Debbie Kirsch Funeral Homily

SOUNDS OF SILENCE

Homily at the Funeral of 
Debbie Ann Kirsch
St. Vincent de Paul Church, Albany, NY    

     If, during this past season of Lent, Debbie were to have attended Vespers in the iconic King’s College Chapel (one of her treasured sanctuaries in England, as many of you know) she would have heard readings not so much from scripture but from the theologian and mystic, Maggie Ross. 
    Ross is a significant voice in contemporary Christian thought. She calls for the recovery of silence and the “beholding” of God in worship and in daily life. Her teachings emphasize the transformative power of silence and the need for deeper spiritual awareness.
    Ross wrote: “Solitude is the human condition, the universal vocation to be human. It is the willingness, with Love indwelling [meaning God], to go to the heart of pain to find new life and share it with the world ….”
    We are gathered here to remember Debbie Ann Kirsch, who was a remarkable model of someone who herself went to the heart of pain to find new life. By any recollection, Debbie was not shy but forthright, not weak but strong of heart and mind, she was filled with exuberant song and stimulating conversations with her friends. The Spirit she found in her own pain could not be contained.
    The writings of Maggie Ross help us to memorialize Debbie. Her affection for her music ministry family and for her larger community of faith here at St. Vincent de Paul’s parish [Albany, NY] inspired us all.
    Ross’s recent book Writing the Icon of the Heart: In Silence Beholding was used in King’s College Chapel. Ross describes the act of beholding as a way to have one’s soul open for God. She explains that silence is not the absence of sound. It is “the vast interior landscape that invites us to stillness.”    
    How do we keep on singing if silence is golden? Brother Jean-Marie, a member of the Taizé community in France, wrote: “Prayer in a Christian sense is an attentiveness to God that also makes us attentive to others. And, in speaking about Taizé, he said, “we’ve found over the years that singing and silence are two fundamentals of prayer.” An aside: I think Simon and Garfunkel sang a song about that back in the mid 1960s!
    Brother Jean-Marie called prayer a “time of listening, a time to leave things before God, a time to be before God, to have one’s soul open for God.” This openness for God is what the writer Maggie Ross called “beholding” God. Good liturgy, she added, welcomes us to the wilderness of beholding God in the unfolding truth of ourselves. (54) As we worship, stillness and song, help us behold God.
    Debbie’s friends chose the scriptures for this liturgy. Isaiah (35:1-10) tells of Israel’s deliverance from captivity. Isaiah constantly begged the Israelites, besieged by enemies, to rely on the promises of God: the lame shall leap like a deer; the silent tongue will sing with joy. Thankful for this Word of God, Debbie believed in those promises as she converted her pain into new life.    
    The second passage (1 Corinthians 2:6-10)  is a snapshot into the lives of early Christians. The writer gives glimpses of the strengths and weaknesses of the community and stresses that true wisdom is discovered when the people of God realize there is a Spirit that dances within them. Debbie’s soul was open to the presence of God. She walked with God on a holy path to the land of the living. That companionship with God gave her strength.
    The gospel (Matthew 11:25-30) reminds us that although Maggie Ross claims “Solitude is the universal vocation to be human,” she also urges that the Christian vocation is to share new life with others. Christ gently invites all who are weary to know that if we accept and deal with the burdens in our lives, we will find inner peace for ourselves. Debbie must have let of her pain to find that inner peace.     
    Debbie Ann Kirsch harmonized the sounds of silence. Along with her musical companions, she spent about three quarters of her life giving voice to biblical texts, singing stanzas of sounds leading to a quiet internal sanctuary. 
    Her steadfast faith and her agency for human rights reminds us that silence and singing together create a hallowed space where our minds, our hearts, and our bodies are united. This moral self awareness grounds us in faith, hope and works of mercy
    That eternal space, that cosmic realm, we believe, is where Debbie is now, where she wants to be, a member of heavenly choirs of angels and saints, continuing to sing hymns, psalms and inspired canticles to the glory of God in perfect harmony.

SOURCES: 
Ross, Maggie. Writing the Icon of the Heart: In Silence Beholding (Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2013)

Jean-Marie, “Prayer at Taizé Singing and Silence” in The Christian Century (March 21, 2001) inhttps://www.christiancentury.org/article/prayer-taize