Ride For Life: Silence as a path to God

HEADLINE: Silence as a path to God; Disease takes voice of Kitchener pastor, so now his sermons are delivered online

SOURCE: RECORD STAFF

BYLINE: MIRKO PETRICEVIC

BODY:
With a stalwart sense of humour, Rev. Bob Hyde is a manifestation of grace in failing flesh.

The carpet in the living room of his suburban Kitchener home is as flat as a plate.

Hyde heaves himself off the couch and aims for the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, but stumbles on an invisible obstacle. He looks a visitor in the eye and a broad grin slowly spreads across his face.

"I'm not drunk," he slurs. "I just do a dance once in a while."

He turns toward the coffee maker and the back of his head comes into full view. Inside his skull, another invisible obstacle has numbed the nerves at the base of Hyde's brain. The crippling effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) have saddled the 57-year-old preacher with the mannerisms of a 90-year-old.

The disease that is killing Hyde's neurons has robbed him of muscle control and thrown him off balance.

After almost four years as the pastor of Trinity United Church in downtown Kitchener, Hyde has had to stop giving sermons from the pulpit.

And yet, while the disease is stifling his voice, the one-time fast-talking preacher refuses to be silenced. He insists he's not abandoning his ministry -- just changing it.

"I have no choice," he says, breathlessly between dabs of Kleenex to the spittle on his lips.

Hyde has been a pastor in communities across Ontario during his 31 years as an ordained minister.

From 1994 to 1995, he served as president of the United Church of Canada's Hamilton Conference, which includes the church's congregations in Waterloo Region.

And for the past seven years he has been on the board of the Francis Sandy Theological Centre, south of Paris, Ont., where aboriginal seminary students train to serve congregations in their own communities.

Hyde doesn't want his life-long ministry to end. So he has traded his platform in the church sanctuary for a pulpit in cyberspace.

In his first Internet sermon, he silently bared his soul by writing on the topic, On Losing Your Speech: Spiritual Reflections on Having ALS. It was a lesson on how silence can be a path to the Lord.

"Losing your voice is also an opportunity to live more fully in the presence of God," Hyde wrote.

ALS is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, because it's the same ailment that the famed New York Yankees slugger died of in 1941. One of the first signs Hyde was getting the disease was his free-flowing tears. He would cry for no apparent reason.

"If the Blue Jays hit a home run - I'd cry."

His wife, Carol, told him he was getting old and sentimental. And for about a year, doctors couldn't prove her wrong.

As he took a series of medical tests, Hyde's voice developed problems. From time to time he cried during his own sermons and he eventually took two weeks of stress leave from his post at Trinity United.

After a trip to an ALS clinic in Hamilton, he got the foreboding news last November.

"Disappointed," he says, was his reaction to the diagnosis. "Not angry."

Disappointed he wouldn't be able to enjoy retirement with his wife of more than 30 years. Disappointed he might not see the arrival of any grandchildren.

Although one of his two sons plans to marry this summer, Hyde knows he may be too feeble to hold any grandchildren when, or if, they arrive. Most people with ALS live three to five years after being diagnosed. Only about 10 per cent live longer than 10 years.

But even that prognosis didn't shake his faith in the Almighty.

"I felt very strongly it was like a call from God," Hyde says. "I feel in my heart God has something for me to do."

So he made a covenant with his congregation.

Hyde needs parishioners to help him endure the painful transformation of his ministry. They need him to help them deal with the loss of their pastor.

They will get through the transition together.

Without the congregation, "I'd be lost," he says. "I'd be lonely. I'd probably deteriorate faster and feel disconnected."

After receiving his diagnosis, Hyde continued preaching from the pulpit and working with Rev. Lori Campbell, who was hired at Trinity last August.

He moved from his third-floor office to the main floor and plans to work half-time before taking long-term disability in July.

Although not as strong as he used to be, Hyde wants to be a presence for his parishioners.

For a congregation, losing a minister is like having a limb amputated, says the former funeral director, who knows a thing or two about grieving process.

So as he teeters around the church he tries to maintain a balance between crying and laughing.

Hyde wasn't known as a joker before the diagnosis. But in a recent photograph taken at the church, he beams straight into the camera while wearing a big red clown nose.

"I can't be sad every day," he said. "The sun still has to shine. Spring has to come some time."

By January, he stopped driving a car. Friends started shuttling him between church and home.

By February, he paused more frequently while delivering sermons.

And as his speech steadily worsened, he inserted jokes into his weekly prose from the pulpit.

"The good news is my sermons are shorter. The bad news is it takes longer to give them," he says.

His body withers, but his mind is still sharp. His body doesn't ache, but it tires easily.

"It's like pushing a rock up a hill," Hyde says. "It doesn't hurt. It's just hard work."

As he climbed the stairs from his basement one Sunday morning in early March, Hyde got a strong feeling that his next sermon would be his last.

"It came out of my gut," Hyde says.

"All my life, when I hear those voices, I learn to pay attention to them."

After the service that day, Hyde and his wife lingered in the sanctuary and had a good cry.

At the end of March, more than 800 people gathered at Trinity to celebrate Hyde's preaching career.

They donated about $17,000 for a bursary to help educate aboriginal pastors.

And they raised money to buy Hyde a laptop computer so he could write -- he's got several sermons in the works -- and preach the Word on the Web.

A parade of friends has crossed the carpet in Hyde's home since his diagnosis became known.

They take him out for lunch, but he realizes he won't be able to share a meal with them much longer.

He already has to add a thickening agent to his coffee so he can swallow it without choking. And eventually he will be fitted with a special feeding tube.

He will miss the taste of Carol's cooking. And there will come a time that his body is so worn down that he won't be able to hug visitors who arrive on his doorstep.

Friends and relatives will have to walk to the family room at the back of the bungalow.

He won't have the strength to touch the loved ones sitting at his bedside.

"They'll have to hold my hand," Hyde says. "I'll still be present."

mpetricevic@therecord.com

Information about a bursary in the name of Rev. Bob Hyde for the Francis Sandy Theological Centre, can be seen at the Trinity United Web site at: http://nonline.net/ [tilde]trinity

'A more meaningful message of love'

Below is part of a Bob Hyde sermon, from Trinity United Church's Web site at http://nonline.net/ [tilde]trinity

Life is never simple. For years I have preached about evangelism and the need to verbally share our faith. Now I have to consider the other side of the coin -- sharing the faith of silence through the nonverbal . . .

Most people assume that losing my ability to speak frustrates me . . . and it does! Our society relies so much on the verbal -- telephones, radios, audio systems . . .

Our protestant Christian faith is almost totally dependent upon the verbal.

We preach. We read the scriptures. We pray aloud. We sing. The tongue is an essential faith tool.

So, as a protestant clergy person, living in a highly verbal culture, I am having to unlearn what my life thus far has taught me -- speak more slowly if at all and learn the gifts of silence.

It is a struggle. I've always talked a lot and fast. I'm having to learn when it is important to speak and when to remain quiet . . .

Fundamental to our understanding of silence is the concept of universal silence. This is the prevalent sound of the universe . . . God has given to us the gift of speech and the gift of silence.

We are so accustomed to reaching out to God through speech that we find it hard to accept the gift of silence.

Just the same, there is a profound awareness of God that comes with the silence.

Although I still have some of my speech, I am beginning to experience the grace of silence. I greet others more often with a hug, a squeeze of the hand, a big smile, with the meeting of eyes or with the shedding of a tear.

I am finding that such greetings convey a deeper and more meaningful message of love and care than I could ever achieve through words.

I find the awesomeness of God much more penetrating now when I sit in silence by my window at home and watch the snow blow around the yard, the winter birds come to the feeder and the squirrels run through the trees.

Being without speech forces me to decide what is important in life and what is not . . .

So what is it like to lose your speech? It is very inconvenient. It is frustrating. It is a great nuisance. Strangers look at you as if you're abnormal. You get tired of repeating yourself. You don't like to use the telephone.

But losing your voice is also an opportunity to live more fully in the presence of God.

It takes you closer to the truth of the words of the psalmist:

"For God alone my soul waits in silence." (Psalm 62:5)