A Sacrament of Healing

There are rare events that break into busy routines and stop us right in our tracks.

Early in the morning of Thursday, September 9, Ginny Earnest died of cancer. Woman of spirit and of power, builder of community, artist, friend of many, partner of Rob, mother of Anne and Jake, Ginny was the kind of person who makes a deep impact on people's lives. She was 41 years old, and her children were 13 and six.

It was another morning, nine months before, as I was hard at work on a new book and 1,000 miles away from Washington, when the phone call came. Young, healthy, and vibrant, Ginny was diagnosed with an aggressive and lethal cancer; it looked very bad.

Ginny Earnest was a long-time member of Sojourners Community, an old and dear friend, but recently we had been estranged. She and others had left Sojourners three years earlier in one of those splits that seem so painfully endemic to close Christian communities. There were issues, of course, quite real; but the pain and separation always comes in the way that disagreements are handled. We were all still hurting from it when Ginny got sick.

The news stunned my soul. I went out to the ocean for a long walk on the beach. I could almost feel my heart hurt. As I walked, I began to feel a very strange, but clear, almost physical sensation. It was as if all of the anger, hurt, and pain I carried in relationship to Ginny and the community split seemed to fall away--almost like scales from my body dropping harmlessly onto the sand. When the scales fell away from my eyes, all I could see was Ginny's face and how much I still loved her. I began to weep alone on the wind-swept beach, tears that felt like a healing stream.

I wrote to Ginny and Rob that day, and called her soon after. As we talked on the phone, her words and voice conveyed the depth of what was occurring within her. With the painful uncertainty of what lay ahead, this was the time to forgive and to heal.

When we finally met face to face in her hospital room several weeks later, the mutual confession and forgiveness flowed freely. We were both ready. Like many people who were once close, we had been hurt by each other. But each time we spoke I could feel the deep and persistent desire for reconciliation growing within us both. I could see it was spreading to others too. Ginny called for reconciliation in her community and we did in ours. Members of both community groups gathered for regular sessions of prayer at Ginny's bedside.

Ginny's illness created a communal web of love and support that extended around the country. From the remarkable loving care of Ginny's inner circle to a chain of prayer that involved hundreds of people from many places, the reality and power of Christian community was revealed and confirmed.

GINNY FOUGHT for life as a way of living, but never more tenaciously as during those last nine months. But when the end came, she and Rob knew it and let go with a grace that was indeed amazing and with gratitude for the richness of life they had known together. Ginny decided where she would die and how she would be put to rest by her friends. She died as well as she had lived--with simplicity, faith, and love.

Ginny was buried by her community--on another member's farm, in a pine box crafted by a friend, under a shower of beautiful flowers gently laid down by the children, covered by shovelfuls of dirt from the hands of brothers and sisters, marked by a freshly planted pear tree that promised to "bear fruit early" as Ginny Earnest had done to the great benefit of all of us.

I believe Ginny's untimely illness and death became a sacrament. It has the power to be a means of grace and healing for all those whose lives she touched. Ginny was the first long-term member of Sojourners to die. Her loss has shaken those who loved her to their very foundations. Yet her presence will remain with us forever, especially when we remember how her death teaches us what is important and what is not, and how we should then live.

I felt Ginny's presence vividly at her memorial service attended by 400 people. I could almost hear her speaking to us--this diverse community her life had drawn together. I pictured her watching us, smiling at us, and weeping with us.

Looking around, I could see what a beautiful and beloved community was gathered. How much more we share in common than what we don't. We need to be careful and gentle with our disagreements, even as we must hold fast to our convictions and challenge one another. We need to be more loving and forgiving with ourselves and with sisters and brothers than we have been in the past. Agreement may never come. But healing calls us now.

This is a living legacy that Ginny leaves behind. Every time we remember to love, to forgive, to heal, to make space for community, I think she will be smiling.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.