Tom was a dear friend of many years. I presided at his marriage to Charles Neeley nine years ago. It was my privilege to preach this homily at Tom's funeral. Thanks to Fr. Mark Weitzel, the Rector of St. Mark's, for a lovely service.
Thomas Curtiss, Jr. RIP
4 November 1941 - 23 December 2023
Wisdom 3:1-5, 9; Psalm 100; Revelation 21:2-7; John 14:1-6
St. Mark’s Church, Glendale CA: March 9, 2024
The Rev’d. Dr. Adam D. McCoy, OHC
Thank you, Tom and Sandy, for those lovely words about Tom. As you did, I have been thinking about who Tom was. Each one of us here will have our own ways of remembering him. For me, Tom was a person of loyalties. Loyal to his family and its heritage. Loyal to his education, especially to his beloved Yale. Loyal to the Marine Corps Reserve, and to the men he led and served in the Vietnam War, though he rarely talked about the war or about them. Loyal to the Law, both in its ideal forms and in its actual practice, and loyal to the many families he helped in the arrangement of their affairs. Loyal to the Episcopal Church, in its faith and practice, and in his many roles in it both at the parish level and for the Diocese. For his service to the Church he was made a Lay Canon of the Cathedral. Charles tells me that Tom reclaimed his faith as an adult Christian in the Episcopal tradition right here at St. Mark’s, so many years ago. How fitting that we are back here with him again today.
And loyal to himself as a gay man. I first came to know Tom when we both served on a diocesan committee in the mid 1980s. The committee was considering the qualifications of a young man who wanted to be ordained, and who was openly and unapologetically gay. Tom and I discovered we both were appalled by the bigoted opposition to him and worked together - successfully - to approve his vocation.
I’m sure Tom had his doubts and uncertainties, as we all do, but he was, to me at least, a man who was secure, proud, loyal to and happy in the many ways he had been called to be.
In listening to the scriptural lessons just read, it may have occurred to some of us that the people we’re hearing about are holy people, saints even. “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God” from Wisdom. The heavenly courts filled with the redeemed in the new Jerusalem assembled before the throne of God. Those for whom dwelling places in the Father’s house have been prepared. [I do prefer the older translation of that passage: “In my Father’s house are many mansions”. There seems to have been some downsizing going on, from mansions to dwelling places.] And we may have wondered - are we making a saint out of Tom? Because he was, like all of us, not quite perfect. We can all think of our favorite Tom stories.
These same readings are included in the Prayer Book service for all whom the Church celebrates at the end of their lives. Not just for the perfect. Not just for the holy. But for all of us. Those readings are not descriptions of who we are. They are aspirations of who we might be. They are hopes of who we might become.
They are anticipations of the mercy of God, looking down on us, knowing everything about us, every little bit of us, every circumstance of our lives, each and every choice we’ve made and all their many consequences, as well as all the possibilities foreclosed by those choices. God sees and knows what we want to be and who we present ourselves as, and also who we actually are, whether we know who we really are or not. God sees it all.
And the wonder is that, seeing it all, God loves us. God knows every smallest movement in our lives toward what is good: every smallest act fulfilling our duties to our families, to those who educate and mentor us, when we serve our wider communities, when we serve others in the work we are called to do. And in every one of these acts it is our faith that we are called to cooperate with God in building up a better world. God sees not only our faults and mistakes and sins and crimes but also all the steps we take toward what is good and wholesome and right and just. God sees it all and I want to think God puts his finger on the positive side of our judgment scale.
God is love. God wants us to live in love, love both imagined and felt but also acted: Love made real through what we do. And this love is more than duty. It is also in our joy. In my experience of him, I know Tom took joy in his dogs, in his cats, in his fish. He took joy in his friends. He took joy in reading about military history. And Tom loved a good fight. He took joy in work well done, especially in a complex legal situation he had brought into fruitful order. He took joy in the traditional worship of the Episcopal Church. He was a fervent Anglophile, loving the ways of that actual and, perhaps, somewhat imagined, heritage. But he also took joy in the growth of the Church among Hispanic people who did not share that heritage. He took joy in his house as a lovely expression of a traditional style of life. He took joy in good food and good drink. He took joy in his lifelong relationship with the wonderful man he married.
God loves us for our duties, but also for our joys. How much love each of us can bring into the world through our joys! Our joys are infectious. They can light up the rooms of our lives and warm the hearts of those around us. They can fill our spaces with light and hope and possibilities. God loved Tom for his joys as well as for his loyalties, his duty done and done well and the joy and delight that filled Tom’s life. A welcome awaits all of us into the fellowship of the righteous, among the throngs before the Throne, among the inhabitants of the mansions prepared for us, with duty well done and with joy, if we will but enter in.
And what of us? What loyalties are we called to? What duties have we done. What duties still await us? Perhaps we can still refresh and renew and do well what calls to us. And what joys do we enter into? What seizes us with pleasure, with happiness, even with ecstasy? Can we share them with each other? Do they show forth our integrity, our confidence in the life God has given us? Can we live with light and warmth and affection and humor and delight?
Let us build something good out of our lives, as Tom built good out of his. That is God’s call to us as we remember this lovely man today.
