It would not bother Audrey, I think, to know that we are making a fuss over her.
Jennifer has already mentioned the lambing season of 1986 - the first year of many that Audrey helped deliver lambs on the farm at Scotsburn. It’s because those lambing experiences meant so much to her, seem to say so much about her, that the reading from John’s Gospel seemed so right for today. It’s a little problematic that Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd.” I have this feeling that if Audrey is listening, she is thinking, “No, I am the good shepherd.” This disagreement will cause some friction between her and her savior, but they’ll work it out.
Jesus used the image of the sheep and shepherd to teach about God’s love; about what God is like, and about what the world is like.
In her reminiscence about the ‘86 lambing season Audrey pointed out that ewes only need assistance in delivering their lambs about 20% of the time. Of course, Audrey already knew that God’s creation, and God’s creatures are beautiful, but also imperfect. She knew that God puts us - even the most vulnerable of us, even the littlest lambs - into situations that require intervention, assistance, and care. And she knew that the reality of all this imperfection is not fair. I guess another way to say that is that she knew that life is not fair.
So, yes, Audrey knew that that life is not fair, that God does not seem to be fair. But Audrey also knew that God is love and that love is not fair. Love is not measured, balanced, or just. Audrey knew that too, and she had far more than her fair share of love to go around. The vast and deep web of her relationships that Audrey developed is a testimony to the way she lived her life loving people.
One expression of that love was the fearlessness and faith with which she talked about death, especially to children. If you haven’t heard about a time that Audrey talked to a child about heaven and what awaits us on the other side of death, then you might not have been listening very closely.
“Will there be flowers there?” one of her patients asked her.
“Of course there will be flowers there!” she said with assurance. Of course there will be flowers there.
Audrey’s faith, which was real and deep, but also quite straightforward, gave her an assurance of God’s goodness that she was eager to share, and that left her unafraid of many challenges that frighten the rest of us - like death.
The great African American theologian Howard Thurman once told a story that puts me in mind of Audrey. One night in what must have been 1910, when Thurman was still a little boy, his mother allowed him to come outside after his bedtime in order to see the wonder of Halley’s comet coursing through the sky. Looking up at this amazing celestial sight, Howard was awestruck, and I guess also a little apprehensive. As he and his mother stood there, heads bent back to watch the blazing comet in the sky, the boy asked his mother, “What will happen to us if that comet falls out of the sky?”
He recalled that his mother waited a short time before answering his question, and he noticed a prayerful look on her face. Then she said to him, “Nothing will happen to us, Howard; God will take care of us.”*
Thurman recalls this story while reflecting on the profound unfairness of the world. And, as I say, it puts me in mind of Audrey because of the way she talked about death. More precisely, it puts me in mind of the way Audrey talked to me about talking about death with children.
In the lives of so many of her patients, so many of her children, something awful had just fallen out of the sky, and they and their families quite literally did not know if they would survive; they had no idea what would happen to them. Early in her career, Audrey knew that many of her patients would not survive. She was not satisfied to let it be, of course, and she would go about changing that fact. She was marvelously effective at changing the facts of pediatric cancer survival, along with Dan and others. But, as I say, early on, she knew that many of her patients would not survive. But she also knew something else, something that she surely knows even better now: she knew that God will take care of us.
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd, I know my own and my own know me,” which was a way of assuring us that God will take care of us.
In her reflections on the ‘86 lambing season, her first experience as a shepherd, Audrey wrote about a lamb whose mother had died. She wrote that “we took [the] orphan lamb,” to a ewe who had just delivered her own lamb. We “smeared [the lamb] with uterine fluid and membranes and tried to put it to the newly delivered ewe…. She accepted him for a few hours, but soon favored her own lamb and started pushing the imposter away. Getting ewes to accept lambs other than their own is successful in about 50% of the time.”
Audrey’s life was not just about being a physician, or pioneering researcher, or a founder of things, a visionary woman who cared, or a rider, or a SCUBA diver - she was all those things and more. Audrey’s life was about accepting lambs other than her own. She did this with great love, in a world that she knew to be unfair. And she did it with great faith that God will take care of us.
Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd, I know my own and my own know me.”
Right about now, I suspect, Audrey may be arguing with her savior: “I’m the good shepherd!”
“No, I am the good shepherd!”
But they’ll work it out.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
at the funeral of Dr. Audrey Evans
20 October 2022
* Thurman, Howard, Jesus and the Disinherited, p 46
