Joshua Hicks

Today would have been the birthday of a man by the name of Joshua Hicks.  Taking some space out to write a memorial of him is appropriate for this blog for several reasons: he was without doubt the best friend I've ever had, he fought hard during his 27 years for reconciliation, and he understood what it meant to have a body that didn't make life easy.  We called him Jack.  I never actually knew why, except that Lewis was called Jack, and other people called him other nicknames too, like Jicks.

Jack and I formed a friendship that quickly became very strong early on in our Seminary experience.  We were both training to be Anglican Priests, we both loved a good gang movie (I can't count how many times we watched Boon Dog Saints or The Departed), and we both loved to cook.  By "loved to cook" I don't mean that we both enjoyed it, unless we could find something better to do.  I mean, we begged the world for opportunities to cook for it, inviting friends over, making up parties just for the pure joy of cooking for them. We'd cook simple stuff, good party food -- stuff that goes well with too much beer, too many Dark and Stormy's, and just a few Gin and Tonic's.  (Ok, a lot of Gin and Tonic).  ;)

Those were the good times.  How many countless living rooms, how many countless movies, and drinks, and food -- always the food -- always the good, well loved, dearly cooked, and exuberantly served food.  And then, when much of the food had been eaten, and the movie turned off, and the first few rounds of drinks were in the books for the night, Jack would get his guitar.  He'd serenade the ladies -- all of them -- and make the men wish they knew how to play.  He'd make us all join him singing, and then, just when we were all a little lost because we couldn't remember the words, he'd strum a little, look around like he was lost too, then, "1, 2, 3, 4...!" and off he was again.

We ate till our stomachs would pop, (and made sure our friends did too) we drank till we probably shouldn't have, we laughed till it felt like our very souls would tear asunder under the joy of it all.  We were also there for each other when life wasn't pretty.  Each of us has very dark shadows in the spaces of our heart that we don't visit very often.  Jack was one of the only men I've ever known who was brave enough to face his shadows and try as best he might to deal with them.

Part of the this internal struggle in his own soul gave him a pure love for other people.  He knew darkness and loss, confusion, and sorrow.  When he saw any of these in another human being, he would love that person with a matchless energy.  When anything -- anything at all that was even remotely good -- took place in the life of another, his joy knew no bounds.  Something deep inside his soul would take over, as it were, and he'd just simply start rejoicing with you.  He had the gift of making you more excited about your own good news after he left then before you told him!

Jack fought for reconciliation.  He worked with Not for Sale (an organization that tries to raise awareness about present day slavery in Mass and the rest of the US.)  He sang many of us right through our own darkness and our own sorrow and our own conflict.  Many who have had the great pleasure of knowing Jack would characterize him with the word, "freedom."  When I was in my period of darkness, and the void where God should have been was utterly silent, Jack said to me, "if you have a choice between not being yourself and sinning, sin!  You can always repent later."  Jack was real.  His love was real.

Jack also had a body that didn't make living an easy thing.  He had an anaphylactic allergic response to four food groups: Dairy, Eggs, Peanuts, and Soy.  I share his allergy to dairy.  So, while I haven't walked a road that is as limited as his was, I am intimately familiar with what it means to have an allergy that will literally kill you within minutes of having the wrong thing.

For you, (if you are fortunate enough to not have any allergies) food is linked (both theologically and experimentally with nourishment.)  To be fair, there are varying degrees of nourishment, (an apple does more for you than McDonalds) but it is nourishment, nonetheless.  For Jack (and I) food is linked both with nourishment and with death.

You really have to want to live.  I don't just mean you have to not want to die.  Not wanting to die isn't strong enough to carry a person through depression.  You have to literally want to live.  Imagine what life would be like if you literally had the chance, every four hrs, (or whenever you got hungry) to die.  Or rather, if you had the burden, every four hrs of avoiding death, once again.  If you are extremely clever, and extremely sober, and extremely lucky, you'll live -- until you are hungry again.

I think this is why we loved cooking for others.  There was (and still is, for me) something incredibly pleasant -- almost intoxicating, really -- about cooking for others.  Sifting through a world filled with life and death, and picking the good things out and making something good and full of life for others is a true joy.  Seeing the delight on their face is a deep reward.

In fact, for both of us, now that I reflect back upon it, 5 months almost to the day of his passing, serving food to someone else was a way of reconciling the world with our bodies.  We couldn't necessarily eat what we cooked.  But you could, and we made that happen.  We would die if we ate what we created, but it brings life to you, and joy to you, and health to you.  And that, in and of itself is worth drinking about, and signing about, and laughing about.   And, in that moment of joy, the fact that we couldn't eat all of the food on the table was transcended by the conquest of love -- our demon that haunted our waking hours was defeated when we cooked for you.

So, on behalf of Jack, and all people out there with allergies who like to cook, thank you.  Thank you for letting us cook for you.  Thank you for letting us rejoice with you, thank you for so intimately being part of our lives, even though you don't know it.