From Heather W. Reichgott

Holy Vignettes

Thursday, June 12, 2008

in memoriam: matt reagon

My friend and seminary colleague Matt Reagon died last weekend. He was in his thirties. In the middle of shock and confusion--we tended toward infrequent but deep conversations, and I last saw him in October, at which point there was no word of illness beyond an ear condition he'd had for a long time, so I'm still scrambling for news about what happened exactly--I want to set down some words to serve as a loving celebration of the little bit of Matt's life I got to share.

Matt threw himself into everything he did with tremendous energy, even when it meant putting five children to bed and then arriving at the library at 10:30 pm. He had a gift for biblical languages. He loved Hebrew with a particular passion and delighted in throwing Hebrew words into casual conversation. When we last spoke he was headed away from parish ministry and toward advanced work in biblical languages. He was brilliant and obsessive and relentless in all the right ways. He would have made a perfect biblical languages scholar.

Years of work refinishing floors gave Matt a worker's hands and a lot of physical pain. The ear condition he suffered contributed more pain and dizziness. Matt went through several surgeries without much in the way of painkiller medication, because painkillers are usually derived from opium. He refused to give up on the sobriety he'd worked so hard to attain, even when it meant daily suffering that most of us wouldn't tolerate without pills.

Matt loved God and hated hypocrisy. He was always reverently irreverent, if such a thing makes sense. This put him in good company where Christianity is concerned. It also put him at odds with most elements of organized religion.

Matt enjoyed a good argument and often used the argument as his standard mode of conversation. You had to like conflict to like Matt. He was smarter than most people he encountered. He did not suffer fools gladly. He had less than zero patience for sanctimonious discretion.

When Matt went through divorce and remarriage during seminary, he was in good company--heterosexual couples on campus were divorcing and remarrying at an alarming rate while our class was there. Students and staff included. The difference was that Matt refused to go away quietly until everything was all nicely settled and he had a shiny new traditional-looking family to show for it. Instead of hiding the life-shattering event of divorce and subsequent blending into a new family, Matt and his family went about their business as best they could, despite some very explicit pressure from the school administration to leave until the situation would no longer embarrass anyone. He and his new spouse devoted themselves to the care of five children who had already been through enough upheaval. "Integrity" may not be the word to describe divorce and remarriage; but for those of us who care about that particular virtue, Matt's choices against the background of look-good seminary culture gave us something to think about.

I will miss Matt every time I open my Hebrew Bible, every time I go to an academic conference, every time I think about our church community in San Anselmo, every time I encounter a blended family, every time I remember the courses and the coffee-shop tables that brought us together. And I will try to honor Matt every time I choose the hard but honest path over the easy but secretive or addictive path.