Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote:

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind
Quiet they go the intelligent, the witty and the brave
I know. But I do not approve and I am not resigned.

There is not a person here who approves of a heart attack that claims the life of one still so young with so much left to do.... nighttime prayers with children, graduations, board meetings, retirement, courts of honor, anniversaries, mountains to climb. His mother who brought him into this world, his siblings who grew up with him, his wife, his children, his friends, his colleagues and others who shared significant aspects of his life....We do not approve but at the hour of his death when it finally gave way to his birth into new life guaranteed him at his baptism we were resigned ... resigned to what could not be changed but never as a people without hope. Hope is what brought you here today ... a reasonable and holy hope grounded in your life with Lyman and the Gospel words that say without flinching and apology in my Father's house are many rooms and if it were not so would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there you might be also.

In the week following Lyman's heart attack ... in the first days where there was the hope of hope... a child offered to Lyman's family an original picture as a gift and a prayer. Some of you may have seen it. It sat on the center of a table in the CCU waiting room for quite a while.

A series of colorful sketches drawn on a half a sheet of paper front and back telling the story of other rooms in salvation history.... Christ's birth, flight from Egypt through the desert, arrest, crucifixion, entombment and then empty tomb.... No words ... just simple drawings in the hand of a child that said all that needed to be said eventually pointing those who sat in that waiting room toward a hope of life beyond life that would begin at the brink of a grave... a grave yes... but a gate also into a life yet to be known by those of us who mourn here. We are led by a child's communication just as Lyman led a number of children his own and others to new places. He made the journey with his five children, countless scouts some of whom others had given up on, youth being educated at the Waldorf School and others he encountered in his work at UNC. Lyman led them into wilderness where they learned to survive on their own and with others, he led them into new landscapes where they learned ways of seeing what had been around them all along, he led them into new understandings about themselves ... In his quiet way he led them ... sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. In order to possess what you do not possess wrote the poet T. S. Eliot you must go by way of dispossession.

His last gift to those who loved him and lived with him and struggled with him was giving them a chance to say their peace and to make peace, to say thank you, to form new relationships and heal old ones and to say God speed on this your journey into the fullness of life. We received in the letting go and that letting go will be different for each and every person who knew him and loved him.

When Lisa and I were planning the funeral we were talking about prayers for the Eucharist and I mentioned one where he could be called a saint and she started laughing and said he was no saint and certainly none of us are in the sense we often describe a saint ... namely someone beyond fault or extra virtuous .... the church understands a saint to be someone who is faithful and who is willing to run the race and who tries as best they can to do what they think God would have them do and when they can't... hope to one day be able. So it was with Lyman ... he wanted to be in so many places at once doing so many different things.

One place you could always find him was here each week sitting over the course of the past thirty years with one of his children in these first pews as they sang beside him or in the choir. He has unlocked many a door on these grounds as warden even as he has unpacked his car in the parking lot countless times from a camping trip with the Scouts. His children were baptized here and he was married here and he will be buried here. He is part of our community now even as he takes his place as part of the communion of saints in the life to come.

The past weeks have been hard as Lyman went from death to life into very limited life into death and now into life again. It was an act of giving birth out of a mortal body that threatened to be a tomb... resurrection. Annie Dillard wrote I think the dying pray at the last, not "please" but "thank you." I know Lyman thanks you for having the courage to sit vigil with him while he passed from this life into the next and now we thank God for the life of Lyman Alonzo Ripperton. We thank God for the hope that is to come for all of us in a house with many dwelling places. Into God's merciful hands we commend him. Into paradise may the angel lead him and may he be in the presence of God who made him and loves him and welcomes him home again.