FROM THE BOUNDARY
Shalom! Peace! It was with these words that Bishop Michael proclaimed the ‘good news’ in his Charge to Synod at St Michael’s Cathedral two weeks ago. Shalom! Yes, a hello and a goodbye – but much more than that. As he recognised, what ‘shalom’ signifies is not simply salutation but a peace which “gives a sense of well-being even when all around us seems hopeless”. It’s the divine dream of a community of peace and justice where we’re all called to transform our world to conformity with the divine design of Jesus, and so a call to ourselves too – to fill all the little holes in our own souls. It’s the call of Isaiah to you and me, and to the Church, to “arise, shine” that the glory of God “shall be seen upon thee”.
It’s a wonderful idea, isn’t it, a “rising Church” rooted in the vision of Isaiah and proclaimed by Jesus himself in the synagogue at Nazareth – in Bishop Michael’s words “to bring good news to the poor, to bring new sight to those searching for light, to set alight a new fire, to raise up the voice of the voiceless, to remove oppression and break down fear, to bring to birth a new kingdom…..”? Yes. YES. It’s not just his Charge, he said. It’s God’s Charge. Bishop Michael explored its meaning – in and through liturgy, scripture, our young people, morals and social justice, reconciliation, love and Christian fellowship. The call of the Church, he said, is to everyone with the love of Christ irrespective of race, class, creed, socialisation, disability, sexual orientation, guilt or innocence. What fine words he used, words burgeoning from love, from the power of Love.
There’s a divine innocence about them. “O brave new world”! ‘Ah yes’, you might say, “‘Tis new to thee.”’ Maybe. But I prefer to believe that what God has created has the innate capacity to be ‘God-like’, ‘Jesus-like’, and that the love within us, all of us, only has to be unlocked, recognised, teased out, harnessed. When I witness the ministry of this Bishop of our Church, I see only the wolf and the leopard eating from the same feeding bowl as the lamb and the kid, and then, standing over, the little child who will lead them across this holy mountain which is God’s world and ours. But OK – maybe, as Bishop Curry suggests, you really do have to be a little crazy to be a Christian!
Now: let me complete these little ‘readings’ on the power of Love with some thoughts on ‘friendship’. Last week, I attended the funeral of one of my dearest friends so it’s very much in my mind. As we get older, we say ‘goodbye’ increasingly to those who’ve been close to us, those who, in their different ways, have helped sustain and nurture us in our life’s passage. I can’t say that in my own I’ve ever had many ‘close’ or ‘real’ friends – many acquaintances of course, and many with whom I’ve been able to share that ‘philia’, which is the love of the affections. But ‘friends’, no, not so many, I suppose. Maybe I’ve been content for the most part with solitude, though it make me, in Bacon’s words in the Essay ‘On friendship’, “either a wild beast or a god”. Hyperbole yes, but it makes the point that without friends, true friends, “the world is but a wilderness” where “the fullness and swellings of the heart” are unknown. I suppose I think of my friends rather as Yeats thought of those great ones – Lady Gregory at her ormolu table, Maud Gonne at Howth station, his Dad on the stage of the Abbey theatre in Dublin before a raging crowd – as “beautiful lofty things”, for me Olympians never to be known again, and each with their very special gifts of love they’ve been generous enough to share with me. And so it’s been with Oslyn(a), my friend of 20 and more years in this place.
We met first at Wednesday Mass at the Cathedral, she behind me close to the north door ever welcoming and warm, sharing little gossipings of joy and woe. And from then a sort of matriarchal angel watching over, putting me right when need arose with impish humour and depths of sense, ever loyal and true.
Well, she’s gone now. The family asked me to read the Gospel at the funeral and the Dean to join him and Fr Kellman as officiating clergy. The wheel came full circle, hello and goodbye in that place which saw the beginnings of me as priest and she as friend. It means a lot, one of those things ever treasured in the vaults of memory.
Happy coincidence – really? For Jesus’ words in my Gospel reading strike to the heart of all I’ve written here on the power of Love and, yes, embrace all those who the Church’s call must ever reach in Jesus’ name: “anyone who comes to me I will never drive away….I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6:37-40). Thanks for that Oslyn, love – with me to the end and from our new beginning. Namaste! Shalom!
Go safely, then – until the next time.
Curtain call from the boundary: “When you unite love with the Lover, then you have love’s perfection” (Kabir).