Fire and shadows

"And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." 

(John 1:5) 

This post is a little late, due to demands of work, but I've felt compelled to complete it. On Good Friday, I attended a beautiful "Tenebrae" service, a Service of Shadows, and it's left a lasting impression on me.

"Tenebrae" is Latin for shadows or darkness. The Tenebrae has evolved from an ancient Christian ritual, most usually held on Good Friday, using diminishing light through extinguishing candles to symbolise the arrest, torture, trial, crucifixion and burial of Jesus. The enveloping darkness holds the sadness, helplessness and hopelessness after his death; a world without God. When I was at school, the Tenebrae would include a dramatic slamming of a church door or other dramatic noise to signify the closing of Jesus' tomb. 

I remember Tenebrae services from my younger days as sombre and deeply sad; even depressive, if I'm being totally honest. This Good Friday, I travelled to the parish of "Our Lady of Mercy and St Joseph", in Lymington in Hampshire, to take part in a beautiful service put together by the wonderful Cathy; assisted by the lovely parish priest, Father Danny. Although Tenebrae has evolved with many traditional and orthodox elements intact, the service at Lymington was incredibly effective. 

Belying the hard work that had gone into the preparation, it was a simple and seamless Tenebrae. About forty people attended on what was essentially a cold Friday night; the pretty parish church is quite small and seemed almost womb-like by flickering candlelight.

The service was obviously reflective and moving, but the beauty of it has stayed with me throughout Easter and is carrying me through the start of the great British summertime. I felt a real sense of quiet hopefulness during and after the service. At the edge of the New Forest and set across the Solent from the Isle of Wight, Lymington is often depicted as an affluent, self-contained area. But the quayside shops and pristine cottages front a town still darkened by poverty and social distress; the community of Our Lady of Mercy responds from a little pocket of kindness which is incredibly deep.

The intent of the service and the openness with which it was received were palpable. It's traditional to leave the Tenebrae in silence; the gathering on Friday in Lymington stayed in hushed contemplation long after the last candle of the service was blown out. There was a very real sense of acceptance and renewal and the affirmation of the faith at the heart of Easter. It was one of the most poignant church services I've been to: impossible not to feel touched by the spark made only brighter by the winter darkness.

"It is a time for shadows.

Before the glorious light of resurrection morning,

there are dark nights, and even darker days.

On our way toward rejoicing in the resurrection,

we are entering that shadow land, those days of darkness,

the darkness that stretched from the upper room to the tomb.

Dark days lie ahead,

somber days, shadowed days.

We have asked terrifying questions:

Will we notice the light, in the midst of so many shadows?

Would we notice the light, were it not for the shadows?

But we have ended with the triumphant question:

Would there be shadows, were it not for the light?

It is a time for shadows,

But it is also a time for hope."

(Adapted from Lee Magness' "Service of Shadows" 2009)

"There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebody's voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?" 

(Frederick Buechner) 

"John Nineteen Forty-One",  from "Jesus Christ Superstar"

God's heartbeat doesn't skip

"The heart is the only broken instrument that works"

(T E Kalem)

Colleen writes a lovely blog called "Thoughts of Grace" . She has a very gentle turn of phrase which is also extremely resonant. About ten days ago, she posted about the reassuring "click click" of her beloved husband's mechanical aortic valve replacement: for the past fourteen years she's been able to hear his heartbeat without a stethoscope. Colleen also wrote that sometimes we forget to listen for the heartbeat of God.  I'm often silenced by the beauty of the words of others these days and this was one such moment.
I recently read somewhere a quote from The Book of Ezekiel, about God giving man a singleness of heart and replacing our hearts of stone with tender ones of flesh. Lately, I've been struggling to keep my head above the waterline with many things: trying to keep up with friends' relationships, stressing about what people think of me, counting pennies instead of sheep at night. My own little heart is not so little as it's enlarged on one side and a common or garden chest infection has introduced a wee atrial flutter: beat beat beat skip skip beat. This could be due to many things, including stressing over all of the above!  Of course I've focused on it and have been drawn into myself. I listen to "outside" noise looking to be irritated by it, I listen to the opinions of others, I listen to background music; and I get hung up on the irregularities of my own heartbeat. What I really need is to be quietened by the constance of the heartbeat of God.
God doesn't succumb to stress or atrial fluttering. His beat never skips. It's the primeval pulse, the essence of vitality, peace and reason sought by the new age crystal practitioners in Brighton's North Laine as much as by the suited and booted church regulars taking their love to the altar, their babies to the font, and their flowers to the cemetery. Listen; and you will find it in the murmur of well wishers, the unsolicited greetings of strangers, in birdsong and the cheerful nonsense of children, in the rhythm and ritual of the Mass, in the ticking of your late father's watch, in the certainty of your own name from another's lips. It's in the hush at either end of each day, it's the breathing space before words spoken are heard, it's the soft echo of longing, remorse or forgiveness of everything unsaid.

My Mum was a petite lady whose frailty in her later years belied the strength of purpose of her own enlarged heart. The congenital failure which claimed her last beat started with a hole in her heart, discovered after scarlet fever as a child. During one of her last cardiac checkups in 2010, the consultant was incredulous that although the left side of her heart was barely functioning, she was still alive. Ironically, whatever her faults and the fallouts of her Norn Irish temper, my Mum was known to be all heart. After Dad died, Mum and I clung together through the tantrums of my teenage years and she indulged my penchant for various indie, protest-pop and rock bands. Once introduced by me, she and Bruce Springsteen got on like a house on fire. She came to see The Boss at Wembley Stadium, leaning on a walking stick after a hip replacement (Mum, not Bruce) and stood for his four hour show, thumping the ground to her favourite songs. She later complained that, although she thought he was "smashing", he could have played for a bit longer for the money. Towards the end of her life, as Mum grew more weary of being housebound, I would often chivvy her into watching the music chart show on TV; I can still hear her today saying such and such a tune had "a good beat". Somewhere in the brash eighties production of "Dancing in the Dark", I can still grasp her walking stick keeping tempo. I wasn't there when Mum's heart gave up the beat; in the dreadful fester of days afterwards, I have no idea when her rhythm slipped in step with mine. Now when my heart skips, I can feel my Mum beating for me, just as she did from before I drew my first breath.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard God's heartbeat loud and clear during a Mass for the Sick. The service took place in the Hampshire parish where my Mum is buried, and where I've since made some very dear friends. As one of the seven sacraments, "Extreme Unction" was known as the blessed anointing of those who were terminally ill. Since 1972, the Roman Catholic Church has used the name "Anointing of the Sick" and the sacrament is extended to all those who are suffering in mind or body.

 Photo: Gigi

Photo: Frances

The Anointing of the Sick is given to restore and strengthen the body and the spirit; and to enable a state of grace for any continuing journey with pain or anguish. That Sunday, I watched other people after they had received their blessing, with a slight smile and an upward tilt to the chin. Several people I spoke to said they felt such peace after the mass. I also felt that the congregation and the men who were anointing them were moving quietly in step with the heartbeat of God. Intention, purpose and effect seemed to beat as one. 

When my little cat Sooty was terminally ill, with a chest tumour that was growing over her own heart, I often pressed my cheek to her fur for the familiarity of it and also to catch her brave little heartbeat. I miss her terribly, and often find myself reaching across the stillness of a moment to rekindle that scent and softness; her beat. When I'm even more still, I feel I can catch other inexorable rhythms finely underpinning every traffic hum, every tick of every clock in my home; and yes, my own sporadically dysfunctional beat beat beat skip. I believe we live between God's heartbeats, carried by His constancy. When our own hearts flutter and finally fail, I believe our names are still found by others in His comforting rhythm. His pace is oblivious to our progresses, stresses and turmoil: His love doesn't miss a beat; He is the pacemaker of the world.



"In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart"

( Mahatma Gandhi)

"If I Should Fall Behind"  Bruce Springsteen

Catholics - parts one, two and three

"I will give you shepherds after my own heart"
(Jeremiah 3.15)

A new three part series of documentary films opened on BBC4 last night, simply titled "Catholics". The episodes focus on priests, children and finally women. The series was commissioned by BBC4 controller Richard Klein. "Catholic Christianity is at the very centre of many of the Western world's cultural and institutional sensibilities, and yet Catholics today can feel at times like they are set apart from mainstream society. So this is a series that asks a simple question: what is it like, being a Catholic?" Klein  has said. The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, has recommended the series, praising it's sensitivity and "great beauty".

The Diocese of Westminster featured heavily in last night's episode, filmed mainly around Allen Hall in Chelsea; one of only three remaining Roman Catholic seminaries in England. Bafta nominated filmmaker Richard Alwyn directed and produced the series and seems to have been allowed extraordinary access to the seminary and some of the men there, at various stages of their journey into Catholic priesthood. This lent the programme exceptional candour. Alwyn was allowed to film at the seminary for six months. Training for the Catholic priesthood is long: the Catholic church prefers to call it "formation". Usually, 2 years of "in-house" instruction and guidance will be followed by a year of practical placement within a parish, culminating in a three year Theology degree. We were shown that the instruction at Allen House covers Latin and Greek, philosophy, the Liturgy and more particular subjects such as celibacy and "special morality"; the latter including war. It costs around £20,000 a year for each seminarian to receive formation at Allen Hall. Although the Catholic church has struggled to recruit young men to the priesthood in recent years, there are currently 45 seminarians at Allen House: a ten year high. However, it must be noted that, with 5 million Catholics in Britain today, only 19 priests were ordained across England and Wales in 2010.

We met some of the seminarians,  most memorably Robert Hunt in his first year. Robert described himself as a "cradle Catholic", but said he had felt he had as much chance of becoming an astronaut as a priest when he was younger. Slightly terse and with a dry, almost dour humour, he made me think of comic Ade Edmondson if he were ever to become a monk. Robert had been in several "imperfect" relationships and had spent ten years of his life as a a roadie for a rock band. He'd always felt that his taste in music wouldn't be appropriate for the seminary; he'd brought his cds and downloads with him, along with his boxed set of The Sweeney for light relief. He pointed out that he still has female pin-ups, although these days they tend to be Saints Bernadette and Therese of Lisieuix.

In his final year of the seminary, Andrew Gallagher is 30 years old. He worked for a city law firm before what might seem a startling career change. Andrew said he didn't realise he had a calling while he attended non-Catholic school, although he always felt rather different and his fellow pupils had nicknamed him "The Priest". Interestingly, he felt his time working in the city literally "pushed" him towards the priesthood. He didn't recall being particularly holy as a child, although he was strongly influenced by his Catholic Irish grandmother (I do have a personal theory that every Catholic in England and Wales is mostly likely to have had an Irish grandmother somewhere). Considering his background, Andrew was edgy and diffident, and as excited as a child when he spoke about finding the right chasuble.

The simplicity of the film-making highlighted the rich and complex nature of Catholicism. Many non-Catholics appear almost fascinated by the ritual and tradition of the religion; the "smells and bells". Certainly the reverence and poignancy of ceremony in the Catholic church was displayed beautifully in this film. Alwyn remarked that a Catholic priest is the bridge between man and God: the seminarians came across as ordinary blokes who were at the same time somehow extraordinary. With (uncredited) mesmeric music trickling throughout, the film offered insight but ultmately maintained the mystique which is at the heart of Catholic faith.