In The Eyes of the Heart: A Memoir of the Lost and Found, Fredrick Buechner imagines a conversation with his mother, who has died. He asks her about his brother Jamie, also dead. "And Jamie?" I ask.

"Little by little Jamie will find himself, and little by little he will find all of us," she says. "And of course he will be found. No one is ever lost. Nothing is lost."

"Thank you," I say.

"My dear boy, you are more than welcome. I wish I'd been able to do better by you," she says. "I am a dream, but I am not only a dream. Will you remember that?"

What do you make of this? Sometimes I have found a few words to say to my mother while I stand washing dishes. My mother is nowhere near. She lives in California and is, as they say, greatly diminished. But I tell her that I wish we could speak more freely. She agrees.

Somewhere in our spirits my mother and I are very close and very comfortable together. On the telephone or during my visits to her assisted living home we try but it is hard work and not very satisfying I imagine for either of us.

To imagine that no one is lost is quietly comforting, gently comforting.

I finished The Eyes of the Heart: A Memoir of the Lost and Found by Fredrick Buechner. I don't think I have ever taken so long to read a book. There are two paragraphs that I am especially drawn to. The first is on page 15. Buechner tells us of the time his mother asked him "Do you really believe anything happens to you after you die?"

She was pretty deaf at the time so he replied, "YES. I believe SOMETHING HAPPENS." Later, at his desk, he wrote a longer response.

"I believe that what happens when you die is that, in ways I knew no more about than she did, you are given back your life again, and I said there were three reasons why I believed it. First, I wrote her, I believed it because, if I were God and loved the people I created and wanted them to become at last the best they had it in them to be, I couldn't imagine consigning them to oblivion when their time came with the job under the best of circumstances only a fraction done. Second, I said, I believed it, apart from any religious considerations, because I had a hunch it was true. I intuited it. I said that if the victims and the victimizers, the wise and the foolish, the good-hearted and the heartless all end up alike in the grave and that is the end of it, then life would be a black comedy, and to me, even at its worst, life doesn't feel like a black comedy. It feels like a mystery. It feels as though, at the innermost heart of it, there is Holiness, and that we experience all the horrors that go on both around and within us as horrors rather than as just the way the cookie crumbles because, in our own innermost hearts, we belong to Holiness, which they are a tragic departure from. And lastly, I wrote her, I believe that what happens to us after we die is that we aren't dead forever because Jesus said so."

I enjoy Buechner's exploration of his mother's question. Very creative and bold.

This week I asked for and was given the few minutes required to change the look of my website. The task was easy, once I was shown how. So, with apologies to those don't like changes unannounced, a change has taken place. 

We will see how this light background suits.

My father told many jokes. The only one I can recall is this:

A boy was eating his lunch with his friends at school. As he ate his sandwich he complained. "Peanut butter sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches. Everyday I get a peanut butter sandwich."

One of his friends said, "Why don't you ask your mother to make you another kind of sandwich?"

The boy replied, "You keep my mother out of this! I make my own peanut butter sandwiches!"

The joke is not all that funny, but it does hold some truth. When we are unhappy, we may be able to point a finger at our mothers for a while. Perhaps their attitude or behavior greatly influenced ours. 

But then we can notice our counterproductive choices, name them, and make an effort to change or not. If not, then we can rightly say, "You keep my mother out of this, I make my own peanut butter sandwich" or whatever.

Stanza 6 from The Leaf and the Cloud by Mary Oliver says,

I will mention them now,
I will not mention them again.

It is not lack of love
nor lack of sorrow.
But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

I give them--one, two, three, four--the kiss of courtesy,
 Of sweet thanks,
of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
May they sleep well. May they soften.

But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
I will not give them the responsibility for my life.

If we want to change, I believe that we need to accurately and with increasing gentleness name the ill-suited attribute. Then we can begin to imagine making something other than the predictable peanut butter sandwich.

I am wondering what difference it made to Jesus as he suffered on the cross that his Mother remained with him? 

We are familiar with Jesus' words recorded in Matthew and Mark's gospels "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" when means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

I also recall the concluding text of Charles Williams' morality play The House by the Stable. Holding the baby Jesus in her arms, Mary pronounces a blessing upon the earth "Now be the gloom of earth split, and be this house blest and no more professed by poor Pride to be Sin, for the joys of love hereafter shall over-ride boasting and bragging and the heavy lagging of Hell after delight that outstrips him--step and sight. [She makes the sign of the Cross towards the house]

Take us, O exchange of hearts! This we know--substance is love, love substance. Let us go."

Williams has captured something familiar to us, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son . . ." John 3:16a Jesus' birth reveals God's love. As human beings, so prone to loneliness, substance matters. We want to hear words of love and to see the one who expresses her/his love. 

So, back to our Lord being crucified. I wonder what it meant to him to be companioned at his death by his mother, his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalen, and the disciple whom he loved" John 19:25-26

Did it anchor him in some way to care so specifically for his mother when he said to his mother "Woman, here is your son" and to the disciple, "Here is your mother?" 

Some remained with our Lord until his death and returned to care for his body as soon as they were able. Do our small efforts matter? 

I believe that they matter a lot, more than we will know in our lives. I believe that caring for another in the time of her need is holy work, holy love, holy living.

Isn't it nice to receive a compliment? Our son recently married a wonderful young woman. So many kind friends and family members verbalized positive reflections. I really appreciate those remarks.

One statement means even more than the rest. I will include it here with the names of our children omitted.

"I'm in complete agreement about the quality of your friends.  That’s a big theme of your son's wedding weekend for me. I saw your family through the eyes of your friends, and your son's friends.  It’s a great view.  Discovering your daughter was important too.  And of course there’s more, but he press of the day/week is upon me."

These words come from a brother-in-law that I would guess we have not hosted for fourteen years. Over that time a lot has changed. My husband and I have let ourselves be transformed by Love. This activity has fostered greater life in all of our relationships, friends included. This man, our brother, has also changed tremendously and in very positive ways.

I am grateful for God's sweet fullness in our lives and for the gift of this specific perspective, the sight of our family through the eyes of our friends. 

Last night my friend told me of being falsely accused of an illegal activity. I responded, "That is a pattern of this man's. if he did that to you, it is very likely that he has slandered others before you, in order to maintain control." Then we discussed the repetitive nature of sin. 

This morning I thought about my relationship with my children. I have always tried to shield them from extreme responsibilities, or simply put: too much work. This is another way patterns can show up in our lives.

Where did that propensity originate? I believe it came from my denial of the labor I had undertaken. If I continue to accept that we have each been born with a will to work for God along with enjoying the gifts of God, I may be able to step right over this old habit of mine.

So what is an authentic relationship with my children? How can I break my pattern of wishing that they did not have to work so hard and so long?

I think my salvation, the means of grace in my conundrum, rests in my firm and clear relationship with the Risen Lord. As Mary, the Mother of Jesus said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior."

Beginning with that choice, I can look around and see how well we are all connected. As members of the body of Christ we are not isolated, nor slaves, but are working well with others.

Our son got married this weekend to a wonderful young woman. We are entirely supportive and yet, with every move forward we leave something behind. 

So I asked my husband's siblings and their spouses, at our post-wedding sibling reunion, "In a word, what is your response to transition or change?" It didn't take long for us each to find a word that characterized our feelings about transitions. 

Then I asked the group to think about how we pray, or have prayed with our experiences of change. 

How about you? How do you respond to changes in your life? And, how do you bring those experiences to the Risen Lord?