When I initially considered a title for today’s service that celebrates Betty, I thought about focusing on her as a founder of our church.
While that’s hugely important to the life and times of our New Covenant church, Betty’s life extends far beyond us, believe it or not!
She spoke about the ‘conglomerate’ of life in a piece she entitled Life’s Layers…
Stacked like shale in thin layers, Jagged edges rest quietly next to satin-smooth breaks.
Out of balance losses and gains cohabit. Sadness and hurt snuggle close to life’s celebrations and joys.
What an incomprehensible conglomerate this creates!
There is wisdom here, as it speaks to the ebbs and flows of each of our lives, ascending peaks and descending valleys.
A life lived contains these things. A life remarkably lived contains something more.
There is seeking, a thirst for movement, deepening, broadening.
In a word, there is a desire for transformation.
Betty’s life has been one of transformation.
Not surprisingly, there is a theme of transformation throughout Betty’s writings.
We even hear it in a poem she calls Wonderful Mistakes.
Happenstance, Chance, and Coincidence bring relationships into being. Not God, Destiny, or Fate.
I bring to this moment all the awful and wonderful mistakes of my life. They prepared me to be available for this opportunity.
Self-Acceptance.
At 16 and 20 I didn’t know where I was or who I was; At 65, I know only slightly more. Most of the time I’m OK with that.
It isn’t often that we hear the adjective ‘wonderful’ as a descriptor for ‘mistakes.’ It’s because we typically make the awful mistake of aiming for what is perceived as ‘good,’ instead of seeing the entirety of our beautiful and varied, and, yes, flawed path as good.
Part of what Jesus taught and modeled was appreciating our here and now – including the imperfections – as not only part of our Divine creation, but, as Betty astutely points out, as agents that prepare us for our next opportunity.
This concept that she highlights…self-acceptance… is an often-overlooked key to God’s invitation to us to be transformed.
Anyone who knows Betty knows of her love of property Cedar Line Farm, which she says is ‘certainly the most important place of grounding for my life.”
On this Farm is a special tree. You hear grounded-ness in this next poem of Betty’s. Listen again for the theme of transformation as she speaks about the Spirit Tree’.
The old walnut – matriarch of all the trees within sight – stands tall and naked in the early autumn. Well, naked except for her bright blue spirit catchers.
They watch over this sacred place in my absence.
The spirit catchers inspire my meditation. They welcome and revere the yellow finch, the woodpecker, the jay, and other bird friends I cannot yet name.
Old stories say the negative spirits are trapped by the bright blue bottles, never to do any harm.
I like to think those bad spirits stop here to rest a moment. They notice the lake in the early morning light. They see the heron’s huge wings as she glides silently toward the catch. They notice the deer in the meadow and a fox along the cedar line.
All negative spirits are transformed.
Each sparkling blue globe now holds a mother’s spirit – a nurturer’s spirit. She watches and waits for my next morning walk.
She’s a dreamcatcher for the Great Spirit who sees the grands, the great grands, and their great grands. The spirit tree protects the hummingbird as well as the hawk.
All negative spirits are transformed. Indeed!
Also in Betty’s memoir Cedar Line Legacy there is a particularly poignant piece that I want to share with you. It comes in the section in which she speaks about her children.
She recounts here the period in which her daughter Karen was planning to marry David, a black man…
Mother and Daddy were both very distressed by Karen’s intention to marry David. On the eve of Karen’s wedding, my dad said the most hurtful works he ever uttered directly to me. He said, “If you were a good mother, this would not be happening. My voice trembled with emotion and my hands shook as I told him, “It is because I have been a good mother that Karen can marry whomever she chooses – end of conversation.”
This is what we call living out one’s faith. It is from such conviction of faith that these words would appear in our Belief and Value statement…
We strive to live out our faith in affirmation of the dignity of every person, and in the quest for peace, justice, and the integrity of creation. We are an open and affirming community.
In the memoir Betty speaks about how Karen went on to marry another person of color, Tim, in later years, and how by then her father had softened about the issue of his granddaughter’s interracial marriage.
Betty writes, “Sometimes it just takes time and new experiences to bring about significant change in attitude.”
I’d like to think that her example of the strength of unconditional love had an impact on her father’s transformation.
Betty’s influence on people didn’t stop at her family. Many coworkers loved her because of the love she shared.
Listen for the transformative impact that Betty had on one of her friends at ISU…Sandra Flanagan:
Dearest Betty,
What a joy it is for me to celebrate your 90th birthday with you, the NCC family and friends. Thanks to Lori, even though I’m in South Carolina now, in a small way I am able participate in your celebration.
I have no doubt this celebration day will be filled with joy, laughter, and everything you love. Even though it’s been awhile Betty, I think of you often and draw upon all the wisdom, kindness and guidance you shared with me during my tenure at ISU. Your compassion and mentorship have had such a lasting impact on my life. Not everyone gets to have a wonderful therapist as her supervisor- lucky me! I’m sending you all my love on this special day. Happy, happy 90th birthday Betty.
Love, Sandy Flanagan
I have my own recollection of being transformed by Betty. In this past year I have spent time getting to know her, and am enriched immeasurably by her friendship and presence in my life. But it was before that, before I even knew her at all that there was a transformative effect that she had on me. Or more specifically, her words.
When I first read NCC’s Value and Belief statement before signed on I knew at a cellular level… These are my people, this is where I belong. I belong with people who would create such spiritually-grounded words. One could say that these words, composed in part by Betty, had a transformative effect on my path to you.
Much can be said about this woman that we esteem today and every day. She has touched many bases in her first 90 years…as a university administrator, counselor, publisher of articles in professional journals,
presenter at national conferences,
a member of Who’s Who of American Women,
founder of our local Compassion and Choices chapter,
mentor of University honors students,
avid runner, skier, mother, daughter, wife.
She’s touched many. And certainly, she has touched our hearts. We have been blessed for over 30 years to call Betty one of our own… a matriarch, really.