The Sermon at the Memorial Service for Helen B. Anderson

Saturday, January 31, 2009

St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt NY

The Rev. James C. Bresnahan, Interim Rector

Speaking from within the religious community, we might say of Helen, She was filled with the Spirit; others, outside of religious community, might say of her, She lived with passion and fervor.  Colloquially speaking, though, we might all say, She was a pistol!

However you put it, whoever met Helen knew that here was a woman with a wonderful joie de vive – an indefatigable lust for life up to near her very last days.

Seeing her, as I did, in the days, weeks, and months, before she died, I can testify, like many others, to her continuing appetite for learning, conversing, and engaging with regard to all aspects of life.  Despite incapacitation, her mind remained active, alert, interested, inquisitive. But in the end her body would not cooperate with her spirit, and physical conditions over which she had no control robbed her and us of her vibrant life.

We have come here today to thank God for her life, for times we had with her, and for the ways she served God in her services to others.

Helen was both thinker and doer.  What she talked, she walked. And while we had her, her thinking and actions stimulated ours. 

What some may not know is that she first began her post-high school education in mid-life, when she attended OCC, then graduated from Syracuse University, then received her Masters in Social Work – and all along the way with honors.  It was like a time bomb went of at mid-life and its effects continued down through the decades in her passionate drive and work.

She headed the Cortland County Office for the Aging. For over two decades she served on the Board of Onondaga Community College and served also as Chair of the Board.  She led Planned Parenthood here in Syracuse as its Executive Director.

One need only read her obituary to see the long list of volunteer causes to which she devoted so much energy – woman’s equality, peace, family planning, education, aging, hospice, politics.  What was she not involved in?

What was she not involved? Who here did not meet up with her in one endeavor or another?

In the last part of her life, Alan, her devoted friend and companion, had it best.  He had her night and day, and she had him.  Helen had rheumatoid arthritis. Alan treated her wonderfully and gave her reason to live amid physical affliction. Their devotion to each could not be matched.  Soon before Helen died, Alan read aloud to her the 23^rd Psalm, which today he read again, enveloping her death on both sides with words of trust in God, even in the jaws of death.

Helen was a communicant member of St. David’s Church with Alan, praising God in this sanctuary and being fed at this table. When their health became such that they could no longer attend church easily, the church came to them in the presence of many visitors who brought to them the warmth of friendship, the conversation of inclusion, the reading of Scripture, and the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  We thank God for that continuing bond.  And I thank God that I had opportunity to meet up again with Helen when I   began as priest here in November, after having known her decades ago through her voluntary association with Hospice and a decade earlier in Cortland.

You, her daughter and son, you her grandchildren, you, her brother, and others of family – you know how much she meant to you, and you know and appreciate the support she gave you over your lifetime and the concern she had for you. We appreciate your willingness, Jon, to reflect today on her as a mother. We pray for the comfort of you all in your grief and for the continuing inspiration to live life with the passion and commitment she lived hers for the good of others and for a more just world. And we look forward to the opportunity later in our Parish Hall to view the display of your affection that you arranged about her and for us to have conversation with you.

Many here have memories of Helen apart from her work and her advocacy for others.  Some, like Jane here, knew her too as travel companion on journeys far and wide – with so many stories to tell about them. Trips to Alaska many times, and to Russia, and China, and Hawaii.

I invite you all now, in a minute of silence to give thanks for your experiences with Helen and for the legacy her life has left.

All our memories, all our hopes, all our questions, all our affirmations, all our regrets, all our satisfactions, all our sorrows, all our glad memories, we tie them all together now and set them before God in prayer – entrusting Helen to God’s eternal care and seeking for ourselves deeper faith, greater clarity, and clearer sense of direction.

In the Holy Eucharist, we proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. Christ encounters us as the living one, who walked into the valley of the shadow of death before us, and who now assures us in a holy meal that nothing in life and nothing in death shall separate us from God’s abiding love.

Sustained by that promise, let us commit our life to doing the work of God so long as we are able by living each day with holy and devout purpose for the sake of others and the sake of our world. Amen