A Desk for the Community of Hope - A Eulogy
Phil Grigsby was my predecessor in the leadership of Schenectady Community Ministries. I am honored to have been invited to share a eulogy in his funeral December 2, 2021, at the Emmanuel Friedens Church in Schenectady
When I first joined to serve SiCM in the early spring of this year, our building project at 837 Albany St. was still underway. The staff took a space in the old building and set up for me an office – a relatively small space, made seemingly smaller by this big desk. I am not a big desk person. You see, the more space I have, the more papers I will keep in my desk. But I digress. The desk my colleagues had secured from me was clearly not made for that space. I was grateful for the careful and intentional gesture of my colleagues but wondered about that desk. Everyone else’s are smaller, better-suited desks for the office spaces we occupy on our campus in Hamilton Hill.
The opportunity presented itself in a passing conversation, and I asked why that desk. The response was simple, and quite matter of fact – that was Phil’s desk. I asked around SiCM, and the person who placed the oldest date on the desk had served SiCM for over 15 years and remembered the desk was in Phil’s office when she first arrived as staff. That was probably Phil’s desk for well over half of his service to SiCM. No one quite remembers when the desk came in, or how it was acquired, but it was the desk Phil used.
When we were ready to move to our more permanent administrative spaces, it was decided that we would refinish the desk. When the local furniture restorer came, I asked if there was any value in the desk. The reaction in his face confirmed what I suspected the moment I finished asking – that I had asked the wrong question. His answer was direct and generous, “the value of the desk is not on the desk itself, but about what it means to you.”
Becoming the lead staff of SiCM was not simply succeeding Rev. Grigsby. The leadership space I now occupy was stewarded by Phil for 33 years. And that leadership was not simply that of an institutional steward. Phil’s leadership of Schenectady Community Ministries was his platform to encourage religious, ethical, and moral leadership in Schenectady and the Capital Region.
I have so many questions about the what and the why Phil led, was present, organized, encouraged, prayed, visited, spoke, criticized, laughed and I imagine cried the way he did. Everyone at the reach of my voice experienced this human being who, through his strengths and weaknesses – whether he was aware of them or not – impacted the way this city, this county and this region experienced social leadership, community presence, and pursuits of justice in pulpits like this one, in the privilege of the floor at all levels of government, in private conversations with policymakers, government executives, wealthy and powerful donors, and in the halls of the State Assembly, the county legislature, the city council, during coffee hour at congregational fellowship halls.
That is the meaning I am seeking to find, and I hope many in this space are also. Because Phil’s presence was not only at SiCM, it was perhaps not even primarily for SiCM. SiCM was Phil’s instrument to effect change in the lives of the marginalized and the disenfranchised of our community for dignity, equity, justice, and peace. And he did this not because he was the executive director of SiCM, but because he was Phil – a neighbor, a colleague, a friend to anyone that wants goodness in Schenectady.
Phil’s most influential religious leader was Roman Catholic spirituality thinker, Father Henri Nouwen. When I sit at that desk for meetings, I think of Phil’s work and of Nouwen’s words about community,
In the face of the human ability to extinguish all that is human, what does it mean to think about faith, hope, love, and live everlasting? God has been revealed as a loving (parent), guiding (its) children through history. But what if history no longer can be counted as a framework of our understanding of God’s love?...
We face a threat qualitatively different from all other previous threats and we do not have a fitting model for a response… As humanity we have entered a period in which our faith is being stripped of all support systems and defense mechanism. But it is precisely with this naked faith that we are called to build a community of hope that is able to resist the darkness of our age.
When I think of this new community in our time I think about people from all over the world reaching out to each other in total vulnerability… I see a (…) network of (people) so totally disarmed that they not only have given up the power of weapons but also of religious concepts, symbols and institutions. I see them moving over the world, visiting each other, binding each other’s wounds, confessing their brokenness to each other, and forgiving each other with a simple word, an embrace, a touch, or even a smile. I see them walking alone or together in the most simple clothes caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, comforting the lonely, and waiting quietly with the dying. I see them in apartment buildings, farm houses, schools, and universities, hospitals, and office buildings as quiet witnesses of God’s presence. Wherever they are they bring peace, not as much by what they say or do, but mostly by their connectedness with those others with whom they form a new community of hope.”
(Nouwen, Peacework, 2005, pgs. 109-111)
Phil, I believe, saw that community of hope. And I have the desk to prove it. The desk can’t talk, but God knows it holds Phil’s work for most of his tenure. Phil can’t talk either, but God knows his passion outlives him. And I have so many questions. And what I’ll continue to do to answer those is to make Phil’s desk the community’s desk. We have refinished the desk and placed it in a room we now hold staff and community meetings – a community working, thinking, discerning, praying, being desk. That community of hope will continue to be forged in that desk for years to come because I believe Phil saw that community of hope in Schenectady.
Descanso eterno concédele a Phil, Señor
y que brille para él la luz perpetua.
Que descanse en paz. Amen.
The service was shared over facebook, https://fb.watch/9EQEjzJ4Ki/. My remarks begin around 31:35