Good Morning. I am Christine Robinson, the Senior Minister of this church, and I welcome you to this service celebrating the life of Laurel Salton Clark. Laurel and her family attended church here when she was a child, and some of her family participate here, and it is an honor for us…for all of us… to be present to comfort her family and memorialize her extraordinary life. As we begin I would ask two things of you. The first is that you would turn off your cell phones and other electronic devices that might disturb you and those around you, and the second is that you refrain from using cameras during the service. The professional media will take care of recording this worship service; the rest of us are here to join hearts and minds together in worship, memory, and love. We will begin by lighting the chalice, symbol of this free faith.

Chalice Lighting

This is the light of faith and hope and love, which shines in our lives even in the darkest times. This is the light of the gathered community, which holds us and comforts us when we grieve. This is the light of our ongoing search for truth and meaning, which gives a path even through sorrow and loss. We light this light and invoke the light that illumines life and death and shines beyond both.

We are gathered here this morning to pay our tribute of affection and respect to Laurel Salton Clark, daughter, sister, friend, and colleague, and astronaut on the Shuttle Columbia. We gather to share our sadness, to support her family, and to say goodbye in our hearts to one whose life shone, broadly or briefly on ours. We gather, too, to honor and celebrate her life, and to take what was best her life into ours; to inspire ourselves to develop our characters and live our lives in the full and loving way that Laurel did; thus will her life live on in ours.

Like the crew of the Columbia, this temporary congregation is composed of persons of many faiths. We bring different understandings of the meaning of life to this service, and many different hopes for what lies beyond this life. Unitarian Universalists honor those differences, and we celebrate the fact that they are transcended by what unites us: our relationship with Laurel and her family, our grief for our loss, our desire to be of help, our intention to remember, honor and celebrate her life, and our need to be reminded that the Mystery at the heart of the universe, which we call Love, or God, or Spirit, is with us and among us even as we grieve, deny, forget, shout, love, despair, work, and help. It is good to be together.

In this next hour, we will remember Laurel and, in our own ways, offer our comforting presence and our prayers for her and for her family. Whether our voices this morning are strong or halting, celebratory or sad, the language after which we will grope is the language of love. We who gather here come in Love's name to express our gratitude that Love has been among us, in the person of Laurel, and that because of her life, ours are better.

No one escapes sadness and loss. Each of us has burdens, we all say many kinds of goodbyes, we must let go of those we love, and in our turn, give up all that we know and make that final journey into the mystery. Each time we are startled into awareness of this difficult fact of our lives we are reminded of all those whom we have lost and of how precious is our life and the lives of those we love.

We continue, then, with a moment of tribute and respect to Laurel and her colleagues on the Columbia: Our best and brightest, the world's best and brightest; we will miss them terribly and in many ways. At the same time we will be reminded with the playing of Taps, that although Laurel is gone from us, and our hearts are heavy, that still all is well at the heart of things, and we all rest safely in the end. Please stand, if you are able, for the playing of Taps and a moment of silent prayer or reflection.

Playing of Taps

… Amen. Please be seated.

Laurel was 41 years old when she died…too young. It is hard to be resigned to that. She died at a moment of triumph in her life…a fact that is both a comfort and a terrible irony. She was the mother of a young child. We know that she would have done anything to live to raise that child, who needed her and will miss her always. We needed her and will miss her. Our troubled world needed her and her crewmates; a joyful symbol and reality of the possibility that we men and women, Americans and others, and a rainbow of skin colors, could all get along on this planet and solve our problems together. We needed these people and all they were and represented.

Naturally, we ask ourselves, "How can such a thing happen? Why?" "Where was God?" And we have to patiently remind ourselves, that this is the nature of things; that life comes only with strings attached. That these soft and vulnerable bodies wear out, are subject to injury and illness and accident; that the life we call ours is fragile and temporary and therefore all the more precious. We remind ourselves that, while we can cherish our lives, we cannot preserve them; that death comes, early and late, to the good, the loving, the courageous, and the strong. We take a deep breath and remember what we know; that an early death is not a punishment or an honor, or a lesson, or a reward; it is simply a sad and terrible reality. We look up from our tears and remember, that God's hands do not take life but rather receive it, and that nothing can separate us from that ground of our being. The apostle Paul said it most memorably:

neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.

Nothing can separate us from Love, for all that we have known lives in our hearts. We remember that love as we remember Laurel, as we watch the sky, when we see our earth as she saw it from space…as one, beautiful planet. We will remember her as we watch and encourage others to follow their dreams and when we become aware of the advance of science and knowledge which she valued so much. Most of all we will remember Laurel in our own works of love and in our own experiences of being loved, for she taught us much.

Laurel liked to sing, she loved music of all kinds, and most of all, she loved to organize people in a common endeavor. So when talent shows and class projects were called for, Laurel was always the enthusiastic leader. She and her best friends from medical school often sang together as a group; we're about to hear one of their favorite songs; "Every Season," by Nichole Nordeman, and this song was sung by those friends at her memorial service in Houston. It's a song about finding God's work in the progressions of the season, the growth of life and persons, and in the beauty of the natural world; even in death and loss. It's an appropriate theme song for a woman who loved nature and sought beauty wherever she went, and an invitation for us to offer our halting thanks for all that has been and all that will be.

Song: "Every Season"

I invite us now into a moment of silent prayer or reflection

Amen.

Eulogy

Laurel said once that she was just "a boring straight-A student" in school, but that's not how her teachers remember her. One of her high school teachers from Racine, Wisconsin, where she moved after she lived here in Albuquerque, said that Laurel "stood out from square one as someone who had her goals established, her head on straight, who was definitely going to amount to something." Her father remembers those qualities back to the day his nine-month old baby decided to walk for the first time. She grabbed a chair and pulled herself up, toddled across the room, crawled back, and did it over and over again in such a single-minded way that entranced her doting father and seemed a precursor to a life of single-mindedly tackling one goal after another. But her father also remembers that she was warm and loving as a child, that she always managed to achieve her goals without putting anyone down. He remembers that she loved the family adventures out of doors; camping and canoeing. Her uncle Bruce remembers a cherry tree that she and her grandfather planted in his back yard in Delancey when she was a young girl.

Laurel was the responsible first daughter of parents who had high expectations for their kids. Although her father recalls that he quit arguing with his very verbal child when she was about 10 and he couldn't win any more, there was still a good deal of discipline in the family, and Laurel always excelled. She was an especially good swimmer, and whipped through all her Red Cross swimming levels, attaining her Life Saving card at the very young age of thirteen. This was the result of her natural ability and summers spent virtually living at the old Menaul Pool. Once during her work with submarines, Laurel was involved in some mishap that endangered her life. Later her father asked her if she had been scared. "No," she said, "compared to playing "shark" with the kids at the Menaul Pool, that was nothing!" Her father remembers that although she was a bold child, she never took unnecessary risks.

Laurel majored in zoology in college, but decided on medicine as a career and went to Medical school. To help pay the bills, she joined the Navy, intending only to stay in long enough to work off her obligation, but in the end, the military provided her with the challenges and opportunities her character craved. It was not always easy. She originally started out in pediatric medicine, and was stationed at Bethesda Navel Medical Center. She complained to her dad that she had to salute 30 times between the parking lot and her office and felt stifled by protocol. Looking around for something more exciting and less ceremonial, she latched on to submarines and the specialized medical issues of sub crews. Never mind, that in those days, women were not allowed on submarines. Laurel was not one to take barriers like that seriously, nor did she let them make her angry. She just found ways around. Her motto was, "Don't get angry, just handle it." She wrangled permission to make several dives with her sub crews, sleeping on the gurney in sick bay. When more of that was forbidden by higher ups, she switched her focus to diving, and became a specialist in the medical issues of diving crews with Navy SEALS in Scotland. They let her dive and she became an accomplished diver. It was during those years that she met her future husband, John Clark. Returning to the States, she took on a new challenge and earned her flight surgeon's wings. She spent a year as a squadron medical officer, flying on rather dangerous aircraft and mourning the men… 5 that year, who died in accidents. Mostly, however, she found that being a medical officer for a crew of the nation's healthiest young adults was pretty boring.

Then she discovered the Astronaut program. Looking over the selection criteria for this intensely competitive program, she realized that she was just what they were looking for and so, she applied. On her interviewing trip to Houston, she got caught up in the romance, excitement and challenge of space flight. When her first application was turned down, she decided it was time to have a baby, but the dream of spaceflight didn't die. She told her father that lots of people were accepted upon second application, applied again, and was accepted during her pregnancy with Iain. The family moved to Houston soon after Iain's birth. For the next 7 years, her life had two goals, motherhood and spaceflight. She was a patient and loving mother to a high-energy child and a high-achieving officer in one of the military's most prestigious programs. With all that she still made time for her extended family; she made many trips to Albuquerque, the latest just last Christmas. And she still participated in family adventures, such as a canoe trip two years ago with stepbrothers and 5-year-old Iain.

Laurel's colleagues in the Astronaut office remember that she was both a dedicated scientist and a loving, fun-loving friend. Julie Payette writes of the power of Laurel's affection; first and foremost for John and Iain, but with plenty left over for everyone else. Cady Coleman remembers that one day during the flight, Laurel's crewmates were having trouble drawing blood from one of Laurel's arms for an experiment, and that arm was staring to look like a pincushion. The ground crew was ready to call a halt to the procedure, but Laurel grabbed the mike and insisted that she had two arms and that this must be what the second arm was meant for! So…the other arm got poked for science, and science won in the end.

Science came first for Laurel, but her colleagues also knew her to have a great view of the big picture. She loved watching the earth from space. She spoke to many people during the mission about the wonders of life; from the blooming of roses to the evolution of spiders. She shared with those on the ground her overwhelming feeling that the earth she could see from space was beautiful and borderless; one planet. She wanted her colleagues to know how she felt about that; she would want us to know. Everyone who knew her was comforted by their knowledge of how passionately she had wanted to go into space. That was a dream she dreamed, and achieved.

Laurel's stepbrother Matthew remembers that when they were little, the children used to play Star Trek, and Laurel and Matthew used to vie for who would get to be Captain Kirk. Now he wishes he had let her win more…because in the end, she's the one who followed that dream. His hope is that her life will inspire others to follow their dreams, no matter how improbable.

"From dust we have come, to dust we will return," the psalmist wrote. Some have taken that to mean that we are nothing; but I would remark that the dust from which we come is the dust of the stars, and that we are made of stardust and dreams and we share that stardust and that dreaming with Laurel, with each other, with every human being on this precious, beautiful planet, and that the dust must scatter but dreams may be passed on. Laurel's extraordinary life was full of dreams and of fulfilled dreams and she and her story and her achievement remind us to live our lives and our dreams well and fully as she did.

From (star)dust we have come
To (star)dust we will return.
A thousand years are like
a day that has passed,
like a watch in the night.
…
Teach us then, to value our days
Hallowing each with grace
as a trust bestowed upon us
Acquiring a heart full of wisdom
And love for the living on earth.
Through all the days though we suffer
And all the years though we sorrow
Rejoice and be glad
For the precious gift of life give thanks
Live for the good each day.

Jon Salton's Reflections

Closing

The poet Wendell Berry wrote these words to remind us of what death teaches the living, and they seem particularly appropriate for Laurel:

She goes free of the earth.
The sun of her last day sets
clear in the sweetness of her liberty.
The earth recovers from her dying,
the hallow of her life remaining
in all her death leaves.

Radiance knows her. Grown lighter
than breath, she is set free
in our remembering. Grown brighter

than vision, she goes dark
into the life of the hill
that holds her peace.

She's hidden among all that is,
and cannot be lost.
Having lived long in time,
she lives now in timelessness
without sorrow, made perfect
by our never finished love,
by our compassion and forgiveness,
and by her happiness in receiving
these gifts we give. Here in time
we are added to one another forever

Let us Pray:

Holy Spirit of Life and Love, help us to recognize your presence in our lives as we return to the tasks and joys of our days. We would take what was beautiful and true in Laurel's life as model for our lives. May her vision of one, borderless world bring peace in our time, and her practice of loving collegiality with the world's diverse people inspire us to embrace human differences with tolerance and understanding. May her love of knowledge and challenge live strong among us. Keep her memory strong in our hearts, and her love strong in our lives. Amen.

Now as the service ends, we will hear the music of bagpipes. Laurel was an enthusiastic Scot, and there were bagpipes at her wedding and at last week's memorial service in Houston. We will hear, as a postlude on this service, "Amazing Grace," and "Scotland the Brave". Scotland the Brave was the song Laurel had chosen to be the shuttle crew's wake-up call on the morning of January 31.

Now we turn to the tasks of our every day, we again take a moment to let music remind us of our faith; that in the end, through all our grief and anger, questions, and love, that "all is well, and all manner of things is well." I thank you for your presence here this morning.

Be at peace.

Bagpipes: Amazing Grace (on Porch) and Scotland the Brave (on patio)

Unitarian Universalist Association
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