Excerpts from Popi's Memorial Service

The following is an excerpt from my father-in-law's memorial service. I was speaking:

I've been in this situation many times before--speaking at a memorial service for a friend, or a church member, or a cherished professor, or my grandmother, or my father, or my mother, and now my father-in-law's service-- and the challenge is always the same:

 

How do you sum up a person's life in an hour? (actually more like 30 minutes) Answer--it's impossible. The best you can do is consider aloud certain characteristics that represent the soul of the individual, and then allow each listener to take one or more with them as they return home, or to their work, or wherever they go when they leave here, to contemplate them, and, sometimes, to emulate them.  For the few sacred minutes we have this afternoon set aside for this purpose, I will attempt to paint with amateur brush strokes a portrait of UryJoseph Armand, Jr. (a.k.a. 'Popi'), but I readily and unashamedly admit that this portraiture will be impressionistic rather than photographic. Photographic realism comes from knowing facts--what's contained in the obituary, biographical information. Impressionism comes from knowing life-- attitudes, animation, words, relationships,emotions. There is a place for photographs (like the slide show before the service), but even then their power is in the memories they trigger and feelings they generate inside of us. What I'm trying not to trip over my tongue to say is how tragic it would be for us to walk away from here this afternoon only having learned a few facts about Ury that we didn't know before-- that he attended Catholic elementary school, entered DeLa Salle Normal School in Lafayette, Louisiana as a junior novitiate, worked as a collections agent, sold work shoes in retirement, passed away on Wednesday, February 5, 2014.

 

No, what we really want is a strong impression of the man and how it might help us to be a little more like ourselves, the selves God intends us to be.

 

By the way, that's the reason we turn so hungrily to the Psalms. If you read them purely to learn some facts about King David or Asaph or theSons of Korah, you will put the book down and walk away disappointed. But if you want to learn a heart, if you dare to expose yourself to raw emotion, honest doubt, even unfiltered anger, read the hymns of the Old Testament like starving vagrant groping for bread or like a desert stranded man gulps water from a canteen. Listen again to the heartfelt impressions in Psalm 30...

Can you see him?  Do you have an impression of the charming man that he was?  I have pondered long what it was about Popi that was so charming, so endearing.  He was not perfect; he had his faults as we all do.  The best way I know to explain his charisma is something Frederick Buechner wrote: "They had caught something of Christ. Something of who he was and it flickered out through who they were." There's my answer -- Ury had caught something of Christ, and it flickered through.