Loving Humanly:
A Homily Honoring Phyllis Roe
By Ben Roe
July 14, 2001
First United Methodist Church, Honolulu, Hawaii
We were looking through some photographs last night and found Phyllis' baby book. I want to share another reading here, out of Phyllis' baby book. Our mother wrote this about her first years:
"Phyllis Carol had quite a time getting adjusted the first three months. Cried most of the time. After that was a very good baby. Phyllis has been unusually pretty and also big. Has had very good control of herself at an early age. Walked at 10 months. Has always been sure of herself. Has a good time playing with brother Benny. At one year says quite a few words. Does so many cute things. Can climb up in her high chair all by herself. Runs and plays.
"Phyllis is a very good and sweet child. Is very active. Never still a minute.
"At 4 1/2 years ... is a very good helper. She and Benny have such good times together. She is very imaginative, enjoys creative play, talks a lot and loves to pretend to read books. She believes she can do most things that Benny [17 months older] can do."
As an adult, no longer did she have to pretend to read: her office and home walls are lined with books. And her photos collected over the years show lots of signs of creative play. She and her husband Michael had a couple of wonderful motorcycles and a sailboat. And she and her friend Linda Rich had a great time on New York's Central Park carousel just over a month ago.
Phyllis was an unusual person, a very special person in many ways, from the start. And she has taught us a lot about loving humanly.
The church at Corinth was awash in controversy and people were getting on each others' nerves and in each others' faces. After giving his advice on a number of things, Paul, like a good pastor, wanted to put things in perspective.
And that's what we're trying to do here today: put Phyllis' life and our many and varied relationships and experiences with her into perspective.
Many have written words of appreciation and tribute, about how she was helpful in their lives, and how she expressed love and loving behavior.
Phyllis was loving, in a way that was a close approximation of the kind of loving that Paul wrote about and that Jesus lived. Whether you were Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, New Age, young or old, male or female, a person of color, Euro-American, gay, lesbian, bi, trans, straight or unsure, single or partnered, rich or poor, abused or abuser-her concern as a therapist was for your growth, healing, and wholeness. She expressed her love by investing in personal therapy and appropriate educational experiences, including two seminary degrees over a period of 9 years to facilitate healing and growth. (She had kept a cross-stitch saying on her dresser: "the tassle is worth the hassle.") Her way of treating people as family, whether you were client or friend was another way of expressing this kind of loving.
She honed her perceptions through meditation, prayer, reading, spiritual direction and searching, so that she eventually was given the Hawaiian name, Ka`onohiokalani, "the eyes of heaven." Many people have remarked that her perception of them in their therapy work was remarkably insightful and led them to a deeper self-knowledge and self-acknowledgement. One friend of ours wrote that when he was a young man just entering Candler, she had a reputation for writing insightful and accurate biographies from their admissions materials.
But human loving is never perfect. We rarely approach the ideal that Paul is describing or that Jesus lived. Human loving is always a journey towards perfection, as John Wesley would have said.
In my prayer at Phyllis' bedside after she had been pronounced brainstem dead, I gave thanks to God for putting us in families where we can learn to love for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health. For Phyllis' loving didn't come without some hard work and sometimes struggle and pain, especially when her husband Michael died almost 10 years ago.
Yet as our mother has recalled, her heart was open from the beginning, as a worried toddler for her sick brother (me), as a friend and companion for me in a challenging childhood, and as she puzzled and hurt when I was unable to articulate with clarity my need to develop and travel my journey without her.
She learned loving by taking on family responsibilities early in life, due in part to my polio and other illnesses. She learned loving in parsonage family life, watching missionaries who visited, hearing dad's sermons every Sunday, and experiencing our parents' dinner-table conversations and broad perspective on the world, faith, and the church. But most of all, I think she followed a path towards fulfillment, the "higher reaches of human nature" and finally reunion with God.
She knew that in dying she wanted to extend her loving for people she didn't even know through her donation of organs and tissues to transplant recipients.
Before I close, I want to express the sincere appreciation of her biological family for all of you, for all of her incredible extended e-mail support group, for her colleagues in ministry, care and counseling, and for Linda, Maxine, Toni, Jolene, and all those who had agreed to be her companions and care-givers in New York during what turned out to be this last stage of her life. There are so many of you who have been a community of support and healing for us and for each other. Neal MacPherson, Yoshi Fujitani, Terry and Allan Fisher have been great help in making the plans for today's service.
I want to extend appreciation to her medical teams. Dr. Morton and Dr. Itagaki here in Hawaii and your care team, you gave her some precious years in which she could continue growing and deepening in her spiritual journey. I also want to extend appreciation to Dr. Griepp, whose humble, knowledgeable, and compassionate presence gave her peace and confidence as she entered this last adventure. And to the whole Cardio-Thoracic team at Mt. Sinai, including Dr. Fink, who interpreted for us what they knew about her complications, and to Mary Giglio, her care nurse at the end. Elizabeth and Melinda, of the New York Organ Donor Network, provided sensitive, forthright, and compassionate help for us as we dealt with what organ donation meant.
And finally, all of you here, who are providing a gracious remembrance and thanksgiving celebration of her life.
I want to tell you a little story. We were finishing our packing the night before our hurried trip to New York City at the time of her death. Maggie was lying in bed and had a strong sense of Phyllis, who said, "I know Ben won't be sensitive to this kind of communication, but please tell him that I'm OK and that I will be OK." Maggie also had the strong impression that it wasn't only Ben she wanted to know about this, but all her extended family and circle of friends and colleagues. So, today we take another step towards adjusting to a reality without hearing with our ears her chuckle, her insight, her wry sense of humor, but we can continue to honor our memories of her by loving each other, using those things she taught or enabled us to see with our own eyes and hearts. As her friend Lowell said, when she went to New York, she set her eyes towards Jerusalem. She has now finished her journey to Jerusalem. We now continue on our own individual, unique, and most precious journeys to our own Jerusalems and to our own Eternal Fulfillment. We continue, knowing that we have been seen with the Eyes of Heaven and that we are loved.