When I heard that Edward Gorey had died on April 15th of last year, my heart sank. It felt like losing an old friend although we had never actually met. I have treasured a number of his books. Several years I have followed calendars illustrated by his hand. Gorey posters have graced the walls of my home. Friends and family members have indulged me in this love by sending me cards featuring his artwork and giving me his hard to find books some of them even signed. Once, I caught sight of him at a Yard Sale on Cape Cod where he lived for many years. He was a figure hard to miss with his full shaggy beard and Keds sneakers. I considered saying hello but had heard that he was suspicious of fans and thought it more respectful to leave him be. It is hard to imagine that the last image and turn of phrase has come from Edward Gorey's pen. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of seventy-five.

Given my long fascination with Edward Gorey, I am often surprised to discover that many people have not encountered his work. One of the most widely recognized pieces is his animated illustration for the public television series, Mystery! The entire piece is drawn in meticulous detail entirely in black ink except for the occasional hint of red: a glass of wine left on a gravestone, roses blooming from an urn. The characters all have the elegance and formality of Victorian or Edwardian England. In the prelude, detectives creep along a stone wall with flashlights and magnifying glasses. A body slides slowly into a swamp. A group of well-dressed people sip cocktails on a terrace. A piece of masonry falls. A beautiful ingénue has her mouth and feet bound and cries for help. A skull winks on a gravestone displaying the name of the host of Mystery!, Diana Rigg.

Edward Gorey is hard to categorize. His books are small and fanciful but he is not a children's author. You may be familiar with The Gashlycrumb Tinies, a book that has been turned into cards and posters. It is an alphabet book that chronicles the unfortunate deaths of boys and girls. The first page reads "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs" and a girl dressed in white is shown in a headlong descent down an elegant staircase. The book continues, "B is for Basil assaulted by bears" with poor little Basil looking over his shoulder at two large furry creatures. Each frame is equally tragic and suspense-filled all the way to the final pages, "Y is for Yorick whose head was knocked in, Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin."

You may well be asking yourself at this point, "Why is this minister bringing such gruesome images and phrases into a worship service? Who was this strange man named Edward Gorey that she is moved to pay tribute to in a Unitarian Universalist church?" Unlike some movies or even television shows that feature acts of violence, close-ups of dripping blood and horrifying brutality, Gorey's work leaves much to the imagination. His words and images are implicit. Although he explores dark themes, through the shadowy landscapes and interiors sparkles a sense of irony and humor. In his obituary in the New York Times, Edward Gorey was eulogized as the "grand master of the comic macabre". The Boston Globe put it this way, "Mr. Gorey used his drawings to express the peculiar Gothic way he saw the world - one in which danger lurks behind lace curtains and innocence is a moving target." Gorey himself is quoted as saying; "For some reason my mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible. I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that's what the world is like."

Edward St. John Gorey was born on February 22, 1925 in Chicago. He was an only child, which perhaps explains all the solitary little figures in his books. Once when he was asked by an interviewer why he hated children, he replied simply, "I don't know any children." His father was a reporter for the Hearst newspapers. There were piles of books in his parent's home and he adopted their voracious love of mysteries, especially those of Agatha Christie. He is quoted as saying, "When Agatha Christie died, I thought: I can't go on! I also remember reading all the novels of Victor Hugo when I was about eight, which God knows is more than I can do now. I picked one up a couple of years ago. Chloroform! But I can still remember a Hugo being forcefully removed from my tiny hands when I was about eight so I could eat my supper." His parents divorced when he was eleven and remarried when he was twenty-seven. His stepmother for a time was Corinna Mura, who was most famous for singing the Marseillaise in the classic film "Casablanca".

I was surprised to learn that Gorey had very little art training given his sophisticated cross-hatching and composition. He attended a Saturday course at the Art Institute of Chicago and went there for only a single term after high school graduation. He proudly explained that his artistic skill was inherited from his great-grandmother, Helen St. John Garvey, who supported her family by making greeting cards and lettering.

Gorey was drafted into the Army as a Company Clerk and served from 1944-46 in Utah. At the age of 21, he went to Harvard majoring in French. Gorey illustrated for the Harvard Advocate and became involved with the Poet's Theatre not only designing sets, but also writing and directing plays. From the sound of it, the years that he spent at Harvard were brimming with imagination and innovation. His roommate was the poet, Frank O'Hara. John Ciardi taught courses in creative writing. Gorey's circle of friends included: Adrienne Rich, Alison Lurie, George Plimpton, Robert Bly, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch.

From Harvard, Gorey moved to New York City where his friends helped him get a job with Doubleday Publishers. He worked for seven years illustrating book jackets of re-released classics. No one was interested in publishing his books with titles like "The Beastly Baby", "The Unstrung Harp", and "The Listing Attic" with equally unusual content. So, he published them himself under the imprint of Fantod Press in small batches. A turning point in his career came when he was browsing in the Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan. There he met the owner, Andreas Brown. The Gotham Book Mart became a clearinghouse of Gorey books and collectibles. "The Doubtful Guest", which Tad read for us this morning, was first printed in 1958 and became a classic.

I am always fascinated by how creative artists influence and inspire one another. While Edward Gorey lived in the big apple, he was a passionate follower of the New York City Ballet. The word "passionate" may even be an understatement because he attended every performance of twenty-three seasons from 1956 to 1979. He cut quite a figure in the audience wearing a fur coat and Keds sneakers. Edward Gorey firmly believed that the founder and principal choreographer of the New York City Ballet, George Balanchine, was a genius. Certainly, he was not alone in this conviction. Balanchine was a prolific and innovative creator in many styles of dance. An interesting parallel is that Balanchine's work was characterized by a cool neoclassicism. Where some ballet masters were known for fits of temperament, Mr. B., as he was affectionately known, remained calm. After intensively studying the score, he would begin dance creation only at the first rehearsal. Many of his ideas sprung from working with the dancers. In contrast to the emotional tone of many works of ballet, Balanchine's choreography had an "impression of cool intellectuality". He rarely discussed his ideas with the dancers and would often say, "I want as less as possible."

Edward Gorey also had a flair for understatement in his work. Gorey is quoted as saying, "God knows that day-to-day reality is drab to the point of lunacy. And that means you have to leave an awful lot out. I have a fairly eccentric talent, but I try to tone it down rather than heighten it. Most people, I think, take the opposite approach . . . Classical Japanese literature concerns very much what is left out. The Chinese, the Japanese. I have always felt that they were much better [than we in the West] at describing everyday reality. That's why cats are so wonderful. They can't talk. They have these mysterious lives going on that are only half-connected to you."

Gorey often summered on Cape Cod. After George Balanchine's death, he decided to move from New York City to the Cape permanently. He lived with half a dozen cats in a 200-year-old house that might have been haunted. I saw him interviewed once on television. His home contained stacks of books and odd collections like pewter salt and pepper shakers. Through out his life, he continued to be a voracious reader. You may have seen the tote bag bearing his illustration and caption "So many books, so little time." He was also an avid viewer of television and movies. A friend described "Ted" as having an insatiable curiosity about everything and strong opinions. His tastes were as varied as the novels of Jane Austen, Dick Van Dyke Show reruns, John Wayne movies, and the foreign film director Fritz Lang.

In 1978, Gorey's costume designs for the Broadway show Dracula won him a Tony Award. On the Cape, he would often stage amateur theatrical productions in Provincetown or Cotuit. I remember attending one of his plays called "Useful Urns". The very mystery and understatement that makes for good visual art and reading made for terrible theatre. There were these big stage pieces shaped like urns that would move about the stage with actors popping out saying various unconnected phrases. I read an interview with one of the actors who admitted that Edward Gorey himself was one of the few appreciative audience members. Even though many people would walk out of these shows, he would remain undaunted and the actors were carried on by his chortling laughter and their sense of camaraderie.

One of the reasons that I am drawn to the work of Edward Gorey is that he was always true to his own vision. Through out his life, he followed his own path with little concern for convention. He never used a computer; even the text was handwritten in India ink. The original drawings are the size that they appear in his books usually four by five inches. When he could not find a publisher, he went on creating and printing his books himself. Even when he happened upon Andreas Brown who promoted his works at the Gotham Book Mart, he remained low-key and held a largely uncommercial attitude. This is perhaps why many of you had not heard of Edward Gorey before.

Beyond the artist and author as an individual, there is something that draws me to the works themselves. Part of it is the use of language. He has so many pithy and dramatic phrases that simply roll off the tongue. The settings often have vaguely English-sounding names like Penetralia, Chutney Falls, and Peevish Gorge. The names of Gorey characters have a Dickensian flavor such as Dick Hammerclaw, Miss Underfoot, and Millicent Frastley.

When asked why his works centered so much on murder and violence, Gorey replied, "Well, I don't know. I guess I am interested in real life." In reflecting upon why I am drawn to these dark images, I came across "An Image of Leda" written by Frank O'Hara, Gorey's former roommate at Harvard. The poem explores the human experience of watching a film. How we are overcome by these images and swept into the story like the mythical figure Leda who is raped by the swan. Here are the lines of O'Hara's poem again:

The cinema is cruel
like a miracle. We
sit in the darkened
room asking nothing
of the empty white
space but that it remain pure. And
suddenly despite us
it blackens. Not by
the hand that holds
the pen. There is
no message. We our-
selves appear naked
on the river bank
spread-eagled while
the machine wings
nearer. We scream
chatter prance and
wash our hair! Is
it our prayer or
wish that this
occur? Oh what is
this light that
holds us fast? Our
limbs quicken even
to disgrace under
this white eye as
if there were real
pleasure in loving
a shadow and caress-
ing a disguise!

Gorey's work too is "cruel like a miracle". These black and white illustrations are filled with so much color and movement. With a sly wink, he highlights our vanity and brutality. The circumstances are suggested not explicit and so through imagination we can step beyond the frame. We can take "pleasure in disguise and shadow".

I am currently teaching an Adult Enrichment course called "Building Your Own Theology". The class offers some tools for forming your own theology based on life experience. The latest session recommended giving yourself a spiritual check-up. Although Edward Gorey was not a religious man, I am convinced that he had a robust spiritual health. Although we would fail miserably in following in his exact footsteps, we would do well to adopt his attitude toward life.

Here are the questions for that spiritual check-up:

When you get out of bed in the morning, are you glad to be alive?
Do you have a healthy sense of humor about yourself and the contradictions, the paradoxes, and the oxymorons of life?
Can you deal with the inevitable tragedies of life, including death, including your own?
Do you manifest your spirituality in the world so that people take inspiration from who and what you are?

Edward Gorey was always baffled that he had a cult following. I am sure he would be amused to know that he was paid tribute in a church service. I invite you to experience his works first hand!