John Paul Koehler

2/02/18

“For everything there is an appointed season and there is a proper time for every project under the sun, a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to root up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to seek and a time to loose, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance”

We come here now because it is a time to mourn. We mourn for John Paul. We come here now because it is a time to weep. And we weep for ourselves in our loss of John Paul. It is a time to speak, to speak of our love, to speak of our memories, to speak of John Paul. This is the season of mourning. This is the winter of grief.

Each of us in our own way try to deal with tragedy, we try to understand how someone so talented and so generous, can be taken away. We try to find meaning; we try to understand the darkness.

Each of us in our own way, in our own time walks this path, taking a route both personal and universal. Each of us tries to find answers, tries to understand, tries to find meaning in tragedy. We struggle with the senselessness, we struggle with the pain, and we struggle with death. Some come to this moment with prayer. Some come to kneel where prayer has been valid, and prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind or the sound of the voice praying. And many arrive at resolution, some through the Church, others through ways private beyond words. For what the dead had no speech for when living, they can tell you now, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. Here now at the intersection of this timeless moment. In San Francisco and nowhere. Never and Always. There is mystery, there is sorrow, and perhaps there is the seed of wisdom. This is the season of mourning. This is the winter of grief.

If we come this way as Christians, Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox, we also try to find meaning; we try to understand the darkness. And we turn to our faith, our faith in the wisdom of God and the love of Jesus. And faith is not a belief in this doctrine or that ritual. Faith goes deeper. It goes beyond the opinions of theologians and priests, dogmas and scriptures. Faith is our acceptance of the love of Jesus and the mercy of his Father. Our Faith informs us that Jesus in his infinite love, looking upon John Paul, has brought him home, has brought him home, has brought him home to dwell with our Heavenly Father and His angels and His saints. We mourn his absence but in our faith look forward to seeing him again in another place, at another time. And all things shall be well; all manner of things shall be well. All will be resolved in infinite love. As Paul writes in First Corinthians:

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And although I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and although I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. Love never fails: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease, whether there be knowledge it shall vanish”

And if we come this way from another direction, not that different, but another path, if we come this way from the East, bringing the understanding of the ancient faiths of Japan, India and China we see not one life time for John Paul but 10,000 lifetimes. We see each person, each soul living a multitude of lifetimes, each incarnation bringing the soul closer and closer to dissolving in the Light. From this view point John Paul lived many lifetimes and will live many more. The ancient laws of karma, the laws of action and reaction, will bring him back to reincarnate amongst those who he loved and those who loved him. As it brought him to this life, so will it bring him to others. While we mourn our loss, while we struggle with the absoluteness of John Paul’s death, the loss of possibility and potential, we realize that in another place, at another time that all shall be well, that all will be restored. History may be servitude, history may be freedom. See how they vanish, the faces and places, with the self which, as it could loved them, to become renewed, transfigured in another pattern.

Living Large; John Paul was born on May 3rd, 1965 in Bad Aibling Germany. Ann Marie and I decided to skip the last semester of our senior year at State and take a six week boat trip to Europe. Traveling first to Paris and then to Germany we settled in a little kur town, Bad Aibling, halfway between Munich and Salzburg. I enrolled at the Goethe Institute and after a week or so, Ann Marie gave birth. I wanted a son.

As I waited the doctor came in and said “Ein Knabe had geboren und ein ander kommen” Being so sexist I asked, “Ein Knabe nicht ein Machen? A boy not a girl? “Ja ja” And another is coming? This was before the days of sonar grams and comprehensive prenatal care. John Paul was born first and pushing his way out of the birth canal slightly flattened the back of his head – going first, pushing through living large and protecting his brother. As the years went on and I couldn’t tell them apart I would feel the back of their head and if it was slightly flatter I knew it was JP.

Living large, Alphabet City, poor and Puerto Rican on the Lower East Side back before gentrification was invented.. Ann Marie, John Paul, Alex and I all lived in Horizon House, a therapeutic community with eighty addicts in treatment. John Paul and Alex had turned five at Horizon House and that July, the summer of the moon walk, there was a heat wave. The people on the street sat on their stoops hanging out, playing dominos and being hot. John Paul and Alex had made friends with a seven year old boy, Ivan, who lived across the street. In the early afternoon the three kids were directing the water from an open pump, towards each other, at other kids and generally creating a water playground common to inner city streets.

At one point a car came driving down the street and the kids directed the water flow at their open window. The front seat filled with water and the driver and his passenger, outraged, jumped out of the car to go after the kids. Bad mistake. The people on the street rose up like some great beast, attacking the driver and his friend who barely got back in the car as the car was being beat on with clubs and pipes. The car drove off, a shot was fired and it was the beginning of two days of rioting and looting in the neighborhood. The next day Ivan came over to play with JP and Alex. He had a bingo game and a Mr. Potato Head that he had looted from a local store. John Paul, living large and in the mix.

John Paul and Alex went to McAteer High School and excelled in football and wrestling. I was working for the City and Country and transferred to Laguna Honda so I could be nearby when John Paul’s living large got a little too large and I found myself in the dean’s office practicing reframing.

A part of their high school team went on the San Francisco State and again excelled in wrestling. During these years JP and Alex became more involved in the family mental health programs and began working as group home counselors as well as psych techs and bouncers. Many of you guys here today know more about what JP was up to those years than I do but I don’t think anyone disagrees that he was living large.

As John Paul moved into his thirties he got tired of being poor and became a stock broker. He also coached wrestling. After a while he decided for various reasons to drop off the grid, follow his Italian ancestry and sell olive products at the farmer’s markets. He also found other products to sell - as well as spending endless hours at the gym. John Paul was noted for his generosity and desire to protect people. Some years ago, when Chenoa was pregnant he convinced me to rent a basement apartment to him so she and her child would have a place to live where he could feel she was safe. About five years ago when Kris, a member of my intentional family in New York, had to quickly leave, it was John Paul that gave him a place to stay on two days’ notice.

John Paul had different girlfriends and various relationships but it took his death and this past week to realize that he had a wife. Now marriage is more than a ceremony or a registration with the state it is the expression of love, devotion and support over a long period of time. Kelly and John Paul knew each other and were involved with each other for more than twenty years. They related like a married couple. I realized after being here a couple of days that talking to Kelly was like talking to a widow. She handled the day to day business of John Paul’s life, managing the bills, dealing with this task or that. And she knew the family stories, she knew John Paul and she knew him better that I did. It is unfortunate that it is only at John Paul’s death that I would discover that I had a daughter-in-law whose devotion for my son and her intimacy of understanding makes hollow any concern for ritual or even formal recognition.

As to his death, he should have died hereafter, there would have been a time for such a word, tomorrow and tomorrow but tomorrow is now, in this moment. Here now on a winter’s afternoon in San Francisco. The Christian scriptures say we know not the day or the hour. We also know not the reason because there is no reason. As a chaplain for three years I was on call to attend to the actively dying. Through those years I saw the angel of death, the little girl in the pink dress with the big bow in her hair silently sitting in a corner of the room; or the old Spanish man with the cane and the black fedora. And others, only occasionally seen, but always there.

I don’t know what form the angel took when sitting in JP’s living room but I do know that a couple of shots of bourbon or an extra Xanax or two were incidental to his death. The gods of the dead had decided and John Paul lived large, there were a thousand similar situations where a touch on the shoulder would have looked the same. If only he hadn’t driven so fast. If only he hadn’t got in that argument at the bar. If only this, and didn’t he know that, and how could he. We comfort ourselves by inventing meaning and torture ourselves with what ifs, blame and regrets. And insult the gods with our judgements and certitude. Better to take refuge in the Unknowing and keep our focus in the Moment.

The chorus in Oedipus Rex sings, “Count no man happy until he dies” John Paul has died and I count him happy and that he lived a happy life. He lived for fifty years free of disease. During this time no one really close to him died. He had comfortable wealth and prosperity and enjoyed life. He did what he wanted when he wanted to do it. He managed to live off the grid in San Francisco, not in some mangy trailer on the outskirts of Chico. He managed to not pay taxes for over fifteen years. And he had the joy of being generous. He had a comfortable death, a little too soon for me but he died, essentially in his sleep, spared from wasting away from cancer, smothering from emphysema, or watching his body and mind get sicker and sicker with each passing year. John Paul lived a happy life and I’m not going to question the angel of death for her reason for touching him last Saturday morning.