A Eulogy for Perren

A Eulogy for Fr. E. Perren Hayes

Gospel John 14:1-6

The Rev Dr. Elizabeth Kaeton

 

“How can we know the way?” 'Doubting' Thomas asked Jesus.

You know, as I think of it, Perren could have subbed in for Thomas as one of the disciples. That’s not because Thomas is “doubting”. No, Thomas wasn’t doubting. Thomas was curious. And E. Perren Hays was nothing if not curious. Indeed, he was one of the most intellectually curious Episcopal priests I’ve known. And, he would never deny you the opportunity – God forbid it! – to learn all about the things his curiosity had just discovered or uncovered.

Perren was curious about curious things. Things that have captured the curiosity of artists from the time cave-dwellers tried to capture a moment in time and draw that in pictures on the inside of caves or trace them on pieces of stretched, dried animal hide.

He was curious about the light. I remember spending an extra 30 minutes with him one afternoon, because he wanted me to see how the sun shifted on the lawn and the trees from his window in his room at Atlantic Shores.

Now, Perren was also highly skilled at convincing people that they had more time to spend with him than they thought they had – indeed, he could be maddening in that way – but that’s another story for another time. The fact of the matter is that he was right: It was, indeed, fascinating to watch the shadow move slowly across the lawn, and to watch the leaves of the trees take on a variety of the shade of green. And we ought to “make time” to watch it.

Perren was very, very curious about time. He understood that linear time was the invention and preoccupation of the human mind but he often quoted to me the line from the psalmist which has been captured in one of our hymns: "A thousand ages in thy sight are like and evening gone".

Perren’s mind was intensely curious about the mind of God – how God might conceive of time and light and how, in the human mind, at least, one informed the other. There would be no understanding of evening without the absence of light and no morning without its presence.

When speaking of Steven Hawking, Perren once pondered aloud that as the human mind of Hawking was so incredibly brilliant, and if humans are made in the likeness and image of God, how glorious must be the mind of God! “In some ways,” he said, “I can’t wait to find out.”

Hubble Star Nursery

Holocaust survivor and author, Ellie Wiesel, once said, “There are many paths but one way to God.” Being curious, Perrin explored many of those paths. He has now found his way to God, the same way taken by Thomas and James and John, Peter and Andrew and all the other disciples, and the millions and billions and trillions of people over millennia of time who now dwell in Light Eternal.

If we are right when we say, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” and the mind of the scientist is one path on the way to God, and if they are right when they tell us that dust and ash from earth rejoin the cosmos and find their way, eventually, to the “Star Nurseries” where we have seen pictures of moments, centuries old, when stars were being formed from dust and ash, then it is true that just as Jesus is “Light from Light,” so, we, too – over the centuries but, to God, an evening gone – become light from that Light.

Perren, rest in peace, my friend. The time for your curiosity has reached its fulfillment. You now stand before The One who is Time itself – who is, all at once and at the same time – The One who is and The One who was and The One who will be.

You stand before The One who is Light from Light, who does not cast a shadow on others but draws everyone into The Light to become light from Light.

Rest well, Perren.  Eternal Light is now yours.

Amen.

I bid you goodnight

 

 

A Eulogy in honor of Harriet *****

Melson’s Funeral Home Chapel – Long Neck, Delaware

Saturday, May 7, 2022

(the Rev Dr ) Elizabeth Kaeton, chaplain

 

 

(sung) Lay down, my dear sister, lay down and take your rest

I want to lay your head upon your savior’s breast.

I love you, but Jesus loves you best.

I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.*

 

She was a lady.

 

That’s the first thing everyone I talked to said about Harriett *******

 

She was a lady. She never gossiped. She never said anything negative. God knows, she was never heard to have cussed. Not even on a bad day. Not even when she lost at the slots at Harrington Casino.

 

How could she? She loved playing the slots. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. That’s the game. That’s part of the fun. And, there’s always next time.

 

That was the attitude of life of a woman who seems to have been blessed with the patience of the angels. I didn’t meet or speak with anyone who knew her as a child or a young adult. I imagine she must have had her moments.

 

Then again, this was a woman who waited five years for the man of her dreams. She waited patiently because she believed him. He gave her his word and she trusted him. She loved him. Completely. Fully. Without hesitation or reservation.

 

And Alvin? Well, he loved her right back.

 

There’s every indication in the obituary and the pictures and from their neighbors that this was a love of a lifetime – a love for the ages – a love that inspired others to try and emulate what they had.

 

What I love most about Harriet and Alvin is that they encouraged each other’s success. The other day, when I was visiting with Alvin, he showed me the sun room which he was having built for Harriet. It wasn’t finished in time for her to enjoy it from the inside, but one of the last things she said to Alvin, as she was sitting at the breakfast table, looking out at the sun room, was to say, “I’m so happy just sitting here, looking out at the sun room.”

 

What she didn’t know is that Alvin has created a wall in that sunroom which will hold all the tributes and accomplishments she achieved in her life. You may have heard the story of how she worked her way up the corporate ladder. What you might not know – well, some of you might – is that, while that climb is hard enough to achieve, it’s even more difficult climbing up that corporate ladder in a tailored skirt and high heels! (Am I right, ladies?)

 

But, Harriet did it. And, she did it with a smile on her face. And, a sense of quiet confidence that inspired others from around the country to call her when they had a question or a problem that seemed impossible to solve. Harriet quietly and efficiently found the answer or the solution.

 

It was her competence and skill and experience, combined with her quiet confidence and gentle spirit that provided the extra lift she needed up that long, steep corporate ladder.

 

What Harriet knew was this ancient wisdom: The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. Showing love to the people who would do us wrong is not just a nice thought you can find in scripture or practiced by Gandhi and Dr. King; it’s one of the things that will save humanity, one human contact at a time.

 

Now, you don’t have to stop making what John Lewis called “good trouble” in order to practice the better as a criticism of the bad. You don’t have to be a certain gender or age, ethnicity or race; you don’t have to have a particular religious or political persuasion and violate your conscience to practice the better. You just have to make the commitment to make it your default setting and practice the better every single day of your life – just the way Harriet did.

 

Some called that being a lady. That’s certainly one way to describe it. I think Harriet was also a very wise woman who, with her beloved Alvin by her side, and she by his, together had the courage to live out their belief that the best way to transform that which mitigates against the common good is to be the change we want to see. Alvin and Harriet did that. Separately and together.

 

Ultimately, all those awards and honors of her accomplishments will only be a small part of Harriet’s legacy. Her greatest legacy is one that is not visible to the human eye. No one will ever be able to bottle it and sell it. No one will ever be able to capture it on canvass or film or print or sound.

 

The greatest legacy of Harriet will be the love that lives on in all of her family members – especially the nieces and nephews that she loved so dearly – and all of her many, many friends and neighbors.

That means all of you here, today, who came to honor her life. You all – everyone here – are her greatest legacy. The way she inspired you to be better; to practice the better as the best criticism of the bad.

 

Her legacy will continue every time you are kind to someone. When you share a smile and mean it. When you practice the Golden Rule as a way of life.

 

When you place the excellence and successful outcome of the work you are given to do as the highest priority even before the accolades you might receive for doing it.

 

When you place a higher value on the love of your life than all the other things you love in life.

 

When you make a commitment to be the change you seek.

 

As you do all these things, Harriet’s legacy will live on, and the people you inspire will also become a tribute to the values and the principles that Harriet stood for all of her life. And slowly, slowly, but very surely and almost imperceptibly, the world will be a better place, filled with better people, all because there once was a woman named Harriet who lived among us and shared the love she had in her heart that was filled to the brim with love, pressed down and overflowing.

 

So our goodbyes are tempered by the knowledge that Harriet will live on in our hearts and in our minds and in our lives. Her legacy will live on in love. 

 

So, we won’t say goodbye, we’ll just say good night, until we, too, wake up one day in that sweet by and by when God calls us home to that mansion where Jesus has prepared for us a room.

 

And, in Harriet’s heavenly room? On the wall with all of her accomplishments? I have no doubt there will be pictures of your faces. Smiling. Doing good. Doing better as a way to mitigate the bad. And featured prominently will be a picture of Alvin, loving her.

 

And Harriet? Well, she’ll be loving him right back right, until he joins her there and then they’ll be together again straight on through eternity.

 

Because Jesus teaches us that nothing is stronger than love. Not hate. Not even death. And so, we bid Harriet goodnight.

(Sung) Lay down, my dear sister, lay down and take your rest

I want to lay your head upon your savior’s breast.

I love you, but Jesus loves you best.

I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.*                                     

 

And, let all God's children say, Amen.

 

 

 

*Author: Probably Sarah Doudney, 1871 “Psalms of Life”, Funeral Hymn/Spiritual, found in US Britain (England – North) West Indies (Bahamas, Jamaica). and the tune to Ira Sankey in 1884. The song was also in a gospel hymnal in 1928, where the song was credited to F.A. and J.E. Sankey. First recorded in the 1960s by the great Bahamian guitarist Joseph Spence and his family, the Pinder family, where it functions as a “lowering down” hymn by the Bahamian fishing community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65jQXHIwy00&t=10s Made popular by Aaron Neville https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myipjQsQ7t8