People Leaving Legacies
Wendell Berry feels like a household name to me, although I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never read one of his novels. Now that he’s gone, I’ve read so much about him this week that I’ve decided to get to know what he did while he was still alive.
I didn’t really follow Dolly Parton. But now that she’s gone, I can’t help my bewilderment at the hole she left for the way she made the world better just by loving it. She didn’t bear any children of her own. I read a quote, though, that said she figured God wanted her to have the blessing of being able to just call everybody’s kids her own.
My grandma was 93 when she passed in 2015. She had four kids, 12 grandchildren, and if I’m doing my math correctly (which is honestly not a sure thing), she now has 21 great grandchildren. By the time she passed, she had taken care of everything. She wanted to be buried on a mountain near her childhood home in North Carolina even though she hadn’t lived there since she’d left home as a young adult. It was a beautiful service in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We all gathered at the tiny white church next to the little stream where she was baptized as a child. The weather was unseasonably warm for December, so we didn’t need coats. Even though all the cousins from California and Florida were donning ski coats and UGGs. She’d arranged for us all to stay at a nearby hotel when the time came. Whoever would want to come to her funeral could stay, so we had use of a big room. We basically took over that hotel because there were so many of us gathered there in her honor. To remember my grandma.
I remember walking in on the crowd that was my family all together in the lobby and thinking how happy she would have been to see everyone. How surprised she might have felt to know that she’d made such a big impact on each of our lives that we would stop for such time to honor her like this.
But of course we would. How could we not? We are her legacy.
What I Mean by “Legacy”
I think about that word a lot. Legacy. I guess it probably conjures up different vibes for different people. For some, maybe it’s more of a financial thing. Like a Legacy Fund. But for me it means the significance of what’s left behind after someone’s gone.
I worked in the funeral industry a few years ago and helped plan a lot of memorial services. I can tell you without hesitation that what made the most memorable funerals stand out were the connections and the relationships the deceased had with those they left behind. I am aware that it sounds cliche. But there is a reason for the cliche. This one is actually true.
The stuff that matters, the most significant anything anyone can leave behind has to do with the authenticity of their relationships they have built with other people, whether it be one other person or several.
I think about Mary of Bethany from the Bible a lot. Not because I’m some biblical savant or some crazy Bible lady. I think about her because her friendship with Jesus left a legacy like none other. I wonder a lot what it was like to know Jesus the way she did. To know him in such a way that her only response was to literally spend a year’s salary worth of money on perfume just to pour over him so she could let him know how much he meant to her. Matthew’s and Mark’s versions of the story say that Jesus actually said she’ll be remembered - her legacy - will be the way she delighted in him. This very act was Mary’s legacy. This connection with Jesus was what mattered most out of her whole life’s days. And it’s the one thing she would be remembered for.
I Think I Found a Way to Leave a Legacy
I’ve been on a journey toward purpose for a while. I’ve been working through some trauma and my therapist, Ruth, suggested four questions that might help me. Who am I? What are my intentions for today? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? If you’ve ever worked through trauma, I’m guessing you know that none of these questions are particularly easy to answer. Not even a little, really. But lately, the answers are becoming a bit more clear. So the other day as I journaled, I answered the question What is my purpose? Here is what I wrote:
My purpose is to help people want to know the real Jesus like Mary of Bethany knew him. Or maybe it’s just to know him like that myself.
Because isn’t her knowing him the legacy she left behind? Isn’t her just chasing him down with all that she was, delighting in knowing him with all of her heart, isn’t that what made her follow him and love him so wholly unbelievably and radically unabashedly wild and free and all in? I mean, what if I could know him like that? What if I put my everything into knowing Jesus like that? Like, for real, gave everything I have to chasing down the real authentic Jesus Christ and knowing him in such an real and true way?
I’m pretty sure that would somehow turn out to be my legacy too.
And there will somehow be seeds. Like fire poppies whose blooms only last for two or three days after the fire has passed, the chasing and the knowing lights a fire somehow in those who find out who he really is, I think. And the blooms drop seeds that help the soil heal somehow. Seeds that will germinate when the next fire comes.
And the seeds are the legacy.
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