Especially "for you"

This is my current desktop picture taken from the 3 Minute Retreat website. The over-printed text at the bottom reads, "I believe I shall enjoy the Lord's goodness in the land of the living" (Psalm 27:13). I suppose the reason I like it so much is the way it combines the dying year and disappearing path with the bridge in the sunlight holding the promise of life and hope. 

I had the privilege of celebrating communion again today - and, despite an unusually long bout of clonus (leg-wobbling), found the experience moving again, including as it does the extraordinary invitation to all and sundry to share in God's love for each individual: "Receive the body of our Lord Jesus Christ which he gave for you, and his blood which he shed for you. Eat and drink in remembrance that he died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith with thanksgiving." I love the way that it says three times, "for you" - just in case we don't get the message. 

What's the connection with my desktop? Well, I think in communion we taste the goodness of the Lord in distilled form. It's not the only place and time we enjoy it - such as the beauty of a woodland walk, or the warmth of family and friends' love... the list is endless. The special truth, however, is that "the land of the living" is not cribbed, cabined and confined to a lifespan. As Kristyn Getty's song puts it, "And we are raised with Him, / Death is dead; love has won. Christ has conquered." 

I hope you enjoy good things this week.

Thank you, Beth

This morning we went to Beth's funeral. She's the 15-year old additionally disabled daughter of James and Lynn whom I mentioned last time. The church was packed. Among those who carried her basketwork coffin were her brother, father and, I guess, her grandfather. It was as emotional service as I can remember, but far from miserable. It included a most remarkable reflection on her life by her parents, which didn't gloss over the pains of having such a disabled child but did not deny either the joy and love she brought.

There were too some of my favourite songs such as "Great is your faithfulness" and "How great thou art". There was one written by Paul Oakley I'd not heard before, "There's a place", which contains this verse:
"No more, no more sadness,
No more suffering, no more tears,
No more sin, no more sickness,
No injustice, no more death." Which would be pretty good news if that was all there was. However the song goes on to the positives:
"There is joy everlasting,
There is gladness, there is peace.
There is wine, ever flowing,
There's a wedding, there's a feast." And it ends,
"We'll see you face to face
And we will dance together
In the city of our God, because of You." (If you don't know it, the best YouTube clip I've found is this -Because of You.) It's hardly a miserable dirge; in fact it's full of resurrection joy.

Yesterday I was simply going to post something that my venerable friend, Brian, had put on Facebook, but today's service made me want to write something more as a thank you to Beth Ross. But I'll still include Brian's lines because somehow they feel all of a piece with the journey of faith walked by James and Lynn and their family.
"I believe in the sun,
even when I cannot see it.
I believe in love,
even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God,
even when he is silent."

"Death, be not proud"

Andrew, a friend from university days, put the great sonnet by John Donne as his facebook status recently. As he said, he could find no better words to say it. A couple of days ago, we were phoned with the news that the disabled daughter of James and Lynn - whose tender care for her was for me a revelation of God's love at New Wine three years ago - had unexpectedly died.  So it's really with her and them in mind that I include these two quotations.

"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die." – John Donne

"Death is not the extinguishing of the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come." ~ Rabindranath Tagore.

Recently I read St Paul, writing to the Christians in Thessalonica, urging them "not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep". 

Stanley Spencer, Resurrection in Cookham Churchyard

The Sparrow's Prayer

I was talking to Tom after church last Sunday. Well, to be accurate 

he was trying to make sense of my marblefull voice and I was hearing him fine. It's always difficult with all the background buzz of conversation and children's voices in a reverberant hall. Anyway, somehow we still managed to communicate. He told me about the book he'd been reading, Christ in the Wilderness by Bishop Stephen Cottrell. During the week a parcel came through our letter box containing the very book. It's about a series of paintings by Stanley Spencer of Jesus' encounter with the world he'd made before he began his public ministry. Tucked into the book was this poem by the late Lord Hailsham, longest serving Lord Chancellor, and committed Christian. I'd not come across it before.
 
Father, before this sparrow's earthly flight
Ends in the darkness of a winter's night
Father, without whose word no sparrow falls,
Hear this, Thy weary sparrow when he calls.
Mercy, not justice, is his contrite prayer.
Cancel his guilt and drive away despair;
Speak but the word, and make his spirit whole,
Cleanse the dark places of his heart and soul,
Speak but the word, and set his spirit free;
Mercy, not justice, still his constant plea.
So shall Thy sparrow, crumpled wings restored.
Soar like a lark, and glorify his Lord.


Clearly Lord Hailsham's thinking of Portia's "The quality of mercy is not strain'd" speech:
"It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice....
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy...." It's remarkable, or perhaps not, that one of our most senior lawyers should have had such a humble perspective, and have clung so fervently to mercy.

Tomorrow I am celebrating communion for the second time in three years. It is the sacrament of mercy. We come with nothing except crumpled wings, broken lives, and at his table God gives us his own broken body and shed blood, and says, "I love you this much." And we can rise with hope restored. We are not lost causes after all. I find it intensely moving and an amazing privilege to be allowed to share God's love in such a way. I hope I don't cry too much.

PS Sunday afternoon - In the event I didn't weep, though my voice had a wobbly moment! People were very kind with their comments after. Paul, the curate, had been preaching about humility - and I must say that the way my less than fluent delivery seemed to help people connect with God was very humbling.

Sunrise

A friend of mine, just back from another round of cancer treatment, quoted this today: "Life is a constant sunrise, which death cannot interrupt, any more than the night can swallow up the sun." George MacDonald in Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood. Isn't that good?

By the way, today is the feast day of St Thérèse of Lisieux, from whose journal Story of a Soul I took the title of Jozanne Moss's and my book, "I Choose Everything". I've been reading the entry about her on Catholic Online. She died at the age of 24 in 1897, having been a Carmelite nun for less than ten years. She lost her mother when she was a child. When her father was committed to a mental institution, "Horrified, Therese learned of the humiliation of the father she adored and admired and of the gossip and pity of their so-called friends. As a cloistered nun she couldn't even visit her father. This began a horrible time of suffering when she experienced such dryness in prayer that she stated, 'Jesus isn't doing much to keep the conversation going.' She was so grief-stricken that she often fell asleep in prayer. She consoled herself by saying that mothers loved children when they lie asleep in their arms so that God must love her when she slept during prayer."

When things are all right

It occurs to me that I tend to use this blog for down-beat moments. But what about those times when things are going all right? Is there something to say then? At the moment things are quite sunny here, both literally and metaphorically - and I'm grateful. I've written elsewhere about my cousin, Grace Sheppard, wife of the cricketing bishop, who even when she was suffering the same cancer as had killed her husband, maintained her attitude of gratitude to the end. She wrote a beautiful book about caring for her husband, David, called Living with Dying. It seems to me that if Grace could be full of thankfulness in such a hard situation, then when "the sun's shining down on me" there's no excuse for not saying, "Blessed be your Name!"

Ironically, I've just discovered from the lovely iBenedictine nuns that today Catholics remember Our Lady of Sorrows. That's of course Mary, the mother of Jesus, and recalls the prophecy of Simeon that a sword would pierce her soul - looking forward to the agony of seeing her Son tortured to death before her eyes. I cannot conceive of the depth of suffering that was for her. I am fairly sure that she'd have said what a friend once said to me: "I wish it had been me, not him." There's no comfort for that moment, just the company of "the beloved disciple". I can't imagine there was blessing in her mind at that point, just bewilderment. Maybe she thought back to her poem of praise when her Son was conceived and she said about the Almighty, "Holy is his name" - meaning that his nature is incomprehensibly different.

There were naturally huge questions for Mary throughout the lifetime of her Son, from being asked to be an unmarried mother to becoming a widowed single mother, from seeing her Son quitting home as an itinerant teacher to his ending up on a cross and then leaving her at the ascension. And yet the song which is her trademark was "My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour". Though we will certainly have major questions in life, may we have a prevailing attitude of gratitude because there have been moments when the shutters have been open and we have seen the goodness of God.

Oscar's testament

©The Independent

As I blogged earlier, Days at the Paralympics, I much enjoyed my visits to the Paralympics. South African, Oscar Pistorius's run for the 400m was a fitting climax to the stadium competitions. He stormed in to win the gold medal. In the post-race interview, the double amputee twice said what a blessing it was.
Yesterday our friend, Sally Lewis, posted these quotes from him:
“You’re not disabled by the disabilities you have; you are able by the abilities you have”.
“Christ makes all the difference. He aids me in my struggles and makes my glories that much better.”