Lord Jesus Christ
you have put your life into our hands
now we put our lives into yours
Take us,
renew and remake us.
What we have been is past;
what we shall be, through you,
still awaits us.
Lead us on.
Take us with you.
It's Tuesday and very late right now so I ought to be brief (!)
We prayed this prayer tonight. It was from a liturgy we have used frequently on Tuesday evenings. We used it on the night of April 3rd when 40 people crammed the stairwells of our home just eight hours before Ali died. We had no idea what we were praying.... "What we shall be, through you, still awaits us". I remember our dear friend Elizabeth that night, how she prayed a prayer for Ali to be released to go back home to God - "she's ready - take her" she said. But what will become of us who are left?
There is an expression which Ali loved to play around with - "thin places" - where heaven is in the ordinary. I have found these moments coming just now and then - as if just enough to remind me that we are ALL within the attentive loving of God. God has not left us to ourselves.
Here are three moments which I savour.
....A moment for Asha.
We are walking into the Round Chapel on a Thursday afternoon - on the off-chance that we would hear some children singing - someone had told us to go there. Asha and I settle in on the balcony - the only place we could find to sit. We are right above the head of the conductor leading the singing: children from twenty primary schools. The performance is astonishing, such a spectrum of children as you can imagine - being Hackney - compressed global village! Asha and I have a whispered conversation about this being the first time back into that big beautiful space since the funeral. Then we are aware that all 800 children seem to be looking straight at us and singing the words from the Spiritual:
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
A long ways from home...
Asha knows exactly that they are singing - but she doesn't think that many/any of the children down there would really have had their Mummy die for real... She's puzzled. "Perhaps it's as if all of them down there, want you to feel a bit less alone, with what you're feeling about Mummy" I say. The singing carried on for ages, with a medley of "When I die I wanna die easy" and "Wade in the river" woven in and out. Only in Hackney would you get primary school kids singing songs like that! And how did we happen to be there at that moment on that Thursday afternoon? A thin place.
....A moment for Kirin.
It's late on a Sunday afternoon and the kids are in their pj's being loaded into the car in a field in the Cotswolds to head back to London. Along into the very next field comes a car towing a box and we watch a man unload a hot air balloon - we follow him! The balloon grows enormous and then two more people jump aboard just as it starts lifting silently and effortlessly, into the still sky. Asha says jubilantly "Perhaps they will go high enough and they can see Mummy". Kirin, clutching tightly to me (he had been scared by the roar of the flames bursting under the canopy) starts to stretch up and - transfixed by this enormous balloon as it gets so distant and high up - says in hushed amazement " ...might see Mummy...might see Mummy..." He kept looking so intently up there, stretching his little body taught on me as if to reach higher himself. And how did we happen to be there at that moment on that Sunday afternoon? A thin place.
....A moment for me.
I am walking the bike on a back street in central London with Kirin and my friend Stefan when I bump into John Bell, a very well travelled speaker in church circles. It was one of his sermons - (did he but know it) which got Ali and me preoccupied with the theme of "getting out of the boat" months before Ali was diagnosed. It was John Bell's skill with words which gave us printed prayers we relied upon, on our Tuesday nights.
Now, of course, he doesn't know who on earth I am, stopping him on the street like that.
But when I mention friends we have in common, he looks at me a bit astonished and says "You know what, I was talking about Ali just yesterday at a conference. I had just got a reply from an elderly man I'd written to, after hearing about Ali's funeral. I wanted to tell him you had used his prayer in the act of taking down that quilt which you all made for her. A prayer about our lives being "folded away" and given back to God. And I told him I thought there are times when we don't know why a prayer has been written, or a song written. And then that song or prayer finds its true context much, much later."
John was on his way to Cornwall en route from Australia or somewhere. We only spoke for a couple of minutes. But it was enough. This city which had seemed to be rushing past me, busy about its stuff, oblivious to my feelings about someone I was feeling so lost to be without... slows down for a moment as this person stops in front of me. So after all, I am part of an intimate community linked by a sort of "family grapevine"- touched by Ali and this little story of a life lived and folded away again. And how did I happen to be there at that moment on that Thursday afternoon? A thin place.
These are just three brief moments. And there's so much time filling up the gaps between them, time when I am being clumsy, stumbling, trying-to-cope, or sullen and hurting, or strangely high-spirited, busy and slightly over-compensating for the core of sadness within. But brief moments can be life-giving. Like Mary pausing long enough "to choose the better part" - sitting at the feet of Jesus as the rest of her world presses and hurries on (Luke 10:38-42) - the reading for church on sunday next.
Oh well. I couldn't be brief, could I ?!
Now, I'm taking a risk here, in putting up here some words I just wrote in response to Seb's drawing. The words are an appreciation all this loving - coming to me and to Asha and Kirin. Please take them to heart - they are meant for you! 