Lisa Bowden

"If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Dear Community,

My dear friend is buried in the Columbarium Garden. Her niche is at eye level when I stand in front of it. I was one of two people who attended her interment 6 years ago, before I had ever stepped foot inside Saint Philip’s. She would come for the sacred music. While she didn't claim the light (love, ferocious clarity, joy) that filled her when she was alive was from a holy place, she chose her final rest in one.

Martha was 36 years older than I and a steadfast champion of people not hiding their light under a bushel. She was fearless, strong as a horse, and never failing in her thorny brand of frankness. We came from wildly different places and generations, but had a most fierce and loving friendship. To me she said Don't be shy or too humble, speak up, don’t waste the time given you no matter how difficult things get. It was an edict: do not dim yourself or deny others your light.

Once I ran 20 city blocks from midtown Manhattan to the Museum of Natural History to see her. The way she looked lit up that day: luminous.

The parables in today’s reading in Mark make me think, perhaps like you, how quickly light travels uncovered, and how proliferative tiny mustard seeds are, immediately germinating and spreading in "good soil." In fact, our own hard dirt yard turned good with lots of rain last week yielding a sudden field of thick, soft, wild green like a promise. Potential. The kind of hope that occludes sharper edges. How someone can say so kindly “I see your tears,” and in an instant, what’s poking softens—-agave, prickly pear, aloe.

I didn’t feel a lot of glimmer when I was a kid, but have had a profound sense of light later, pouring through, into and around me. Like during Holy Week, an encounter with something so blindingly brilliant—radiance, refraction, reflection—I couldn’t sleep.

I used to sing "This Little Light of Mine" to my daughter. We listened to it over and over. Now I sing a bar or two once in a while when she needs a reminder. Since she was little, we've ended the days whispering a prayer like an edict, "follow the light all through the night." And in the morning, I braid them into her hair, if she lets me.

Peace be with you,

—Lisa