Virtual Methodist

This long, rambling poem/monologue is the product of sleeplessness, reading a fictional account of the death of Jesus and Clive James's self-penned poem about impending death written in 2014, but widely shared last night on social media in the light of his demise. Please don't seek to compare this to his piece -  there is simply no comparison. He was a genius, and I do not use that word lightly. Also I should also say that the characters in this piece are not anyone living, dead or dying, although it is obviously influenced by my experience. I am also, not dying (I think) at least not imminently, so don't worry about me any more than you usually do... Has it come to this? I’ve been in this hospital room many times, Or if not this one, many like it. Ministering to others. Praying prayers that neither the dying Nor their companions could hear Over the din of impending death. Reading words from a book That many of them think Is as dead as they soon w...

A bumper bonanza issue of the supplement due to a two week backlog of stuff I'd compiled... (you can save some of it for Bank Holiday Monday if the weather's bad and you have absolutely nothing better to do!) Ongoing Fun and Games ...not a reference to the World Police and Fire Games, which seems to have been a great success, but to the fact that after the fun over the flag at Christmas and the annual riot-fest around the Twelfth... this year we had the added bonus of a right royal ruckus in Royal Avenue in response to a Republican Internment Parade... This has led (among other things) to much activity in the virtual sphere... A few of the more interesting pieces include: "What does the Outside World Think of Us" - this is a question I ask myself all the time given that I have spent a fair proportion of my ministry interpreting the Northern Ireland situation to visitors from the US and elsewhere, and my FB is usually filled with questions and concerned com...

Today's offering on God Morning Ulster's "Thought for the Day", my last for a wee while... Have you ever said “There aren’t enough hours in the day” or “there aren’t enough days in the week”? Well now there aren’t enough weeks in the year… Because at the moment we are apparently in the middle of, not only the well publicized Christian Aid Week and Community Relations Week , but also, Choose Charity Shops Week - a nationwide campaign to encourage people to donate goods to charity shops; Dying Matters Awareness Week , aimed at encouraging individuals and organisations to take simple steps that can make a big difference to people when they are dying or bereaved, and International Food Allergy Awareness Week , an initiative of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Alliance … a group name that was a significant challenge to say live on radio at 6.55am… All of these are important issues but it does speak to me of a world where, despite the proliferation of ways of commun...

Writing this at stupid o'clock, because I've just come down from a local hilltop where I had the privilege of sharing in the scattering of ashes of a member of my congregation. Her husband is a Kiwi, and it is, he tells me, a Maori tradition to do such things at dawn... I've been to the top of this particular hill for dawn services before... but those have been at Easter, at a time of year when the sun has the decency to lie in for a bit... This morning we had to be there for shortly after 4am. I needn't have bothered going to bed! Anyway, my body clock was clearly worried about missing my early start and I was up even earlier than I needed to be... And as I thought about what was to come, both this service and a later more conventional interment of ashes, I made a start on this short poem/reflection, which I finished on my return a few minutes ago... So this is for Carole, Paul and family... Dust on the breeze Is that what life comes to? A hilltop offers fresh perspect...

Today is national poetry day, and I've been struck by how many people have cited Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle" as one of their favourite poems. It is an amazing, emotionally charged poem, calling for defiance in the face of death. But it is one that speaks, ultimately of a sense of hopelessness. I think that poetry, or that poetry put to music in the form of lyrics, enables us to address profound human, spiritual issues in a way that prose cannot. Perhaps it is the careful crafting of thought and emotion required for good poetry, I don't know why... But my own favourite poem on the subject of our mortality is a sonnet by John Donne. It is just as defiant in the face of death, but is suffused with the Christian hope of resurrection. So here's my posting in honour of National Poetry Day, and I post it partly in honour of my colleague Rev Wilfred Agnew, who, last night went to his reward after many years serving his Master in this sphere: DEATH be not proud, t...

Whilst preparing for the two funerals that I have to conduct today, I came across this piece by Bishop Charles Henry Brent , which apparently was sent to Fiona Castle by a well-wisher shortly after the death of her husband Roy. Bishop Brent is probably more famous for his more developed analogy of death being like a ship sailing over the horizon. Here he uses the same image but in the form of a prayer: We seem to give them back to Thee, 0 God, who gavest them to us. Yet as Thou didst not lose them in giving, so we do not lose them by their return. Not as the world giveth, givest Thou, 0 Lover of souls. What Thou givest, Thou takest not away, for what is Thine is ours also if we are Thine. And life is eternal and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. Lift us up, strong Son of God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly: draw us closer to Thyself that we may know ourselves to be nearer t...

OK... Warning. I'm about to rant again... This time it is due to a piece of junk mail that landed on my doorstep yesterday... The sheer amount of unsolicited mail that goes straight from letterbox to blue bin is usually enough to trigger a rant... But on this occasion it was because of a kind offer by Sarah Muggeridge to provide me with some assistance to deal with the implications of the government's " End of Life Care Strategy " published last summer. Now I don't know whether this offer is coming to me in my role as chaplain to the local hospital, where I am actually on the multi-disciplinary palliative care education sub-group (the title is longer than the meetings), but the fact that it was sent to the church's PO Box address, suggests that the name and address was gleaned by some web-crawling bot, that has cribbed my name and address from either the local or national church website. With that in mind... one general point... Any junk mail senders take note...

Recently I was at an event where the Rev Leslie Griffiths (or Lord Griffiths of Burry Port if I were to be official about it, and name-drop with an enormous "clang") told those present that he lived and worked surrounded by a significant graveyard around Wesley's Chapel in London. This, he affirmed, served to remind him not only of the past, but of the future... the future for all of us. His comment reminded me of the fact that in my first station, a rural one, I was the only minister in the local clergy fraternal who didn't have a graveyard around my church buildings, a fact for which I was perennially thankful, not because of any squeamishness but because my colleagues lives seemed to be dominated by the petty politics involved in administrating grave plots. Yesterday I was back in the same room as the discussion with Leslie Griffith, but this time the speaker was Duncan Morrow (many more postings will probably stem from what he said, here and elsewhere...). During...