What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sabbatical: Back to Glasgow

02/12/2012
I’ve arrived back in Glasgow. For those who haven’t realised what I’ve been up to, I’ve been on a big sabbatical trip that has kept me out of the country for 12 weeks.

I was a little cautious about indicating online that my flat was empty for an extended period of time. Facebook friends will know something about where I’ve been but twitter and blog friends won’t know as much.

It is very strange being back. I’m pleased to be home but have a bit of a dose of jet lag which is making me feel decidedly under par. I conquered it on the way out by going swimming in the Pacific soon after I arrived in Vancouver. I suspect that I’d better not try that down at Pacific Quay.

I’ve been living with my watch jumping around all over the place for weeks. Since I set off in September, I’ve shifted time zones forward and backwards by 22 hours altogether. I know some people do this in their work all the time, but it has been a new experience for me and one that has been, at times, rather disconcerting.

Anyway, for those interested, here is the list of places visited. I was trying to visit cathedrals and other interesting churches, looking for those which were growing and trying to search out those with a progressive/inclusive agenda. I find I learn from people who are different from me. You learn most I suspect from people who are different from you but like you in some ways. Some of these were substantial visits of a couple of weeks, other were side trips where I met with people for conversations along the way or simply experienced what was going on around me.
- Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver – good preaching, music and a very familiar inclusive ethos and a diocese rebuilding in places where there has been strife and secession
- St Paul’s, Seattle – beautiful liturgy with string quartet and jazz pianist and a brilliant formation programme for adults
- Compline at St Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle – 500 people at Compline, mostly young people, many lying on the floor
- St David of Wales, Portland – amazing congregational development
- Trinity Cathedral, Portland – iconography institute and huge programme to feed the hungry
- Grace Cathedral, San Francisco – beauty, labyrinths a huge programme of everything and a great team
- St Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco – where we dance as well as sing the liturgy in another fabulous building
- University of the South: Sewanee – great school of theology
- St Paul’s, Chattanooga – y’all’s welcome at this busy urban parish
- Washington National Cathedral – still suffering earthquake damage, still a spiritual home for the American nation
- All Saints’, Chicago – thriving urban parish, feeding the hungry and worshipping with joy
- St James’s Cathedral, Chicago – very Victorian looking Cathedral, very forward looking Dean
- The Advent, Boston – the heating was broken but the fire had not gone out
- St Michael and All Angels, Sanibel, Florida – a few days retreat in the sun over Thanksgiving
- Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York – A vast, incredible building, where they focus more on people than the vast, incredible building
- St Mark’s in the Bowery, New York – fabulous preaching and creative music with a gospel/blues undercurrent
- St Lydia’s Dinner Church, Brooklyn – a church which emerges out of a meal and singing
Fairly obviously, it has been a busy trip. An incredible one too. It is a period of time that I’ll never forget. Of course, whilst I’ve been exploring these places, I’ve been meeting the most amazing people – “12 weeks hanging out with cool people” was how one of them described it. I’ve also been enjoying learning so much not only about matters ecclesiastical as about Canada and the USA themselves.

Inevitably, coming back to the UK is a bit of a shock to the system. As I try to get my mind around what time it is, I am also starting to put it all together and pick out the themes and moods that I’ve been travelling around. On the plane on the way back home I looked through, sequentially, all the photographs I’ve taken. There are two and a half thousand of them.

I’ve done the most interesting and refreshing project I could think to accomplish with my sabbatical time away and am immensely grateful to all those who made it possible.

Just a few days more and I will be back at work in St Mary’s. Then the outworking of it all as I bring what I’ve learned into my daily life.
Canada, sabbatical, USA

9 responses to “The Episcopal Way of Death”

Rosemary Hannah

02/11/2017

The greatest privilege I have ever had in the service of the people of the church was to be the person who received the coffin the night before the funeral and led Compline then. The church was on an island, and the coffins those of people I loved and honoured. It was deeply moving for everybody there. I hope one day that will be done for me and mine.

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Sr Alison Joy

02/11/2017

I have prayed washed and dressed Sisters who have died and it helped me to see that death is not scary. I have lined a number of Sisters graves with flowers around the inner edge from the inside, also helpful. The body was received at Vespers in Chapel the day before, Solemn Requiem was the next day complete with asperges and incense. We returned from the graveside and when in Chapel sung a very joyful favorite hymn for the Sister we had just buried. It was always a sad, happy, remembering occasion I hope that I will be able to have most of this too.

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Sarah Lawton

02/11/2017

This is beautifully said.

When my parents died in a car crash, we knew our Episcopal church would be too small to accommodate all the mourners; but the local Roman Catholic congregation saw our need and graciously offered the use of their space for our Episcopal funeral (including Eucharist led by two Episcopal bishops). They also offered their pall for the second coffin as we had only one. All the churches and the synagogue in town offered choir members and/or food for the feast after the service. An ecumenical, indeed, interfaith foretaste of heaven!

We placed the two bodies in closed coffins in our Episcopal church the night before; we prayed Evensong and Compline, and received a long line of visitors; and then parishioners kept vigil with the bodies all night. In the morning we prayed over the bodies before beginning the procession to the larger RC church where the (Episcopal) funeral was to be held. In this sad, glorious service sang many, many Easter hymns, and I learned that it’s possible to sing and sing even through tears. I’m told that people reconciled that day who had not spoken in years – I’ve heard it from both parties (one now a bishop).

All of which is to say: our Episcopal Way of Death can be a profound grace if we let it. It can be profound too when it’s a simple, small, quiet service for a person who has lived a long life and died of old age (unlike my parents). It’s the same words, the same truth of loss – all of us pass through this life but for a moment – the same mystery, the same words of affirmation and hope at the grave: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

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1. Kelvin
  
  02/11/2017
  
  Thank you for posting that – bearing witness to exactly what I was trying to say.
  
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2. Michael Povey
  
  04/11/2017
  
  Thanks Sarah. (Other readers, Sarah is a friend. I was at the Funeral and heard her offer the most profound Gospel Centred and Honest Grief eulogy I have ever heard)
  
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  1. Sarah Lawton
    
    29/11/2017
    
    Dear Michael, thank you for saying that. Your presence that day was a blessing to our family. That gathering, for all the shock and sadness, really did feel like a foretaste of heaven, didn’t it? A great cloud of witnesses singing with us.
    
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Ronnie Smith

02/11/2017

Having attended a few funerals in our parish recently – one of them for our Vicar, who died on Easter Eve – and being nearer to the grave myself (at 85 and still active as a priest) I appreciate, Father Kelvin, the care you take over this special subject. The Church can be so close to families at this special time – giving them a taste of ‘The great love of God as revealed in the Son’ – precious at this time.

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Tony Whatmough

04/11/2017

There are sometimes good reasons for having the cremation first, as there was for my brother yesterday especially with people traveling and wanting to be able to bury the ashes on the same day. They key is to talk with the family about what they are looking for and how it can be done.

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1. Kelvin
  
  04/11/2017
  
  Dear Tony, I’m sorry to hear that you’ve lost your brother. May be rest in peace and rise in glory.
  
  There are always reasons why people want to have a cremation first and people always believe that they are good reasons. Every single time there are reasons. My contention is that I’m unpersuaded that any of them justify changing what we believe. (What we do and what we believe being utterly bound up with one another in such circumstances).
  
  My point about funerals is very precisely that the wishes of the family are important but that no tradition will survive if we simply abandon what we believe for reasons of convenience.
  
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