NEWSLETTER

September 2001 From the Revd. Hugh Trenchard, Vicar. Dear Parishioners Dear Parishioners, I hope you have enjoyed the incredibly warm weather and let's hope that, holidays or no, the sunshine has cheered you and will continue to make light of the winter to come. I write this at the end of a quite moving fortnight. This last week I had four funerals - all delightful people. My oldest parishioner from Llanarth who became over the years a much loved family member; a 47 year old friend from Cardiff and two gentle ladies from these parishes who did much for charity as well as their own special families. At the start of the week there was an essay published, which won the Catherine Pakenham Award. Catherine was the late daughter of the recently deceased Lord Longford. She was killed in a car crash at the age of just 23, having already become an extremely promising journalist. Longford made the prize an opportunity for young female journalists between the ages of 18 to 25 to gain some public recognition. This year's award was won by Alice Wignal, a 23 year old from York. The essay began: "My grandmother died on Chhristmas morning" and proceeded to tell the story of her funeral. For Alice it was the first time she had seen a dead body let alone visit a funeral parlour. The experience was to prove cold and unfulfilling, except that from this young mind came words as profound as any experienced writer, of many more years expertise, would have been moved to have penned. "- a deep breath - my first corpse. Unimpressive. I'm sorry Grandma, but it's true. People sleeping, playing dead, holding their breath and concentrating hard, hard, hard on not letting even a flicker of their eyelids give the game away are still, unmistakeably there. They'll let you know. You're not alone in a dark room, will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. She - this - was empty. To die should not be a verb. It's not a doing word. Death is just an absence, of activity, of anything. An undoing word." "Death is not a verb, a doing word; it is an undoing word". And there instead of despair lies one of the simplest but most profound expressions of the power and gift of Resurrection. Instead of clinging on to that which we treasure because we are made of the same, we have to learn to let go of the empty and now meaningless shell of these bodies of ours and allow death to do its best - not as we so often see it, its worst. Its best is that as an undoing word it allows freedom - it allows personality - it allows identity - it allows the eternal which has begun to grow in each of us to have the opportunity, the space, the reality in our experience. We are not abandoned, left alone without the guiding light have loved and treasured - rather free of a body which can only decay and register its cold and unfeeling presence. We are permitted, if we can to bend our minds, to listen and talk, to be bathed in the love and delight of all who we have loved but can no longer touch or see. My week with four families took an ever more unexpected turn when a truly delightful man dying of cancer, was moved by something he'd heard me say at a funeral he had attended and asked his children to find me and ask me to visit him. Such was the expression of anxiety on their faces and in their voices my only reaction was to drop everything else and go there and then. When called into such an intimate and charged place you do not go easily, but you know it's every bit the same emergency as if life itself were on the spot. Within a few minutes we were laughing together and talking of the little future he has without that conspiracy of secrecy which takes us all over at such times - afraid to cry together, afraid to admit that time is short, afraid and therefore each can so easily be isolated. I gave him a crucifix, plain one side with a figure on the other bounded with metal - hard enough to grasp and smooth for comfort, and sharp enough to dig into your palm when medication fails to deal with sharp, deep and slow pain. This person is the 17th person to use this cross - and each of his predecessors are now colleagues, accompanying him through these last days. Fear has now gone, he can complete his living rather that enter a long process of dying. Death, the undoing word is already opening up the way forward just as if you had unlocked a door or unpadlocked a gate. Freedom, once accepted gives us a glimpse that our life with God has already begun. The peace, confidence, coupled with brilliant community nursing and the complete support of a family freed to talk and experience, points to this lovely man's courage to use the "Vicar" a can opener, if you like, allowing death, the undoing word, to have a positive action as he completes his living. The difference to dying is awesome in its naturalness, its humour, its tears and its hope. This doesn't make it easy but it does make it rich. More important, death can now be the very healing of that which cannot be cured any other way. its very undoing nature makes the experience real not pointless, meaningful not empty and celebratory not bitter and fruitless. It is the Anglican Canadian Prayer Book which put it best: "In life, in death, in life beyond death, our God is with us." Through it all we and our loved ones cannot be alone. Jesus Himself emptied that word lonely in Gethsemane and on Calvary, offering His unique companionship to us all. Best wishes and God's Blessing, Hugh Trenchard