wishing wells and fountains

I am preaching today, it's supposed to be a sermon on living our lives shot through with the quality of hope - and loosely based on Jeremiah 32 - the prophet who buys a field in a war-zone! Hmmm. I feel emptied of hope like the tide going out, it comes and goes with about as much frequency! But I thought I could share you an incident that goes back to August, although I forgot to blog it. Here goes.

Asha was at Trafalgar square. None of the fountains were operating, sadly. But she noticed coins in the bottom of the pools, so she got me to give her a twopence piece. She knows about wishing and wishing wells! She dropped it in, and just as the coin landed on the bottom - immediately – I’m not joking, immediately - all the fountains in every pool erupted and started gushing out water! Asha almost fell off the edge where she was leaning over!

We have so much trepidation – we are so small-minded about what we might have in life – perhaps we can coax something out of God or out of life by a bit of wishful even wistful longing – perhaps a coin can be dropped in and something will turn up after all. If we are lucky, if God is in a good mood. Perhaps life won’t be so bad any more.

Well, here’s how God is. God just taught me a lesson that day. God doesn’t want us to reduce life to a series of barters or exchanges or petty transactions. Life is gift. God gives us a fountain, gushing grace, not just a few wishes or favours if we are lucky. We need to be baptised with a sense that life – day by day life – is a gift. That attitude can grow in us and change our way of living from cynicism and despair to hope.

There speaks the husband who learnt from Ali about welcoming life as gift, and welcoming wednesdays with champagne!

Grief begets newness...but slowly. Don't think I live this exuberant welcoming "life is gift" way of living. Not much, not for a long time probably. But to say life (day-at-a-time life) is a gift can't have been true then, when Ali was around and now not true. It's just harder for us who survived her to work out the implications. And let's never forget that there were plenty of days throughout the illness when Ali really struggled to see much "gift" around. The silent days that never made it to the blog for instance.

I want to invite anyone who wishes to join us on Tuesday:

Tuesday October 2nd is a chance to be together almost 6 months on from Ali's death.
All of this will be at 33 Powerscroft Rd
Music / singing at 8.30pm - violin, mandolin, piano, voice .... add your's!
Short liturgy with bread and wine 9.30pm-10pm
And more informal relaxed sharing from 10pm until midnight or even later...

Please bring your laughter,tears, thoughts, reflections, songs, silences, questions, hopes, need to share & be together


Wednesday 3rd October we with children, who can sort the issue of transport, will be meeting at Springfield Park- at 4pm to plant bulbs at Ali's tree. We will most probably do more of that on Saturday afternoon October 27th so don't worry if you miss it first time round.

Here are some photos of the ashes being buried/strewed at Beverley - thanks Mark. And some of me and the boy and an Asha one!

Lots of love

Chris

Ashes and things

The last of Ali’s ashes are still waiting to be buried, as she wished, near her birthplace.

This Saturday 8th September a few of us will gather on the Westwood outside Beverley (East Yorkshire) at 2.30pm (for 3pm) just short of the Walkington Road cattlegrid – which is a left fork off the A1075 York Road out of Beverley. We will be mostly friends and family from the northeast and just a few from further afield. It will be a simple and brief moment – prayers, songs, readings and burying the ashes. Hopefully we will do some reminiscing afterwards wherever people regroup. Tea afterwards at Little Weighton with Ali’s Uncle and Aunt (Peter and Moira) is being offered - please contact Mark Kensett on mlk@fish.co.uk for directions and to let us know you are coming. There is also a chance for us to get together at the Green Dragon in Welton from 7.30pm that night.

To mark six months since Ali died – and this really is for anyone who may wish to join us – we want to do a simple “remembering time” at our home on Tuesday October 2nd starting with regular Tuesday night singing/music at 8.30pm, prayers at 9.30pm (until 10pm) and then a vigil and sharing-time through into the early hours of Wed 3rd October. This is I think a much-needed chance to gather together - memories, songs, prayers, pictures – anything people feel is appropriate to express how much we are missing Ali.

Please make some comments appear on this blog for use that evening if you wish. Or send an email to me at chrisalawrence@mac.com. All of that is for the grown-ups . For any children who wish to join in - we will probably plan a visit to Ali’s tree, plant some bulbs, do some singing. Meet at Springfield Park in front of the café in the big white house on top of the park at 4pm on Wednesday 3rd October. Check the blog that day if it’s raining hard!

This blog is being wound up soon, probably coinciding with the October 2nd vigil and sharing time. If you wish to have a “published” hard-copy version of this blog – in some form - please let me have a postal address for you (EVEN if you think/know I already have it – this is to help me delegate the job of posting them out – possibly as early as this December). Email me your name and postal address to my new email account chrisalawrence@mac.com during September (and no later please). We don’t know quite how we can get the blog published as hard copy – so any ideas please contact me!

There may be a successor blog from me and Asha and Kirin – that is still being decided…

Finally what incredible generosity from so many people who have responded to Ali’s desire that we send money donations not flowers at Ali’s funeral! As a result this week we are sending £3000 to Armonia and £3000 to WaterAid. More funds will probably trickle in - we will be collecting until the end of September– details of what these charities are and who to send donations to - see April 9, 2007 blog entry.


Thanks for reading – and comments – more please if you don’t mind – it does keep me going.

Love Chris.

Over my head...

Asha asked me while we were on holiday with David and Ann after a trip to watch seals, whether we had ever lived on the coast in Norfolk – she remembered a cottage we had borrowed – the one Ali and I used each Easter, at Binham. So having no other plan, we drove there. We went to see it and then Binham Priory which she also remembered (Kirin calls it a castle!). On entering the big echoey church, Asha ran right down the length of the nave and immediately started to play pretend school. It was to be a singing lesson. The song she started to teach standing in front of the altar – facing me, Kirin and the rest of her imaginary class, was

over my head, I hear music in the air
over my head, I hear music in the air
over my head, I hear music in the air
there must be a God somewhere

Not an obvious choice by a four year old! Ali used to sing it to Asha as one of her bed time songs. It was sung when Asha and Kirin, hand in hand with Doug, led the coffin with Ali’s body in it from our house to the hearse. It is the song we use frequently at Christmas time. We will use it when we bury Ali’s ashes this Saturday (see above). Ali loved it, I love it. It doesn’t claim too much. Just that “there must be a God somewhere” – based on some notion that we can hear singing...just a hint of angels up above… Not making very sophisticated claims – but hopeful, nonetheless.

Bad, very bad moments, have been redeemed for me, by breaking into song (in my head if not literally). Many of the last and most beautiful memories of Ali with us, have songs to go with them. The air is full of singing, particularly when we walk back into a place like Binham Priory. Songs we have sung can jump me out of a rut - push me to be open to other people, to their loving gestures, even if something in me feels threatened or unsettled by letting people in. Somehow the experience of singing from this repertoire of familiar songs acts as a gentle persistent reminder to me that the story will go on. The music in the air is a prod from Ali to get on with it, to live with new perspective - “ let not my doubts or my darkness speak to me” in the words of a Taize chant. Grumpiness and anger are the feelings I get quite regularly, at some point every day probably. And when those feelings hook into me, they can end up with me being short, churlish with the children, and out of reach of others who look on. Sulking is a cul de sac. Grieving is not sulking, but it has similarities. Being gentle on myself (frequently offered advice) doesn’t, I think, mean that I can’t also have a fairly tough dialogue running with myself, an argument back to my negativity. What does it mean, to live a new story out of all this crisis and crushing disappointment? I told a few people that life feels like trying to make up a sequel to a drama, where the main actor has now left the stage. I have to imagine how the story is to go on ...even if people are shuffling in their seats. That’s a really unhelpful perspective, which, all in good time, eventually, will be replaced by a different way of feeling and thinking.

Loving the children – enjoying their company, looking at holiday photos, listening to Asha’s rendition of “there must be a God somewhere” in Binham, five months after her Mummy sat there singing those same songs... That is what I need to cling to, especially in the moments trying to fend off despair. An hour after this episode Asha did an enormous tantrum in a very public place and I felt horribly alone - a textbook example of a “not-coping-parent “. I was bailed-out by Ann and David who let me escape upstairs when I got to their home. It’s debilitating.

That is all I can say – my experience with Asha and Kirin is stressful, knackering, enormously draining… and then once again, beautiful and fun – the experience of so many, many, many parents of very young children!

So… some holiday snaps -Holland, Kent, Scotland