For Leanne

There are people who draw attention to themselves. They are flashy or loud or do big things that can't be ignored. And because of that, folks are convinced that such people are more important than the rest. But there are lots of people who are none of those things but who keep things running or who otherwise make the world a better place. Leanne was not flamboyant or noisy or given to grandiose gestures. She was sweet and down to earth with a wry sense of humor. And she made the world a better place.

And while she was not one to make a spectacle of herself, she did have an eye for, well, not so much spectacle as beauty. She loved beauty and she tried to capture it in her art. She even saw beauty in dead trees. She painted live ones too, and landscapes. Several of us have her paintings.

And she sought beauty through travel. She went to Alaska with her parents. She went to Europe with her mother. She went to Mexico with her nephews. She went to New York with her daughter and her choir. She went to Australia by herself. To look at a big rock: Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, over 1000 feet high. And she saw in it the same raw beauty she saw in dead trees. And she painted it.

She was also fortunate to be one of those people who loved her job, not only as a librarian but as a storyteller. She loved going to conferences for storytellers. She loved sharing stories and sharing her love of books with children at the story hour and igniting their imaginations.

One day her little nephew was crying about an orangutan who was run over by a Volkswagen. At least in his imagination. She entered into his imagination and they expanded the story and gave his imaginary friend a proper burial.

She entered into the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. She read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy often. Its page count is roughly that of the Bible and she could read the whole saga in a weekend!

Stories are the main way that we humans make sense of the world. Stories give everything meaning and our actions purpose. And this is why we have problems when someone like Leanne endures suffering and tragedy without a final triumph.

12 years ago Leanne had a stroke in the middle of the night. She was not discovered till morning. Doctors operated on her brain and stopped a life-threatening bleed. Ultimately their efforts left her alive but unfortunately they did not leave her intact. She lost control of much of her body. Nevertheless gradually her brain healed to a greater degree than we had hoped and her personality asserted itself and her wry sense of humor returned. She couldn't do much of what she had previously but she was still Leanne.

She lived the rest of her life in nursing homes. Her family watched over her and helped her and visited her and took her out for holidays and special occasions. They mastered ordering and driving vans for the disabled and securing her in them and in her wheelchair and built a ramp for the house her daughter and son-in-law  and niece lived so she could be brought there. We all talked with her over the phone...when she didn't call us during work or in the middle of the night. Leanne retained her love of travel, planning trips for her and for her friend. She wanted to visit my wife and me in Florida and go fishing with her brother. The logistics were often unworkable but she never stopped dreaming of travel.

What happens to our unfulfilled dreams? We spend a lot of time and energy and creativity on them. Is it all for naught? Since science tells us that energy cannot be destroyed, what happens to the energy we expend in dreaming, planning and creating?

There is another story that Leanne used to give her life meaning and purpose. It is the story we find in that book that is just about as long as Lord of the Rings. It is the gospel. Leanne put her trust in the good news that our Creator loves his creation and love us his creatures. That he does not desire that our stories end in disease, disability and death. That he entered into his creation in the person of his Son to tell and show us his love and healing. He too suffered pain and death. But that was not the end of his story. He rose and promises to all who follow him that death is not the end of their story, either. As we read in Revelation, just as God resurrected his Son, he will resurrect his creation. Though we have taken the paradise God gave us and done our best to turn it into hell on earth, he will restore it and renew it and recreate it and repopulate it. He will make us into what he created us to be: his children reflecting the God whom we experience as our heavenly Father, who is the very idea of love, and his Son, the incarnation of that love and his Spirit, the one who instills that love in us. As we read, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more—nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have ceased to exist. And the one seated on the throne said, 'Look! I am making all things new!'” That's good news.

If Leanne's story ended for good a week ago, if there is no sequel, then this is an unjust world. If there is no afterlife and no God who is love, there is no justice and no hope in this universe. But if there is another chapter to her story, one of restoration and renewal and healing and triumph, then this is just the part of the story where Gandalf faces the Balrog and falls into the abyss. And we know that one day we will seem him again in splendor.

And I can't think of a better way to paint the picture of our hope than the way Tolkien's good friend C.S. Lewis, without whose encouragement we would not have the Lord of the Rings, brought his own epic The Narnia Chronicles to an end: “But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All of their life in this world and all of their adventures...had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

See you again one day, Leanne. Can't wait to see the new paintings and hear all your new stories.