Mourning glory

 

She’s gone. On Wednesday morning, our youngest daughter flew to Brisbane to study and work for two years. She is 21 and it is time for her to head out into the world - and I’m glad and excited for her.  After weeks of angsting (I had to say to her one day “Lizzy, you know you’re not going to Mars, just to Brisbane. You can get home!”), on the day itself she was simply joyous. It was wonderful to watch her bright face as she waved and then turned lightly to step towards the airport gate.

The house seemed strangely quiet when we got home. I told Bruce I needed to be on my own, that if I had to make the effort to talk to someone I would break. He understands that, and he left quietly for work. The dogs and I sat on the couch and watched Wicked. After that, I was together enough to take a deep breath and walk into her room, switch off the salt light, unplug the fairy lights, gently close the door of the empty wardrobe. 

This is what parenting is for, to prepare our children to launch into the world. I wanted her to go freely, unburdened by worrying about us or her grandparents. I know what it’s like to feel constrained, to feel that your parents can’t manage without you. I watched Josh, Lizzy’s boyfriend, shoulder the weight of his extended family’s grief (no-one in their family leaves Whanganui, and his mother looked at Lizzy like she was stealing her boy). I’ve carried that weight all my life, and I do not want that for my children.

These last two years have been all about closing doors. Some have slammed, suddenly and unexpectedly, like work. Some have slammed so hard, I've felt pain, as if my hand were trapped in the door - like when I had to take my mother to dementia care. The end of being child of the mother I knew. Others have been a slow creaking, like the church I left behind. But this parenting door has closed so softly. I have had just a few months short of 40 years with children in my home – longer than most parents ever have, because of my two bonus babies. Forty years of parenting, perhaps more than half the length of my life. If I close my eyes, I feel overwhelmed for an instant by all the times I have failed, but then there comes with a rush a kaleidoscope of joyous movement.

The scent of babies, the dancing of toddlers, homework and music practice and cricket and the singing of bright-eyed children, and conversations with curious adolescents whose burning questions about the meaning of life always seemed to erupt just when I was ready for bed. So much to treasure.

 

  This closing of doors has been disconcerting - perhaps because they all seem to have closed at the same time! Three years ago I was a professor, a solver of other people’s problems, a contributor to endless committees, a preacher and elder in a large church, a mother, someone's child. Now I am…..well, that’s part of the question, isn’t it?

What I can see – an I’m only just learning  - is that the closing of doors should be mourned. The grief and loss are real. But they are never the whole story. And for me right now the doors that are opening are different to those I would have recognized in the past.  

Last Sunday, I was the preacher at lovely little St Oswald's church for the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple, or Candlemass. Candlemass is a pivot point: we look back to the light and joy and hope of Christmas and forward to the grief and pain and loss of Lent and Holy Week. We must have both. And it is in the tension between the joy and hope of beginnings, and the grief and loss of endings that resurrection happens. 

There is an invitation to quietness now, to take my time, to sit in wonder before a mystery. To paint my mother’s fingernails a disgraceful scarlet and read her favourite books aloud, to gently place a host on her tongue. To imagine my father as an outrageous adolescent, with a literal gun in his pocket, as he tells his stories. To walk in the streets of my childhood home with an old and loved friend. To sit among the bluebells, to listen to the soaring music of Evensong in an ancient Cathedral.  To simply watch the fish in my fish tanks, rejoicing when each new translucent baby appears. To see childhood in a completely new way as I build a house of sticks on the beach with my grandson. 

I’m unused to this quietness, these unfamiliar doors, and sometimes I fret. “Have I lost my edge?” I asked Bruce anxiously this evening. “I haven’t noticed’” he said, not looking up from his book. “What if this is an early stage of dementia?”, I ask Anne. She nods at my concern, “don’t worry – I’ll tell you.”

But mostly what I feel is peace. And a sense that I’m being rewired by hands unseen, by a voice that bids me rest. 

 

 

The Lord is here

 

 

My friend Anne has been in charge of rural chaplaincy in the Dunedin Diocese for some years now. Often she has talked about the challenges and joys of this ministry and I have listened and  (hopefully) supported, but have been quietly thinking "None of this makes sense. Why wouldn't you just close some of these churches down and combine them?"

This weekend I headed down to Dunedin to spend a few days with Anne during Electoral Synod. The plan had been to just potter around Port Chalmers, eat good food, knit, and chat. But when humans plan God laughs of course. Michael (Anne's husband and priest in charge of the Queensland parish) had organised cover for the wedding and two services scheduled in Queenstown/Arrowtown for the weekend, but his cover had unfortunately come down with a chest infection, and Anne was the only priest not at Synod. So Anne met me off the plane in Dunedin and we drove to Queenstown.

 

The countryside between Dunedin and Queenstown is .... take your pick of superlatives. Sweeping green spaces, a turquoise river, tiny villages, the stones and scorched earth of Alexandra, and the (truly) Remarkables mountain range dominating every scene. The trees were as green as an English spring, with elder and hawthorn bushes in full flower along every country lane, peonies, roses and irises in every garden. We must have talked, because when Anne and I get together, we never stop - but I felt as if I spent the whole drive with my jaw dropped. The beautiful, beautiful south. 

 So much about the weekend was wonderful, but there's something in particular I want to remember. On  Sunday morning we were up early and driving through quiet country lanes to Arrowtown for the first service. We arrived at this tiny church, which seemed like an echo of another era, set amongst swaying spring trees. Inside, the church glowed: one exquisite stained glass window behind the altar made patterns of light on the glowing timbers. Everything was perfectly cared for, from the linen on the altar to the polished pews. 

We were warned that only around 8 people might show up (an important rugby match was scheduled for the same time ) but instead a community of 18 gathered - newcomers invited by the regulars, recent emigres, people whose families had lived here for generations. The service began - as maybe it had begun for a century - with the ringing of the church bell. 

And there was this moment in the service. Anne stood facing the congregation in her white alb and stole patterned with pohutakawa blossoms. With a fluid upward movement of her arms that felt like an embrace, and a voice ringing with joy, she proclaimed words I have heard a thousand times: "The Lord is here!". And my eyes filled with tears. 

On the way home, we took our time, stopping in small settlements to visit small churches, with their well-tended gardens, mouse houses, beautiful windows, labyrinths, mosaics and ancient organs that require the organist to pedal constantly to keep the sound going (Anne demonstrated in the church at St Bathans). Some of these churches still have regular services; in others worship is a special occasion which gathers the entire community. These small buildings are carefully tended and I saw in that constant care such faithfulness, such an expression of love. 

The Lord is here. Throughout this beautiful region in the most southern part of the most southern land, the Lord is here. And people are gathering in their small communities to bear witness to this astounding truth. A pattern of light.

It's important not to be too starry eyed, of course. These congregations are elderly and the diocese is struggling to find ways to resource them. And such communities are made of human beings who doubtlessly squabble and struggle for power. But when those flawed human beings come together for the Eucharist, they all face forward, they all bear witness to the truth of God's presence among us. And who am I, I wondered, to so carelessly think about  amalgamations and efficiencies? What made me think those things mattered at all? So much would be lost if just one of those lights were dimmed. 

In my own church, I am constantly reminded of little lights, shining across the world. Several times a week, I race up the steps of the Cathedral for exposition of the sacrament.  And I ponder sometimes - especially when it's raining, and it seems to have been raining forever - couldn't I just stay at home and pray? But it would not be the same. What draws me - apart from the sacrament itself - is being with others, all facing forward, all bearing witness. 

My most recent joy is saying the daily office. What I love is knowing that all across the world, people are saying those exact same prayers, that there isn't a time when someone is not praying the office. That we are all saying the same psalm of lament, grieving over Gaza and Ukraine and lost children and the plight of the poor, over and over, as the earth spins. That we are all saying the same psalm of joy, celebrating the love and power of our God. Saying the same Benedictus to bless the world. In every place and in every time, light upon light upon light: The Lord is here.

 

Listening

 

 

Today my mother hates God. I arrive at Aroha to find her shouting abuse at one of the sweetest carers in the place. Go away! she is shouting, leave me alone – I don’t have to do what you say! You are a horrible, horrible person. You're Hitler! The mild young man with the medication tray, who bears no resemblance at all to a murderous megalomaniac, is looking uncertain. I plonk myself down on the other side of her. Hey, I say, is that the way a good Catholic speaks to other people?

She spins around. Her face lights up. Then darkens again. The carer backs quietly away, throws me a small thankful smile.

I’m not a good Catholic, she says. I’m a bad Catholic.

Surely not, I say. We went to Mass just a few days ago. What will cheer you up? Shall we go and read more of Prince Caspian in your room?

No, she says. I hate Prince Caspian. I hate C.S.Lewis.

Nooo, I say. Well, let’s go to your room and see what Dad has written on your whiteboard.

We walk slowly down to her room. She is angry, angry, angry with every step.

We sit side by side on her bed and look at the whiteboard. Read it to me, she says, I can’t see it from here.

It’s Lizzy’s neat handwriting. She has written, “Ellis, Lizzy and Lucy came to see you today. You looked beautiful in red. We love you”.

Hrrrmph, says my mother, glowering.

What’s with you, I ask. Isn’t that nice?

No, she says. Yes. No. Nothing is nice. I HATE God.

Oh, I say. Why do you hate God?

Well, look at the mess of the world, she says, look at THIS place. If he wanted to, he could just wave his wand and sort it all out. But he doesn’t. He just folds his arms and sits there.

I don’t think God is a magician, I say, he doesn’t have a wand.

Huh, she says. Well, it’s all the same: he looks down and sees how everything is awful and does NOTHING.

What do you think he IS doing, I ask.

Probably polishing his fingernails, she says, and mimics someone admiring their nails and blowing on the varnish to dry it. The image is so vivid and unexpected that I laugh out loud.

You may laugh, she says grimly, but it is so.

Why don’t we read some of your favourite Bible verses, I suggest, that might cheer you up. I read from her Good News Bible: Psalm 23, the end of Romans 11, and 1 Corinthians 13.

She manages what is indisputably a Blakemore sniff.

What do you think, I ask.

I think, she says, that I’m trying very hard not to stab my well-meaning daughter who is reading trite passages from the Bible.

Fair enough, I laugh. Ah well, let’s say a prayer and tell God how you’re feeling.

YOU can, she says. He’s not listening. 

 

I hold her hand and pray: thank you God, that you don’t mind us telling you exactly how we feel. My mother is very angry with you right now. She is full of spiky feelings and she thinks you should do something about the world and this place. Please surround her with your love and peace. Please do something about the world. Thank you for listening. Amen.

Huh, she says. And then: you know, I think we're having ice-cream cones with dinner tonight.

As I drive home, I remember how I took her to Mass just a few days before. I remember how the old charismatic song, His name is wonderful, came on as we drove to Dad’s and how tears ran into the folds of her cheeks. I remember my mother and father that day in the garden, inspecting the lavender, the apple blossom and the mock orange, watching the bumblebees in the purple hebe. I remember how they marvelled over the mandarin tree covered in creamy blossom, my mother leaning in to inhale the scent of the flowers. 

 

  

Later I go to exposition at the Cathedral. I look at the candles and the monstrance with its golden spikes which always seem to me quite ridiculous. And I tentatively, carefully try out new words. I’m angry, I whisper. I’m so angry. And I’m sad. I’m overwhelmed with sadness. I think I might be afraid too. I don’t like these feelings. I don’t know what to do. Thank you for listening. 

Dappled light, refracted through the coloured glass, makes patterns on the cool white walls of the church.  I grope in my pocket for a tissue. Someone on the other side of the church coughs. A door behind me opens and closes. Enfolded in that gentle light, my body relaxes, and I nestle into a quiet and unexpected peace.