The Rev. Kate Norris
The Rev. Kate Norris
Assisting Minister, Church of the Holy Cross
Sullivan’s Island, SC
I’d like to share a word on play, grace and encouragement from my Dad, Peter Moore. What I needed most from Peter Moore was not his tips on preaching, though I listened closely, nor his teaching on leadership, though I admired his servanthood, nor his wisdom on evangelism, though he had courage of an army when often alone, nor his mentorship, though I watched him give and give until the end. What I needed most was his fatherhood. This was a new frontier for my dad. He had a broken home. While he was proud of his parents, he carried scars from childhood that have only just been healed when his Father in Heaven took him home. Because of these scars he could look at a room and see that the most hurting person might look just like him. Because of them he had a fierce commitment to his family in Christ and the Good News they proclaimed. Because of them, his soft underbelly where theology and psychology meet was exposed in our family and he humbled himself over and over to connect, reconnect, and love us, love me. It’s no mistake that his three children are sharing their tributes to him at this memorial service. He was a repentant man, which meant any fight ended with his asking for forgiveness, and me his. God flooded our sorely imperfect lives with love. I felt my dad’s love. We all did. And we loved him back. I watched him love you. And you love him back. He was both a father and a child in God’s family of grace. What better gift could a father give a daughter?
My dad played. He played in ministry. He played with me. As I grew up in Toronto when he was Rector of Little Trinity, I remember hitting badminton in the driveway or ping-pong in the garage (which he never let me win) and I’d get all sweaty in my nightgown before bed. I remember him reading Narnia and similar novels to me or making up his politically incorrect storyline of Howda Hooda, the Native American Chief. I’d ask him to make it scary but not too scary, with wolves in it. He welcomed the challenge every time.
In these last years, I got to share my own children with Mom and Dad and they became Nana and Popop. I realized anew how important play is to a child of any age. God created imagination to meet us in it and reassure us all is well between us. I felt God’s love in Dad’s play. I still see it in FOCUS and all the ministries he started. He wanted to ski with you, play charades, play board games, and did you know he played tennis? It would usually get too competitive, and we may have stories of when it went sour. But that’s part of the beauty too—Dad never presented himself as holy or perfect. He knew he was a sinner saved by grace. It was a constant balm to my perfectionism. I felt permission to be myself around him too.
Now a story about grace. Dad loved to take trips. The trips we took usually brought out the worst in us, and exposed the worst in the places we visited, which caused endless laughter. He was always one to laugh at himself. As a result, I learned to tell stories on myself and to lead not from my strengths but from my weakness. For instance, when I was 11, he pulled me out of school to visit both my sister and his old stomping ground in Oxford. We took a walk from Upper Slaughter to Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds. It was a brilliant, partly cloudy afternoon with horseback riders crossing the cobblestone streets. I wore my new, white Nikes with a purple and pink swoosh. However, as we trespassed through the sheep fields my new sneakers got completely submerged in mud over and over again. I was well beyond the age of a temper tantrum, but I had one that lasted the whole walk through those emerald hills. Dad could have barked at me that I was ruining our father-daughter time, or that I was ungrateful, which were all true. But he just let me have it until it ran its course. And we came back together again. We never forgot that walk. I will always remember the grace of my father. I think he would say he had supernatural patience to not react. It’s probably my favorite trip because of that walk. He was quick to give me grace as one who needs it too. I hope to do the same.
I’ve talked about my dad’s play, grace, and now encouragement. Though he loved St. Michael’s—the church that brought my parents to Charleston, they spent much time worshipping at Holy Cross in I’On where my husband and I were pastors for the last three years. When health allowed, they came to both the family and Communion services, supporting Sean and me and welcoming their grandchildren on their laps and under their chairs. This past February our location closed. God was in it but it was a big loss for all of us. I led a service of lament and then an art project to express our grief and gratitude for what God had done in our midst. Mom and Dad jumped into the painting project. At first, Dad was frustrated with his painting, but then, when I held it at a distance, he raised his eyebrows and said, “Ahhh,” in approval. On the picture he wrote the verse John 12:24: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Since he painted it to encourage, Sean, me and the entire Holy Cross congregation, he wrote, “More fruit to come!” He delighted in the chance to encourage me. As I look back, he has encouraged me in all my small beginnings, botched speeches, ministry losses, and temper tantrums. Christ had encouraged him over and over and it poured out into me, into all of us. It still makes my heart full of courage to try again.
In his painting, I couldn’t help but think back to the original symbol of FOCUS. It was of a dead dandelion puff just waiting to release a million seeds into the first whisper of wind. Given Dad’s hatred of weeds, it was a truly supernatural symbol. It conveyed this verse promising everlasting life in Christ to those who are dead. Jesus revealed himself to my dad as a teenager in the St. Mark’s Chapel as the living Son of God who pulled him from death to life. That night Christ blew on Dad and the dandelion seeds travelled and here we all are, gathered together because he changed our lives using Peter Moore. I don’t think my Dad was thinking of his life story when he painted it. But it came from a deep place, as art always does. As I watched my Dad die, I was never surer that Christ would keep his promise. In that painting, in that seed, in that breath blowing on us now, I think the Lord is still speaking through his friend and ours, my dad, Peter Moore.
