JT Bottom Funeral Sermon

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

There’s surely something of a future promise in this – a promise we trust is now fully realized for JT, that he is indeed seeing God. But at (perhaps) a more profound level, Jesus’ wisdom here is such – that for the pure in heart – they actually get to see God much sooner. For with purity of heart comes the gift of seeing God everywhere, and in particular, in everyone.

For so Christ taught us to love God and to love our neighbor, and in so doing, to see God in our neighbor. And, if there were just one accolade we were allowed to proclaim from the rooftops for John Thomas (Johnny, JT) Bottom, III it would be this: he loved everyone! So would his friend Don Scott say of him, when – as the Signa Chi rush chairman for Ole Miss – he had his first JT encounter: “Johnny was one of the most charismatic people I had ever crossed paths with.” And as has friendship grew over the decades, he would conclude, “[That man] only had sweet bones in his body.”

JT saw people. He saw them and delighted in them. There was no such thing as a stranger. He collected friends, then kept them for life. Even in his later years, once he’d moved to Gig Harbor and Alzheimer’s was already making its way in him, JT never stopped seeing people. On his daily walk in the harbor he observed another man who’d walk at the same time each day. JT didn’t know him, but sensed a “military bearing” about him, so he began saluting him. The man would salute back. After several days of this, they stopped to talk. Turns out he had been in the military. In fact, they’d been stationed at the same place just a year apart. His name was Pete. And he and JT became friends. And then walking partners – three days a week in the harbor, as long as he was able to do so.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

And because making friends came so naturally for him, it was a gift he fostered in others. “Hey, come out with me to Salt Lake City,” he told his friend Clark.” I’m going skiing with my friends Dona and Doug.” Clark had never skied before, but off they want together along with a gaggle of JT’s friends. Then every year, for the rest of his life, whether JT was along or not, Clark skied with Dona and Doug, his “closest of friends,” all because of JT. When two of his friends were going through their divorce, JT was the one guided them in how to do it well, and how to retain a supportive relationship. “We credit JT for making this happen,” they’d say.

There’s a certain irony in the fact that this “zest for life, love to laugh and dance, friend of all, JT Bottom” would actually hail from a strong military family. Now, he was proud of this; proud of his father, the “Admiral.” And JT himself was in the ROTC throughout his time at Ole Miss and commissioned as a Lieutenant. But when it was time to graduate and move on to the next steps, his friend Pete Stiven would write, “neither one of us were intrigued with the prospect of having a duty assignment in South Vietnam. [So] we decided to extend our active duty commitment so that we could have our choice of assignments.” They both chose Europe. It’s like my own grandfather advised me at the outbreak of the first Gulf War, “Eric, a good place to be when there’s a war, is where the war ain’t.” Or in JT’s own words on this topic: “I may sound like a redneck, but I’m not stupid.”

And so JT would say of his three years in Germany, “I served my country. I ran the gym, organized basketball games, and skied all over Europe.”

I truly mean no disrespect, but that does seem a fitting description of what kind of soldiering JT would finagle. He was just so automatically orientated towards the pleasurable things of this life – skiing and hiking, traveling, golfing, music, and enjoying friends.

Now, you might say this all sounds rather Peter Pan-ish. (And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. As Julie says, “He was a kid!”) But if you knew him (like you did – that’s why you’re here), there was actually something (dare I say it?) “pure” in all this. JT understood the goodness of this life and reveled in it – delighted in it. Now, he knew how to work; he was successful in his career in technology leasing and finance; he was an excellent father and husband. But none of these “adult things” got in the way of him knowing how to live and how to enjoy living. There was a sense in him, that he knew how to embrace “the now” of the present moment. Julie would do all the organizing and planning for a camping trip. JT came alive when it was actually time to camp. He came alive in “the now” – right now – ready to be the worker bee, the one who would ensure the campfire was blazing by the time everyone else was waking up.

And in this way, JT modeled for us one of our most precious attributes of God. And that is how God is always, now. “Who are you?” Moses once asked. “I am,” said God. That was the name God chose for himself. And so God is, the forever I am – not regretting the past or anxious for the future, but always now: alive and fully present with us, in this moment. And with us, in love, a love that will never tire or turn away. And so, I would say, showing us this aspect of God is JT’s particular gift for us.

I wonder, (and this is just me wondering), if JT’s gift of living in the moment didn’t prepare him well for when Alzheimer’s took over, more and more – when there really was nothing but the present tense; when “I am” was both a statement of JT’s own existence and a prayer of address to the God who was fully present to him in every minute of “the now.” Who knows? I hope so. But I can say this, with some confidence: A couple years ago I was on a spiritual retreat having something of a guided meditation. And in this session, a whole series of memories from my life and impressions of the universe and my place within it began to swirl around together as one – with no regard for chronology and order. All was one with God and I felt the worthiness of my life and my belonging to God and God’s creation. And later when I was reflecting on it – and how “okay” it was for these aspects of existence to weave in and out of each so fluidly – I said to myself quite distinctly, “I don’t need to feel sorry for JT anymore. Alzheimer’s is no barrier to God.” Who knows? It may even be breaking down those ordered barriers that keep us from experiencing the God who is all in all.

For certainly we could observe in JT, to the end, his undying spirit of gratitude. “Thank you” for him was more than just the well-healed training of a southern boy. “Thank you” was JT’s way of living every day of his life in gratitude for the goodness of this world. “Thank you,” in fact, were the final words ever articulated by his lips.

And of all the good things of this world that JT enjoyed and was grateful for, surely music was high on the list. It was his perpetual joy and constant companion. He lived his days with a kind of soundtrack always playing. Live music, rock-n-roll, blues, Americana – he loved it all. And, in JT fashion, he shared it all with his friends. Whoever reminisces on their friendship with JT always includes the music he introduced him to: going to live concerts with Pete Stiven in Berlin to see the Rolling Stones and The Who; going to hundreds of live concerts with Don Scott and introducing him to Marshall Tucker, the Altman Bothers. JT loved music.

And he loved curating of music. He was constantly updating his own “Top 100.” And as the years went by, and audio technology developed, JT kept apace – from his huge reel-to-reel recorder, to cassettes, to CDs. (I’m sorry he never got to discover the limitlessness of Spotify.) His particular gift was making play lists for his friends – these perfectly curated collections to give voice and emotion to whatever was going on in their lives.

“When I was going through a divorce,” Janie remembers, “JT made an amazing CD for me. He said half were sad songs to know I was not alone and half were dancing songs to move me forward! I spent lots of time crying to the sad and dancing like a crazy woman to the “move me forward” songs. [That CD] is still my favorite.”

It’s fitting that, during JT’s last years, whenever you’d visit, there was always music playing. His body may be shutting down, but his music knew and insisted on a reality that was and ever would be – of joy and life and life again.

Of course, by that time, he could no longer choose the songs himself. It was now Julie’s duty to pick the play list. But I trust she had enough good data to go on. Julie and JT were married for 31 years. Perhaps, on the surface, they weren’t the most obvious pairing, “not exactly two peas in a pod,” Catherine Endicott would recall. But what Catherine came to see, as did we all, was what a good pairing they were indeed – how deeply they shared their values; and how JT’s love of life and his freedom to enjoy the adventure of life, was exactly the gift and partner Julie needed.

And JT was an excellent father, “the best of dads,” Julie would say of him. “It’s what he excelled at. And he was the perfect dad for Sophie. Once she was in our lives, it was all about her.” She was his “Margaret” and he was her “Phil.” (And I don’t even understand what that means. But they knew what it meant to each other.) He taught her to dance and to camp and to golf and to ski and to enjoy all those “good things” in JT’s world. He’d wake her up early in the morning, bundle her up, so they’d be he first to arrive at the ski resort, with the best parking – so that after day of skiing, his tired little girl wouldn’t have far to walk back to the car. He was always her champion and friend – running alongside her as she rode her unicycle in the Rose Bowl Parade – delighting in her, staying present to her, not wanting to miss a moment of her. “Keep on smiling,” was his undying Wet Willie advice, a message now scribed in her forever.

Several years ago, Sophie and Julie and JT went hiking together in Zion National Park. And their hike one day was, literally, up a river – in the river. It was a pure JT moment – surging through the waters. Julie can see him still, reaching their destination; JT’s standing atop a rock, arms outstretched, glorying in the accomplishment and the thrill of it all – what a gift! to be alive and part of such a glory.

It was like the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of God’s intention to redeem the brokenness of this world. He envisioned a river flowing from the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. And the further it flowed, the deeper it got – first just ankle-deep, then to the knee, then to the waist, then too deep entirely to cross. And the river keeps flowing, down and down God’s mountain, and into the Dead Sea – that salty brackish sea – where nothing can live. But when God’s river reaches there, the sea becomes pure and springs to life, swarming with fish; trees growing bounteously on its bank.

For this is our hope, that our God, the I am, is the always-living one, who has already begun this work of making alive that which was dead. The waters of God are already flowing. And as Christ before us has succumbed to the swirling waters and risen alive from within them, so is JT surging up this river of God, to life and victory, to his place upon on the rock, arms outstretched, exulting in the glory of love and life and life again.