Thank you to all of you who have reached out today, and in the past several days, remembering dad. I am so grateful to know that none of us are alone in our missing of him. 

A couple of people have asked if I had recorded the comments I made at his celebration of life last January. We did not record that service but I took some time today to type up my notes into more of a cohesive narrative to share. I'm putting it here just as a way of remembering the both/and inclusivity that dad lived out & embraced. 

At the service, we encouraged everyone to take a button with an ampersand (&) on it and put it in a place to remind them that life is both/and. Often we use "but" to join complex truths. Dad, instead, modeled using "and." He wasn't God's beloved child, but human (thereby discrediting the beginning of the sentence). Instead he was God's beloved child, and human. He was loving and, at times, a bit too exacting (am I right?) in his expectations. He had friends who the world praised as high up in the hierarchy and many of his closest people were everything but. May we all invite everyone to the table...unconditionallly...as he so often did and may we embody, as he did, the complexities in each of our beings, as image bearers of the Divine.

doreen's comments at Fr. Ignatius' Celebration of Life in Modesto on 1/21/23

I invite you to take a moment to look around and take note of all the VIPs you are sharing space with. You might wonder at the comment but, if you really think about it, you know that’s exactly how dad treated everyone…as though they were VIPs. Because, in his mind, they were. We were.

Most of us ARE representatives of a particular demographic. We are of a particular race or gender, age group or faith perspective. Most of us also HAVE a demographic of folks we are connected to. We’re a part of a community of teachers or construction workers, entrepreneurs or business people….people who look or think or act a lot like we, ourselves do. This is normal for humankind.

This was NOT, however, normal for my dad. 

Dad, otherwise known over the course of his life as Jerry, JD, Br. John, and, finally, Fr. Ignatius, actively defied boxes and labels. There was no “kids” table in his reality, instead everyone, the messy and the glorious, belonged together at one gigantic table. Nobody was either “this” or “that,” deemed “appropriate” or “less than”…especially himself. All through his life, he reveled in the AND, celebrating the complexity inherent within it.

For example:

Dad was beloved by teachers and school administrators in his tiny school in Eastern Washington AND he skipped more school, in more crafty ways, than any other student of record.

He was a rule following and exacting builder AND, while serving as a house parent at his Christian college, brewed beer in the custodial closet. (When the keg exploded, he could claim innocence because it wasn’t in his apartment.)

He was a nationally celebrated sales person clad, toward the end of his career, in hand made ties and braces which matched every suit AND, in the last chapter of his life, donned a hand me down cassock and well worn skull cap as his only garments.

(As an aside, once, early in his time as a monk, he and I were taking photos together on the grounds of my undergrad campus. A friend who worked there noticed us posing together on the green. She texted a mutual friend, “What in the world? I’m looking out my window at work and doreen is outside taking photos with a wizard!!!”)

Dad was a person who did NOT camp AND, at age 67, invited me for a sleep over in the tree house he’d built, trying to convince me not to panic when a racoon joined us in the middle of the night. 

He was a gifted and effective leader AND was working hard at humility and submission to a someone much larger than himself.

For the vast majority of his life dad didn’t give any weight to who was “in” or “out,” “successful” or not. He was a friend of everyone he met and had the most diverse Rolodex, each card holding the most minute details about each person’s life. The birthdates of their children and grandchildren, addresses and phone numbers, the name of their favorite relative or friend and the date that they had died. Often these cards included the person’s favorite meal or the size and style of clothing they liked in case he wanted to get them a gift. He invited everyone everywhere and, as often as he could, he paid their way. You never knew (and this is the truth) if he was introducing you to the president of a company or the custodian of the building. He taught me that administrative assistants and the janitorial staff are the most important people in every part of life. He lived by this teaching. He gave money to everyone who asked. “It’s not my job to guess why they need it or what they’ll do with it. It’s my job to be generous.” he’d say. 

In all of dad’s defiance of conventional and relational norms…in all of his iterations as a person (a piano student, dancer, disc jokey, donut shop manager, 4th grade teacher, construction worker, sales person, financial planner, VP, seeker/monk/abbot)…there was a foundation of:

Generosity

Inclusivity

Complexity

Creativity

His commitment to these four things was IMMOVABLE.

As the son of a builder, he knew the importance of a solid foundation. He understood that nothing built on top of a shoddy one could withstand the kind of stressors that life in this world offers. Given this, he made sure his foundation was solid. This meant that, with God’s help, any number of remodels could happen above ground because the foundation he’d built was firm and reliable.

In every of his wildly diverse vocations in life, he modeled:

Seeing and affirming that of God in every person (even when/especially when the complexity of said person made it seem impossible that they are an image bearer). 

Honoring that, because of God’s creativity, people are all different and are also all siblings in a big, wild family.

Offering grace, love, and resources generously and without regard to status or whether or not a person “deserved” these gifts. He credited his many mentors, who had each extended these gifts to him, with instilling this pattern in him.

Inviting everyone to the table then actually making space for their unique selves, helping them, in turn, find ways of including and belonging to each other.

Yes, dad would say he belonged to God. He would also say that he is humbled by getting to belong to each of you. Let me say that differently. Dad, with all his exacting instructions, fully on-or-off modes, sky high expectations, and espresso breath glory would say that it is YOUR friendship, your partnership, your practical and emotional support, your text messages and photos (oh my word did that man love receiving photos on his phone), your prayers and blessings, your very being that greatly contributed to the wild, beautiful, and meaningful life he was blessed to have. He’d give credit to God, then he’d tell you that he sees God in you and is grateful.

If he could speak audibly to us today, he’d tell us all to build a solid foundation and to dwell there, inviting everyone in to sit at the table (and not at his feet)…the holy AND the human, the salty AND the sweet, the young AND the old (especially the young), the espresso lovers AND the tea drinkers. Heck, he’d even love to have the italian soda folks at the table. 

I also feel certain that having us gathered here today, he would circulate through the room and, in whatever way is unique to you, he would communicate:

You are important to me and to the world.

God is in you and you are also in the heart of God.

My heart is knit to yours.

It still is.

It always will be.

I’m deeply glad for that and…

there you have it. (perhaps his favorite saying)