Auntie Annie's Smile and the Bread of Life

Craig's brief kiss, Auntie Annie's constant smile.

To my cousins Marilyn and Joan and Susan in celebration of your mom's life.

Perhaps it is not merely coincidence that Ann Skowron joined her brother Joe passing into their new life just as in the church into which they were born, we are in the third Sunday of the “Bread of Life Discourse”.  Two Sundays ago Jesus fed the multitude, even though what He had seemed ridiculously inadequate to the task.  Then last week He said that he was the Bread.  This Sunday, even as we consider the meaning of Ann’s passing in our own lives, He tells us to eat his flesh and drink his blood that we might have eternal life.

So here we are, with two of life’s deepest mysteries greeting us:  What is death, and is this Jesus to be taken seriously.  Or perhaps more practically, what difference does either of them make in the way we live in our lives?  I feel blessed by you in my generation, my siblings and cousins, as we become the aging edge of the Daniels family.  I smile to see you in the next generation as you grow into adults with much of the same passion and self-determination as your grandparents, struggling in these challenging times as they struggled in theirs.  And I watch in awe as your children become the growing edge of the family. 

What does death mean, and what about eternal life?  That’s up to us to figure out, if we care.  Perhaps the grief is an ache to fill this emptiness, this chasm of unknowing,   Perhaps it is the first gift of Ann Skowron’s new life.  Perhaps her gift to us is this very being confused about these things, death and eternal life.  Perhaps we’re fortunate if we can’t break the words down.  Perhaps it is we who are to be broken down by the words, and it is being broken that we enter our own new life.  Perhaps we are called to consume this life of hers which is not dead, even though the body is.  Perhaps we are called to fulfill the experience of Ann Skowron by remembering, re-membering, that she is indeed part of the blood that flows through our hearts and the memories that flow in our brains and the breath of the Spirit that lifts us on often weak wings.

Perhaps she invites us, as Jesus did, to enter eternal life now, while we can bless this world as she did with a peace and calm and kindness that are unshakable.  Perhaps for those parts of us who have a difficulty believing in a long-ago Jesus who invited us to new life, we have this gift of a smiling Ann Skowron - Mom, Grandma, Aunt, friend - who invites us to that very same new life.   

So let’s take it all in, and let it break us, break down the walls of doubt in the eternity of this life, and the love of this God who never ceases to look at us with this same smile.