In our church this year we have had close to a dozen funerals already. More so than all of last year. Though I didn't go to all of them I attended those who I knew or thought I knew quite well and joined the celebration of their life and the committal into the hands of the Saints. As always with me, though they were my friends of long-standing, and core members of the church we shared, I always knew less about them than I thought I knew and it was always a revelation when family and intimates from the past described the base of the mountain that formed the structure of my friend. It is like flying above the clouds and looking at the mountain tops, knowing your friend from that vantage point but missing the arduous but dedicated rising to the top that went on for the many years where you were not there and knew not what. The better glimpse of my friend I was always privileged to see is never to vision the crags and shear of the great mountain they climbed, but to hear it once, to know the mountain top, and to be content in the rest for them in the arms of the Saints. It is enough.
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