A few weeks ago, I was in a conversation with some members of my congregation. I told them I was going to attend my high school class reunion, and an attractive woman about my age said, “Oh I went back for a reunion once, and everyone but me had face-lifts.” (She must be from California.) Another person, a man who is a highly successful surgeon and President-elect of the congregation said, “I don’t ever want to go back for a reunion; I was a nerd.” I told them not to fret about that stuff; I was so quiet in high school I was voted most invisible.

Well, here we are, the nerds, the athletes, the high profile, and the invisible.
We are the same people, yet we are not the same.

Here we are, old friends and new friends.
Here we are, some wealthy, some comfortable, and some struggling to pay health insurance.

Here we are, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents…and probably some Greens and Libertarians.

Being pre-integration, we are not racially diverse, which saddens me, but we are diverse in many other ways. In our diversity, however, we have a common human bond of shared experience.

Today we share a bond of remembering classmates who have died in the past 45 years, particularly those who have died since the last reunion. It was poignant for us yesterday, as we heard from Lynn Furr Hammett and Linda Schmidt Rhodes on the class video. For many who grieve these and other recent deaths, it is hard to accept that they are not with us. Thank you, Stevie and Steve and Bill, for the gift of that video, which invited us into the lives of some of our classmates.

Last Sunday, I told my congregation that it would be my privilege to be here today, calling the names of classmates who had died. I told them that I had been asked to offer some words of comfort. Then I said that I would mention that it is likely that some of our names will be on that list of names at the 50th reunion. Now, that probably is not your idea of comfort, but I believe we come to this time of remembering with a greater fullness of presence because we are aware of our own mortality. And we cherish the time we have together with more awareness of how very precious it is. Because we call ourselves into a space where our common bond is in cherishing the present moment and living in it, I believe we are given a power to offer comfort for one another.

Poet Mary Oliver writes,
To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
To love what is mortal,
To hold it against your bones knowing your life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

As we honor our classmates today, we remember and cherish who they were; we call their spirits into this space, and give ourselves space where we may help one another let go.

Each death that touches us recalls every death—those we have grieved and those we have yet to grieve. Each death welcomes us into a circle of grieving, which is also a circle of loving. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my father’s death. I know many of you have lost parents, or siblings, or even children and others dear to you. You know that it takes courage to grieve. Our culture gives us so many ways to avoid grief; perhaps because we are afraid of the deep place these feelings take us. We are afraid of one another’s feelings, too. Perhaps we are just afraid of losing control…or the illusion of control. That is why our culture gives us about three days after a death to grieve in the open, preferring, really, that we take sedatives so we can get through without crying. When we say someone is strong, or doing well after a death, we really just mean he or she is holding it together. This is a mistake. “Give sorrow words” wrote Shakespeare; “the grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.”

So we are here to speak our grief, to care for one another, to open our hearts to ourselves, and to be in a tender human moment together.

We are here also to honor and remember classmates whose lives touched ours, who offered something of their gifts into this world, and who live in our memories at many stages of their lives. Their faces come to us young and innocent, from elementary school, perhaps. They smile into our memories from Jr. High and High School classrooms, from playing fields, from over chemistry experiments, typewriters, and cafeteria trays. They visit us from proms, parties, plays, picnics and past reunions. Remembering them, we remember also ourselves, and who we were together.

Remembering them, we call ourselves into holy space, where we invoke the blessing of the Holy Spirit upon them, and create a circle of love to embrace and comfort all who have loved them. I call now the names of members of the Winter Park High School Class of 1961 who have died since 2001:

Sue Sturgis Hyde
Lynn Neidig Hon
Anita Smart Coffman
Donald Owen Nuzum
Penny Clark Aldridge
Linda Schmidt Rhodes
James Porter Crosby
Lynn Furr Hammett
Joy Hardy Marshall
Shirley Deaton Lansing
Jeanie Jones Russell
Bunnie Pechin McBride
Robert Danforth
Judy Reding Stocker
Carol Streep Copeland

I invite you to call out the names of others, classmates and teachers—those you wish to honor and remember at this time.

(Names called by those attending)

Now, I invite you to join in a litany of memory for these classmates and for others whom you hold dear in your memory. Please respond to each line that I read with the words, “We remember them.”

In the rising of the sun and its going down…
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter…
In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring…
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer…
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn…
In the beginning of the year and when it ends…
When we are weary and in need of strength…
When we are lost and sick at heart…
When we have joys we yearn to share…

We remember them. So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are a part of all who have known them.

(Litany adapted from a modern Jewish liturgy by Roland B.Gittelsohn)