What is in Kelvin's Head?

Back from Retreat (all perky and ready to go)

21/06/2012

Just back from a week on retreat in a Jesuit house in sunny Spain.

It is a while since I’ve made a retreat and four years since I went to this particular place. Like before, I’ve come back all perky and ready to go.

I realise as I look back over the last few weeks that much of the blogging has been quite technical church synod stuff. Normal service begins again here.

It has been interesting reflecting on my life here at St Mary’s recently. I didn’t particularly go on retreat to do this but inevitably, one thinks about where one is coming from and in conversation with other retreatants, you do find yourself thinking a lot about the life you have as you hear of the lives of others.

This retreat wasn’t a silent one – it consisted of mostly imaginative Ignation exercises and group sharing in the morning, siesta/sun/snooze in the afternoon heat and then a Jesuit examine style of prayer in the evening before mass. Quieter in the mornings. Chatter later in the day. It was just what I needed and I’m very grateful to those who make this kind of thing happen. The theme, by the way, was Mentoring.

No doubt I’ll have lots of emails and messages to deal with when I get back into the office this afternoon.

I’ve just checked the cathedral website to realise that this Sunday is one of those bumper ones which make life around here so wonderful. It is the last blast of the West End Festival this week and so we’ve a special Choral Service in the morning (Darke in E) and then the extraordinary spectacle of an Orchestral Choral Evensong in the evening.

Yes, you heard that right – Orchestral Choral Evensong. A very big choir and an orchestra and music that you know and love:

Orchestral Choral Evensong
sung by the Cathedral Choir and St Maryâ€™s Festival Chorus,
accompanied by St Maryâ€™s Festival Orchestra
Introit: I was glad â€“ Parry
Responses: Rose
Psalm: The Lord is my shepherd â€“ Howard Goodall
Canticles: Stanford in A
Anthem: Greater Love â€“ Ireland

orchestral evensong, retreat, Spain

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.
    
    Reply
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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