Shipping lines
THIS year’s Edinburgh Fringe Award for Funniest Joke went to Mark Simmons for his one-liner: “I was going to sail around the globe in the world’s smallest ship — but I bottled it.”
I’ve heard better one-liners in my time (usually in vestries), but it came to mind as I embarked for a shipboard holiday. It was a fantastic trip. If I made TV programmes, though, I would put Alan Bennett and Dame Maggie Smith together to comment on the behaviour of passengers at sea. A brief observation is that travellers seem to fall into two categories: those who celebrate and relish every minute of their holiday, and those who endlessly moan and find fault with something.
My resolution on return is to have a good “complain cleanse”: to abandon the delusion that complaining is “being realistic” rather than an attitude; and to try to weaken the complaint toxicity that seeps everywhere.
Our Captain was no moaner, though, and had some rather good one-liners himself. On the first evening, a rather nervous passenger asked him, “Do ships like this sink very often?” “Usually only once,” he replied.
Pilgrim’s progress
ONE of my excursions from the ship was a day in Santiago de Compostela. I had never been before, and was bowled over by the beauty and positive spirit of the city. I went to the cathedral to see the ginormous thurible, and to “embrace St James” — the tradition of mounting the steps behind the high altar to give the statute of St James a friendly hug. As I did so, 2000 years seemed to disappear as I clumsily said “Thank you” to one of the many who first preached our faith at such cost.
When I got home, having read both Claire Gilbert’s and Victoria MacKenzie’s recent novels on Julian of Norwich (Books, 6 April), I took the train up to a very different shrine: St Julian’s Church, and sat for a couple of hours in her former cell. I am no anchorite, but it was a defrosting experience to be reminded that “Love was his meaning” — especially at a time when the news reports that so many (Christians among them) seem to be praying for it to be on earth as it is in hell.
The trumpet shall sound
NOTHING prepares you for the sudden death of a friend or colleague. It took me quite a while to believe what I was hearing on the phone about our director of music, Ian Keatley (Gazette,16 August). On the first day of his holiday, walking in Austria with his girlfriend, Ian collapsed and, at the age of 42, passed from this world.
He was a colourful collage of a man: always reflective, sometimes outrageous, hospitable, a person who loved his friends and who filled rooms with his laughter. Most of all, he was a superb musician and an inspiring mentor to our choristers, many of them now undergoing their first painful bereavement.
Ian was also my neighbour, and I miss him dropping by to enthuse about the latest wine he’d discovered, or share the latest idea he’d had to make music resound in the cathedral. He translated our faith into sound. This was his passion and his vocation, and he fulfilled it with great dignity.
We often talked about John Donne and the other Metaphysical poets. I’m praying that he now lovingly rests in that place where there is no noise nor silence, but — as Donne put it — “one equal music”.
Eye of a needle
I WAS a bit worried when I head references to “The Big Cathedral Knit” — were they talking about the Dean? Actually, it was an invitation to people to come into the church and garden to knit or crochet blankets for people experiencing houselessness across London.
When I was a curate, my vicar used to refer to the gossipy local knitting circle as “Stitch and Bitch”; so I wondered how our day would pan out. I needn’t have worried. More than 700 people of all ages turned up and, as they chatted together to a background of jazz, blankets for winter began to take shape beautifully. “I’m just knitting my way to happiness,” one woman said, surrounded by her yarn.
I’ve often thought that Jesus was less concerned abut how to get us into heaven than how to get heaven into us. It is so often through simple acts of creativity, shared generously and with good purpose, that such breakthroughs seem to happen.
Glimpses of glory
THIS year, I celebrate 30 years of being a priest. It is reported that Anselm, when appointed to lead the English Church, was so upset that he promptly suffered a spectacular nosebleed. There have been moments when my less significant shepherding has had its challenges. As President Clinton said, leadership can be like running a cemetery: there are a lot of people under you, but nobody’s listening.
But priesthood isn’t, at the end of the day, about leadership. And, on this anniversary, I’m much more conscious of those who have shepherded me, inspired and helped me, through the years and the darker days.
On my ordination card I had printed Gerard Manley Hopkins’s words: “I greet Him the days I meet Him, and bless when I understand.” Whether it’s blessing pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, or the local bakery on Lammas Day and the second flush of Darjeeling tea as it arrives at Borough Market; whether it’s listening for God in meetings, or trying to navigate a community with love, or praying with the person who’s found themself in the cathedral, or seeking friends in the cause of justice, priesthood as lived where I am now is as privileged and as wonderful as it ever was.
In some ways, I don’t quite recognise today the Church of England I was ordained into. But, as long as we have a commitment to being sacramental, poetic, and just, and try hard to live this out in tones of kindness and generosity, then it remains my home, and my heart says an enormous “Thank you.”
The Very Revd Dr Mark Oakley is the Dean of Southwark, and Canon Theologian of Wakefield Cathedral.