Smiling at Funerals

Make what you will of this.....


Smiling At Funerals

Sometimes it’s hard,
among the flowers and the hymnbooks,
and the mourners all assembled,
not to smile.

Perverse thing, that.

I emerge from the vestry,
face fixed, as needs be, in that neutral mien,
conveying what, one hopes,
is an appropriate amount of gravity.
But the weight of those watching eyes;
the silent, controlled tension of those moments,
forces me into an unnatural self-consciousness.

Can I trust my face?
Do I look sad, or just vacant?
Peaceful, or indifferent?
God forbid;
How can I be sure I’m not grinning like a loon?!

So every now and then,
I twitch the muscles in the corner of my mouth
To make sure my lips are set solemnly straight.
And in so doing,
momentarily,
superficially,
I smile.

I hope no-one sees.
They might think I’ve grown calloused
and insensitive to grief,
when the truth is,
standing beside the dead and deadened,
sorrow, gratitude, love, despair and hope
mingle into one emotional continuum,
like streams surrendering to the river’s course.

And rooted on this bank,
from which I see, however faintly,
the estuary spreading out towards the boundless, open sea,
I think I can allow myself a smile.

Comic Timing

Comedy has always been a release valve from me.

(That began as a typo, but on reflection I think it's a truth. Scarily Freudian. A release valve from me, rather than for me. Hmmmmm.)

It began as a kid when we'd watch Not the Nine O'Clock News and the Young Ones and run through the routines the next morning in school assembly. Kudos for those who could remember the most. And it's continued well into adulthood - when I'm tired and just want to switch off my brain, it's Dave or UKTV Gold I gravitate to. I never tire of re-runs of Fawlty Towers, Alan Partridge, HIGNFY or Buzzcocks.

Half the DVD's and videos in my collection are standup: I love the storytelling skills of Billy Connolly and the mad surrealism of Eddie Izzard and Harry Hill.

I was watching Dara O'Briain late last night, and one of the things he does is pick on members of the audience and improvise whole chunks of his act around a conversation with them. It's a remarkable gift.

But one of his questions to the audience stopped me in my tracks last night and made me think long and hard. He pounced on one poor guy with "what's the most amazing thing you've ever done?". Try answering that in five seconds! I'm struggling 12 hours later!

What would you have said?

Pluscarden Reflections - Part 3

A few years ago my spiritual director of the time asked me to go and write my own obituary. This wasn't her way of telling me to 'go forth and multiply', but a tangential approach to helping me think through what it is I really value from life and want to be remembered for.

Boiling all of that thought down, the essence is this: I want to make a difference by helping others connect with God.

This is my hope and my heart. And the converse is my fear. A life where I make little or no difference. A life where I don't leave footprints in anyone's heart.

I took that thought with me to Pluscarden, and voiced it among the guys on the first night together. When I'm tired and overworked, these are the times when I wonder what it's all about and whether anything I'm doing has any lasting value.

The next day I realised I'd thrown an envelope in the back of the car - my treasurer had handed it to me as I left the church and I hadn't taken it indoors when I got home. I opened it and read these words from a young woman whose wedding service I'd taken just before Christmas (and I record them to show that God is good, not me!)

"We wanted to thank you for your beautiful service and acknowledge the time and energy you must have put in to personalise our special day. Your heartfelt words touched both Steve and I, and your warmth, humour and sincerity reached out to all of our weddings guests. In fact we were bombarded by friends and family who said it was the happiest and most joyful service that they had ever been to, and we owe that to you alone.... we look forward to continuing to see you on Sundays"

I see a providence in the fact that those words were there for me to read on that day. It was God's way of saying - "There you go. Take heart. These are the kind of footprints you're leaving"

Pluscarden Reflections - Part 2

Apart from the sheer magnificence of the building, the crowning glory of the Abbey is its stained glass, much of which was designed and manufactured by the monks themselves.

On the Monday afternoon I set off for a wander as the light was beginning to fade, and as I walked past the end of the Abbey I noticed something odd.

The stained glass window in the North Transept depicts Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, both women pregnant with unexpected sons. At that time of day the window was almost entirely dark because the chapel wasn’t in use, but there was a solitary light burning inside. The light from that bulb illuminated one small panel with uncanny precision; the one showing the women’s faces close together: loving, contented and united. Their faces stood out in bright colour, against the blackness of the rest of the window.

I stood there for a good ten minutes in the cold, soaking up this lovely image– passers by must have thought I’d lost the plot! - but I knew that God was saying something important to me through it. And what I think he was saying was this – “This is what you were made for. For intimacy, with one another and with me.”

If I could ask one thing for myself and for my church it would be this. To help people draw closer to God and enjoy a deeper and more intimate fellowship with him. For me, this is what the church is for. Everything else we might do, however important or enjoyable, is a distant second to that first priority. Mission, outreach, worship, social action – all these things flow from the ‘spring’ that is our own connection with God.

Pluscarden Reflections - Part 1

Two weekends ago I went on retreat to Pluscarden Abbey, the only medieval monastery still in use in the UK. It's set in beautiful countryside near the town of Elgin and is home to a community of Benedictine monks. Guests are free to come and go as they please, but are invited to join with the brothers in their times of worship.

After arriving, we joined them for vespers at 5:30 and sat through 45 minutes of ritual, song and prayer that I’m guessing had changed very little in seven centuries. And although I didn't understand the Latin liturgy (and there's still a part of me that balks at ritual), it was a blessing to be there because the experience opened up for me a window into the mystery of God.

Incense hung around us like a cloud as the priest consecrated the bread and wine, and having done so, we kept silence together before God in that great room, for fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes of absolute silence. It felt like the whole of heaven was holding its breath. It was an experience of the Numinous.

This Sunday's lectionary readings - Moses on Sinai and Christ's Transfiguration - can feel a bit problematic because of the whole son et lumiere thing. How do we, who have never and probably will never have that kind of experience, relate to what Moses and the disciples went through?

Answer - the very same light and sound is breaking through all the time in little ways if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Gerard Manley Hopkins was spot on:

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil”