David Crowder's thoughts

David Crowder posted these comments on his blog yesterday. They're in response to the passing of his friend and pastor Kyle earlier this month. I thought it was a very thoughtful commentary.

it really is just perfect. it’s the most beautiful cemetery i’ve ever been in. i realize it sounds like a juxtaposition to use “beautiful” and “cemetery” so closely but it’s immediately serene; peaceful. just what you’d hope. completely cinematic. the grave itself was a pile of flowers. i had expected to see dirt. that red texas-clay-dirt that i’ve seen covering every other newly covered grave i’ve stood beside. early morning, kids laughing and a mound of flowers. i’m certain the mound of dirt was somewhere under the flowers, but driving up to it it just looked like a 3 foot high pile of flowers, perfectly mirroring the rectangular shape of the hole he is in. i’ve never seen flowers piled 3 feet high in the shape of a rectangle. there were potted flowers that outlined the perimeter of the rectangle and they were all leaned over and inward, none of them sitting up properly, resting against the mound as it rose from the grass. it was so strange, absolutely foreign to look at. the slightest bit unnerving. these flowers leaning against flowers. it gave the appearance that as he went into the ground his beauty had drug all this on top of him. as if you’d spread a cloth over a table that had a rectangular hole cut in it and then placed something with weight over the hole and let go. it would drop past the surface of the table pulling the table cloth through the hole with it as it sank. this is what had happened here over night. the weight of his passing pulled at our surface, and the flowers filled the hole and piled up to keep the world from caving in on itself. it was the weight. i had felt the weight. there were six of us surrounding him, carrying him down the steps, slidding him into the car and it was all impossibly heavy. the flowers didn’t have a choice in the matter. this is where they had to be, they had been pulled by the force of his departure and wanted to be near him and saved us all in the course of their aspired proximity to him. it was beauty summoning beauty and falling, laying on itself until the hole was clogged. grace is a bunch of flowers falling over each other to be near a beauty that is too terrific a weight to keep on the surface for very long. we will miss kyle but we might be ok. for now there is grace enough to keep breathing.