Lisa Hess has written a beautiful tribute to our mother, it reveals the grace and power that she carried in her everyday life, as well as the boundless enthusiasm she had for anyone with a vision.
Moments like this are ones that prove to us that she will forever influence and exist in this world.
Lisa M. Hess
I met Lee four times in my life, only once for sustained conversation between the two of us. In an intentional participation in some hospitality she had begun, we met for a NYC lunch. I was dying on the vine where I was, and had had a disturbing but hopeful dream. She was perceptive and generative, like I’m guessing she often was. “You’ve had a vision!” she said to me in utter conviction. A seed of belief was planted in the humus of my own fear and hope, still regularly watered in conversation with a coaching-friend she recommended.
As odd as it may sound, I met her again this past Wednesday noon, even though she’d officially breathed her last by 8:45 a.m. the day before. A group of women scholars had gathered to have a small-group discussion on “feminist approaches to multiple religious belonging,” or some such excuse for women to gather. We were attending daylong seminar sessions on “theologies of religious pluralism and comparative theology,” and created a smaller space for evocative listening, together. News travels fast, in Blackberry time, so an implicit message resulted in unexpected tears at the name and news of Lee Hancock, from seed-memories so many (p)ages ago.
“Tell us about her,” one of the women asked me, as I made motion to excuse myself from distracting our work together. I sat back down. “I didn’t know her,” I confessed, “I guess you could say she was an ‘accidental mentor’ for me one afternoon.” I spoke what I did know of her work—in urban interfaith understanding, educational administration, wry wisdom that often broke polite expectation. I spoke of the other contexts I knew she loved—her family with two daughters, a group of bodacious women (for lack of accurate memory and desire to protect association), mainline ‘church’ done in subversive fashion.
The conversation eventually led into the group’s focus and purpose, but we had a renewed sense of compassion, shared-grief but celebration, and the kind of wisdom that reaches beyond any one location into new spaces. We as women went deeply that afternoon, rather more quickly than expected, creating a theo-poetic space in which thirsty roots found living water to salve hidden fears and nourish secret hopes. As we re-entered the large group conversation, I found myself smiling. In one sense, Lee had done it again, even at some remove. She had been the connector of women from multiple traditions—Jewish, Muslim, Christian—into a life-giving conversation of celebration, shared grief, of holy devotion to one and all.
To Lee Hancock: I only met you five times in my life, and only twice for sustained conversation. But I will never forget you nor that conversation, as it continues to teach me and others from the theopoetic space of memory. Thank you, dear holy one, of blessed memory.
