My Mother

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

I’m emerging from the whirlwind of my mother’s death to write you this note for this week’s newsletter. It is mostly an effort to express my sincere gratitude to you during this time and to share with you some of our journey.

Mom’s death and final months were apparently pain-free and her passing was very peaceful, surrounded by her loved ones and the prayers of the community.

We knew my mother was experiencing “memory issues” that were clearly quite severe back in mid-February.

In fact, after our outdoor Ash Wednesday service —where we remind ourselves “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” — I lingered for hours in Roberts Forest.

Instead of putting out the fire in our church’s fire pit, I simply allowed the embers to take their course, prayed to God, and wrote a song for my mother. (As all of us know, Roberts Forest is a place of great peace and comfort).

My prayers that night were simple: that if Mom’s memory issues were severe and irreversible, she be allowed a quick and pain-free death. But I also prayed Jesus’ Gethsemane Prayer: “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Days later, Mom had scans that revealed the softball-sized mass in her abdomen and we had a diagnoses of 4-6 months. She entered hospice and she died almost exactly four months to the day she entered hospice. She was not in cancer-related pain throughout her final months….a fact that continues to astound her medical staff, caregivers, and family. And her passing was peaceful, surrounded with family.

I will take the liberty of sharing more about my mother’s attitude toward both life and death with you in next week’s newsletter. Because Mom long ago taught me some very profound lessons about both that shape my own ministry and deepest values.

(OK, I’ll give you one big hint now: she lived making sure there was nothing left unsaid or unresolved…making the goodbyes less regretful, even as they were sad.)

For today, I am not foolish enough to say “God answered my prayers.” Death is a mystery, always. We mostly don’t get a choice for how it actually comes. But in my own heart of hearts I —and our entire family— are grateful for a relatively painless and quick passing for my mother. And I have personally felt God’s presence throughout.

As I have told grieving families for years, “Sometimes there is such a thing as a good death.”

That advice comes back to me today. My mother’s death was one. And, at this hour, we are taking simple comfort in that.

I’m writing all this in the event you have questions.

As you’ll no doubt see elsewhere in this newsletter, Mom’s service will take place at Northaven UMC. I am slightly regretful that we’re not having the service at KPUMC, simply because I know well your ability to minister compassionately to families in their time of need.

But Mom remained a member of Northaven until her passing. And the pandemic really prevented her from getting to know you all as well as she did her friends at Northaven.

In fact, it’s one of my *own* pandemic regrets: Had this been a “normal” past few years, you would have had the chance to know her better, and I’m absolutely certain you would have loved her.

As I’ve been telling folks this week: there is no question that the most popular member of the Folkerth family at Northaven was Pat Folkerth. (I am really not joking…)

I’m very grateful to Jonathan for arranging our choir’s joint performance with Northaven’s at the service. That deeply warms my heart. While I’ll say some words of eulogy for my mother as a son, Revs Ann Willet and Blair Thompson-White —Mom’s two most recent personal pastors—will preside.

I look forward to being with you for worship this coming Sunday. I actually NEED to be with folks for a while…away from the ever-present details. And it will be a joy to see your faces.

Now…my final thanks to YOU.

Thank you for the kind cards, PMs, and offers of food. Thanks to Ken and Kay for filling in on last Sunday (I’ll ask them to do it again on August 14th…)

You all are such a kind and compassionate community…to me and my family…to Pastor Kay and her’s.

What a mess that we’ve both lost parents in the past two weeks! As my mother said of her diagnosis “It is what it is…”

Pastor Kay and I have both commented several times how grateful we are to be serving a community filled with such compassionate grace.

We are experiencing Jesus’ love and grace through you. And while we are deeply sad, we are grateful to you all in this time too.

Grace and Peace,

Eric Folkerth

Words to Get Through Difficult Times

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

As I closely read these passages in the middle of the Gospel of Luke —the ones that serve as our lectionary this summer— I’m struck by how much they all surround and reinforce common themes.

On Sunday, we’ll unpack the story of the “Man Who Built Bigger Barns.”

Unlike many of Jesus’ parables that feature an ironic twist, this one is fairly straight ahead. A man has a surplus of crops, more than he knows what to do with. Instead of giving the surplus away to others, he decides to store it up for the future.

He then admires this work, confident that he’s set for “easy street” for the rest of his life.

But that very night, Jesus says, the man dies. And Jesus says God says to the man, “Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?”

The entire parable gets told because apparently somebody asks Jesus to be their personal Probate Court Judge. Jesus isn’t at all interested in the worry about who owns what “stuff.” And so, he tells this parable.

Jesus introduces the parable with these cautionary words:

“Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions, even when someone is very wealthy.”

This is taken from the “Common English Bible” translation which I believe emphasizes in an extremely helpful way that there is no level of wealth that can determine the meaning of one’s life. Our “life” must be centered in the spiritual view that extends far beyond the physical realm.

But what’s fascinating to me is to understand the developing themes throughout all of this center-section of the Gospel of Luke. They can be summed up like this…

“Follow me to do the challenging thing (go to Jerusalem).”

“Ask for DAILY BREAD, not more than you need for each day.”

“Spend time with friends and loved ones, and really BE PRESENT with them (Mary and Martha).”

“Help those in need, even your ‘enemy,’ out of what you have (Good Samaritan).”

“And understand that it’s never what we OWN that gives our life meaning.”

When we are stressed and strained —when it feels like either our personal lives, or our world, are falling apart— it can be extremely difficult to remember any of these things, much less all of them.

But I am struck at how almost all of these teachings happen AFTER Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem.” He knows and understands, and so does everybody else now, that his life is likely in danger…that his message is being rejected. And even THEN, Jesus STILL wants to be sure we hear the lesson that we should worry about our lives, what we have or don’t have, that spending time “being present” is important, and that even serving those we dislike is our calling.

Read those bolded sentences again and again. Because I know that it’s a difficult time for our world, but Jesus knows that if we live them, it’s our way through our own difficult times too.

I Was Wrong About...

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

There’s an interesting exercise happening at the New York Times right now. Eight opinion writers from across the political spectrum have written essays on the common theme “I was wrong about…”

The online landing page to all the essays starts with this introduction: “I did my research. I read, watched, I talked to the experts. I formed an opinion and I wrote about it.”

They essayists write about things such as “Inflation,” “Facebook,” “Trump voters,” and “Chinese censorship.”

I’m fascinated and inspired that these columnists chose to so publicly disclose things they now, in retrospect, believe they got wrong about the world.

If I was to answer this same question, there is no question that my number one answer would be:
“I was wrong about the inevitability of progress.”

If there is one thing that events of the past decade have taught me, it’s that the myth that progress is inevitable is just that…a dangerous myth.

For the vast majority of my life, I think I believed in an onward and upward trajectory of human innovation and progress led by our ability to think ourselves out of hard societal problems and come together around shared values.

My Father was a rocket scientist. His part of believing this myth was that logic and science would solve all our chronic human ills. He seemed to believe that society would “think” its way out of its problems.

Our modern era has shown us, however, that scientific data itself can be forged and manipulated. Our best discoveries can be turned against humanity.
From the threat of nuclear annihilation to the opioid crisis…
From climate science deniers to doctors who lambasted the COVID vaccine…

It is clear to us now, or it should be, that we can’t just passively “think” ourselves” out of a jam.

Nor can we just “feel” our way out of our problems either.

We’ve had decades of talking about “tolerance” and “respect” for other human beings. We’ve made great social gains in accepting people of various races, faiths, and sexual orientations.

But at the end of the day, reactionary forces still push back, deny our scientific and our social gains.

Please understand, I still think we can, and do, make “progress” in the world. We can, and do, come together around shared values. (At least, some of us do…)

But increasingly, it’s clear to me that the idea of that progress is not “inevitable” or guaranteed.

I suppose if there was one phrase that summed up the “myth of progress,” it would be a phrase so often attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

In our modern era, it seems far too many of us have believed that this sentence connotes a kind of inevitability of justice, fairness, and equity.

Sure, things often look challenging in any present moment, but that arc bends and it cannot HELP BUT BEND.

It’s this last part —the part I’ve put in all caps— that I no longer believe.

Yes, justice and equity are possible.
But, no, they are not inevitable.

And that “arc” is never a straight line, onward and upward. Instead, progress seems to fold back on itself before lurching forward again.

But! Progress *only* happens if we continue to work, struggle, and believe that our actions matter. Should we simply sit back, rest, and hubristically believe we have arrived at some perfect moment of eternal bliss, we will find ourselves horrifically mistaken.

Even further, we must be prepared to re-fight struggles for justice and equity that we thought were “already decided.” We don’t ever, as a society, leave things like racism, homophobia, and tribalism in our past…because we human beings have a tribal core that always rears its ugly head.

This coming Sunday, we’ll unpack scripture from Luke 11. The stories start with the Disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. In response, he teaches them “The Lord’s Prayer.”

But, instead of just giving them some rote words to repeat, Jesus very quickly tells them two short analogies designed to reinforce a simple truth:

“Keep after it.”

It seems Jesus is telling his Disciples: “Pray…yes, absolutely do that…but also keep after it.” KEEP praying…keep working toward justice…keep believing that your actions matter every day.”

Never get to a place in life where you believe you have arrived.

We United Methodists call this “moving toward perfection.” We United Methodists believe our calling is to work *toward* that state, but to avoid believing we have permanently “arrived.”

As I look back at my adult life, I must now say that I was wrong about the inevitability of social progress and justice. I am afraid that some of this may well have come from my own relatively privileged position in our society.

Jesus’ words about prayer indicate that he knew something about how many of us feel today.

We feel that too many around us have their doors shut and no longer seem to care for the world around them. And maybe they do. But that shouldn’t change our own persistence in working to make the world a more just, compassionate, and fair place.

Never believe you have permanently arrived. Life is a journey of each successive day, and struggle is a part of our calling.

But, be persistent, Jesus says. What we do matters…to ourselves, to our world, and to God.