When I was a small child, a new priest came to our church. Buddy had grown up Southern Baptist but had become an Episcopalian priest, and he recited the liturgy with the most fabulous, paint-peeling Southern accent. I found that his accent lent him an air of authority, or at least credibility, because most of my mother’s best friends—the village of women who helped bring me up—were Southern. At that time in my life, I perceived Southerners to be a generally no-nonsense, loud, and comforting lot of people in my life. Maybe that was part of why I absorbed what I did.
I remember a significant amount of the Easter mass from the year when I was four years old. The church was packed, and we were sitting on the left side of the aisle as a result, which was deeply disorienting (we always sat on the right). That day, Buddy gave the sermon, which was about the story of the resurrection: how the women went to the tomb, only to find the stone rolled back and the tomb itself empty. There to greet the women was an angel.
And according to Buddy, that angel’s name was Bill.
“When the women got to the tomb,” Buddy told us, “there was an angel, settin’ on the rock and swangin’ his legs. It was Angel Bill. And when the women were most amazed, he just looked down at them and smiled and said, ‘Jesus ain’t here no more.’”
Up until that point in my life, I had understood church as one of those innocuous things that Mom and Dad made us do, like clearing our plates after dinner or refilling the dog's water dish. It was just kind of part of the deal, part of our family culture. At some point I learned the term “Cradle Episcopalian,” and it made sense to me: regardless of the particular state of your faith, you had been going to church since you were a baby and could probably recite the Nicene Creed backwards and forwards.
But suddenly, here was a priest who was making these stories… well, kind of funny. Relatable. And in their own very flawed and human way, joyful.
Many, many years later, I went to Italy to study art history and found myself staring at countless frescoes, mosaics, and altarpieces depicting the scene of the women at the tomb. I would always take a private minute to grin, because I knew the Buddy version of the story and could greet that angel by name.
I said quietly, more than once in many a Roman basilica, “Hey Bill.”
In the Renaissance paintings, the angel was always perfectly beautiful, with balanced, serene features. Mannerists elongated him and took some liberties with the physics of the human body: a slightly uncomfortable, stylized beauty. If the painting were Baroque, the angel would still be beautiful, but dramatically lit and probably gesturing expansively. Nevertheless, the angel that always appealed to me most was Bill, who in my mind always looked a lot like Buddy, swangin’ his legs on the rock.
A few months after I got back from Italy, I got a call from my mom. Buddy, barely forty, had died of a heart attack.
I had not seen or spoken to the man in more than fifteen years, but that afternoon I felt a horrible creak and ache inside my ribcage. I understood, as I’ve understood before when someone I love dies, that something truly wonderful had just gone out of the world, and I cried for a good long time.
Later that day, I found Buddy’s widow’s address and wrote her a letter, describing to her my trip to Italy, my memory of the Angel Bill, and how large an impact her husband had had on my faith. She wrote back to me, a kind and wonderful letter, and included with it Buddy’s interpretation of the Ten Commandments, a photocopy of his own notes.
What I remember about what he wrote was that he saw the distance between an immaculate, haloed ideal and the lives we actually lead down here in the mud. For instance, he believed that “loving your neighbor as yourself” didn’t mean that you had to be everybody’s best friend all the time. Because, really? For the majority of us, that would drive us absolutely up the wall—and for better or worse, the whole “thou shalt not kill” thing would still apply in all cases. Buddy’s interpretation of loving your neighbor was simply wishing him or her well; that you didn’t need to drain all your own energies in harmful relationships. You just had to honestly wish good things for that person, and let it go.
I think Buddy chose the right vocation because he understood, better than anyone I have ever met, what it means to be human: to be creatures who are so intensely flawed but capable of such incredible grace. And that grace itself is not immaculate and perfectly coiffed and serene and capable of wearing white clothing without dumping mustard all over itself. Grace is messy because living a life is messy: it is funny and irreverent and stained and broken and sad and angry and constipated and waiting and hopeful and hungry and perplexed and flailing and trying to figure it out.
Grace is my contentious big sister wrapping me very firmly and protectively in her arms when I broke up with my boyfriend. It is clam chowder turning out right, and my best friend’s baby kicking in her belly when I sing “Bohemian Rhapsody” to him at the top of my lungs. Grace is taking time to be acknowledge and own the sadness of my grandfather’s illness and gloat mercilessly when I beat him at cards. Grace is loving someone with every cell in your marrow and wanting to strangle that person at the very same time. Grace is remembering from when I was four years old that the angel on the rock is named Bill.
I do not and have never believed that any one religion has cornered the market on truth, what it means to be a good person, or how to lead a good life. From my own experience, being kind, being funny, and picking up after yourself are probably the best recommendations I can make on that score—and none of those things is inherently or exclusively Christian. I generally loathe talking about my faith because I figure that what I believe is my own business—it’s between me and my higher power—but what I do think is important, especially as I get older, is how I live my life and the standards to which I hold myself.
Sometimes I feel, as I wait for people to tell me where the next stage of my life will take place, that I’ve fallen off the ride and everything is swirling around me; I have no idea how to be in motion again. My lack of patience is painful . I should be handling this more calmly. I should be more adult. I should be better.
Then I think about Buddy. I think that he would say that somehow I am being patient, in my own way, and that I don’t have to like it. I can be angry and scared, and if I’m not nasty to people and don’t kick too many things, it’s okay. We make our own sense of things, and we do the best we can. I myself am not serene and perfectly coiffed: I just didn’t come out of the box like that. So why should I expect grace in my life to be that way?
In the Episcopalian baptism, part of the blessing goes like this: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere.” Regardless of faith or whatever you do or don’t believe in, I think there are worse things to hope for than a discerning heart and the courage to persevere. I myself, just shy of two years old and deeply displeased with the entire situation, kicked, screamed, and generally raised hell (if you’ll pardon the term) throughout my own baptism. But now, twenty-five years later, those are the things I’m seeking: a discerning heart, to recognize when better is in fact better and when it’s just silly, and the courage to persevere in the face of things difficult, heartbreaking, and downright uncomfy.
Knowing at all times, of course, that both Angel Bill and Buddy have my back.
