I have never done this before. Never, in all my years, has anyone requested that their funeral be held on Sunday morning at our normal service. And really, this is not a funeral. Father Bernie Dooly didn't want a funeral at all. He wanted us to worship together as we always have, as he did for decades. He wanted us to share in the body and blood of Jesus and to remember him at the same time. He did not want a special service giving thanks for his life. He just wanted us to come to church together and give thanks. He wanted to be with us when we came together to worship. He didn't want it to be all about him. That was so much like Bernie.
I have known Bernie almost all of my adult life. I first met him when I came here to this very Cathedral to do an internship during Seminary. He was a new Canon, having served as a chaplain at FSU for two decades. He was really happy at FSU. And so we both felt a little lost in this big Cathedral. I would wander down to Bernie's office and he always had time for me. He would lean back in his chair and just listen. I cried in his office and probably made a fool of myself. When I had to preach my first sermon, he suggested that he listen first. And so Bernie stood in the back of this empty Cathedral when I preached for the very first time to him alone. He just stood there and smiled. I can still see him there.
Bernie was Irish. He was born in Ireland and it was so much a part of him, in his blood. He also loved God and found God particularly in silence. Maybe his exposure to silence happened when he was young and suffered from double pneumonia. He would follow that sound of God in silence into the priesthood, reading and studying about God. He became an Irish Catholic priest and served in the church, finally being sent here to St. Augustine.
When you love God in silence, it is easy to retreat into solitude, but Bernie's life was not complete with only solitude. All his life, he would struggle to find a balance between his love of people and his love of silence.
It was in St Augustine that Bernie met and fell in love with an artist. Marcia had two daughters. She exposed Bernie to a kind of freedom and beauty that he had never known. He gave up the priesthood to marry Marcia. Bernie became a father and he adored his girls. Bishop Cerveny welcomed him as a priest into the Episcopal Church.
Bernie loved all people but especially the young. He was so happy being a chaplain at FSU, where he and his students could be creative with all kinds of liturgy. Bernie was not one for tight schedules or hierarchy. He would always give up his seat in the chancel, always make himself available to listen. He had the students at FSU do everything, from having a Vestry to officiating at liturgies. Bernie was always ready to give up his seat.
Our lives are a balance. We all need the sound of sheer silence that Elijah found when he was searching for God in a cave so long ago. But we also need one another. Bernie's face would light up when he spoke of Liz or Marta or Marcia. He adored Marcia's art. Her paintings gave him joy. But after beholding the presence of God in silence, Bernie could never just surround himself with business and people all day. He needed both, both people and quiet, and so do all of us.
In yoga sometimes we practice balancing. We stand on one foot and stare straight ahead. It is amazing how balance is nothing more than constant movement. The muscles in your foot and leg are always moving, first one way and then the other. After lots of practice, it becomes easier, but the movement from one side to the other never goes away. Bernie's life was spent balancing between his two joys, his need for God in silence and his need for all of you. When he spent too much time around people, he would become quiet, even a soft kind of grumpy. When he was alone too long, he would take joy in people.
At the end of his life, I think that Bernie struggled the most with being so weak. His body was giving out. That pneumonia that he had as a child led to him having a hole in his heart all his life, but he didn't know it until after retirement. He found himself weak and unable to care for Marcia as he wanted to. But he was a giver and he didn't know how to ask for help. I would go to see him for spiritual direction but, although I could always use Bernie's wisdom, I knew that he wouldn't let me come if the visit involved taking care of him in any way. He was terrible at that!
I feel regret that Bernie did not let us help him more. It is so hard to age. I hope that he didn't feel alone.
Bernie would want this message not to be just about him but to be about you. What kind of a balance have you found in your life? We all need to hear the sound of sheer silence that Elijah heard, for it will fill our hearts, but most often we run from that silence because before we can get to it, we often must hear our own crazy and disturbed thoughts. So we fill our lives with noise and activity. We run away from God.
If Bernie wanted one thing for you to receive from this service, I think he would want you to receive the gift of silence, to know that deep down, below the chaos of your thoughts and the noise of this world, there is a presence, so deep and so beautiful, so full of love as to take your breath away. And when we can't feel that presence it is not because it isn't there. It is because we are too rushed or wounded or angry to truly listen. Most of us have a storm of sorts in our minds, a storm that moves over the top of silence, making us think that that is all there is, so that when we are quiet, all we hear is worries and regrets and noise. But there is so much more beneath all that.
The silence waits. It is always there for you and once you touch it, you will want nothing more than to find it again and again. It used to be translated as a still small voice. Then scholars got back together and decided that this translation was inadequate. So they called it the sound of sheer silence. My seminary professor translated it as eloquent silence. But words are still not good enough. There are no words to describe such things. The only thing Bernie would say about it was that it is God.
Bernie gave this Cathedral a few gifts. Along with Louise and Mary Busse, he gave us the gift of the Center for Prayer and Spirituality, a part of this Cathedral that will already remind us of the presence of God in silence. He also gave us a chapel located on the third floor of Cathedral House. You can take an elevator up to it. It is full of Bernie's books and statues and icons. It is a place to be quiet. The only sounds that you hear are the children playing in the playground of the homeless shelter across the street. Bernie gave it to us, his community, so that we could find a place of quiet, a place to pray, a place apart from the hustle and bustle of life. It is always open to you.
You have to fight for quiet in your life. It is a battle. But please try. It is vital for your mental and spiritual health. And try to find the other side as well, that balance that is community, the people who make your heart sing, with whom you can be yourself. Nurture those relationships, tell them who you really are. God is Trinity and God cannot be known alone. God must be known also in community. Three in one and one in three. God is all about balance. To try to find God is to dance your way to finding balance in your life. And balance between quiet and community looks entirely different for each and every one of you.
Bernie knew the beauty of loving people. He knew the beauty of time spent alone with God. He knew the beauty of nature and art and music. He lived and he loved. And we give thanks for his life. After all, that is what the Eucharist means...thanksgiving.
