Prayers For Melissa

so much love
when first met
rekindles treasured memories
caught again aflame
passion set blazing
one another blessing
God with us
so now journeying
on life sharing
our beloved daring
to behold caring
in our hearts
Lord, evermore carrying
world without end

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“When I thought of an art gallery…” he said, “…I imagined a world where life and death existed together. My hope is that the world might look a little different after entering and re-emerging from this space.” –Lee Ufan, a Korean-born, Japan student, Europe worker, world artist whose museum in Naoshima opened this year and whose works can be seen in harmony with architecture and nature

Upon re-reading these words above quoted in an article I read from an inflight magazine en route to Seoul this summer, it occurs to me that I myself have been in a sense through a gallery of sorts in which life and death exist together and by which we are re-emerging in time and space with re-formed perspectives. My view of the world is looking different now than it ever has before. Words appropriated from Scripture come to mind: “Love is stronger than death!” and echoing from the first question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism found in our Book of Confessions: “Our sole comfort in life and in death is that we belong wholly to the Lord our God.” With Word and Spirit in, through and upon us, we persevere in prayer to the glory of God.

A number of folks in our congregation have endearingly asked, not just how I am doing these days following my father’s and my wife’s passing over the past year, but how my family’s faring, and specifically, how are the children. For the most part, considering how much we’ve endured, my children are doing remarkably well, academically and otherwise. Each has moments when waves of emotion may come and go, though overall, we continue to feel and know God’s grace carrying us through. We are thankful to have my mom (their “Lola”) with us in the aftermath of our loss. The love and care we have experienced together as a family of faith in compassionate community has been very heartening for us, even especially now in hindsight of the last several months. It is with a deeply grateful heart that I write to you in these weeks leading up to the end of the church’s liturgical year.

As I type, we approach the end of a fourteen hour flight from Chicago to Abu Dhabi en route to points of interest in India where I and eighteen other fellow pastors in the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program are embarking on the culminating study tour of our inaugural fellowship sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. These are among the same ministers who have sojourned with us in the midst of a very challenging ordeal, providing gratis pulpit supply, prayers and much support during such trying times. Along with other clergy spouses during our voyage to Mexico a year ago, Melissa and I bonded with these treasured colleagues in ministry. While I was not entirely sure just a few months prior whether the Lord would have me go on this trip that had been planned over two years ago (given what my family has been going through in the nine months leading up to it), I believe that in honoring the covenant we made with one another in our fellowship, this will be yet another transformative experience for us, much like my family’s pilgrimage to the Philippines this summer was spiritually. As such, in my absence, I am pleased to once again welcome to preach for our Sunday worship services at the end of this month the Rev. Dr. Bob Hunter and the Rev. Dr. Rose Niles through the generosity of Lilly Endowment, Inc.

The fact that I am led of the Lord to travel apart from my family at this time serves as indication concerning where we are in the journey of God’s healing grace through the ongoing process of grief. Though we may have come far to this point, we have yet a ways to go. I have informed church leadership in recent months of a number of counseling opportunities afforded to me and my family in this season of ministry. We are currently on a waiting list with Brooke’s Place in Indianapolis. This is an organization that provides grief support groups for families with children, free of charge. There is much high regard and good reports about the work of this organization. Their philosophy of care resonates with respect to carefully directed attention tailored especially for children. In addition, I have begun the first of six free sessions over the next six months with a licensed counselor as part of the benefits for ministers of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA). While this benefit is also available to my college-aged dependents, they also have counseling available to them on campus.

It is remarkable for me to try to comprehend what the Lord has done in our ministry together at First Presbyterian Church, New Castle, Indiana. I am experiencing now a greater freedom in the Lord to venture anew in fresh, renewing ways for the mission and ministry we have been called to accomplish together here. Please keep on keeping on praying more and more increasingly so for God’s revelation and for the Lord’s revival among us yet to be and already being manifested in our midst. I know this is not me, but the Holy Spirit working all things for good. May we all be lifted up in the Lord’s presence to greater heights for God’s glory.

In Christ,

Pastor Rex

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once awhile

throughout day

tinges sadness

pits loneliness

wants longing

loss lingering

feelings fleeting

passing evening

nights dreaming

away sleeping

awhile staying

once again

breathing

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When something or someone dear and precious is taken from us, especially with regard to a significant and abiding relationship, a deep and profound sense of loss can be experienced that influences and affects the lens through which we see, perceive or comprehend our current circumstances. We cannot help but to not have any situation we might encounter from that point on become somehow understood in the wake of such an event as seminal as that in our life’s journey.

Even, and maybe especially, events leading up to and prior to our experience of loss can be seen in a new light. It is as if blinders that we had not been aware of previously had been suddenly removed and the scales from one’s eyes taken away. Not unlike Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus in Acts 9, a “Come to Jesus” moment ensues upon us and we hear the Lord speaking to our heart and soul with renewed clarity and strength of conviction.

An opportunity for reflection and introspection occurs to us and, if welcomingly received, submitted and surrendered to, and taken advantage of by being given ample time to process through, can allow us to listen well to the voice of the spirit within us. Our interactions, focus and perspectives are then exposed to new light shed upon us in the Lord under the severe mercy and greater grace of a sovereign God.

Such has been my own experience over the past year. There has been at once a deeply profound remorse and regret at my own failings before the Lord and others such that at times in the recent past, I could not bear the weight of guilt, grief, shame, brokenness and sadness apart from sensing, knowing and experiencing the love, prayers, encouragement and support of many upholding us in the Spirit.

It is a terrible thing to face the Lord Who truly sees us and meets us in the presence of one another, speaking the truth in love, presenting an opportunity to fess up, be real, and come clean over and over again, and as the apostle Paul reminds us, to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” It can be, as one of my late, well-loved and much appreciated seminary professors might say, “a deeply humbling, transforming moment.”

All this is to share a perspective with you that from this moment on, I am pursuing the Lord and seeking to serve God’s people in this time and place with a passion and purpose that I am not sure I have ever experienced before. If the enemy of our souls had thought that by taking away my most precious beloved we would be deterred from rising above our situation and beholding the Lord sustaining and lifting us up further for God’s glory, he’s got another thing coming. Out of these ashes, beauty will indeed most assuredly arise! Watch out as the Lion of Judah moves us with a fresh fire in the fervor of the Spirit of the Lord. As it says in the Scriptures, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall accomplish this!

Thank you to all of you who are embarking on the journey together with one another anew as evidenced by many who attended this past Rally Day Sunday’s activities. It is with a deep sense of gratitude and awe that I pledge to serve alongside with you as the Lord equips us to serve one another in love. May the joy of the Lord be our strength as we seek in partnership to rebuild our community through Christ, renew our fellowship in the Spirit, and transform people by God’s grace. To this end, I remain and continue

Prayerfully yours, and His

Pastor Rex

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It has been a record year in the life of the Espiritu household at New Castle, Indiana. Much has gone on in our lives together as a family that is worthy of time spent for shared reflection in retrospect toward preparing and propelling us forward in faith with renewed zeal, fervor and vision for the glory of the Lord our God in Christ.

On 9/11, 2010 marked the passing of my father Mariano G. Espiritu. Six months later on March 13, following an intense bout with cancer, my wife Melissa would go on to be at home in eternity with the Lord. On what would have been Melissa’s 50^th birthday weekend in July our family celebrated our youngest child Sara Joy’s 7^th birthday near the Golden Gate Bridge in the San Francisco Bay area where Melissa and I had spent some wonderful times together early on in our marriage. And on the 23^rd anniversary of our wedding in August afterward, our six daughters and I remembered their mother upon our arrival in the capital of the Philippines where I was born. These are among the milestones and memory markers we have been enduring through our shared journeys of faith over the past year.

During our time this month in the land of my birth, we visited a museum honoring some recent martyrs for the cause of liberty and justice through peaceful democratic reforms opposing a previous dictatorial regime’s human rights abuses. One of the names listed on the memorial stone wall there was that of my mother’s older brother. My uncle Francisco, an outspoken leader for freedom in his township, had been tortured and killed when abducted by some henchmen of one of the Marcos regime’s political cronies on the eve of the snap election(s) that had been apparently rigged in favor of the incumbent dictatorship a few decades ago. It was at this place of honored remembrance that we found another, for us, notable name recorded among the earlier vocal leaders speaking out against the then emerging dictator’s crimes against humanity. At a time when other ecclesiastical leaders among the clergy in the Philippines were silent, the Rev. Cirilo A. Rigos voiced opposition against the oppression of what would later manifest as martial law.

Before Melissa and I ever met, this Presbyterian pastor who ministered to my sister and me and our parents during my early childhood in Manila had also ministered with Melissa, her parents and sisters while having had his training in ministry at their childhood church in Rochester, New York. Upon reading of his justice work in the plight of the Filipino people, we so very much sensed the Lord’s Providence in our lives together through the generations as God’s will continues to be worked out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

Not unlike I would imagine the greatest generation’s remembrances of seminal events in the North Atlantic theater of World War II might be along the beaches of Normandy and elsewhere in Europe, our family spent significant times toward the end of our last week along the shores of Subic Bay and the island of Corregidor remembering the remarkable events of WWII in the theater of the South Pacific among the waters between Asia and Australia. After touring an old lighthouse and presiding over a brief memorial service at an old Spanish mission’s island chapel, it was there by the dock at the end of the pier on the south side beach of Corregidor that we were blessed to share in solemn solitude the spreading of my father’s ashes upon the wind over the waters at the mouth of Manila Bay near the South China Sea. It was more heartening for me than I had expected or could ever dream for us to experience honoring the memory of my father and his service during WWII in this way at this time and place. We were blessed with such good weather and people with us on that special day among all the days of our travels.

Thank you, Beloved, for your prayers and support of our family in the work of grief and faith this year. In the words of General Douglas MacArthur, not only “I shall return,” but we are glad to have returned home. In God’s Grace and Peace, with you and yours, together we continue

Pastor Rex

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There

is

a deep dull ache

as far down

as the ocean’s depth

the towering tip

of a tremendous iceberg

submerged

in immensely vast seas

of utter grief

No place else to be

will not ever be forgotten

not to be lost for ever more

a colossal displacement

a huge void

an infinite, unfulfilled emptiness

a large, inestimable volume of silence

an unspeakable expanse

the extent of which is unfathomable, unknown

Yet

there

is

One Who is, was, and is to come

able

Immeasurably more

Exceedingly, abundantly

Far above, all

any could

ask, think, even imagine

glorious, holy, anointed, mighty

to save, heal, fill, restore

blessing, power, glory and honor forever and ever

Now and not yet

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A Celebration of Women: an evening in honor of Melissa Espiritu

Description

A Celebration of Women

an evening dedicated to the life of

Melissa Espiritu

All mothers, daughters, sisters, friends

please join us!

First Presbyterian Church, New Castle, IN

Monday, May 10, 2010 at 5:00 p.m.

Salad pitch-in with chocolate fountain of goodies provided for dessert!

Music by John Lansinger

Speaker: Annette Goggin

For reservations, please contact the church

office@NewCastleFPC.org

              765.529.3703         765.529.3703

http://NewCastleFPC.org

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There is a silence of the heart

that exists in empty nothingness

An unspeakably deep void

Where memories of a loved one

dwell, coalesce

For ever embedded in the recesses

of one’s mind

A timeless, untimely place, eternally

wanting, yearning, aching, numbing

A frontier-less space, vast as the cosmos

From whence eyes remain unlifted

Upon which ears stay unstopped

A motionless state of being, unmet

When all that is

dearly beloved and treasured

stands

still

speechless

Don’t ask me

how I am

Do not disturb

the fathomless depths

of unknowable peace

Dare not approach

the intimate cloud of unknowing

Immortal, Invisible, Inaccessible

welling up

with a bowl

of profound intercessions

in perpetuity

Stay with me

Pray with me

Belay with me

When words fail

Where sentiments assail

Whether unspoken or unexpressed

Let

silence

unsounded

be

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A Service of Witness to

Celebrate the Resurrection and the Life in memory of

Melissa Q. Espiritu

July 10, 1960 – March 13, 2010

Organ Prelude    Trumpet Voluntary    Jeremiah Clark

Andrea Hughes

Musical Offering    My Tribute/God is So Good

Ed Dimangondayao

His Eye is on the Sparrow

Sophie and Daniel Buchanon

Opening Words    Pastor Bob Maravalli

Prayer of Invocation

*Songs of Praise    Awesome God

Blessed Be Your Name

Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone

Old Testament Lesson    Psalm 118    Pastor Rose Niles

Personal Reflections    Carmen Cash

*Song of Thanksgiving    Great Is Thy Faithfulness

New Testament Lessons

John 14:1-6    Pastor Clark Hobbey

2 Corinthians 4:15-5:7        Pastor Jeff Gramza

*Hymn    It Is Well With My Soul

Romans 8:18-39

Musical Offering    With Hope    Steven Curtis Chapman

Levi Velasco    

 

Meditation “Is There Life After Life?” Pastor Bob
 

Prayer and The Lord’s Prayer

Offering of Music    You Raise Me Up

Levi and Diane Velasco

Ed Dimangondayao

Andrea and Bryan Hughes

Charge

Benediction

*Song of Assurance    In Christ Alone

Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend

*Declaration of Victory over Death

*Postlude    Tocatta    Widor

* Please stand as you are able.

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Service of Witness to the Resurrection – Melissa Q. Espiritu (1 of 5) from Rex Espiritu on Vimeo.

Service of Witness to the Resurrection – Melissa Q. Espiritu (2 of 5) from Rex Espiritu on Vimeo.

Service of Witness to the Resurrection – Melissa Q. Espiritu (3 of 5) from Rex Espiritu on Vimeo.

Service of Witness to the Resurrection – Melissa Q. Espiritu (4 of 5) from Rex Espiritu on Vimeo.

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