Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Holy Rover

Home
New Visions
Mary & Me: A Lasting Link Through Ink

Mary & Me: A Lasting Link Through Ink

Last updated on: February 11, 2016 at 6:45 pm by Lori Erickson

Mary & Me: A Lasting Link Through Ink 2016-02-11T18:45:27-06:00 Lori Erickson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

download When was the last time you wrote a letter, an honest-to-goodness letter with paper and pen and stamp? In this age of Facebook and email, it’s probably been quite a long time ago.

My friend Mary Jedlicka Humston is making up for the rest of us. For 30 years she’s kept up a handwritten correspondence with Mary Potter Kenyon, letters that have chronicled their lives, loves, and losses. The two of them have been exchanging letters at least three times a week during those decades, which adds up to more than 4,300 letters each. It’s a remarkable relationship, one that is chronicled through their jointly authored book Mary and Me: A Lasting Link Through Ink.

The two met in 1986 when they lived next door to each other in Iowa City, Iowa. Mary Kenyon left town a year later, but a bond was formed that has been sustained through these letters. The two women have found that putting their feelings down on paper is more meaningful to them than digital forms of communication.

For many years, their friendship was primarily through these letters, with only the occasional face-to-face visit. That changed in 2011 when they traveled to a writing conference together and shared a hotel room. From that point on, their friendship deepened as they shared subjects they hadn’t discussed before. But the letters still kept flying back and forth between Iowa City, where Humston still lives, and Manchester, Iowa, where Kenyon resides.

Johannes_Vermeer_-Lady_Writing_a_Letter_with_Her_Maid(detail)_-_WGA24698

Detail from Johannes Vermeer’s “Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid” (Wikimedia Commons Image)

The book draws heavily on their correspondence, but has been re-shaped to fit various themes, including In Sickness and In Health, Losses, Faith, and Mothers. Their two voices alternate, creating a counterpoint of reflections on universal and personal topics.

Some of the strongest parts of the book detail their struggles, particularly when Kenyon writes about her difficulties in forming female friendships and Humston describes her struggles with crippling anxiety. Through it all they support and love each other, providing a contemporary model of a much older form of friendship, one primarily nurtured through letters.

The book also includes essays contributed by other writers on the theme of friendship. I was asked to write one of these, which you’ll find below. (Between the time I wrote this and the book’s publication, I’ve become a member of a different church, but the volunteer work I describe goes on, just in a slightly different form.)

I’m grateful to Humston and Kenyon for including my essay in their book, and also for their honesty, wit, and wisdom in Mary and Me: A Lasting Link Through Ink.

Copy-of-IMG_7365-1024x880-300x257

Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto (photo by Lori Erickson)

Cherry Blossom Friendships

by Lori Erickson

For much of my life, I’ve thought my most valuable friendships were those that have lasted a long time. But through my volunteer work as a Healing Touch practitioner, I’ve come to realize that some of my most important friendships are all the more meaningful because they are short-lived. I’ve come to think of them as my Cherry Blossom Friendships—beautiful, fleeting, and full of wonder.

Healing Touch is a form of complementary medicine that has many similarities to the ancient Christian practice of laying-on-of-hands for healing. In my church, we offer it as a form of ministry. Most of the people we see have been diagnosed with cancer. They come to our healing room overlooking a courtyard garden for a weekly session in the midst of their chemotherapy or radiation treatments.

It’s not surprising that friendships often form in this context. What typically takes years during the course of a normal friendship can happen very quickly under these circumstances. This is especially true for those who do not receive the cure they desperately seek. Despite their valiant struggles to live, their cancer worsens and their medical treatments lose their effectiveness. Healing Touch often becomes even more important to them as they enter Hospice care.

Each time this happens, I question the wisdom of doing volunteer work that stands a good chance of making me extremely sad. When I attend the funeral of someone I’ve worked with, I sometimes toy with the idea of finding another form of service, like walking dogs at the animal shelter or reading to schoolchildren—-activities that aren’t likely to end with me in a church singing “Amazing Grace” through my tears.

Then I go right back to volunteering in our healing ministries program, because these friendships have taught me more than almost any other relationships I’ve had.

The first person I got close to in this way was Diane, who came to see me for Healing Touch while undergoing treatment for breast cancer. We were strangers when we were introduced, but we soon became dear friends. Nearly every week we would meet in the healing room at our church. Before we started our session together we’d visit, first about inconsequential things but increasingly about more personal matters.

Every time I saw her, she found positive things to focus on. No matter what bad turn her medical condition had taken, she always found something to be grateful for. At first I thought she was perhaps putting on a brave front, but over time I came to see that her sense of gratitude and optimism were utterly genuine.

That optimism came, I think, both from her deep faith but also from her knowledge that she was surrounded by people who loved her. I noticed that she rarely used the word “I” in relation to her medical condition. It was always, “We’re going to be trying a new treatment next week,” or “We’re making progress on this.” She knew that she wasn’t going through her journey alone.

I was also struck by the way in which Diane cared for me. In a situation in which technically I was the one serving her, she gave as much to me as I did to her. In that room we shared a great deal, I think in part because we had no other ties other than that hour per week. We didn’t know anyone else in each other’s families or social circles. We could complain, share worries, and rejoice in each other’s joys knowing that what we talked about was confidential.

As Diane approached the end of her life, she asked if I would speak at her funeral. I said yes, of course, but I also worried privately over what I would say. I had only known Diane for a short portion of her life, and I had never even seen her outside the walls of the healing room.

At the same time, I felt that I did know her in all the ways that mattered. I knew firsthand her courage, her vitality, her warmth. And as I stood in the church in front of hundreds of people, I realized I knew many of them too. Because of all those conversations with Diane, I knew about her children and grandchildren, their foibles, quirks and histories. I knew about her siblings and book group members and her old friends from college days. I didn’t know their faces, but I knew what they meant to Diane.

Kuniyoshi_Ishiyakushi

Kuniyoshi Utagawa’s Ishiyakushi (Wikimedia Commons Image)

In my eulogy I spoke about how much I had learned from Diane and I told them how much she loved them all. After the service, many of them introduced themselves to me at the reception. I delighted in meeting these people I’d known only through her stories. They felt like old friends to me—for after all, any friend of Diane’s was a friend of mine.

Today when I work in our church’s healing room, I sometimes think of a trip I took to Japan during cherry blossom season, that brief period in spring when a gauzy shroud of pink covers parks and gardens. While there I learned that cherry blossoms are more than just flowers to the Japanese. They are an excuse to celebrate, for families and friends meet under the flowering trees to drink, eat and socialize. Even more important, they are a symbol for the transitory nature of life. The delicate cherry blossom, here today and fluttering to the ground tomorrow, is a poignant symbol of how beautiful and how brief existence is.

Diane was the first of my cherry blossom friendships, but not the last. Each one reminds me of walking underneath the blooming cherry trees in Kyoto, their petals falling like snow.

Japan

cherry blossom season in Japan

cherry blossoms

Mary & Me: A Lasting Link Through Ink

Mary Jedlicka Humston

Mary Potter Kenyon

Previous Post

February 7, 2016

Wyoming's Heart Mountain, a WWII Internment Camp, Has Lessons for Today

Next Post

February 17, 2016 Vikings in Search of Holy Sites

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Aging & Spirituality Amish Anabaptists Animals Apocalypse Archeological sites Art and Spirituality Awards Belgian Holy Sites birds Blessings Books Buddhism Business & Spirituality Callings Cats Celtic Cemeteries Children Christianity church Colorado Creation Death Desert Spirituality Easter Economics Education & Spirituality Egypt Episcopal Church Faith Fear Films First Nations Food Forgiveness Germany God Good & Evil Good Friday Grace Gratitude Happiness Healing Hildegard of Bingen Hinduism History Holy Rover blog Holy Sites Holy Week Horses Iceland Illness Images of God Indigenous Spiritualilty Interfaith Interfaith Dialogue Iowa Islam Israel Japan Judaism LDS Church Lent Machu Picchu Martin Luther Media Meditation Monasteries Museums Music Music and Spirituality Musings Mysticism Native American Nature New Age New Zealand Norse History/Culture/Spirituality Orthodox Paradox Paranormal Peru Philosophy Pilgrimage Poetry Politics Pop Culture Pilgrimage Sites Prayers sermons Silence Social Media Spiritual writers Spirituality and Food Spirituality and Social Media Stone Circles Thomas Merton Turkey Uncategorized Unconventional Holy Sites Utopian communities Videos Virgin Mary Wicca Work World War I Writing Zen

Select a Month August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the first Christian martyr?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Paul James Peter Stephen