Tonight I've been doing some work next week's funeral, and was looking for some words of commendation that would be suitable.  Among the resources on my shelf is a book with the original title of Funerals: A Guide, James Bentley et al, Hodder and Stoughton 1995.  Looking through I found this one by David Adam which I really like, addressed to the deceased:

[N]

You shared your life with us: God give eternal life to you

You gave your love to us: God give his deep love to you

You gave your time to us: God give his eternity to you

You gave your light to us: God give everlasting light to you

Go upon your journey dear soul to love, light and eternal life.

This funeral is relatively unusual in that there are no hymns and the only music is entrance and exit.  I am pleased that my cousins felt able to say 'no' to music during the service but am intrigued and inspired by their choices for processional/recessional, which I will ask to be played in full.  Both are by a musician called Lisa Gerrard, of whom, to my shame, I had not heard.  She sings using a form of glossolalia which evidently she says is 'singing to God' (according to something like wikipedia anyway) though she is not actively of a specific faith tradition.  The music - which I listened to on YouTube and subsequently bought a CD of - is incredibly haunting and has an innate spirituality to it.  On the way in we are having one called Sanvean (I am your shadow) and in the way out Now We are Free (from the film Gladiator).  These two threads - of shadows and freedom - will frame my thoughts; a Biblical focus on the beautiful Romans 8 'what then can separate us from the love of God' will underpin it all.

I have probably prepared extra well for this one - I hope that's not favouritism but appropriate familial care.

At the meeting today there was a request for articles to include in the organisation's publication.  Foolishly I said I'd do something on blogging - not least because I am aware of someone who has written a brief theological piece on this.  So, rather than just me waffling on about why I blog and what I think is good blogging etiquette or posting ethics, I thought I'd canvas a few views from readers and writers alike.  The only wrong answers are untrue answers - and anything that breaches my private code of blogging etiquette or ethics.  Comments, which can be anonymous, are invited from Baptists and non-Baptists, ministers and real people ;-) , bloggers, lurkers and commenters.  It would be helpful if you indicate which you are but not essential.  Also, if you happen to be a Baptist-, a minister- or a theological-blogger and happy for your blog to be mentioned in what I write, please let me know.

Some thoughts you might want to share are...

why you read/write blogs?

what you read/write about?

what rules/etiquette do you endeavour to observe (if you write or comment)

do blogs have a useful lifespan or sell-by date?

if you blog, has yours changed over time?

if you blog, why is it called whatever it's called?

and anything else you think is interesting (and publishable!)

So, after yesterday's rant, God gave me kind of an answer, along with a hint at a Bible reading for next Tuesday morning.

I was at a meeting of a committee I serve on, and enjoy being part of.  The chairperson - who I know doesn't read this blog because he didn't know what a blog was and couldn't imagine why he'd want to read one - read some theology to us from a big book he is enjoying.  He spoke of the great gift of people who can write this kind of stuff which the 'jobbing pastor' to use his phrase can then employ.  As he is a Revd Dr, the title 'jobbing pastor' seemed a bit incongruous, but he shared of the intra-university arguments over whether or not to allow his thesis - which was evidently pastoral theology - to be passed.  For those of us with good brains who choose to use them in God's service there is a tension between academy and church which can lead to either or both of them being awkward to appease.  But somewhere in it all, I felt God was affirming me in my own walk and service.

After these thoughts, he read part of Psalm 139, saying these were words he often used at funerals where he wasn't sure about the deceased's beliefs or character - that heaven or hell (Sheol/depths) God is present.  These may well be the words I will use next week for someone who believed in God but is described by those who knew them best as 'a lost soul.'

Thank you God, for your mysterious presence.

... please fill in the blank.  This is a minor rant having just encountered what feels like another example of Christian anti-intellectualism.  May not be what was intended, but it is how it felt.

So here's my train of thought...  God calls people with good brains to train as ministers... said people recognising this gift find the exercise of it energises their ministry... and as a result are told their passion is not 'x' or 'y' even when they believe it is.

I find myself left in a quandry: in ten years or so of preaching and leading church groups in study and reflection I have never been accused of being incomprehensible, too academic, aloof or detatched.  Indeed, to the contrary, I have often had people tell me that when I explained something it became clear for the first time (head swells), that I talk sense, am practical in what I say and so on.

Yet, in contexts where I feel that a desire to think and reflect ought to be valued, I find the opposite to be the case: because clearly Peter et al were unschooled, the Bible says so, it must be better not to read or think.  So, I'm feeling annoyed! I'm annoyed because the employment of gifts of music or art or medicine or valued and celebrated whilst the gift of intelligence, it often feels, is required to be denied, dumbed down or restricted to academia. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I feel better now.

A lot of stuff happening in the next little while which will necessitate a fair amount of time 'on the road' and a fair amount of that ministerial art of 'mood switching.'  When they teach you pastoral care skills they talk a lot about 'immediacy' and 'congruence' but far less about the need to adapt to the context  'chameleonism.'

This week is relentless meetings of one sort or another - a couple of local ones, a couple of Association ones and a national one, each very different and with equally diverse expectations; it promises to be a fun and busy week.  Next week is a first - I will conducting the funeral for one of my cousins who was younger than me.  I have always been a bit wary of 'intra-familial' undertaking, not least after attending the funeral of an atheist uncle around 25 years ago (which was just embarrassing, it was so bad; I was left feeling very sad for my dad whose brother it was) and when my sister took my grandmother's funeral a decade or so back and was left really drained with nowhere to grieve.  But this feels right somehow - I don't want to entrust my cousin, even though not someone I'd met very often, to a 'duty vicar' who will know nothing about the life they led or the dreams that are now forever lost.  It's not an objection to other ministers - goodness knows I do enough 'duty vicaring' myself - it's just a concern that it be done well, and in a way that the surviving siblings (along with my aunt & uncle) can own.  I realise that the stakes are so much higher for me than a 'duty vicar' who can simply walk away and be grumbled about ever after, and maybe there is a sense of this being the only thing I can do for someone who 'there but for the grace of God' go any of us.  It will be a little odd to swoop in to another county, picking up my mother en route, to an unfamiliar crematorium to conduct a funeral, not least as I can name a good four or five local minsters (Baptist and otherwise) who I know would do a fantastic job, but it feels right on this occasion that it be so.  SBJ 1967-2009 RIP.