Heaven: From Community to Community - with Rev. John Mabry

“If you cultivate community in this life, you will pass into community.”

In this episode we spend time with our dear friend and teacher, Rev. John Mabry. We met him when we were both seminary students in Berkeley, CA and have remained close.

Reverend Dr. John Mabry is a United Church of Christ pastor and a spiritual director. He is a novelist and songwriter and lives with his veterinarian wife and 3 boxers in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains In upstate New York.

We will talk about his latest book Ash Wednesday, in which a small town literally comes face to face with Death. John has published both fiction and non-fiction as well as music, and you can find more information about him and his many creative endeavors on his website johnmabry.com.

In this episode, John speaks about a book that was important to him in his understanding of death, Charles Williams’ novel All Hallows Eve.

You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Also, we would love your financial support and you can join us on Patreon. Anyone who supports us at any level will be invited to a special live, online conversation with Annalouiza and Wakil.

And we would love your feedback and want to hear your stories. You can email us at endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

Transcript

Wakil - Welcome everyone to this episode of End of Life Conversations. I'm Reverend Wakil David Matthews.

Annalouiza - And I'm the Reverent Mother, Annalouiza Armendariz. In this podcast, we'll be sharing people's experiences with the end of life.

Wakil - In this episode, we're gonna welcome. Reverend John Mabry. Reverend Dr.
John Mabry is a United Church of Christ pastor and a spiritual director. He is a novelist and songwriter.
He lives with his veterinarian wife and 3 boxers in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains In upstate New York.

Annalouiza - I am delighted to have John here with us.
Wakil and I met John a few years ago. We were both at a seminary in Berkeley, California training as spiritual directors.
So I am delighted that we get to hold another space together.

John - Well, I am delighted to be here. Thank you so much for asking me.

Wakil - We're really glad to have you - we usually go through some questions and we want to just have a conversation. So the first question just to get things started is when did you first become aware of death?

John - Well, I think I first had a vague, concept of it when I was about 3 years old and my great-grandmother died. And I don't really remember anything about her death specifically. I just remember that she was living across the street from us and then she wasn't.
Which, was confusing at the time. Where did Granny go? Yeah, and then of course my grandparents were my first big encounter with death.
My mother's parents both died while I was in my late teens and early twenties.
But you know, I had never been close to them. I love them, but they always lived on the other side of the country.
So. I was sad that they had passed, but,  it didn't really hit me emotionally.
The first time that that really happened was when my dog Claire died. Claire had been my constant companion for 14 years.
She was a whippet lab mix. Had been very traumatized as a puppy and, had been found on the streets of San Francisco and was scared of her own shadow and suffered PTSD her whole life and I like to think that I created a safe space for her.
And we loved each other desperately. And when she died, she took a part of my soul with me.
And I think one of the most amazing things about just how connected it felt like we were was after she died, I put her dog bed up in the attic. And it was about a year. When I felt ready to have another dog in the house and so some friends of ours needed… were gonna go away and their dogs needed a dog sitting so we we invited their dogs to come and stay with us.
And so I went and got the dog bed down from the the attic and put it out and the dogs would not go anywhere near this dog bed.

Annalouiza - Wow.

Wakil - Okay.

John - I mean, they would cross to the other side of the room not to have to go by it. And so I talked to my spiritual director about this and I said, what do you think is going on?
And she says, well, I think you need to have a talk with Claire.

Annalouiza - Hmm.

John - And tell her that these other dogs need the bed right now. And so. I sat down cross-legged on the floor next to the bed and I said, you know, Claire, honey.
You are welcome to Stay here as long as you want but while these dogs are here, I'd love it if you could.go lay on the couch or lay on our bed or. Anywhere else but the dogs need this bed right now.

And then I felt like an idiot because I was talking to this empty dog bed. So I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea and when I came back out I almost dropped the cup because there were these 2 dogs sitting in the dog bed.

Annalouiza - Wow. Lovely. Hmm.

Wakil - Oh. Beautiful. It's so interesting that many people we talked to.
Their most impactful dealing with death has been with their animals. Their animal companions. And that's it's very true that they become a part of us.

John -  Oh yeah. And you know when she was dying. We had the vet come out and do the euthanasia at our house and I told her that when it was my time, I wanted her to meet me.

Annalouiza - Hmm.

John - And I felt like we had an understanding. And I am certain that when it is my turn to crossover, Clare's going to be there to greet me.

Wakil - Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.

Annalouiza - Yeah, and it's so impactful because you know oftentimes they say that ancestors come and and welcome us right to go to the light and I wish I could talk to you at the end of your life, it'd be like, is Claire there is Claire there.!?

John - Well, come find me and I'll tell you the story.

Annalouiza - I will. In the afterlife. Yay! That's so beautiful. I love it.

Wakil - Yeah, so we now have dates for the afterlife. I love it. Yeah.

Annalouiza - Oh, it'll be fun. So in your current work. How does death impact your work?

John - Well, in my work as a minister, it impacts it pretty frequently in that everybody has people who die. People are facing death themselves. And when someone they love passes over, they need someone to help to mark it ritually. And hold them as they as they begin the grieving process and sometimes they need reminding to grieve.
And so in my work as a pastor, I, certainly do, all of that.
And some of my richest experiences as a pastor have been accompanying people through the mystery of death and accompanying their families.
And, in my work as a novelist, I mean, I actually think that It is through literature that most of my ideas about death have come. 
I would say that Charles Williams’ novel All Hallows Eve is the most important book in my life.
In his book. It opens with 2 young women who don't realize they're dead.
But they've just been in a plane crash and eventually, it dawns on them that they are.
And as they come to grips with who they were and who they are now they move toward either community or isolation.

John - And I find that those are always the choices that are before us and in Williams’ universe, Williams, by the way, was best friends with CS Lewis and a good friend of J.R.R. Tolkien's too.
They used to get together every Tuesday and read each other their work. and so their works actually have a lot in common.
But in Williams’ understanding of things, what we call heaven is community.

Wakil - I like that.

John -  And what we what we call hell is isolation.

Wakil - Yeah.

John - And Williams doesn't believe that God sends anybody to heaven or hell. People choose community or they choose isolation.
And if you cultivate community in this life, then you will pass over into community. And if you cultivate isolation in this life, you will pass over into isolation.
You always get exactly what you want.

Annalouiza - That's pretty powerful. - Wow.

John - It is. It is. Because anything else would be coercion.

Wakil - Yeah, of course Yeah, our friend last time told us a story about death and working with a family and his words were death is a unitive experience or can be or should be perhaps.

John - Yes. Oh yes.

Wakil - A unity, a community experience. Made me think the same thing, you know, ideally death is a community experience.

John - Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil - Doesn't have to be. You can choose otherwise. But in a good ideal situation, it can be a community experience.

John - And one of the greatest examples that I can think of that is, you know, one of my dearest friends, was a woman named Margaret.
She had been my English professor in college. And then when she retired, she moved up to And, you know, in our church, we, write a lot of our own liturgical music, a lot of our own labyrinth songs, which are very similar to like Taize or Sufi songs, Dances of Universal Peace songs, that's kind of thing.
And so when Margaret was dying, Her family invited the members of the church who wanted to come to gather in her hospital room. And 24 of us showed up and we brought our guitars and for the next 3 hours, we sang to each other.

And to her and as we were singing these sacred songs that were just so dear to our community. One by one people went up to her and held her hand.
And she wasn't outwardly conscious. But that didn't really matter.
All of us got a chance to have some intimate time with Margaret and say our goodbyes.
All while being held in song by the whole community. And while this was going on, it was just so magical and I had this vision of us bearing her through the veil on our hands and her being received by other hands. So passing from community to community

Annalouiza - Hmm.

Wakil - Hmm. Beautiful.

Annalouiza - Oh John, that's so it's so powerful and I want to point out that you know, for anybody who might be listening who has this yearning for that kind of community who hopes that their parents or their spouse has this ending, you know. I know that sometimes I hear stories like this and I wish this for me and I want everybody out there hearing me like It doesn't have to be 24 people in your hospital room.

And my sister was dying and she was like in the hallway getting moved to a different room when I think about a dozen PTs or somebody from the hospital who knew her from all the years of being in the hospital. They all showed up and surrounded her bed and somebody took a phone out and like played some song that I still just don't remember and they all sang along to this like pop song and I just backed away and let them sing and that was actually the last moment my sister ever spoke.
Like that was it. And what she said, I'm not doing this anymore. She got sung down into the next level, too.
And so I cherish your story and I want everybody to know that it's it's available to all of us.

John - Yeah.

Annalouiza - Just call and show up and. But the iPod on or whatever you have.

John - Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil - Yeah, and that's not only not only something we can hope for for ourselves with something we can manifest for our beloved's. So that's such a great call. Thank you guys.
Brought tears to my eyes. Thank you, John.

John - So, I'd like to talk a little bit about how these themes have shown up in my latest novel, Ash Wednesday.
In this book, a farmer goes out into his field. And sees a 6 by 6 pink cube.
And cut into the cube. Is a sculpture of a man at the moment of his death flying into a windshield.

And the farmer recognizes the man. He knows this person. And over the next several days, more and more of these cubes start appearing in his field and they're other people from the town and they all depict them at the moment of their death.
And some of them are much older in the statues and some of them are similar to the age that they are now and some of the deaths are violent and some of them are peaceful.

And word gets out. The townspeople start coming out to this farm to look at these cubes and there's this kind of carnival atmosphere.
It's all kind of horror show and fun and games and everything until the man from the very first cube actually dies and he dies in exactly the way that the cube depicts. And so now. The entire town kind of freaks out.

And people start acting out. In ways that are not healthy. And some people deal with their grief responsibly and a lot of people don't.
And  one of the main characters. Peg who is the pastor of the local Congregational church realizes that this is going to spin out of control and someone's going to get seriously hurt unless the town can come together and do a collective work of grieving.

Wakil - Right.

John - There needs to be a public catharsis. There needs to be a place to ground the energies that are that are that are kind of driving everyone a little nuts.

And so, it, the town is in the California Central Valley, but most of the townspeople are immigrants from Sweden and so there's this Swedish tradition of a long house where you build a fire pit in the middle of the long house and and and you set it ablaze.
And people bring their grief and put it in the fire in various symbolic ways.

And so she invites, they build a long house and they invite the entire town and the townspeople come and to everyone's kind of amazement people start pouring out their grief and they have made artwork around how they feel and they put that in the fire and

So, the book really is about.
How? How, how do we confront the evidence of our mortality?
When we come face to face with the fact that we will die and that we can't escape it.
How do we deal with that?

Wakil -  Yeah. Yeah.

John - And there are different ways of dealing with it. There are healthy ways and there are unhealthy ways of dealing with it and the healthiest way of dealing with it is in community.

Wakil - And in communication. Yeah.

John - And that, yeah, that, really is the central, the central theme of the book.
And along the way, Peg, encounters grief of her own hat just shakes her to her core.

Wakil - You know, I think the book really was profound to me and one of the things about it was that. we are many of us and this is really this is why we're doing this podcast. Is that many of us would rather not talk about this.

John - Right, right.

Wakil - Would rather not think about it, right? And so in this book, a town is not given the choice anymore, you know, guess what? t's in your face, you know. And the reason and how that plays out with the different people in the town is really it is fascinating and revealing and also very real.
I think part of the reason that many of us choose to ignore it is because of that maybe that fear of the way that we would respond.
And the fear of you know, lost control. Of the loss of control. There's a lot of fears around that.
And we, and we may, you know, get to, maybe get to the question later about your own fears, but.
But thank you for sharing that. I really did find it a profound reminder of how we forget or how we choose to forget.
And, just what might happen if we had no choice. We had to remember. Yeah, that was great.

Annalouiza - And well, I have a question. So it's been your book has been out for a year.
How have people received this? How have they integrated this? This notion of collective grieving.
 
John - Well, it's, it's hard to get noticed as a novelist these days.
So, I wouldn't say that very many people have read it but those who have read it, I think, have not just enjoyed it, but I think have been very moved by it. I've gotten just some amazing letters and some of the reviews that are up there on Amazon have moved me.

I certainly think that it has helped some people process their own grief and helped them navigate approaching their own mortality.
You know, the gestation of this book and the writing of this book happened during COVID.
Which and in some ways it's a mirror of that because as a culture, as a, you know, as a civilization, we were confronting our own deaths.
You know, it was on our doorstep. The angel of death was passing over And we never knew whose house it was going to stop at.

And We knew people who were grieving. And there were so many losses beyond just the loss of life that we were grieving, the loss of freedom, the loss of of community that wasn't virtual.

Wakil - Yeah. Yeah.

John - There was so much that we were grieving. And all of that was just poured into this book because I was so fascinated with the notion that what we were going through was a collective grief process. And so I wanted to explore what a collective grief process looked like.
And, and the implications that that had for for community or isolation.

Wakil - Yeah, we all were dealing with Isolation, loneliness in many cases, very deep, sadness.
Fear, fear of the unknown. Yeah, all of those things that go along with grieving and go along with end of life.
Kind of hand in hand.

Annalouiza - And it almost feels like your book is still extremely pertinent because, you know, we're just, we're, we're still 3 years from that start and it's still not over. It's still not gone. And we're still seeing all the issues that have been born from this. There's still sadness and isolation. and fear.
And our collective grief is still not done. We're still not finished. And we're still, I feel like just thinking about this with your book right now.
People make assumptions that they're past it and they're out in their lives are normal, but when you get to really sit with people they've lost parts of themselves that don't have a job or have an isolating job or they lost neighbors or their parents or their pets because it was strange to go into vet's office.
I mean, we have so many little pieces of grief that we could attend to and don't know how to.

John - Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah.
I think just giving ourselves and each other permission to feel grief and to express grief. Is a is a profoundly counter-cultural thing.

Annalouiza - Yeah.

John - Because we, you know, I think we have an allergy to what we consider negative emotions.

Wakil - Yeah.

John - And our culture. And that is just so, just so profoundly unhealthy. Because what do we do with this energy?

Annalouiza - Right, we bury it. It becomes, they become our shadows. Okay.

John - You know, we bury it exactly, exactly. One of the things that makes me crazy as a pastor is that I will find out maybe weeks after the fact that one of my parishioner's dog or cat has died.
Or, you know, a family member has died. Why am I hearing about this 3 or 4 weeks after the fact?
If a parishioner's, cat is dying I would love to come over and anoint the cat with oil. For healing and rest. And cry with them andhold the parishioner and ask them what they need.
You know, and why is that and why is that a shameful thing? Why is that an embarrassing thing?
Just because it's a pet.

Annalouiza - It sounds like that's the challenge, right? Is having people feel like they can actually tell all the aspects of their their lives that are in need of anointing and bearing witness to right like any number of of things could be amenable for you to show up.

John - Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil - That's the Sufi saying of die before you die, you know, in recognition that we have little deaths every day.
Each breath in its way in its own way, you know, you expel your breath, you just given up your breath, breath of life and now you get a new one.

John - Yeah.

Wakil - You make room for a new one. And of course, the losses that we're talking about, the larger losses of of pets or animals or jobs or partnerships or relationships.
Yeah, or, you know, so many things. Faith in our government.

Annalouiza - Yeah, or a tree in the park like I have been grieving the loss of a tree like I literally have to go by it all the time with my kids and just be like I'm so sorry that you just couldn't make it here, you know, like it was, it's been hot, it's been hard.
And you know, my kids are used to it, but there are hundreds of people passing every day.
And there's this tree that's died in the middle of this field and It strikes me so much every day when I walk there.

John - Yeah, yeah.
You know, and I think I have an advantage in some ways because I'm a very emotional person who wears their heart on their sleeve.
Unlike my wife who is from Vermont. And if you know Vermonters, that's all you need to know.
She has emotions, but she doesn't really show them very often.
And, I remember when my dog Judy was dying we we had to take her into the vet and when the vet gave her her shot I was inconsolable and I just I wailed I wailed and I threw myself on her neck at the moment of her death and I screamed, Jesus, come get your dog.

And that was the most. Honest prayer I've ever uttered in my life. And I'm so glad that I didn't let shame stop me.

Wakil - Hmm. Hmm.

John - From grieving her in that moment.
Because It was it was also an expression of love for her, which I think, you know, I think those bonds go beyond death.

Annalouiza - Agreed.

Wakil  - Yes. Yes, definitely. Definitely. Yeah.
Well, thank you. You're doing, you're moving right through this really well. You've managed to pick up some of the questions we didn't even have to ask.

Annalouiza - Well, I wanted to just double back to how John, how do you keep yourself resourced? It sounds like as a minister.

Wakil  - Yeah. That's an important question.

Annalouiza - Right, you hold a lot of these if your parishioners in your heart you hold your characters of your book You've got, I know your spiritual director as well.
There's a lot of of parts of humanity that you bear witness to and so how do you keep yourself resourced?

John - I'm in the middle of kind of a huge grief event, at the moment. Earlier this year I suffered a sudden severe hearing loss.
I am deaf in my right ear. And we have recently discovered a brain tumor that will take the hearing in my left ear. And as you might expect the prospect of that loss is devastating.

And if I don't know how I would get through it if I didn't have people around me who Love me and uphold me. And let me know every day that, no matter what happens that I'm still gonna be held in love.
So I'm grateful for my wife. I'm grateful for the people at my church and at the church that I serve.
I'm grateful for my friends who call and say, what can I do?
I'm grateful for my prayer.
Well,  the day I received the diagnosis. About the tumor
My wife and I were walking. And. I said, what am I, what am I going to do when I go deaf and she says, well, you'll learn sign language and you'll go minister in that community.

Wakil - Yeah.

John - And I go, oh, oh yeah. It won't be the end of the world. That's That's it.

Annalouiza - Yeah, Okay.

Wakil - Okay. Okay.

John - That's exactly what I'll do. And so the next day as I was praying... I usually pray using a method that I learned from core shamanism. In that I use active imagination to basically go to Jesus' workshop and sit with him in front of the fireplace and I tell him what I'm worried about, what I hope for and what's going on that day.
And what I need help with and and we kind of cuddle. So, it's really lovely.
And so the day after I received my diagnosis. I was telling him about it.
And he said bodies break.
And I took that to mean that it wasn't my fault. And that it wasn't God's fault.

That things just happen. Bodies break. And that was comforting. And then he told me Embrace the adventure.
And I felt a thrill of hope at that and even a little bit of excitement you know yeah this is gonna be an adventure.

Wakil - Wow.

John - And then he told me to look for things to bless God for.
And you know, it doesn't matter what's going on. If I look around, there are always things to bless God for.

Wakil - Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

John - And then he promised me that there would be joy ahead.

And I don't know ever since I, after ever since that prayer session. You know, I have felt grief and I have been scared But I haven't been overwhelmed by anything. I am. I feel wonderfully supported.
I feel hopeful. I feel excited for the future.
Even as I grieve the losses that I know that are coming.
It's not it's not going to be the end of the world.
And in fact, recently I've been told that I am probably a good candidate for cochlear implant so my deafness may not even be permanent so that gives me reason for hope too.

Annalouiza - That's wonderful, John.

Wakil - Yeah. Thank you for sharing those. I love the visual of active imagination. Sitting in Jesus workshop.
I'm gonna definitely go visit that place.

John -  Oh, you will love it and he makes great hot cocoa.

Wakil - That's really sweet. Thank you. That's a very, very good example of ways that we can, anyone can find their way to comfort and I also like and think it's important that you notice the importance of accepting grief and not pushing it away and just being in it being in the grief.
And being in it with your community, including your workshop with Jesus.

Yeah, thank you. Beautiful examples.

So is there anything you wish we had asked you that you'd like to tell us about or, Annalouiza, were there any other questions that we really should be checking.

Annalouiza - Nope, the last one was what do you wish we had asked?

Wakil - Yeah.

John - Well, I don't I can't think of anything. Actually I feel I feel very complete.

Annalouiza - Thank you. So much. Yeah
 
Wakil - Great, beautiful.

John - And thank you so much for asking me. It's wonderful to have opportunities to talk about the deep things of the soul. That we don't have a place in our culture for.

Annalouiza - Exactly why we're here. Truly like you just said it and we keep I keep hoping that the more we talk about it, the more people can listen to this.
There's going to be conversations amongst people and it'll be easier and easier. To like chat about death, chat about the grief. Hey friend I'm losing a toenail. Can we do ritual around it?

John - Okay. Yes.

Wakil - Why not?

John - Yeah. Okay.

Annalouiza - Okay.  I think culturally we just always want to appear as though we have nothing going on with our internal lives or our home lives that could cast a shadow of a death and death is always considered like a body death but there's you know like we said there's so many different kinds of small deaths every single day.

John - Yeah. Oh yeah.

Annalouiza - And let's get used to it. Let's. Let's, cuddle up with it.

Wakil - Cuddle up and have a conversation.

Annalouiza -  And a cup of cocoa.

Wakil - Yeah.
A cup of cocoa, yeah. Or maybe a little whiskey.

John - Yeah.

Wakil - Well, thank you. Wow, it's been so great. Totally honor and appreciate who you are and all you do and As Annalouiza said, you were one of our favorites when we were in seminary together and we really do hope that your work continues to feed you and and that you get what you need and know that all of us and all of the folks listening hopefully have gotten so much and gained so much from your willingness to share.
Very much appreciated.

Annalouiza - Hmm. Thank you so much, John.

John - Thank you. Thank you. Further up and further in.

Annalouiza - We will end each episode with a short poem. Here is this week’s:

Life and Death
A twisted vine sharing a single root.

A water bright green
Stretching to top a twisted yellow
Only to wither itself
As another green unfolds overhead.

One leaf atop another
Yet under the next,
A vibrant tapestry of arcs and falls
All in the act of becoming.

Death is the passing of Life
And Life
Is the stringing together of so many little passings.

 ~ Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro

Wakil - Friends, we have some wonderful guests lined up. In our next episode, we’ll be hearing from Patty Bueno, a certified Grief Counselor, Dying Consciously teacher and creator of the AMORTE podcast on Death and Grief Education

Annalouiza - And we want to hear from all of you! We know there are many poignant and moving stories and we are excited to share them. You can email us at endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.