Eric McLaren: Building An Altar in the World

 When Eric was diagnosed with ALS in 2010, he made a video in which he explained his situation to students, alums and parents.  The address was clear and forthright, and pulled no punches about the seriousness of his condition and his determination to do everything he could to fight the disease.  He announced a plan to organize others to launch a research assault on the capacity of ALS to ravage.

I sent him an email note commending his presentation.  I noted in particular the reference in his talk to Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, An Altar in the World.  He read it  with a group from his church the previous summer.  In his email reply he remarked: “As issues have unfolded for me I have gone back to the book a number of times.”  Also, he expressed appreciation for a Scripture passage I had shared with him from Isaiah:  "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine . . . ."    Eric said: “I have prayed upon it many times.”

       Over the past four years many have joined Eric in prayers ascending, either in his presence or on our own.  And now there is a tsunami of thoughts and actions shared, events and enterprises worked through together, plans for future ways to live a purposeful life as he urged us to do.  I worked with Eric over many years.  He and I supported and challenged each other through matters thick and thin.  There are too many instances to detail.  So I will simply relate one, where he helped this old English teacher with a class even though he was not in the room.   

It was a crisp and chill fall morning.  I found myself striding into the building with Eric in the early morning hours, after a student death by accident the night before.  I was subbing for a colleague; the class was to begin Hamlet. I told him this was a daunting prospect, given the real life tragedy they had just learned about.  And this was not my class.  Not students I knew.  Eric paused, turned to me and said: “There’s no teacher on this faculty better prepared to find the right words to say to those students this morning than you.”  I was startled by this encouragement.  When I crossed the threshold into the very quiet classroom, I still did not know what I would say.  The principal’s voice seemed to echo in my head—“. . . find the right words to say . . . “—and all of a sudden, I knew.  The needed words would not be my own but Shakespeare’s: “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, / absent thee from felicity awhile, / and in this harsh world / draw thy breath in pain/ to tell my story.”  They did.  They talked about their classmate.  There were tears, and there were smiles, and there were voices that started out calm and then cracked. 

    We know about those reactions because that’s what we are doing now as we absent ourselves from felicity awhile and tell the story of this good, kind, brave and caring man. We did hold him in our hearts, and still do.  Eric McLaren taught us much about how to live in the world, and how to face final challenges at the end of life.  That’s a cadha journey, “from a steep place,” both rising and descending.  To traverse the trails that serve others is to shape a moral exemplum.  He has left us nothing less than a life that had meaning and purpose and made a difference.  That’s the real green light at the end of the dock, the shining city on the hill, the altar in the world.  Jubilate.