Ordination newspaper photo.

The last few days I’ve thought it would be good if I could just jot down a few of my memories about my Aunt Margaret.

I find myself in writer’s block so chronically (which is a fear of writing things, really) that to write about anything meaningful is good for me. But moreso, it’s just a chance to be informal about my aunt and who she was to me.

If I was to write a story about Margaret, I would ask the basic questions: where was she born? What was he birth order? Did she have siblings? Were they near or far in age from her? Such things inform relationships within the narrative.

In Margaret’s case, she was the third of three children. She was the youngest child. She was also the only girl amongst her siblings. So she grew up as the youngest child and the only girl in her family.

It was new to me, in the obituary-building process, to learn that early on Margaret thought she would end up working in a hospital. It is not surprising, as it is a caring profession, and caring was a part of her make up, but I just did not know that.

In the end, theology and pastoral care caught her attention as a young woman, and she wanted her life to be built on a career that involved her faith. Her years attending the family’s Presbyterian church had had that impact on her. Her undergraduate degree from Tulsa University was a Bachelors of Science in Christian Education. And she wanted to translate the hope and encouragement she had experienced in her faith journey to others in places of struggle.

After I attended seminary, back in 1994, when I was still somewhat young and more enthusiastic (“en-theos”, in the Greek sense), I didn’t know what next step to take in my life. I went to seminary out of a wholehearted endorsement of the primacy of Scripture and the Christian Gospel as a necessary corrective for the woes in this world, but I did not see myself as a preacher. I did not feel mature enough to lead a church. But I did want to serve somehow as a voice and a pair of hands in church life. My aunt had discovered medical chaplaincy as a career a number of years into her vocational journey. By talking with me about her experiences as a hospital chaplain, my path took me to Houston, Texas, for nearly a year to explore chaplaincy myself. It was closer to the type of ministry I saw myself best fitted for- one-on-one connection and counseling- but I was not wired for the crisis aspects of it. She was.

Margaret’s friends knew her as Maggie. When I was little, I guess I couldn’t pronounce Maggie, and ended up calling her “Aunt Buggy”. So she was never Maggie to me, or to the rest of our family after that time. I only knew her as Aunt Buggy all of my life.

When I was in a Southern Baptist seminary, I discovered a Lutheran pastor/author I came to admire excessively- and it was in part because of Margaret. A child of the 60’s, Margaret had developed in a theological climate that was animated, and from it she commended that Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to me, as well as Paul Tillich and the Niebuhr brothers, among other existential Christian authors that were prominent while she was a seminary student. And oddly enough, I found in them and their existential approach to life questions some arguments and answers that gave me comfort. She also introduced me to Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton.

Some time after I completed the chaplaincy internship and found myself depleted by it, I returned back to New Mexico and scrabbled up a basic tech job in a computer store, feeling miserable at my failure to become a Christian professional of some sort. She then gave me a copy of a book she thought might help me: “If You Meet Buddha on the Road, Kill Him” by Sheldon Kopp. I put off reading it for a number of years, but when I started reading it, I stayed with it steadily for a week, finishing it rapidly. It was a refreshing raw book reflecting on the psychotherapy pilgrimages taken by a range of people, through them also asking and answering for the reader some common therapeutic questions, and it challenged the reader to take control of their life and the meaning they found in it. I realize today it is a book I need to re-read.

“Don’t spend your life following everyone else around to find out from them what is most meaningful in it for you.”

Margaret also influenced me to read “The Road Less Travelled” and the other books by M. Scott Peck. We shared a deep interest in the mechanics of the human mind and soul, and in dynamics related to the interaction of heart and soul, and person with person. She was a strong fan of his for a long season.

Margaret loved QVC. She also loved Suzy Orman financial planning materials. And workshop tools and nails and screws and boards. She loved Garrison Keillor broadcasts and books. She also loved campaign, slogan, photo, and bling buttons. She loved her many pets.

To my surprise, in the late 1990’s, our personal dedications to the Chicago Cubs were revealed as a common passion, and they become a shared interest. Margaret had liked the Cubs and the Kansas City Chiefs each for quite some time, and she was able to see each team win a league championship in the handful of years before her death.

In paperwork from her home recovered after her passing, Margaret had carefully detailed out the extent of her assets and personal accounts, and had made careful requests about things to do related to her estate after she was gone, including directions for her services, her obituary, and her internment. She had been prepared for her death and accepted as another part of life, as she had witnessed such a struggle and finality in hundreds of thepeople she walked and worked with in hospital and ICU and emergency rooms. She was not afraid of it.

My aunt, to me, was always been a strong woman. I know she had to be. She was a lifetime single, despite an opportunity or two to marry. She had some deep wounds that I think were exacerbated later in her life. She withdrew from family and friends later in her retirement, which to me is the result of some deep personal hurts in her life, among other things.

Margaret loved Christmas, and all of the decor that came with the season- from Christmas trees to Christmas yards. This makes sense to me, if anything, because of the hallowed status of the birth of Christ.

That’s a little about my Aunt Buggy, lover of cats and patron of Po. A very little, indeed.

“Life is complex.
Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another…The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness. ”
― Scott Peck