Here’s what I
wrote in the Cathedral notice sheet.
I write this with mixed feelings.
On St Cuthbert’s Day it will be 12
years since I was installed as Dean of Durham. The time has now come to
announce that I shall be retiring from the role at the end of this year. The
Bishop and the Chapter have kindly granted me three months of sabbatical leave
to complete my time here, so Jenny and I will be saying our goodbyes to the
Cathedral and the wider community at the end of September. Our farewell service
will be evensong on Sunday 27 September.
It is too soon yet to put into words
the gratitude we feel as this wonderful chapter in our lives approaches its
end. However, I am sure you will realise that this parting of friends, when it
comes, will not be easy. But in the image of an earlier dean (who loved this
place as I do), we are hermit crabs who need to recognise when the time is
coming to move on. We shall be retiring to Northumberland. There we shall say
our prayers for the Cathedral in the knowledge that it will be in the best
possible hands in the future.
It’s a
strange feeling, knowing that the die is cast. We made the decision months ago,
Jenny and I, that we would retire in September. So I already knew that it was
my last Advent Procession in the Cathedral, my last Christmas sermon, my last ashing
at the start of Lent. I knew that I would never again watch the trees on the
river banks turn autumn gold, or the first snowdrops push through the frosty
Deanery lawn. I was aware of these things, but didn’t allow myself to think too
much about them. It didn’t feel real. It wasn’t imminent.
But after
today it is different. It still isn’t imminent (I tell myself), but it has
become a whole lot more real. Seeing it there in black and white says to me:
the time is coming. There’s no argument. You need to be ready when it comes. There
are things that need to be done before I go: people to see, undertakings to
meet, jobs to finish, files to close. I have never been a good
completer-finisher, so this could be exacting. The rituals of leave-taking can
be deferred for a while: it’s not yet time for farewells. It can be business as
usual for a few more months.
Or can it? For
in a sense, every moment from now on is a kind of leave-taking, not just of
these 12 Durham years but of the 40 years I have been in full-time ministry
since my ordination in 1975. I have to learn that everything that has ‘constructed’
my working life is now provisional. It’s not that everything comes into the
category of ‘last time’: ministry doesn’t end with retirement. But what will be
different is that it won’t any more be the daily habit of ordinary working life.
I need to recognise that pretty well everything will need to be renegotiated on
the other side of the threshold called ‘retirement’. That feels exhilarating
but, if I’m honest, daunting too.
All day I’ve
had the line of a Philip Larkin poem in my mind: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now. This great poem is called 'Aubade'. In it, Larkin imagines death
creeping up on him remorselessly, terrifyingly. The dreadful visitant will not
be put off. There is no postponing the unwelcome encounter, so it all depends on
how the poet faces it. I wonder why I unconsciously made the association:
presumably because whatever else it is, retirement is a kind of dying, letting go of
one kind of life in order to embrace the new. Right now, life after retirement
feels as much of a mystery as life after death, so maybe the analogy has
something in it. It recalls earlier rites of passage: what was I supposed to do
on the first day after I left school? Or got married? Or was ordained? You
never quite know till you get there.
On the other
hand, I won’t pretend that I’m not looking forward to the possibilities
retirement will bring: more time for family and friends; a new place to live and
a new community to belong to; lifelong interests to enjoy and new ones to
discover; volunteering in ways that could put something into church or society;
having choices about where to focus energies. One of the best things will be
that we shall still be living in our beloved North East England with its wonderful
people, rich heritage and beautiful landscapes to go on enjoying. We shall accentuate the positive in the spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld: for all that has been, thanks! To all that shall be, yes! Isn't that the Christian way to cross any threshold?
But oh, it is
going to be so hard to leave Durham….
More anon.
