Go Fish

The Orthodox Church lost a great man this past week, but few will pay much mind. My Reader, the newly-reposed Servant of God +Douglas, was never one for celebrity and fame.

But I will say this, and mark it down clear: I never knew a more Christian man. And today, I grieve that we are here to bury him ...

The first time I met him was on my very first week here in Pittsburgh. I met him in the same place that I last saw him, just days ago -- in the hospital, of course. He joked (of course): “I’m a hick.” I said, “so am I.” Then he said, “I do a lot of fishing.” I told him that was where we parted company, because the fish generally snicker when they see me coming, and wink and nudge each other with their fins when they see me cast.

On that hospital bed in Shadyside, he said, “We can fix that. Someday, we’ll go.”

I’m still waiting.

Jesus once told Peter, after a large haul of fish, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Doug was like that: he followed Jesus straight-away and obeyed His Church. Consequently, God made Reader Douglas a fisher of men ... and women ... and alcoholics, drug addicts, hopeless cases, street panhandlers, failures and washed out people ...

... a fisher of just folk, people like you and me.

We are all here today as part of that great big haul of fish that Reader Douglas pulled in, in Orthodox service to the Chief Fisherman’s saving commands.

I am here today to talk about obligation -- yours and mine. We are all obliged. We are all sunk deep in debt up to our eyeballs.

Some of you here today are no longer drunks simply because of your meeting up with Doug.

Some of you here today are not in jail because Doug was faithful to his Lord.

Some of you here today still have your children, still have your house, still have a job and are still off the streets because Doug rescued you.

Some of you are even alive because Doug prayed for you late in the night when you were busy doing whatever you were doing, destroying yourself, and because this simple man was willing to go out late just to haul your drunk self back to detox, or to talk your sorry self out of a suicidal hole.

All of us here, and all of us here at St. John’s, and all the way to Alaska and back to DC -- all of us are better men and women because we met the life of Jesus Christ in the voice, and in the hands, and in the fellowship of this humble fisherman, +Reader Douglas.

I am here to talk about obligation, because any time that we are saved by the love of Jesus, we become obligated. There is now a great big debt to pay to God to make things right. There is now restitution to be made. We were given a gift in this man: it is now high time to send God a thank you note, and to show our gratitude.

How do we pay back?

We all need to live better, and to love a whole lot more.

Some of you here from AA need to get to work quickly to find a new sponsor: you know Doug wants me to tell you that. Don’t waste time just being depressed because your sponsor is getting buried today: get your Recovery back on track, and soon.

Some of you need to make amends and make restitution to people you’ve hurt. You need to forgive the people who’ve done you wrong ... you need to get your emotions and passions under control. You need to quit backstabbing and cutting people down at the dinner table.

Some of you need to get to back to Church every Sunday, and to make things right with the God Who wants to save you: after all, this is what Douglas did in spades.

You need to know that despite Doug’s increasingly weak and feeble body, he insisted on coming to this place, to worship the Holy Trinity in the apostolic way. You saw him sit on a chair in the back, and you might have wondered why. I will tell you: the only reason why he sat was simply because he could not physically stand.

Reader Douglas was the only person that I ever begged not to come to Liturgy, so sick he would be sometimes. But I guess you know how that suggestion turned out.

Many times, Doug and I talked about how Church and AA were related ... I came to think that Doug saw the Orthodox Church as a kind of “super-duper AA” ... and watching him live out the rest of his life, I came to agree with him.

The Church picks up where AA leaves off, where it cannot go ... the AA can save your body, but Jesus Christ and His Church alone can save your soul.

In AA, you introduce yourselves like this: “Hello, my name is John, and I am an alcoholic.” And you say, “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

In the Orthodox Church, we say: “I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth ... and in Jesus Christ His Only-Begotten Son.”

And in this Church we introduce ourselves like this: “Hello, my name is Jonathan, and I am a sinner.”

AA is good for this time and place. But the Orthodox Church is for this world, this age, and the next.

There are a million reasons why I will miss Doug. To be honest, I am trying to avoid the thought of all of them. Sure, I am happy for Doug right now, for he is now resting in the bright presence of Grace, and in the glory of Jesus Christ, and in the fellowship of the Virgin Mary and all the saints. I know that his meeting up with his beloved Saint Herman has been poignant, to say the least.

But two reasons remain, and I feel I must share them with you.

The first is simple. Doug was faithful. He never threatened to quit because someone had hurt his feelings. He never accumulated a list of people he no longer talked to. I never heard a discouraging word from Doug about anyone.

Honest to God, Doug never -- at least in my hearing -- complained about or slandered or maligned anyone. His speech was restrained from vulgar, bitter and swearing words: he told me that he prayed "Set a guard, O Lord, about my lips." He said that he especially tried to clean up his speech, since he was Orthodox clergy.

Mind you, he was a Reader, not even a Priest.

And Doug made it clear to me that when the doors were open here at St. John’s, he would be here if it were at all physically possible. He said that he would stay here, at this Altar, till Kingdom come. I could count on Doug showing up, in the fear of God, with faith and with love.

He could never understand quitters and tumbleweeds. He’d always say that he had no time in his own life for feeling sorry for himself.

The second reason is a little more complicated.

It started this past Lent. I think it was around the Third Sunday, when we venerate the Cross smack dab in the middle of our annual Revival that we call the Great Fast.

I remember clearly, and painfully, watching Doug come into the sacristy here. I was suiting up for the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy on Friday night, and looked up to see him shaking, tears streaming down his haggard face.

He explained: “A guy called me last night ... he was a drunk and he was going to court ... he wanted to kill himself ... I tried for half an hour to talk him down ...

“... he shot himself on the phone ... I heard the shots and the roar ...”

There are lots of things in this sinful age that human nature does not prepare you for. There are some things that you cannot recover from. There are grievous wounds that cannot be mended here in this frame, this body, under these skies.

And hearing those shots from a drunk despairing man was something that the weak body of +Reader Douglas could not stand.

Things were better for a while. The St. John’s Church helped Doug help the young wife and children of the man on the phone. After Pascha this year, Doug finally fulfilled a long dream of going up to visit Alaska, where he made his one and only pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Herman on Spruce Island.

I hear the Yupik Orthodox priests up there really liked him: I’m also sure the regular curia didn’t know what to make of him. He was always a tad unsettling to those who had to have things whitebread and regular.

But lately his body began to fail, and he could never get the sound of those gunshots out of his mind.

He began to hurt. And one day, while he was under a respirator lately at Shadyside, whilst he was lying unconscious, it came to me clear that it was time.

Time for a Sabbath rest.

Time to go home.

This faithful servant had been out laboring at night in the deep, fishing for the Lord, long enough.

I miss him because we all benefitted from him: but our benefit from Doug -- as is always true in the sharing fellowship of the Body of Christ -- usually came at a cost to him.

Doug bore his Cross for Jesus Christ: and quite often, that Cross was us.

So, I must admit to you, when Doug’s friend (and mine) Tyrone came and knocked on my office window late Thursday night and came, through a rain of tears, and told me the news, I was kind of relieved, if you must know.

Sure, I was sad. But I was glad. Because a certain grief had been lifted from a man who had carried it way too long.

A certain cross had been lifted from a long-weary back.

A certain ex-drunk had been told, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

I have Doug’s prize fishing pole.

I will keep it unto the day that we can make good on that Angler promise.

To go fishing in in the hick streams of the transfigured earth, where someone, even like me, can reel something in.

Comments

[Eric John]

May his memory be eternal.

[James]

Father, Bless,

In the midst of the nonsense (political, social, and cultural) that masquerades as "Orthodox Christianity", it is rare to meet and know a true man or woman of God. It sounds as if you have been blessed to meet such a man in the person of Reader Doug.

May we all stand in his shadow on the day of judgement.

In Christ,

James

[Ben]

Thank you for a beautiful elegy for a true servant of the Lord. I will always cherish the memory of his visits to our parents and the grace he shared with them.

Ben

[FrGregACCA]

May his memory be eternal.

Doug, pray for me, a sinner.