Dying Matters

It's a bank holiday weekend. The sun is shining. The world is beautiful. Tomorrow is Whit Sunday. It's not a time to be gloomy.

However....

This is Dying Matters Awareness Week. I wish I'd known about it sooner. I became aware of it yesterday as I was reading the Catholic weekly The Tablet. This always excellent journal leads on the subject, and there is an excellent article by Rosie Harper, an Anglican priest, about helping people talk naturally about death.

This is what the week is intended to be about: recovering the importance of thinking about and discussing end-of-life matters: palliative care, dying, death, loss and grief. I say ‘recover’ because as we know, the difficulty we have in even naming some of these topics seems a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Our forebears did not stumble over facing the incontrovertible truth of the old tag memento mori. To remember the certainty of death and to reflect on dying well is all part of learning to live well, and not just well but happily.

The Dying Matters hashtag is #YODO: You Only Die Once. It’s good. I’m learning late in my life that the things we only do once are supremely worth investing time and effort in. Yesterday I was giving an address to school-leavers. I talked about how they might cross this unique threshold of becoming an adult with thankfulness, hope and joy. I linked it with my own imminent retirement, another threshold that carries significance for the whole of my working life, not just the few weeks that are left and whatever lies beyond. I spoke about (horrid word, but useful) mindfulness. If I’d been talking to fellow clergy or caring professionals I might have spoken about awareness or reflective practice. The words don’t matter. What 's important is that we draw on our emotional and spiritual intelligence to bear upon these life-changing passages we all have to negotiate.  

This year’s Dying Matters theme is Talk, Plan, Live. The website says: ‘During the week, we will be encouraging members of the public to take five simple steps to make their end of life experience better, both for them and for their loved ones.’ These are: 1 Write your will; 2 Record your funeral wishes; 3 Plan your future care and support; 4 Consider registering as an organ donor; 5 Tell your loved ones your wishes.

Here in Durham (and we are not alone), we have encouraged this approach to death by inviting members of the Cathedral Community to design their funeral rite, or as much of it as they wish, and deposit it in writing with the Precentor. We often have deeply-held desires about the shape of the service: where it should take place, who should be involved in it, the readings, music and hymns we would like, what is to happen to our body and so forth. This is of real help to shocked and grieving next of kin and to the ministers who support them. Unless incorporated in a legal will, our funeral wishes are not legally binding, but loved ones will almost always want to respect them. (And if we change our minds subsequently – i.e. not after death but before it! – we can amend as we wish.)

We only die once. It’s an event worth taking seriously. I’m not talking about ‘designer dying’ as if it were a lifestyle (deathstyle?) choice. I mean investing in dying as the culmination of living, a gateway that we hope to pass through with the dignity that belongs to a human being made in the image of God. The seventeenth century Bishop Jeremy Taylor famously called it Holy Dying. Here’s the reason we need to talk about it more. Death is not simply a solitary matter for each of us personally. It is communitarian. Apart from its public and civil aspects – recording it, investigating it if necessary, handling the succession in accordance with law – it’s an event that belongs to all our communities of love, trust and care: our family, our faith community, our neighbourhood and the institutions we have belonged to. In each case, ‘every man’s death diminishes me.’

Nothing can be more important than the way we say farewell and honouring the memories that are left behind. I always feel the chill in the Ash Wednesday words 'dust you are, and to dust you shall return', especially when I say them to children as I impose the ashes on their foreheads. But being mortal, with our existence bounded by a beginning and an ending, is something we can learn to celebrate for the focus it gives to the unique meaning of each precious human life.

It makes me wonder why the Church of England isn’t making much more of it – or perhaps I have missed something? This year, Dying Matters Awareness Week falls at the very end of the Easter season. What better time to meditate on death in the light of these Great Fifty Days, and Christian faith’s sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead?

Even at the grave we sing alleluia!

Hallowe'en is Coming: some thoughts

It’s that time of year again. The shops are full of lurid spectres, ghosts, creepy-crawlies, masks and skeletons. ‘Halloween is almost here!!! Come to Wilko for all your goulish gear and requirements.’ (Shouldn’t that be ghoulish?) The Yorkshire Trading Company in a Durham shopping mall has a tall skeleton attired in spooky white and wearing a black cross. Dangling above is a big red disc promoting a ‘Bloody Weapon £1’. 

The history is colourful. It poked fun at death and the devil by partying and misrule: lighting fires, dressing up, mumming in the streets or taking part in a danse macabre. People play-acted dead souls who returned to knock on the door looking for hospitality. Much of this goes back to primitive atavistic fears about winter and keeping light and warmth alive during the darkest season of the year and threat posed by the spirits of ancestors if they were not treated with respect. To a pre-modern society all too familiar with cold, flood, disease and famine, it was an ominous time of year, this day midway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. 

In the Celtic calendar, Samhain marked the end of the harvest and the gateway of another year, though it’s not certain that the day’s mythology included the dead coming back to haunt the living. In early Christian times, the ambiguities of the season were not forgotten. All Saints Day on 1 November and All Souls next day kept the memory of these life-and-death, light-and-dark motifs. The name Hallowe’en is purely Christian, ‘the eve of All Hallows’. But Christians have differed on whether or not to embrace Hallowe’en ceremonies and the permitted chaos that went with them. Yet the tradition has persisted. In Europe and North America it’s seen as a day of parody and irony. Its defenders say that none of it is meant literally, but like all humour it makes a serious point about what lies beyond the familiar horizons of what we can see and touch.  Others add that the psychoanalytic observation that it acts out the deep fears and anxieties hidden in our psyche, our ‘shadow’. Both are healthy instincts that should be playfully encouraged, not suppressed. 

So if Halloween recognises mystery, and parodies death and the demonic, why don’t I care for it? It’s not the commercialism, rampant, plastic and shoddy though most of it is. It’s more about what it means. 

It brings back a memory. One October night over 30 years ago, the front door bell rang during dinner. My little daughter came with me to see who it was. When I opened the door I was faced with the sight of a full-sized open coffin. It took me a few moments to take it in. There was no-one to be seen: its mischievous young bearers were hiding down the street. It was as if it had arrived out of nowhere, a sinister memento mori meant especially for me. When the trick-and-treat kids came running, I found some sweets for them and they went away satisfied, as did my daughter who did not see why she should be left out; she got her fistful of liquorice allsorts too.

I found it eerily discomfiting. That’s the whole point of Hallowe’en, you say: it’s meant to unsettle you. Well maybe. But there’s a bigger point here. In earlier Christian societies, it belonged to a triduum: three days of religious commemorations. Hallowe’en was the vigil, a day of preparation. Next day came the joyful celebration of the saints brought the light of Christ into our world, and after that, All Souls with its solemn memories of the dead and the opportunity to think about dying and death in the light of the crucified and risen One. It would have made all the difference that the rituals, parody and play-acting were firmly held within a Christian framework. Lose that, and Hallowe’en becomes an end in itself, one more occasion of self-indulgence, an anti-game perhaps, laden with an unhealthy aspect that relishes frightening ourselves and others.  

Some churches ritualise Hallowe’en by devising games and rituals that focus not on darkness but on light, not on 'ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night', but on the wholesome goodness of the saints. My question about that is whether there’s still room to acknowledge the reality of the shadow, all that is threatening, oppressive and demonic in life as the traditional symbols and rituals encouraged. Perhaps what’s needed is a way of ritualising both together within one Hallowe’en ceremony. It could look like a foreshadowing of Good Friday and Easter when we recall both the awfulness of Golgotha, the ‘Place of the Skull’, and what follows, the new life and expectant hope of an empty tomb in the spring time garden. These are the places where truly human beings and saints are formed.

Has this more holistic kind of approach that moves purposefully yet playfully from death to resurrection already been tried? It would be good to know. I can see how it might have the makings of a cathartic ritual and a great party.

On Good Friday Afternoon

In the Chapel of the Nine Altars in Durham Cathedral, there is a striking sculpture by local sculptor Fenwick Lawson. His Pietà shows Mary at the end of a long and terrible Good Friday. Stretched out at her feet lies the body of her dead Son rigid after his ordeal on the cross. His left arm is slightly raised, stretching out towards his mother whose hands in turn are opened towards him. In his wrist is the mark of the nail of crucifixion. She is depicted as the woman who has undergone sorrow beyond words. Her face is worn with grief and with the scars of ageing that great suffering incises on the human body. I have tweeted some images today: @sadgrovem.

Large numbers of worshippers come here on Good Friday afternoon for a simple service of evening prayer. A few years ago we decided to make the Pietà the focus of our last act of worship on this solemn day. It is the traditional office of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, very simple and spare with no words wasted and plenty of silence for thought and meditation. It needs to be understated like this, almost empty, coming as it does after three hours of profound spirituality and high emotion in the Good Friday liturgy. In liturgical time, Jesus is being laid to rest. His mother, his disciples are exhausted, numbed, and so are we.

How to bring the service to an end? We do it by listening to the Stabat Mater read aloud. This 13^th century Latin hymn enters into Mary’s experience as she watches her Son die.

At the cross
stood the sorrowful mother in her grief
while her son hung there.

The genius of the poem is to recognise that Mary’s grief is the same as any mother would feel. Even if he had not been the Son of God, he would still have been hers, and how could she love him more than in the hours of his suffering and dying?  There’s a moment I find especially poignant:

She watched her own sweet child
dying in desolation
giving up his spirit.

This is ‘the sword that shall pierce your own heart’ that Simeon had warned Mary about when she brought her 40-day old infant into the Temple to present him to the Lord. Death can have the effect of reawakening childhood memories and what mother would not remember her precious son’s infancy at a time like this?

When I wrote my book Lost Sons, I introduced it by meditating on this corner of the Cathedral. I have always been struck by two other presences near the Pietà. One is a painting by Paula Rego that shows Margaret, the 11^th century Queen of Scotland, with her son David sitting at her feet. This time, it’s the mother who is at the point of death, but the mother-son image is a striking if unconscious echo of the sculpture (I put it that way round because the Pietà was here first). The other feature is a simple early 19^th century memorial plaque to two sons who died in early childhood. It was placed there by their ‘afflicted’ parents to commemorate their beloved boys John and Francis. Were they their only children? We don’t know, but underneath the simple words the emptiness of a bereavement two centuries ago still speaks powerfully.

To me, the Pietà helps to make sense of what must be the worst human loss a parent can ever experience, the death of a son or daughter. Christians have always seen in the suffering of Jesus God’s loving identification with all human suffering: the divine Victim knows what every victim is going through. The Pietà says the same. But it does this by focusing specifically on how death severs human intimacy, strikes at the heart of the love and friendship that we need if we are to flourish and be happy. The thought that God understands and cares gives solace in our darkest times.

In his Good Friday sermon, the Bishop spoke about Jesus’ last word from the cross in St John: ‘it is accomplished.’ That sounded like an ending, he said. He went on: ‘how and why it is not an end but a beginning, I cannot know on this day - yet.’  The Stabat Mater is a sombre poem. But at the end of its long and gloomy day, the sun comes out once more. Like today’s sermon, its conclusion hints at Easter in a last line that speaks of glory and paradise. Tomorrow, on Easter Eve, we imagine a Sabbath rest for the Christ who has finished his work. And then, early on the first day of the week, he will stride through the grave and gate of death into the glory of resurrection blazing the trail where in God’s time, we hope to follow.  

Many Waters: floods and faith

Here on the Durham peninsula, we live with water all the time. As the River Wear, it flows round the rocky acropolis on which Cathedral and Castle sit. When it is in spate, you can hear it in the cloister, tumbling noisily over the weir between the Mill House and the Old Fulling Mill. When the river is very high it goes quiet again, for then the weir becomes just a wrinkle across the smooth fast surface of the flow.

However, all this is happening far below. The river remains confined to its gorge, kept in its place as rivers are meant to be. What we have seen in Somerset and across the south of England is water that bursts out of its proper bounds. And then it is not simply unwelcome but frightening, a power that is as relentless and destructive as hurricane or wildfire.

When I am walking past the mill, I sometimes think about one of my favourite novels, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. In that story, the mill is Tom and MaggieTulliver’s home. Never mind the plot (read it for yourself) in which river and mill play a central part. During the story, Tom and Maggie become estranged. At the climax, the river floods and the mill is swept away. Tom and Maggie’s boat capsizes and sinks, but not before Tom and Maggie are reconciled and drown in a tender embrace.

The novel is set in the Lincolnshire fens, not the Somerset Levels. But it captures so much of what people have been suffering in Somerset where life is imitating art in a terrible way. But there’s a point at which art and life differ. In the book, the flood brings about a reconciliation, and by implication, something new and better is coming to birth. It’s the same in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung where the old order of the gods is swept away by fire and flood and a new humanity is born. But in Somerset, there is no redemption, at least not yet. People continue to be overwhelmed, week after week, submerged beneath cold, filthy, hateful waters that simply refuse to go away.

George Eliot and Richard Wagner were drawing on ancient mythological archetypes in their art. The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Genesis story of the flood are among the oldest narratives in the world. The Bible is witness to the primordial fear the Hebrews had of waters that transgressed their limits and would not stay where they belonged. ‘The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their roaring’ (Psalm 93.3). To them, the flood represented chaos in its worst manifestations, monstrous, terrifying, powerful.

So it is not strange that in the New Testament, one of Jesus’ most memorable actions is to calm the storm, reassure the boatmen and instruct the waters, like a ferocious wild animal, to ‘be muzzled’ (Mark 4.35-41). It echoes the psalmist’s faith: ‘more majestic than the thunders of mighty waters, more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the Lord!’ Or as another watery psalm says, ‘be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46.10).

But to those who are victims of the waters that are despoiling homes and farms and livelihoods at present, these words may not yet bring encouragement, still less hope. It will require a huge act of faith to hear them in any way other than as a cruel mockery. But we who are dry and warm in our own homes should try to pray imaginatively for the children, women and men who are on our hearts right now. We can stand alongside them and on their behalf, hold on to our belief that there is no chaos, however awful, where God is not already present, sharing in the pain of victims, knowing in his crucified self the waste and the loss and the pain. They need us to hold on to our belief that in God’s time and in God’s way, not least through the care of those who are bringing help and support, they will find hope once more, and be given back their lives. 

'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it' says the Song of Solomon. I am writing this on Sunday, the day of resurrection. May it come for us all - soon.

On Going to See Shakespeare

Last week we went to Sheffield to see The Winter's Tale. The Crucible Theatre has a thrust stage and we had seats close to it. It always takes me a few minutes to get used to Shakespearian language, but in this environment so near to the action we could hear everything clearly. It was a great performance: such a pity that the theatre was half-empty.

Winter's Tale is a favourite play of mine. It's one of the late dramas that are not easy to classify, as if in his maturity Shakespeare is reaching beyond straightforward categories. It starts out as a classical tragedy where, like Othello, the tragic flaw is jealousy. Leontes imagines that his old friend Polixenes is having an affair with his wife Hermione. The drama vividly depicts a man eaten up by self-absorption jealousy, his rapid disintegration bringing about the collapse of a family's whole world with the deaths of his wife and his young son.

But then comedy breaks into the hopelessness. The famous stage direction  'exit, pursued by a bear' seems to introduce a note of parody, hinting that nothing is quite what it seems. There is a clown and lots of flirtatious dancing, and all is set for a happy ending with paradise restored and broken relationships mended. But (spoiler alert) Shakespeare gets there by using a device that has puzzled critics because it seems as if it resorts to trickery. At the climax of the play Paulina brings the statue of lost Hermione back to life. It's a tease, for we don't know whether she was ever really dead or had simply been hidden away and looked after by Paulina. Anyway, in a beautiful recognition scene she and Leontes are reunited and the drama achieves its resolution.

Does the play itself 'lose its mind', disintegrating from the high art of tragedy into what at times feels close to farce? Does the comedy, following hard on the heels of so much grimness, mock what went before as if to say, don't take any of this too seriously: it's just illusion, a ceremony to mark the passage of the seasons? Perhaps it's a parody on both tragedy and comedy: the scarcely believable speed at which things go wrong at the beginning, the sudden lurch into an apparently careless comedy complete with songs, ballet and pick-pocketing slapstick and a miracle (if that's what it is) to end with and undermine belief still further.

Or is Shakespeare, far from being careless, showing his mastery of dramatic form by merging the two genres in one art-work and making what is unbelievable at one level credible at another?

Here's where I find the drama especially telling. As a theologian, I see profound resonances in The Winter's Tale of the central Christian story of the passion and resurrection of Christ.  It's not that any one figure is an image of Jesus (unless it is Paulina whose action in the drama is to bring about both judgment and redemption). It is the drama itself that feels irresistibly Christological, taking us through a passion-like experience of suffering and pain into a realm of laughter, reconciliation and dancing that suggest resurrection and the kingdom of God. So the play is a great transformation scene, leading us out of winter into spring and summer, bringing colour into the sombre monochromes with which it began. This is one way in which the movement from tragedy to comedy is not just credible but ultimately necessary. (See F Buechner,  The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale.)

Paulina says near the end: 'it is required you do awake your faith'. Which is why, when the statue comes to life (and who envies the actor who has to stand there so still for so long?), you can smile at the ludicrousness of what is happening, or else find yourself believing in it and being deeply moved. Theatre is always an act of faith for playwright, actors and above all, audience. In The Winter's Tale, we seem to be summoned into an act of faith that draws us into the life of things, into God. Either parody or gospel - or maybe both, because in an important way the gospel parodies the silliness of self-important human lives and says: look beyond this and see something that is not transient but eternal. Shakespeare is always big enough for there to be endless possibilities in the way we respond. And by keeping us guessing, he always has the last laugh.

Marvellous theatre. Why don't I go to see Shakespeare much more often?

Easter: Off-beat Reflections

It may have been the coldest Easter Day on record, but in Durham it was golden. I wish it could have gone on for ever. In an ultimate sense it does, of course: resurrection is not just for Easter. And now we are celebrating the Great Fifty Days of Easter that take us to Pentecost with alleluias all the way.

The sights and sounds of Easter Day linger on. The lighting of the new fire an hour before dawn in the cloister garth as dark as grave; the rattles, whistles, bells and cymbals that accompanied the first great alleluia! shout; the quantities of water freely ladled out of the font as candidates were baptised; the new copes lending brilliant colour to the day’s celebrations; magnificent choral music (including an Easter piece by Widor of Toccata fame, said to be the loudest anthem in the choir’s repertoire); the pleasure on choristers’ faces as my wife and I gave them eggs and chocolates after the services. Worshippers came in great numbers and, from what they told me afterwards, were genuinely touched and inspired. As I was.

But two memories stand out, both of them surprises.

The first was of administering communion at the dawn vigil service. Twenty were confirmed, of all ages from young choristers upwards. It is always moving to see the candidates kneeling round the great Cathedral font as the bishop moves round the circle laying hands on them. They received communion before anyone else. And as they knelt at the altar and I gave them the sacred host, a wonderful scent filled the nave sanctuary.

It took me a short while to realise what it was: the perfume in the chrism oil that had been liberally poured on to their heads at the font. Two weeks before, I had preached on the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus with her precious ointmentThe aroma filled the house, says the gospel. But yesterday’s was the scent not of burial but of resurrection. It was an unexpectedly tender and beautiful experience.

The second also happened during communion, this time at the mid-morning sung eucharist. I was administering at the west end. What felt like a never-ending flow of people came up to receive the bread or to be blessed. Most of these I didn’t know personally: regulars are always far outnumbered by visitors and guests at the great festivals.

But at the end someone came up whom I knew extremely well. It was my eldest daughter carrying her month-old son Isaac, our first grandchild. I put out my hand to touch him and give him his first church blessing. That touch was charged with a significance I can’t put into words. It was as if all of life seemed to be gathered up in this tiny child. I wondered if Simeon felt something like it when the infant Jesus was presented in the temple. It was as if I was being offered a great gift.  It wasn’t I who was the giver, but he. The intensity of the moment subsided as it had to.  But it will be unforgettable, I am sure of that.

They were both off-beat experiences: not about sight or hearing which tend to dominate our consciousness, but about scent and touch. I have heard it said that these are the more basic, primary among our senses. A baby depends mainly on them to recognise mother. And at the end of life, touch and smell outlast the other senses leaving a person who is gently slipping away with something like the experience of beginning life.

I don’t pretend to understand these things. But I did glimpse how in a wonderful way, Easter speaks to each of our human senses. Our meeting with the risen Christ is not just a matter of seeing and listening but of allowing him to encounter all our human faculties, so that we can become more fully human through his resurrection. To recognise this and not to be afraid of it is what it means to be embodied, for the incarnate Jesus and for us.

‘The glory of God is a human being fully alive’ said Irenaeus famously. That’s one of the gifts of Easter.  Maybe it's not so off-beat after all.

My sermon on the anointing at Bethany is at http://deanstalks.blogspot.co.uk.

Lost Sons

SPCK have just published my new book, Lost Sons: God’s Long Search for Humanity. I don’t want to indulge in self-promotion (moi?).  But now that it’s out I hope you’ll allow me to say a little about it.

Earlier this year the title felt as though it had a rueful irony to it.  A book is like a baby: a unique individual whom you have begotten. Its life becomes separate from yours; it has a character, temperament and will of its own. This offspring just didn’t seem to want to be born. It felt like a lost child.  The labour pains were considerable.

I’ve pondered why this might have been.  Maybe the content touched me too personally.  I am after all a (late) father’s son and a son’s father.  So the theme of sons who are lost and found was bound to bring up material from my own past and present.  It would take a psychotherapist (e.g. my wife) years to get to the heart of what all this might mean. 

The book looks at stories in the early part of the Bible that tell of sons who are ‘lost’ in various ways. Abel is murdered, Canaan cursed, Ishmael abandoned, Isaac destined for sacrifice, Esau supplanted, Joseph betrayed, Moses hidden. Adam is the archetype of them all, and us: the child who hides himself from God. In each case I try to show how Jesus in his passion and death is God’s ‘Lost Son’. It is not that these Old Testament stories are all ‘types’ who prefigure Jesus. But the first Jewish readers of the gospels would have known these stories intimately and would, I guess, have brought their own associations to the passion story, seeing ‘pre-echoes’ if you like in these lost sons.

But the wonderful thing about God’s Lost Son is that he is ‘found’ again in the resurrection.  And this turns out to be true of many of the ancient lost sons. Ishmael is rescued from the desert.  Isaac is not killed on the altar because an angel stays his father’s hand.  Esau is reconciled to the brother who supplanted him as Joseph is with the brothers who sold him into slavery.  Moses is discovered in the bulrushes and brought up in the royal palace. So the book is about resurrection as well as death, even if sometimes we have to go looking for it in dark and baffling places.

This may remind you of the parable of the Prodigal Son or, as I think it’s better called, the Lost Son and the Loving Father. It was constantly in my mind as I was writing.  In the introduction, I tell how that marvellous parable seems to have a counterpart in the Hebrew Bible in the moving story of Abraham and Isaac (depicted by Chagall in the painting on the book’s cover – see to the right, and don’t miss the little crucifixion scene in the top right-hand corner). In both stories it isn’t just the son who makes a journey to a ‘far country’ (an idea that appears in both stories) but the father as well: physically for Abraham, imaginatively for the father of the Prodigal. Perhaps the book is an invitation to make that journey as both father and son, ago into a far country and in doing so, enter more deeply into the mystery of the passion.

I dedicated the book to my wonderful not-lost son Aidan.  My three equally wonderful girls are asking when I intend to write a book called Lost Daughters and dedicate it to them.  I am thinking about that.

The Olympic Flame Arrives in Durham

In a dean’s life there are occasional diversions from the solemn business of looking after a Cathedral. 

This weekend the Olympic Torch was in Durham.  Early on Sunday morning, a lot of people gathered in front of the Cathedral to see Durham cricketer Paul Collingwood light the Torch before being taking it in procession down to the market place.  It was timed to depart at 0833 with the railway precision of a French TGV.  The Cathedral choir sang anthems (including, appropriately, Hail Gladdening Light despite the line ‘the lights of evening round us shine).  The Chorister School turned out in force, as did the civic dignitaries, the media and the public.  The rain had stopped.  It was all very merry. 

I did some interviews with press, radio and TV.  One of the media people asked a question I hadn’t expected.  Did I secretly hanker after holding the Olympic Torch for myself?  Not especially, I said, though I was pleased for the many ‘ordinary’ people who had been honoured by being asked to carry it.  Then it was time to light the flame at the Cathedral door.  I found myself standing next to Paul Collingwood so I asked him how heavy the Torch was.  ‘See for yourself’ he said and handed it to me.  I held it up in the approved way. At once a score of cameras started clicking. Apparently a cleric in a cassock holding the Torch had some novelty value, even if it wasn’t yet lit. 

I’d expected that it would all simply be a bit of fun, not much more.  But as it was happening, I realised that perhaps it carried a deeper symbolism.

First, lighting the Olympic flame outside a religious building reminded me of the origins of the Olympic Games in classical Greece. In ancient times the Games were deeply imbued with religious ceremonies and rites, indeed they were thought of as a religious event held in honour of the gods who lived on the sacred mountain of Olympus.  So what about today?  Some would throw their hands up in horror at the thought of linking the Games with God.  Yet the question is not whether God will be present in the London Olympics (we know he will be: as Carl Jung famously inscribed on the lintel of his front door, recognised or not, the Deity will always be present), but how we shall recognise and know his unseen presence there. 

Second, lighting the Torch at the door of the Cathedral recalled for me the lighting of the new fire early in the morning of Easter Day. The Easter liturgy is the greatest service of the year.  The new fire symbolises the light of the risen Christ whom we look forward to greeting in the eucharist. This unconscious resonance with Easter seemed especially apt on a Sunday morning when the early morning eucharist had just been celebrated inside the Cathedral. Light is a great symbol for all people of faith.  Perhaps the Olympic flame and the Games themselves can raise the sights of people going through dark times during this economic crisis.  Perhaps it can even bring hope.

Third, the ancient Olympics were a time of truce between peoples in conflict. Warfare was forbidden while the Games were taking place.  The Flame seems to have had a remarkable effect in bringing people together out on the streets as it passes through cities, towns and villages.  It helps to build community.  Perhaps we should cut through the dark side of sport with its obsession with power, image and big money and think of it instead as re-creation. When I was a youngster learning to play rugby, our instructor told us: ‘the object of a game is to enjoy yourself.  Never forget that’. Joy is always a clue that God is around.  So the Olympics could be a striking image of the kingdom of God.  When people of every race and background gather together for celebration and recreation, when the barriers of division are broken down, at least for a while, isn’t this a picture of the world as God would like it to be?

Finally (and perhaps I should have put this first), I thought about ancient Greece again, and how the Olympics are its gift to the world.  I recalled the agonies (a good Greek sporting word for the struggles an athlete would endure) modern Greece is going through right now.  On Sunday, while the Torch was passing through Durham, the Greek people were going to the polls in an election that the whole of Europe was watching anxiously.  Their crisis is our crisis.  As we celebrate the London Olympics 2012, it’s important that we don’t allow them to become a big distraction from the problems our world is facing. Rather, we should allow the Games to give us a new vision of God’s world as it might be shaped one day.  So this is not a time to forget the people of Greece but to hold them in our hearts and pray for a better future for them and for us all. 

It was a good start to the day for Durham.  It was fun.  And it was thought-provoking.