Applause

It’s always the simplest questions that get under our cultural radar and penetrate to the heart of something important.
Like when my four year old asked me when I was at theological college: “Where is God?” I approached my doctrine lecturer who said that was a hard one and over the years I have realised that much of what we think about heaven is not theological but cultural. It’s full of clouds and angels with harps because the Greek heaven was full of these things and we are still essentially a post Greek culture. The bible sees heaven as a city, built by God, with open gates to all point of the compass as a sign of welcome.
Yesterday a good friend asked me why we don’t applaud at funerals. I wasn’t sure but I suspect somewhere deep and culturally funerals are really times for sadness, which is right but also a weird kind of embarrassment because we have failed through our faith, or our intelligence to keep this person alive. Maybe there is a deeper feeling that good people didn’t ought to die and therefore applauding at the funeral, acknowledging that this was a good person, challenges our notions of fairness. If they were good enough to get applause, why weren’t they good enough to live longer?
The bible again is quite clear that our time on earth is fixed by God but is not dependent on our goodness or badness, for all life no matter how short is God’s gift and grace.
Today I conducted the funeral of a youngish father with two small children in front of me. Thinking about what my friend had said about applause I asked the congregation to applaud the diseased so that his children would have something tangible to remember from the service, something that would lodge in their memory to remind them just how much he was loved by others.
It was very moving to see the smiles on their face at this tribute to one of God’s creatures. There might be more applause at future funerals I think.

Famous last words

Late to bed as I finish off the paperwork for tomorrow's funeral. Bit of a shock when I discover that I am on the radio tomorrow morning. Never sure how you prepare for this, I have been caught out before by radio people who say that they want to talk to you about topic A and actually live on air they ask about topic Z!
Anyhow I don't get too perturbed because it's an internet station which I have never heard of... So it really doesn't matter what I say, does it?
Famous last words!

Twelfth Night

There is a duality in my life and work between brain and emotional work that is sometimes a bit unnerving. Take today: I spent a considerable part of the day composing a sermon for the funeral of Nora Nelson tomorrow. Nora was a lovely lady who I knew very well and so I particularly wanted to encapsulate her as she was, a very special lady. all of this safely going on in my head and on my computer.
Tonight it was more of the emotional stuff, heading to the hospital first to see my oldest son who is having a minor procedure then on to see the man in intensive care again. I was surprised how much both visits got to me, something to do with the incredible vulnerability on display… which touched at my vulnerability, unable to fix things, only able to trust.
Tomorrow will have it’s own ups and downs but today has left me a bit ragged.
In addition to this we have taken the decorations down which always makes me a bit sad. so it feels like we are back to once again the depths of winter. The chill of it seems a bit more intense tonight...

Sabbath

Sundays are rarely a day of rest for clergy and their families but usually involve at least one visit to "work." Any more than one and I am in danger of making my children "churched out!" which is their phrase for an overdose of religion.
Whilst not the best candidate for day of rest Sundays usually allow one indulgence: the afternoon snooze. Today I had a particularly good one that began with a houseful but ended with just the family left.
The snooze is a great gift from my dad, who without even the drop of a hat could take a quick nap pretty much anywhere.
Wouldn't britain be a better place if we all had an afternoon snooze... An hour of rest even if you don't get an day of it.

Held in the balance

Funeral visits this morning, a bit of shock to the system as you walk out of the tinseliness of Christmas into the cold realities of life and death. Except they're not that cold as the great mystery when someone dies is there is this wonderful dam burst of the love from those who knew the deceased.
More of a cold shock when I am called out to visit someone taken suddenly ill and now unconcious in the intensive care unit.
"What did you do?" my wife asked when I returned home.
"The usual."
To hold a hand, to stroke a forehead, to say a prayer and to mark with a cross.
All together commending someone into God's care, who holds their life in the balance.
The truth of course being that for those who believe that's where we always are... whether we acknowledge it or not.

Adventures with my SatNav

Today we drove over to Boundary Mill to try and find some bargains. We know the way the way there all too well but decided for fun to leave the Satnav on. All the way it kept tantelisingly pointing up small lanes which we managed to resist being directed up.
On the way home a certain giddiness came over my wife and I, due to the lateness of the hour or the sheer joy of shopping without whinging children and so we decided to follow the SatNav. I have no idea which way we went but given that we started off in completely the opposite direction to that which we would have gone and arrived back home from the North when we had left towards the West we had an exciting adventure in the dark, that was neither illegal, immoral and it didn't make us fat!
Given my usually default position these days of grumpiness it was kind of exhilirating, not least because you were completely in someone or something else's control.
Just a brief glimpse then of the attraction of cults and facist regimes?
Probably not as there was not so much pain involved, more like the attraction of the fair ground where for a few risky moments you put take your life out of your own hands.
That self control that we all love to think we have is almost certainly an illusion but at least with the SatNav you can switch it off.

Back Again

So I have been off blog for a couple of weeks and the truth is the Christmas Wave has meant that I have just about managing to hold my head above water, and today after going to bed at 3.00 a.m. I have managed to sit still for long enough to write this blog.
It's been funny not writing the blog, a conversation interrupted really and a discovery, from the number of people who have commented on the fact that I have stopped blogging that people are reading it.
Sad news just now of the death another of my flock at Cragg means that next week I will probably conduct three funerals in this parish of 600 people, quite significant really, all ways round, not least in that they were all lovely people.
John Donne's no man is an island, which calls for us all to consider that when the bell tolls it tolls for us is particularly poignant for this little communities, where we can't afford to lose people.
So another prayer for another bereaved family and after the briefest of respites the vocation makes its call back to work.