Celebration of the Life of Bill Walker

                                                      Eulogy for William Mudd Walker

                                                      St. David’s Episcopal Church, Wayne

                                    Episcopal Academy                     Princeton University

                                                   Psalm 23 King James Version                                                   

Bill Walker had a secret, something hidden from us all. Bill’s spiritual and emotional life was a secret that he, you, and I work hard as well to keep hidden. I discovered his secret when he and I met during the last weeks of his son’s pain from cancer and his eventual death. We kept meeting after that tragedy as Bill suffered from a blood disorder that eventually took his life. His secret was his feelings of vulnerability as day in and day out he couldn’t find the air to breathe. Some days there was not enough air to shave. He, you, or I would not think of that word as a word that would we find in his obituary. Obituaries track our achievements through life. But Bill’s life was also during the days before and after his son’s death and filled with a legacy of not finding an answer to heal him or his son’s illness.  I can think of nothing that would make us more vulnerable than wondering, when that next breath would come. Try holding your breath for us long as you can when you get home and that accompanying fear that comes once you can’t do anything when you are just gasping the air to get in. Could you or I be any more vulnerable? What we remember and celebrate today is vulnerability and courage and Bill’s legacy given to the rest of us here.

A theologian, Henri Nouwen, a Roman Catholic priest and author who is helpful in seeing the importance of Bill’s recent journey as the wounded healer, who takes his personal pain and turns it into wisdom and healing from it. Jesus modelled all our behavior. Even the Lord himself could feel vulnerability as part of his human self. He felt this in life, in death on a cross, and his disciples found it in their vulnerability right after Jesus’s death, but it changed to courage when they went out proclaiming the good news. Vulnerability. The wounded healer!

I want you to know that in teaching ethics at EA for 38 years as Head Chaplain, there is a question that I raised with my students each term which is what supports the lived world in which Bill and I had together. I ask my students this question: How much of your lives do you make your decisions guided by avoiding vulnerability, guilt, and rejection? Every hand in the room goes up year after year. If you can get a group of high- powered adolescents to all agree on anything, pay attention to that statement that these students agree to with acclaim.

Our family life is one location for our development of what Luther called the Pater Familias which means in the Latin, the Mask of God. It’s where conversations that are sacred happen. Like all families we are a mix of what is helpful and hurtful.  Bill became the ultimate provider and responsible husband and father doing what he thought was best for all and did what all of us do at times do paving the way to hell with good intentions. St. Paul put it thus: The good that I want to do I don’t do ‘t do. That which I don’t want to do, I do.” We do things that as Jean Paul Sartre, the existentialist, would say, “We can be heaven or hell for others.” We all try to get that part of human nature right, but it is still there. Brene Brown, the leading expert on vulnerability wrote, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, courage. “

Will and Bill Walker never looked to AI for the answers to the most important questions as they knew that AI is great at working with people looking for answers. It seems that AI can answer anything. It is the future, but one thing is true about AI. There is one thing that it can’t do. It cannot raise the important questions of life such as his son, Will’s comment to me that he wanted to write a book about his brave battle with cancer with the title “Why not me?’ but didn’t have the opportunity to do so. “Why Not Me?”

The characteristic of the wounded healer is vulnerability. AI mirrors data but doesn’t provide empathy and connection for people. It does not raise the profound questions that derive from empathy, vulnerability, rejection, and guilt Like the one our Lord raised. “Who do you say that I am?”

When Bill and I would meet he certainly raised the question of what was the medical  answer to his illness related that was not answered fully even to his dying day. But that became more important for him to cast aside to take a deep dive into getting the questions that stir your soul regarding what was important to him. His vulnerability revealed his ultimate nightmare but created courage. What can we learn about his life and legacy that can inform our lives for the better?

First, we must make a choice. Do we want to live our lives with our obiturary so concerned with what we have done, or do we want to live our lives as a legacy which are all our attributes as a gift to those that we leave behind. We will forget his obituary as great as it was. so that we can learn how he lived and how we felt about him; vulnerably, empathy and what made him happy like doing all the planning for Emily and Brent’s wedding at Kiev. I was taken back when Emily asked me to bless her marriage because she said, “You would be working with my dad on the occasion as he was detail guy. Mom is the glue that holds the family all together.

Bill and Margo have lived through trauma, the vulnerability associated with that is part of what forms their love, and that love, for those of you who know them well, is a love for the ages. “I love you.” The first words that greeted each other in that first moment of wakefulness. Please know that kind of love applies to Will’s wife, Sydney and Will and their children, Brooks and Whyatt.

We must get the questions right. For us here this morning we must ask that question that we have to deep dive with life as Bill did. Remember Jesus asked of those around him, “Who do you say that I am?” During the hardest of times who was more fearful of vulnerability, rejection, and guilt than the disciples after the crucifixion and I would dare say for all of us.

But Bill discovered firsthand the vulnerability that he was experiencing, but he kept going on because it opened his eyes and heart and soul. We change our focus as he did and can say he led a good life of deeds done but now look at the good life of his life faith and moral actions.

Bill could teach us from his death what is true about life. Let’s listen to his voice regarding how we should live our lives. His thoughts are universal and are his legacy that we should pay attention to. Jesus is the wounded healer for us all.

But how does that story of courage emerge from vulnerability that is reflected in the lives of Bill and Will. Perhaps a different context or anecdote will demonstrate courage emerging from vulnerability.

I had a student come to see me when he was in tenth grade. He said, “I am scared”, and then started to cry. What you don’t know is that he was one of the feared defensive line men in the Interact Football League. He was the last person that you would think felt vulnerable or scared. From those moments of vulnerability, the emotion of courage was brought into his psyche and soul. The wounded healers, people who have been through something that became courage through the actions of our Lord and each other. It doesn’t mean that you are not afraid. It is what you need to overcome it.

He went to law school sometimes sleeping on the floor of his apartment and not having the money to buy textbooks for his law school courses until his funding came through. But he still struggled and received funding becoming a JAG officer in the army, He called me one day out of the blue. He was in an airplane in civilian clothes that was descending into the Islamabad Airport. He was to spend one year under deep cover in Islamabad. “He simply said, “I am scared.” There were transactions with the enemy that he had to make to gain information to help the USA. He had guns pressed into his head during his job, vulnerability. As the plane was circling down, we said, Psalm 23 together, “yea though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me” His final words to me just before he landed were…I now know that I am not alone. The “Lord is with me,” that wounded healer, our Lord, was with him.  A few weeks ago, David and I made a deal. He said he would write a book about his life if I would do the forward.

He retired from the service fought alcoholism and PTSD that still exists at night as nightmares with that wounded healer by his side. He now has a wife, two beautiful daughters, and is Vice President of a company and he is has found happiness. He now has a beautiful life born out of vulnerability and courage, born in the smithy of his soul, He is now paying his story and belief’s forward, just as the disciples did.

That is what Bill and Will know resting in the arms of their Lord in peace, Vulnerability waiting for whether that next breath will come with courage or pain found in the wounded healer will be present with them and that love that will cast out fear as it hangs on a cross. Bill and Will knew vulnerability and courage, but they also knew the wounded healer who we call Lord. Amen