today’s essay about Justin, my eldest son who drowned on this day, April 30, 23 years ago. We lost him on the first Sunday after Easter.
Like Coventry Cathedral, we still bear the marks of the blast we received that day. And like the people of Coventry, we rebuilt our lives, which stand adjacent to the ruins. Extending this analogy, in the new cathedral one can look through a glass wall, known as “the screen of saints and angels,” and see the old cathedral. Angels have been etched into that glass by artist John Hutton (it was a ten-year project) so that, as one looks out at the old church, one is aware of ghostly presences. While we no longer think of Justin daily, at unexpected moments he enters our thoughts, just as Hutton’s transparent angels insinuate themselves into one’s field of vision.
Justin would have loved the George Herbert poem/hymn we sang as the recessional. Justin, who was 21, had embarked on an intense spiritual search at the time of his death and visited four churches in the 24 hours before he died, including the Episcopal/Anglican church he grew up in. Although sometimes tormented by religious struggles, he was also joyful and didn’t hold back from expressing his joy at being filled with the holy spirit. Here’s Herbert doing the same in his call-and-response poem that places special emphasis on the heart:
Antiphon 1
Chorus Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.
Verse The heav’ns are not too high,
His praise may thither fly:
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.
Chorus Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.
Verse The church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out:
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.
Chorus Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.
In the moments before his death, Justin rushed up to the large wooden cross on Church Point (at St. Mary’s City, Maryland), kissed it, and joyously flung himself into the St. Mary’s River, a kind of baptismal immersion to match his overflowing joy. He was singing from every corner of his being.
And lest you think he was being reckless, we had taken our kids to swim in this spot when they were small, and at any other time the river would have posed no danger. In fact, Justin had jumped into that water fully clothed before. What he didn’t know was that the rainiest spring in decades had created dangerous currents, one of which caught him and dragged him out.
A student who saw him go under reported that he cried out, “Jesus God!” before disappearing forever. I’m sure there was fear and desperation in those words but maybe also a sense that he was not alone. There’s no way I can know.
What I do know is that Herbert’s hymn would not have done much for me at the time. I didn’t much feel like lifting up my voice to sing, and God indeed seemed “too high,” an impersonal force that didn’t bother itself with our tiny lives.
Now, however, my heart opens to hear the psalms, including today’s psalm, which is the 23rd. In church together we will read, “Yea though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me” and “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I shall live in the house of the Lord forever.”
Justin, as he leapt into the water, was singing from the heart. Our children have much to teach us.
