More dust and ashes...

Another two funerals appeared today for next week...

Dust to dust...

After a few terms at college you realise that, once ordained, you will be spending quite a lot of time doing funerals, and funeral visits, and that you may well preach as many eulogies as sermons. We have lots of weddings this summer, which are wonderful occasions, even if the curate isn’t necessarily sure of what she is doing all the time. (Although I seem to have managed OK so far.) But I suppose I didn’t really think that we might be doing so many funerals as well, especially during the summer, as the number of people we serve is not that large. The third funeral in five weeks in our parishes happens this week.
Well, actually it will the second funeral for me as curate because I was excused the funeral last week I should have been assisting at to go to one of my own – for someone I had known and worked with for 30 years. And for whom I gave the first real eulogy I have ever done. It was a privilege to do and I was pleased to be able to contribute to our celebration of our friend, colleague, son, brother, in that way. And it was a celebration too – with the family all wearing colourful clothes, with great music, and lots of laughter and good memories at the lunch afterwards. Unfortunately I am no stranger to funerals – I think that the tally stands at about 25 or so now – but this was the first ‘non-working’ funeral I have been at since being ordained. To start with I prepared and gave a eulogy. And even though I was just an ordinary mourner, I found that I cannot switch off the ‘professional eye’ and stop noticing good and not so good ways of doing things, and stop looking at the watch to see how near the service is running to the 45 mins allowed, and wondering where the vicar got that prayer from, and whether the crematorium staff liked dealing with wicker coffins (beautiful things, I would like one myself when the time comes), and why the coffin was left on trestles rather than put on the catafulque, and…

Something to reflect on and watch, because sometimes I need to mourn too…

What they don't tell you - No 1

I have been pondering what I can blog on now while still respecting life, people and confidentiality in the parishes of which I am curate. It's all part of the interesting tension between being who I really am and the public persona that I both occupy and am given by others. And I expect that, no doubt, I will get it wrong from time to time. Bloggers at Ridley in the past year were similarly exercised at times, and a constructive debate went on. See the archives in wannabeapriest's blog if you are interested in the guidelines that evolved.

One thing I am starting is an occasional series of 'What they don't tell you at theological college' in the hope that it might inform, and sometimes entertain. Here is the first, offered solely in the interests of helping those who follow us into this ordination business.

Consider cultivating the absence of a sense of smell. Mine was badly dented by treatment to control chronic rhinitis (a runny nose) brought on, I discovered by experiment, by too much exposure to swimming pool chlorine. Keeping fit is dangerous... I'll leave it to you to decide how to lose your olfactory prowess. What they don't tell you is that sometimes the deceased can still make their presence known at funerals. The priest taking this funeral had to work very hard at not throwing up. Whereas I just noticed a certain fruity mustiness... Forewarned is forearmed. In such circumstances wreaths containing lilies are to be welcomed instead of being cursed for the orange stains the pollen makes on a lovely white, newly laundered surplice. I suppose we could always revive the custom of carrying nosegays...?

'He restores my soul...'

Since being ordained deacon not quite two weeks ago – although it seems much longer – it feels as if my feet have not touched the ground. In a couple of days’ time all that I will have left to do in order to have experienced all of a deacon’s ministry will be taking a funeral and leading a communion by extension. And I suspect the funeral, at least, is not far away…
But in all this busyness a huge bonus – and which I had not realised – is the wonderful countryside nearby. After three services in three churches last Sunday I went off in the early evening to the Norfolk coast, only 30 mins away. And there on Snettisham Beach was a view to restore anyone, let alone a rather disoriented deacon. I walked a mile or two on a near-deserted shingle beach, watching the day end over a vast expanse of sandbanks and the sea in the far distance. ‘I will lift my eyes to the sky and sea. From where will my help come? It comes from the Lord’, to misquote Psalm 121.

Followed with a fish and chip supper eaten out of the paper with the fingers, and an hour spent with friends visited on the way home, and what more could I need…?

So...?

Yes, it was a life-changing experience although I am not quite sure yet who emerged from the cathedral... It will be fun finding out.