Grief

The last few weeks have seen a number in our communities lose loved ones, sometimes in the most unexpected and painful circumstances. I have found myself standing awkwardly, unable to offer any meaningful words to those in grief. I suspect the truth is that in these moments, there are no words that can be said; there will be pain and it simply has to be endured. Each of us reacts differently; at least, those were the wisest words that were said to me when I suffered a bereavement a few years ago.

I am sometimes asked as a vicar how I cope; does it make it easier that I believe in Heaven? I am not sure that does help me. I believe that God’s love for us does not cease at death. But exactly how that works out is not something I know, or indeed care much about; in the life of faith, there are some questions we simply have to leave for God. I do draw strength from the most detailed picture we have in the Bible of death and grief; the account of Jesus visiting the house of his friends Martha and Mary, still raw from having buried their brother Lazarus three days before. Jesus knows their grief; he weeps. If you want to know what the phrase “God with us” really means, look no further; God shares in the deepest human pain. And, perhaps as a promise to us that love is really stronger than death, Jesus orders, Lazarus from his tomb. And Lazarus cannot ignore the command of love; he rises. So if you want to know what the word “hope” means, look no further; somehow in this story we see that the God of life prevails.

Rev David Poyner

Finding our Centre

This week, some words from a recent post by Pete Greig, a church pastor in Surrey.

“Jesus is to be found in the eye of the storm. This is something I am learning. In fact, with all the distractions, deletions and distortions of this turning world, it has become my necessary daily practice simply to sit in silence and stillness each morning for a few minutes, re-centering myself on the peace of his presence, re-anchoring my scattered senses in the absolute bedrock of his love.

This is not a type of prayer I was taught as a child and at times it doesn’t even feel like praying. … But I believe that God’s quiet invitation to each one of us at the start of this year is this: ‘Be still and know that I am God.’. We know ‘of’ God through the bible but we actually know him through the practice of silence, stillness and solitude….

I believe that our world needs people who carry this deep stillness, a lack of anxiety, a reassuring quality of eternity in their hearts. Each morning in prayer I reinstate Jesus as the One whose loving actuality defines reality – not my hormones, not my bank balance, not my problems and pains. Only his presence. Without these moments of recentering I can easily spend my day like a pin-ball pinging between flashing lights, propelled from reaction to reaction by circumstance….

T.S. Eliot captures and conveys the spirit of precisely this kind of silent praying;

     ‘You are here to kneel, where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying’”

Rev David Poyner

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a year ago, I, along with many others was trying to reconcile Christmas with Covid. I see that I wrote optimistically about vaccines that would eventually allow a return to normality. I wasn’t entirely wrong, but we are now faced with new uncertainties but all-too-familiar worries; is it save to meet? What should I do? On one level, religious faith offers little beyond platitudes; we are not divinely protected from Covid, or worry or anxiety. So what can we offer?

The Christian answer is that at Christmas we mark a resetting of history; God entering our world as one us. So often our Christmas carols get this wrong; the baby Jesus did cry, like any other human baby because he was a human baby, not God pretending to be one us, “veiled in flesh”. It is only through this total acceptance of all that it means to be human, frail, weak and mortal, that the divine can help us, by showing how we can partake of the divine nature, of living in pure love. It is a process that at best we can only catch in glimpses; but in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus we see what is possible, to live life in or out of Covid season as God intends.

Rev David Poyner

The Dark Side

Advent is traditionally considered as a season of penitence; a mini-version of Lent, when we are called to consider the four “last things”, death and judgement heaven and hell. This is not something that translates very well into chocolate advent calendars, nor indeed in many church services during December. If I am being honest, these are not things that I preach about very often; I am much more comfortable talking about the God who is love. But talk of bringing love only really makes sense if we admit there are times and places where it is absent, where we are prepared to look at the darker side of our nature and its consequences. In the last few weeks we have heard of the terrible end of Arthur Lanjino-Hughes, killed by the brutality of his parents and the deaths of the 26 refugees in the Channel, victims of people-smugglers and before them a chain of events which led to them being refugees in the first place, the majority of which can probably be laid at the door of the wrong-doing of either individuals or groups. One of the key themes running through the Bible, especially the Old Testament, is the search for justice in a world where it not present. The prophets warned that the God who is a God of justice is also necessarily a God who is a judge, who will hold individuals and groups to account for their actions, who will turn her/face from the perpetrators of evil. As Psalm 82 puts it, “Arise, O God and judge the earth, for it is you that shall take all nations for your possession.”

Rev David Poyner

Those Parties…..

The news is full of parties; Christmas parties held in Downing Street to which we, and apparently the Prime Minister, were not invited. Parties held when we were under the last lot of Covid restrictions when we were all told to avoid unnecessary social contact. For many, this brings back memories of Dominic Cummings’s trip to County Durham at the start of the first lock-down; then there was the rather close physical contact between the former health secretary and one of his aides earlier this year. It does seem like one law for them, one law for us; the powerful do not share the world of the rest of us.

There is a danger that we can be excessively judgemental when we read these stories; I’m aware that I have not always followed Covid restrictions to the letter . But I understand the anger of many (including politicians supportive of the government) at these incidents; the feeling that we really should all be in this world together. We can contrast this with Christmas, when the ultimate power, God, entered this world as a human, fully human to ultimately suffer death. Whatever political rulers may do, God is with us; God does share our world.

Rev David Poyner