/ worship
Wednesday, August 12
Permalink

Maurice Reeder, M. D.

posted 3 months ago

Today at Saint Francis I officiated the Burial Office for Barbara Reeder, the wife of Maurice Reeder. After the committal at Druid Ridge Cemetery in Baltimore, I told Dr. Reeder that one of the things we have in common is William Beaumont General Hospital in Fort Bliss, Texas. I’d read that he had interned there.

“When were you there?” I asked him. “1958 and 1959,” he said. “Ha. We were there at the same time. I was born in 1959.” “What month were you born?” “May.” “I was there from June of 1958 to June of 1959. At the end of my internship, I concentrated on obstetrics and delivered 150 to 200 babies,” he said. “There’s a good chance that I delivered you.”

So it may be that today I helped a man commend his wife out of this world who fifty years ago brought me into it.

Friday, June 19
Permalink
“ You never know when praise might break out!
• Millard Posthuma, MD. I learned today that he died on 31st May. A close friend of Ed and Muriel White Stehouwer (my father- and mother-in-law), in 1983 Dr. Posthuma and his wife Gertrude had come up with Ed from Cadillac, Michigan to visit Mom in Marquette. We’d had dinner and were relaxing in the living room. It was customary in the White home for a passage of the Bible to be read and for a couple of hymns to be sung. Someone passed around the hymnals, Victoria got out her cello, Wes took up his guitar, and Russ sat down at the piano when suddenly Millard got up from his chair and said he’d be right back. We asked Gertrude what he was doing. “Oh, he’s just going to the car. He keeps a tambourine in the glove box,” she said and Millard, now going out the door, hollered over his shoulder, “You never know when praise might break out!” I’ve remembered him fondly for those words ever since. His obituary is here.
Wednesday, May 06
Permalink
“

‘This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!’

Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror — indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy — but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend, and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.

‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’

‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of him? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!’

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
• from The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, chapter seven, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”