In Memoriam:

Esther Higgins

              Human Being Extraordinaire

There was absolutely nothing half-hearted about Esther Higgins. It seemed that she was constitutionally incapable of holding back in extension of her loving nature. We know that her beloved Martin, husband of over 50 years, might be able to give evidence to the contrary and perhaps her children too. There must have been moments of temper, frustration, and sadness. But her friends, neighbors, parish community, staff and most especially the students at Linden Avenue Middle School saw her only as the most generous, caring, hardworking, perpetually positive and frequently laughing person ever.

 

Large institutions - businesses, hospitals, and schools at every level - are often overwhelming and in spite of being service oriented entities can seem the very opposite for many individuals. Relief can come in the presence of a person, often not a professional, who by virtue of her humanity and personality, can provide the beating generous, sympathetic heart of the place. This is the person who can miraculously break the tension, restore confidence, heal crushed hearts, and remind one person at a time and face to face that they are good and valuable. This was Esther Higgins' role at Linden Avenue School. Thus Esther cannot simply be described as a school secretary or aide. Esther was a genius at educational facilitation. One could observe her defusing the temper and resentment of a student arriving at school within minutes of an upsetting incident at home. This spared some teacher the task of having to settle down a whole class if the fuse was still afire at first period bell. The guidance counselor had an informal assistant in Esther who in little but oh so meaningful ways could provide follow-up by a brief daily check in with a youngster who needed support and to know that somebody really cared. She was informal counsel, second mother, confidante, ego and self-confidence builder for students, and some adult staff members too. And the adults knew that she could be counted upon to facilitate a solution to any scheduling foul up, to find those missing supplies, to be there when needed. Principals could come and go but support staff such as Esther remained to provide continuity in their knowledge of how things really worked, what kids needed, and to be the smiling face and pleasant voice of the front office.

 

I met Esther in 1980. The fact that I had known Esther for a long time was always a surprise to Red Hook folk. Esther and I had a little secret between us. We both participated I in an At Home Retreat sponsored By Linwood Spiritual Center in Rhinebeck. We were 13 women meeting once a week for 13 weeks led by a religious sister and a married woman. We came as women of faith wanting to have that faith enriched. Esther and I both came with great pain weighing upon us. I was to learn of the recent death of her son Marty and she would learn of the creeping deterioration of my marriage. Women are relationship people and Esther was more so, even in the depth of her personal grief. She made a special trip to my Kingston home to gift my son with a copy of Shel Silverstine's book "The Giving Tree" to mark his First Communion. When Don Germaine introduced me to his office staff in 1990 Esther and I just looked at each other. The ties formed by our deeply shared experience years before shot between us with magnetic force. We knew lots about each other that was not public knowledge. We had a bond.

 

St. Francis of Assisi is said to have given this advice to his confreres. "Preach the Gospel. Use words if you must." In these terms Esther was the supreme teacher. She spoke of God as pure love. She acted as if it was her obligation to demonstrate that truth. While very devout, she did not preach with words. Her pulpit was any human situation in which she found herself. She exercised the priesthood of her baptism by befriending, helping, joking, listening, healing, laughing and, on many days, just plain working hard.

 

To write this is an inadequate redundancy. Those who never met Esther cannot really image this person and for those who did, my description is unnecessary. They were given the blessing of knowing Esther. My human heart has been sad these days and writing here has helped my grief. But my soul is rejoicing. Esther is in the embrace of God. She has the ear of God and will undoubtedly be offering what would be best for those she loved and left behind.

Sisters in Good Company

I awoke to clutter everywhere

Calling me to weave

My life into

Fabrics of soft, rich color or

Bold, dramatic design or

Lacey, light musical tones and texture

To drape on the soul

In her wild dance

Of Transformation.

            Weaving a Life by Sister Bette

…Yet will Love remain constant and pure.

I shall dwell with Love in gratitude and joy;

I shall sing praises to the Beloved,

Heart of my heart.

            Psalm 7 (last verses)

            Psalms for Praying by Nan C. Merrill

An original poem and the ancient wisdom of poetic psalms speak of truth and constancy, two great lessons from blessed time spent with Sister Bette, hermit of Stockton Springs, Maine, living in the utter sufficiency of a circular wooden yurt on Lighthouse Road. Another structure, a canvas roofed yurt, her first home in the woods, now serves as her studio; the loom room in which she creates hand woven garments, shawls, mats and runners earning her reputation as weaver of note. This is paradise to the solitary weaver of her own handspun yarns.

First called to apostolic religious life in a Wisconsin community, Sister Bette eventually felt drawn to live an even further remove from the hustle and bustle of the ordinary market place. She began a long search for the right place to establish a hermitage.

“I…am waiting for winter, its silence and solitude speaking of Intimate love in the darkness – Let’s listen!”

Bette and I have written to each other once or twice a year since our first meeting at the 2004. I was drawn to her as a source of wisdom; an experienced practitioner of the contemplative way, following a solitary path. She was a courageous hermit persevering in steadfast presence before the God of Love and Mystery. Could she teach my extroverted self something about living as a contemplative in community? Could she offer some wisdom for my own journey, my experience of the contemplative way of living together as hermits sharing the common life?

“The unfolding mystery in us; is us.”

I have saved every wise and compassionate letter received from Bette. Our friendship is a strange, inexplicable mutual gift. We both admit to fumbling on our way to God – mysterious and remote while at the same time intimately present in ways beyond our comprehension. For us, sharing our struggles is a means of restoring the bulwark supporting the singular and often lonely contemplative path.

Sometimes longed for meetings with friends rarely seen in person can fall so short of eager expectation. However, my visit with Bette in the early days of August was all and more than I had hoped it would be. Merely being blessed with the opportunity for this contemplative nun and the reclusive hermit to meet was miracle. Bette was typically open and generous; happy as a child to know that I was coming; enjoying all of her planning and preparations for a quintessential Maine lobster lunch presented in her home. “Why eat out when we can talk so freely here?” Bette further explained how our festive meal was provided by the postponed use of a birthday gift from a generous friend. She rejoiced that the gift was magnified in being twice shared.

A tour of her weaving studio and then her wooden yurt replete with solar energy, wood stove, well water, and compost toilet gave a sense of the simplicity with which this hermits lives her days. After driving into the village to pick up steaming lobsters just out of the pot we drove passed the homes of her neighbors.  Many of these friends are very supportive and attentive in their care and attention to Bette’s needs as an older woman living alone in natural terrain and sometimes hostile climate.

Bette put last minutes touches to a meal set out with great love, blessed by her prayers and crowned as sacrament in the wine we shared. Cracking open our lobsters, we enthusiastically sucked out every bit of juicy meat they offered. But greater than this feast of tasty food and enervating wine was our presence to each other.  We rejoiced in the beneficence of God who makes all things possible, even a yurt and a visit to Stockton Springs on Maine’s rocky and lighthouse dotted coast.

“What really matters is Divine Love – and becoming an icon of Christ’s love in the world.”

We shared the challenges of our lives; making sense of vocations which seem to have little or no significance in our world and even our Church; coping with aging, mortality and loss of those we know and love; our own diminishing strength and number of days; the need for a tenacious hold on the Presence in us and among us; and persevering in our availability to the energetic Center of all creation.

Bette spoke so enthusiastically of the inspiration recently received at a Franciscan conference. The invitation issued there radiated from the lives of Saints Francis and Clare and the Gospel of John reminding of the call; the call to be in our own lives a constant presence, an ever-burning flame. If we do no more, we cannot fail if we but maintain ourselves as a burning flame in the Presence of God.

Woven in and out through our conversation like the hand spun yarn in Bette’s weaving shuttle was the theme of knowledge of self and truth to ones own reality. In remaining available to the Divine, in faithfulness to our spiritual discipline, in our generous contemplation, we learn who we are and find, in companionship with our loving God, the strength to live as who and what we were created to be. And so we ate with each other and fed each other all the while knowing and feeling the most Sacred of Energies flowing in, through and between, informing, enlivening, enriching and blessing it all.

"Friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship. When other friendships have been forgot, ours will still be hot." Cole Porter, "Anything Goes"

The lyrics above come from 1930s Broadway musical. I thought of them while searching for a photo to accompany the homily shared here. I am not trying to be flip about Holy Scripture. This morning, Fr. Thomas Travers, CSsR gifted us with a touching and pointed reflection, the fruit of his meditation on today's Gospel, Matt. 20:17-28. He titled it "Listening." Listening is a mark of friendship; it generates the "blendship", and keeps it "hot". How are we listening to those we would call our friends, to those with whom we try to make community, to make family? And how are we listening to Jesus as he speaks to us each day?

Sr. Maria Celeste and Sr. Weena 

Redemptoristines, Liguori, Missouri

Listening

by Father Thomas Travers, CSsR

Rector, Mount St. Alphonsus Retreat Center

Espous, New York

I think that a very interesting and instructive exercise is to try to, as they say, get 'inside the head' of Jesus. For instance, we can ask ourselves: what was he thinking, what was he feeling when he went through the experieces of today's gospel?

This gospel reminds me of a commercial on TV. I do not remember what it was for (maybe you remember it). The scene shows a guy, who looked like a teacher in school. He is seated at a table or desk and he is engrossed in something he is doing with his hands, perhaps playing a game or trying to figure something out. Then some little kindergarden kids bring in a rabbit and put it on his desk and say with tears in their eyes and voices, "There's something is wrong with Peter." The teacher just keeps on playing his game; does not even look at them and says off handedly, "Oh, that's OK. I still have the receipt."

He is completely oblivious of what is really going on. And then, somehow, he realizes what the kids are talking about and jumps out of his chair, raises his arms, grabs two balloons, touches them to the rabbit, says something and heals him. And the kids, all smiles, take the rabbit back in their arms again and go out to play.

I really think that Jesus can relate to those kids. He had a real problem. Not a sick rabbit but a life-changing event he had to face; a matter of life and death. And he told his disciples about it and they paid no attention. They kept right on with their useless chatter about who was going to be greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

I mean, just look at the gospel. Jesus is really serious. The gospel says that he takes the twelve disciples aside by themselves. (He did that when he was serious.) He tells them that he is going up to Jerusalem to be handed over to the leaders of their people, to be condemned to death and passed off to the Gentiles, then mocked scourged and crucified. Now that is serious stuff. He is telling them of what is going to be the saddest experience in his life. And all they are thinking of is who is going to sit at his right and left hand when he gets to the kingdom. And then the other disciples, realizing what is going on, get all bent out of shape, not because of Jesus' predicament but becasue they might lose out on the best seats, the highest rewards, in the kingdom.

You can almost hear Jesus saying, "Hey, aren't you listening to me? I just told you I am going to die a cruel death and all you are worried about is your seats at the banquet. What did I tell you about seats at banquets?" But the disciples were not listening!!! How it must have tore at the heart of Jesus. All he wanted was a little support and consolation. And he got none.

A short while ago something like that happened at our dinner table. Someone had something really important to say. He said it, but no one listened. Someone else came right in and drowned him out, oblivious to what was going on.

I think that the lesson we can learn today, the lesson that Jesus wants us to learn because he felt the effects of those who did not learn it, the lesson is to listen; to listen to the other; not to be so taken up with our own world, our own life, our own games, our own rewards that we do not hear the other in their pain and sorrow.

If our whole life is supposed to be other-oriented, loving our neighbor as ourselves, the only way we are going to be able to do so is to notice, to see, and to hear, the other especially in their hour of sorrow. LORD, GIVE US A LISTENING HEART. AMEN.