On Friendship

Ministerial Meditations

by The Rev. Connie Yost 

March 10, 2016

Jan and Me

On Friendship

My friend Jan recently gave me a birthday card, which perhaps doesn’t sound very remarkable except for two things:  1) it wasn’t my birthday and 2) she thanked me and said “I love you very much.”

I have known Jan for about 40 years, and though I moved away from Seattle where she continued to live, I tried to keep in touch with her when I came back to visit.  In the beginning of our friendship, I wasn’t aware that she had a neurological condition.  But over the years, she became progressively more unable to take care of herself.  For years, she lived in a little rented house near Seward Park.  She enjoyed cooking and gardening and her cat, Baby.  She had help that came in a few times a week.  Then she started to have falls, and surgeries, and a stroke.  On the phone one day she told me that she had had to move from the little house into an adult family home on Beacon Hill.  Though it was hard to give up the independence that she had had, the worst thing was that she couldn’t take Baby with her.  A cat person myself, I grieved for her.

Jan lived in that first adult family home for about 5 years, then was told she was moving one morning.  She never did know why.  The new adult family home was visually unappealing to me, located next to an auto repair shop with a dump of tires visible in the back yard.  But Jan became quite attached to the older woman who cared for her, and she had a large room to herself.  All seemed well for a couple of years until her caregiver went to the hospital for back surgery.  A new, younger couple took over as the caregivers.  Jan thought this was temporary until the older caregiver recovered enough to come back, but as the months went on it became clear that the younger couple was there to stay. 

Fully Alive

Fully Alive

A Sermon by the Rev. Connie Yost
preached on Easter at the UU Fellowship of McMinnville

4/20/14

As some of you know, I love to travel.  I just returned from a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, where my nephew was married.  It was a beautiful wedding at a fancy restaurant in the old historic city.  The city, which I had not visited since I was 10 years old, is a truly gracious and lovely place.  At this time of the year, the azaleas and dogwoods were blooming with glorious color, and the wisteria grew wild up the trees in the forest.

Weddings and spring are surely signs of hope and life.  It was the first wedding both sets of parents had experienced, and the mothers, especially, were ecstatic.  Being the slightly eccentric old auntie, I decided to go ahead and ask my nephew the question we all were dying to ask:  “Are you and Becca going to have kids?”  My sister and I waited in hopeful anticipation as my nephew cleared his throat and announced, “Becca says the official answer is ‘We hate kids’” but he was smiling so I knew that this was not true.  He went on to explain that they wanted to get a house first, get out of the inner city of Washington DC where they live, and then – yes, maybe then we will have kids, he said.  OR, I suggested, it could happen the old-fashioned way – SURPRISE!

 Well, that’s life, isn’t it?  SURPRISE!  And we are!  For some reason, most of us are surprised when stuff happens that is out of our control.  Whether a good thing or not, it takes us a while to grapple with the things that happen to us.

2013 Holiday Blessings

 

Me at Disibodenberg, Germany in November 2013

2013 Holiday Blessings

There are years that ask the questions, and years that answer.    – Zora Neale Hurston

I have often reflected in my annual holiday letter that the year has been the usual mix of blessings and curses.  But for me, 2013 has been nothing short of miraculous blessings.  The impossible just takes a little time!

Some of the blessings came out of the blue – grace many people would call it – and some were the result of very hard work on my part.  But even when I knew I was working hard and participating, there still seemed to be an element of grace in the result.  For instance, I scoured Portland for months seeking the right house, and just when I thought I would never find one for the price I wanted to pay, a house more perfect than I thought existed appeared.  And I am very happy in it today.