Grace Church, Utica, NY – Thursday November 19, Part 1

This was a blogger meet up of a different natue….While having met others before, last night’s  was of a different nature, as it was occurring because of Rev. Jim Jensen’s Requiem Eucharist. For those who do not know, Jim was the husband of Klady or Kathy.  (I hope that Kathy does not mind that I am using photos from her blog for this post. I especially love the baptism photo below – and as we all know death is a part of our baptismal promise, an act connect to death but filled with hope.)

The church, which you can see at the top, is quite stunning. I entered and got into a line of people waiting to pay their respects to Fr. Jim. As I did not know him in life, I could not say if he looked “good” – whatever that means. I do know that a body remains, but a soul has already gone onto the Kingdom and is deep within the heart of God. However, Fr. Jim did look exactly as his photo shows him, a handsome man and vested for his last Holy Eucharist.

After a brief prayer, in which every member of our community was in my heart I took a few steps towards Kathy. She took one look at me and a huge smile covered her face as she said “Fran?!” We embraced tightly. I am not typically at a loss for words, even at funereal events – tonight I stammered a bit and said that I was there on behalf of everyone, especially Jane, Mimi, Shelley and Doxy – as well as so many others. Kathy told me how grateful she was for what we all have out here. She felt so much love and support during the time from Jim’s death forward. I quickly moved on.  (Shelley aka PseudoPiskie, was at the funeral of George Bland, father of blogger Janis Bland and couldn’t make it to Utica.)

A few minutes later I saw someone I knew would be there, Rev. Lauren Gough who blogs as Muthah+ both here and here; what a joy to meet her even under these circumstances. She has the most beautiful smile and I further felt the enormous generosity of heart and spirit that I had experienced on her blogs and in email.

The place was awash in Episcopal clergy and I will write more about that at another time. The entire church hall was very, very busy as you can imagine. Seconds after meeting I looked up and saw the Rev. Mark Giroux. You are right to say “who?” Mark is not a blogger, but in a crazy small world thing I actually know him otherwise. It was at St. Mark’s that Jim Jensen fell ill on Saturday. We chatted for a moment and I was further moved by how, as Fr. Mark had written to me in an email, “It astonishes me how the internet seems so often to expand the circle of God’s love.”

A little while later I had the chance to meet another blogger, one who is anonymous on his blog, but who I have gotten the chance to know via email. That would be none other than +Clumber. He was very discreet and The Right Rev. Gladstone B. Adams III who is the Bishop of CNY did not even realize that another bishop was present! I love that kind of clerical humility, that is all I can say.

I am going to break this up into more than one post, so this one will close here; more to follow.

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