Journal: Dying matters Awareness week

What an amazingly immense day spent outside engaging with people as they shopped as part of 'Dying Matters' awareness week. I have had so many conversations with people and taken the opportunity to just 'be' with the people of Tamworth and it was marvellous.

From 10:00 to 16:00 I walked, talked, listened and prayed. I handed out leaflets for a bereavement support group based in St. Martin's (Stonydelph) and conversed with people from St Gile's Hospice   Funeral Directors, and many other people besides.

Back on the Streets on Friday - hoping it stays dry and that I experience more of the same.

There is a real temptation for me to just give up on all the admin and stuff and just soak myself in being out there on the streets - so many needs - and so much joy to be celebrated and made real.

As a society it seems that we don't do death as well as we did. We don't think about it in a healthy way, in fact we rarely think about it unless our mortality (or that of someone we live or know) is threatened. One of the most important roles a cleric has is that of helping people to die well - not a morbid thing, but something of joy and completeness I reckon.

We don't always grieve well either and the spectrum ranges from 'always look on the bright side of life' through to turning the home into a shrine and engaging in a toxic grief that ends normal life for others too. Death is a painful thing, but it is supposed to be and because grief is so often malformed rather than bring healing and a way forward it causes people to revisit the pain with no obvious exit for the roundabout!

So on with the week and the encounters and conversations and the pain of loss and the optimism that a new day brings.

Have I mentioned how much I love this ministry stuff.

Lord, for everything that's been today and all that's before me tomorrow: I thank You.

Dying - in the Ditch

Next week (May 8th -14th) is 'Dying Matters' Awareness Week.

There will be a presence on the streets of Tamworth with representatives from the local hospice and clergy, funeral directors and the like giving people the opportunity to talk about dying, death and bereavement and things that affect them personally.

As part of this we will be launching a new venture: Dying - in the Ditch.

A regular monthly evening in a micro pub where conversations on death, dying and bereavement and some good company are on offer.

Not a 'church' thing but a response to the needs in our town. Something for people of all faiths or no faith.

So if you have a question, a concern relating to death and dying, or have lost a loved one and are seeking answers - or a friend and a safe place - Why not come along?

Monday 8th May - 7:30 pm onwards

Journal: Four walls make many things

Listening:
to an inmate in a prison recently speaking of the four walls that was their cell,
to a homeless person who spoke of their need of four walls to escape the cold,
to someone for whom, by circumstance, the four walls of their home had become a lonely place.

Reflecting on them, the words of Lovelace's poem 'To Althea, from prison' echo in the recesses of my mind:
"Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage;
 Minds innocent and quiet take that for an hermitage;
 If I have freedom in my love and in my soul am free,
 Angels alone, that soar above, enjoy such liberty."

Our setting becomes what we allow it to be an although four walls may contain, constrain, and even condemn us to separation - there is no place where the light and love of God cannot shine through and set our souls soaring free from the 'surly bonds of earth' to soar with the angels.

Today I have been privileged to soar with those contained and constrained by health, circumstance and situation, and in the presence of simple bread and wine, proclaimed Jesus, the Christ, Risen Indeed and basked in the Sonlight!

Today I have been saddened to to encounter those in cells of their own making, their bitterness and rancour creating 'ex nihilo' a cell upon whose wall hang paintings that speak of division and through whose windows hell is to be seen!

Today I have prayed for those climbing the steps of the slide - that one way journey that we will all take in the amusement park of life - that each step will be made easy and the final event good; for what is the role of a cleric such as me if not to help people descend the slide as best they can? What better or more honest role can I have other than to help people dIe well?

Today has not stopped - from the first visit to the closing business meeting - from bread and wine to 'bred to whine'. We all create our surroundings, making them what they are to us and living in that illusion thus made condemned or blessed by its perceived nature.

Lord, bring those at the close of life to a peaceful and solid end. Remove from them the pain of the ascent and may the downward journey on the slide be one swift and blessed act.

For those contained by walls of their own making remove the scales from eyes that refuse to see life in all but drab and darkened hues and others in light that casts them as the villain and sees them consumed by the bike that they themselves have made.

Those who live lives fulfilled and crowned by love, yet tinged by loneliness of loved ones passed, 'waiting for God', the television and the the radio for company, the routine and the daily round for curse. Open the door and bring to them Your Church through visits and telephone calls and as they revel in Your image made real in the one before them - help us, Your Church, to set them free.

And for those in prisons real and made of lies and life and others acts - set the captives free and set their souls soaring - for you are our life, our hope, our love and our persistent friend, source of salvation and our external a: unending friend.

Come Holy Spirit, set our hearts on fire and in the darkness of the walls we have, our lives inspire.

Priests and Privilege

I wonder how many people there are out there who think that the possession of a piece of plastic around the neck and the prefix 'Revd' make for a privileged class of people?

I wonder if they also realise just how right they are if they think that and also wonder if they realise that they are more than likely right for all the wrong reasons?

The reality is that privilege means that one gets invited to things that others generally don't as what appears to be a matter of habit and as a mark of who the person is. After all, if you're one of those suitably enobled people you get invited to stuff all the time - this is indeed privilege and preferment.

If you're one of those rare people who have won a medal in some major sporting arena, or perhaps in some major arena of conflict then you will also get yourself invited to things - So if you're Mo Farrar of Johnson Beharry VC, you can expect those invitations to select gatherings and amazing functions and happenings to fall through the letterbox all the time I I guess.

But if you think that's the all the case because you have that wonderful 'Revd' sellotaped to your business card then you have got the wrong sort of privilege in mind; after all, I haven't been invited to much in the way of gala functions, state balls, celebrity-filled junkets or the like in all of my time doing the job.

BUT - We are indeed privileged, and it goes like this:

I have been privileged to sit by the bed of a person who is departing this life and have had the privilege of helping their last moments in this world have shape, meaning and within the pain - a dignity.

I have been privileged to sit with those who have lost a loved one and help them come to terms with their loss, finding meaning, reason, hope and solace in the situation before them. Sometimes I have been able to bring a perspective of the person's life and to see within the haphazard jumble of life's events a consistency and qualities that closeness to them has previously obscured.

I have been privileged, as I was today, to find myself in a crematorium (or at a graveside) and, in the company of the deceased and their loved ones find before us someone whose life was to be not only celebrated but also given thanks for - even when they have left earlier than my 87 year average!

I have been privileged to celebrate life coming into the world and to give thanks for it in blessing and baptism services - often at times when those bringing the child knew only that they wanted to have God involved even when they didn't understand fully what that might mean (another privilege as I get to explain guilt, love, grace, sacrifice and relationship as found in Jesus, the Christ, and the cross).

I am privileged to have eaten out with the homeless on many occasions, sharing a sandwich and a brew as I find out who the image of the invisible God is made visible in!

I am privileged to be invited to dinners, but as there's no such thing as a free meal, that comes with saying grace (another privilege which I'd pay for - and with mess dinners - I do!).

The list could go on for a lot longer (are you still awake?) but I'll stop here (or shall I mention weddings, school assemblies, chaplaincies, marriage counselling, prayer ministry, preaching, church, worship and the rest? No, thought not ;-) ).

Suffice to say I am more privileged than perhaps many of you out there might think.

Pax