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Rising Up
(indulging in a memory)
 My first ministry was in Uruguay with street people, the poor, the homeless, those dying from AIDS, when it began in the 1990s. Our Cuban Bishop’s wife, Marta, and I dared to start visiting the newly formed AIDS public hospital. In those days, everyone was frightened that this tough killer disease was contagious just by breathing the same air, especially if a drop of the victim’s blood got on you. We didn’t worry. Our weapon was love and Jesus. We buried many a young adult who didn’t really know what AIDS was, other than a sexual disease that killed and whose parents, if they had any, refused to give, as death creeped in, their son or daughter a hug or a kiss, for fear of “catching” this deadly disease. (Sound familiar?)
Sammi, one of our favorite street friends, died after a long on and off struggle. She had been an alcoholic street person, a mother who lost her child to the state, a regular at the soup kitchen in the bowels of our cathedral near where she watched cars for a few pesos. When she knew I was there, she would call my name like a calf calls for a mother. It scared me. Yet, I learned over a period of time about the segments of her life, those days when she was sober, she was beautiful, clean, smiling rather than crying. Her small possessions, many of which we gave her, were neatly folded and clean, signifying the real Sammi.
She died, finally relieved of the torture in her heart, and I was allowed to celebrate her burial in the sad public cemetery. In Uruguay, the law requires that any dead corpus must be disposed within 24 hours. A few of her street companions arrived at the scene and tossed in the crudely dug hole a t-shirt or a shoe or whatever they had to gift to her for the trip to heaven - one even bought a bottle of wine. These so-called tombs for the poor would be emptied in two years to make room for the next set of bones. But on this day, Sammi inhabited that tomb.
As I read the familiar prayers and tossed dust on the cheap, temporary casket, I could feel Sammi. I could see her smile as she rose into the sky. It was her ascension to the God in which we both believed. It was an amazing moment that I’ll never forget. It had been raining, but immediately the sun came out just as I said the prayers to accompany her into the heavens. She was a lovely soul who had a horrid life. I buried many people in those days, the British members of the church, the homeless people dying of AIDS, addicts, whomever needed a final prayer while ministering in the AIDS hospital and in the prisons. And it was always as spiritual a moment for me as it hopefully was for them as they reached the loving arms of Father God. But Sammi was unforgettable.
When my mother died at 93 years old in 2012, I was relieved. Her body had just run out of gas. Nothing broke. Nothing damaged or diseased. It was just done. A few days later, I left for a planned trip to China. It took my mind off of death. But God had not finished. About half way into the adventure, I was sitting at 10,100 feet high, on the top row of the Lijiang “Shangri La”, an incredible outdoor theater in view of YoLong Shan “Jade Dragon Snow Mountain”, the most southerly snowcapped mountain in the Northern Hemisphere. The cast was 500 local ethnic Naxi, Bai and Yi people. I was over-awed! It was the most incredible spiritual theater I had ever seen. I gazed up into the sapphire blue sky on that cool morning and saw my Mother, who would have loved the massive horse-riding parts. Mother and I had never traveled together in my adulthood. And now, it dawned on me, she could always accompany me on my wild adventures. And I felt her presence and burst into tears. It took quite a bit of time to re-connect with the earth. But it was another ascension event.
Many of us have what one might call in the air or lifting up or flying experiences - real or imaginative. As a child, 4-5 years old, we lived in my grandfather’s huge stone mansion not too far from the L&N railroad tracks which he survived on as a child. Now, in success, my grandfather had a garden of peanuts and strawberries in the back where two giant mules were stabled in a small barn with my Shetland pony Penny who drew the buggy that employee Lawson brought out for my birthday parties. But I knew at that early age, I could lift up and float down the huge set of double spiral stairs that led from the top to the bottom stair in that so-called Broadnax Mansion, on South Parkway East. Early on, I’d stand at the top of the stairs and yell for Willie, our butler, who would come pick me up and carry me down. But still, I had this secret magical ability to just lift up from my own will. I guess the closest comparison would be Mary Poppins, who had not been created in my childhood days 80 years ago. Wisely, I kept it secret.
But that wasn’t all. I seemed to have created a curiosity that grew as I did, about being high in the air - first like riding horses that were higher than humans, the higher the horse, the more fun the challenge. In my sixties, living for two years in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I learned and loved rock climbing gyms where I trained to rappel down dangerous, long drop cliffs (that’s fun). It was paired with early morning hot air balloon trips into the sky, (all this means rocky mountain high), and who would have thought I’d run and jump off the side of a Teton mountain into the waves of air, hanging from a hand glider with a driver holding me together - no motor, no propulsion, just using God’s gravity and protection, oohing and aahing until, as we need to land, the guide yelled - slide like going into home plate. As one soars on waves of wind there is a peace that has few equals on this earth. Also, gliding in a motor less plane is another high rise that gives a clean silence, a peace unknown and blissful, while counting on the spirit of the air waves to bring one down after circling to solid ground. Now one knows how birds feel, the joy they must experience, the challenges they must have on a gusty day to stay in control.
Thank God I’m done. The new high requires crazy brave “flyers” who have flying suit that uses small jet engines sewn to the fabrics to allow humans to leap off of tall mountains with devastating drops, control their descent, and land with a smile on their face that they just flew.
There is something intriguing but also spiritual about being as high as one can get, reaching one’s soul up to maybe to touch the heavens, maybe that’s why I tackled Mt. Everest at age 68. My spiritual guide, Jim Williams, owns a rare patience. As my body may have made it, fit as it was, my cowardice popped in and out, and I wimped out of some extremes on the trails, but we made it to Base Camp the year the Olympics were in China and the authorities shut down the possibility of climbing past Base Camp. (not that I would have tried that.) It was a tough haul but what more extraordinary and spiritual to me than to be free in the air on the highest peak in the world, wrapped in heroic prayer flags. A few years later, I took the pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, part of the Trans Himalaya in Tibet. It is sacred to Hinduism, Bon, Buddhism and Jainism, and if one completes the circumnavigation of the enormous snow-covered dome, one’s sins are forgiven forever. The hardest part was traveling across Tibet and acclimatizing in remote places seeking alternative to toilets. But one gets used to that!!
So, 2000 years before, at the Ascension of Holy Jesus, what St. Augustine called an Apostolic event, it must have seemed a miracle to those standing below watching, weeping, wondering, praying, maybe singing, cheering, pointing, mouth dropped open, rubbing their eyes to see if it was a vision or a truth. He had risen with the smoothness of a glider on a whirl of air current, or as easy as a catholic priest lifts up the Eucharistic wafer and the cup of wine every time there is a holy communion. Yes, Jesus rose up into the blue, like a modern jet, but without noise or fuel or anything but the majesty of His body and soul, returning to His Father in order to save and prepare for us to do likewise at the end of our stay on earth. Thank you, Jesus.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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