Seasons of Durham Life: September

It's the equinox. The trees, still mostly green, display yellow highlights. The vegetation looks tired. The rose garden that has brought a burst of late-summer colour to the Deanery garden is looking tired now. Leaves on the trees are tinged with yellow. Curtains around the College are drawn in the early evening. There is a chill in the night air. The heating clicks on; there is the scent of an open fire somewhere nearby. The year is closing in on itself. Before we know it, it will be winter.
 
I have always loved this time of year with its unique mix of experiences: endings and beginnings intertwined with one another as summer's lease runs out, and the annual cycle of activities starts up again, and children go back to school, and it's students rather than tourists who are now walking these ancient streets.
 
The rhythms of Cathedral life haven't quite been paused during the summer, as readers of my August blog will recall. But the pace changes with September. On the last weekend the Cathedral Choir is on holiday, we enjoy our annual visit from the Buxton Madrigal Singers. As usual they are here for the last big festival of the summer, the Translation of the Relics of St Cuthbert. On the Sunday nearest 4 September, we commemorate the day in 1104 when the first phase of the Cathedral's construction was completed. The sanctuary and quire were finished, and in an elaborate and carefully documented ceremony, Cuthbert's body was placed in his new shrine. Today the whole congregation processes to the shrine where incense is swung (yes, it's still permitted despite worries about 'legal highs'), and prayers are said. It's a high day in the calendar, and for Durham people marks the threshold between summer and autumn.
 
The Cathedral choir returns, and the rhythm of daily evensong resumes. How good it is to see and hear them again. We are grateful for all the choirs that visit over the summer, but there is nothing like your own Cathedral choir. At first, we miss the old familiar faces in the choirstalls: last term, a larger cohort than usual reached their top year in the choir and left to go on to other schools. We always wonder how the survivors can possibly reach the standards of last year...but they always do, even if the first evensong or two are a trifle more tentative than we are used to. I say to the choristers that confidence is all they need. Everything else is there.
 
This year there is a major service on Day 2 of the new choir term. This is the day when The Queen overtakes Queen Victoria as the longest-serving Monarch in British history. The Lord Lieutenant has summoned the county to celebrate at the exact time (5.30pm) this threshold is reached. The music includes music used at the Coronation including Zadok the Priest, sung at every coronation since George II's. The choir distinguishes itself magnificently in front of a large and appreciative congregation.
 
The pattern of Cathedral meetings resumes. Agendas and minutes are sent out, and non-urgent business laid aside during the summer is dealt with. A flurry of emails follows the opening of bulging inboxes. Out-of-office notices are turned off, things not done attended to. There is an air of Busyness around the campus. You're reminded that the Cathedral is a significant organisation that employs over one hundred staff to serve it. The departments include finance, property, development and fundraising, music and liturgy, library and collections, marketing and communications, the shop, the Chorister School, development and fundraising, governance and administration, volunteers, vergers, cleaners, the 'yard' which includes the Cathedral works team and the gardeners. The restaurant is run as a franchise but it still needs oversight.
 
Another way of putting this is to say that the Cathedral is a business with a gross turnover of more than £7 million. Some people don't like a Christian church to be described in that way. I don't shy away from using that word, as long as it is complemented and informed by other words like faith, spirituality, worship, mission, learning and heritage. Our purpose and values statements are important here. If we are also a business, I say: let it be a good business that is efficiently run, and above all, an ethical business.  
 
I said that with the advent of September, the year feels as though it is drawing itself in for the winter. This is true for me personally. We are just a week away from our farewell service at evensong on 27 September. I have 168 hours of deaning left. After that, retirement. Already there have been farewell dinners and parties, and some beautiful gifts, and many, many kind letters and cards to thank us for the past twelve years and to wish us well. Perhaps you only appreciate the sheer goodness and generosity of people when the time comes to say goodbye. I have done valedictory interviews for the local radio stations and the press. I'm asked: 'What are you most proud of?' 'What do you regret?' 'What will you miss most?' How could I not miss the unique and wonderful place that is Durham Cathedral with its amazing beauty, its unrivalled heritage, its quintessentially northern spirituality, its procession of holy saints and its limitless capacity to inspire? How could I not miss daily choral evensong? How could I not miss this ancient Deanery that has been our home for twelve years? 

But when I think back to this morning's eucharist, and administering communion at the altar rail, I feel an especial pang for the people of this place: the colleagues with whom I have worked here, this warm, forgiving, generous community in all its richness and diversity. They transcend the boundaries of Cathedral, Diocese and wider community. They include the many who have become, we are sure, friends for life. How privileged these years here have been.

We now face negotiating this difficult ending gracefully. But whatever other emotions surface in the next few days, I know that at the heart of it all will be a great and lasting gratitude for these Durham years. So this is the last of my twelve blogs on 'Seasons of Durham Life'. Another year has passed, and with it, our time here at Durham. Thank you for reading. I'll blog once or twice more under the Northern Dean banner. After that.... who knows? 

A Job is Advertised - Mine!

Today I got a web alert to tell me that a job has been advertised on the CofE website. Mine. DEAN OF DURHAM it says in big letters. That it should appear today, 4 September, is something to note. This is the anniversary of the day in 1104 when the relics of St Cuthbert were laid in their new shrine at the east end of Durham Cathedral. It was a great festival in Durham in the middle ages. Please don't tell me it's just a coincidence that the world learns today that Durham is looking for a new Dean. Especially when this one was installed in the Cathedral on the other St Cuthbert's Day, the anniversary of his death on 20 March 2003.

It's odd, staring at an ad for your own job before you've even left it. (I should say that I was asked months ago if I was happy for the appointment process to begin while I was still in office, and I readily agreed to it: it's in everyone's interests to see the next Dean in post as soon as possible.) But seeing the ad in cold print and reading the detailed documentation that went with it made me stop and think. A bit like stepping on your own grave. My first flippant thought was: if I applied for this post now, would I even make it to the short list?

Enough said. I am going to be scrupulous about not commenting on matters to do with the succession. Except to say that whoever is appointed will find him- or herself in a truly wonderful place inhabited by an equally wonderful community. It's been hugely rewarding to complete my full-time ministry by serving these dozen years at Durham Cathedral. I can honestly say that I have never been happier.

But it's my next thought that has haunted me all day. This is actually happening, I realised. It's real and irrevocable. The die is cast. In less than a month I shall become part of history, the thirty-ninth Dean whose name is engraved on the Bishops, Priors and Deans board outside St Cuthbert's shrine. It's not quite in memoriam. The name board is not a grave slab - yet - though it will be one day. Of all Durham's Priors and Deans, only two of us are still alive.

But when I stop and muse in front of it as I regularly do - because I enjoy lists and names and dates - I don't think morbid thoughts. On the contrary, I'm reminded that the recollection of the past is always a vital aspect of our sense of place and belonging. These servants of God still live on in our collective memory. This grand alabaster tablet is a celebration of so many honourable and good people who have given their lives to this place and left their mark on it, some of them heroically. Even after twelve years, I still feel keenly the privilege of seeing my name among them. I have tried not to take it for granted.

As I look back after the end of this month, I want to be able to say, 'This was the best of me'. Pray God that I shall be able to. Each step in this long drawn-out rite of passage called 'retirement' is an opportunity not for regrets but for thankfulness: to contemplate the past with a deeper awareness of the goodness of God, and to look forward expectantly to the days that lie ahead.

Yes, sunt lacrimae rerum: there are tears in things too, and no doubt they are permitted when we come to say farewell. As I've blogged before, leaving Durham is going to be a big wrench. But I shall - from afar - share the celebrations that will surround the appointment and arrival of the fortieth Dean. This Cathedral is the focus of so much prayer, affection and love across the world. It will give to the next Dean as generously as it has given to me. It's that kind of place, that kind of community, like its saints, especially beloved Cuthbert whom we honour today. And ultimately, that is how God is, for love is his nature and his name.

You can find the papers about the post at https://www.churchofengland.org/clergy-office-holders/aaad/vacancies/dean-of-durham.aspx

Seasons of Durham Life: August

If you read my last blog you'll know that I've not been around in Durham for much of August. We have been in Haydon Bridge beginning to inhabit our new home and getting the feel of what life in 'retirement' may be like in this lovely village.

I think of August as a dreamy sort of month. It evokes glowing suns, afternoon heat haze, balmy evenings, and if the climatic reality is cooler and damper than this, an aestival chimera still lingers on in the mind. The year seems to be at its still point, finely balanced as if on an edge from which it's about to fall. It feels like a time of endings. Bank Holiday weekend is its final rite of passage. After Monday, it will be September, a lovely month, but indisputably autumnal. The nights will draw in and the day's warmth will quickly dissipate. The school year starts up again and the movement of the seasons gets back into gear. Soon it will be the equinox. August is a month to savour while there is still time: 'summer's lease hath all too short a date'.

I recently came across a poem called 'The End of Summer' . It's by the American poet Stan Kunitz. He speaks about how the year turns on a hinge even when the sky is still glowing azure, 'blue poured into summer blue'. The poet has a moment of recognition: 'I knew that part of my life was over'. That's especially the case as I contemplate the last month of my full-time working life that begins the day after August ends. A forty year era, a big part of my life, is coming to an end.

But what of the Cathedral in August? It's both busy and not busy (or should I say #notbusy?). The 'not' bit is that the schedule of formal commitments and business meetings slows right down. It ought to have stopped altogether in my opinion: only workaholic Cathedral chapters hold meetings in August, surely. This year, we had to break a rule and hold one in order formally to approve the annual report and accounts. But it's always a relief not to be chasing paper and answering hundreds of emails for one month of the year. It's the nearest we get to a corporate annual sabbatical. Wonderful for catching up, writing, preparing, pondering, woolgathering. And for getting round and spending valuable time with people whose paths you don't normally cross except at meetings and events.

The other side of this is of course that August is the peak of the visitor season. The Cathedral is thronged with families on holiday, guests from every corner of the globe, groups from cruise ships docking at the Port of Tyne, overnighters taking a breather on the way to Scotland and pilgrims following the path of our Saints. The Cathedral keeps late opening hours to welcome evening visitors. Our front-of-house staff and volunteers work their socks off. The Education Department runs activities for children. The Lego Cathedral team promotes our wondrous achievement in and around the Cloister. The Durham Photographic Society holds a summer exhibition in the nave. There are concerts and informal recitals. There's a wonderfully lively atmosphere in the church all day long. And if you want a quiet place to pray in, the Chapel of the Holy Cross is open every day as a cool, contemplative space that is kept silent for our visitors' needs.

And of course, the liturgy goes on day by day and hour by hour like a Christian prayer wheel. Visitors are sometimes annoyed, often delighted to find that their visit coincides with the daily midday eucharist or shrine prayers, pulpit prayers for peace and justice or choral evensong. And August brings a rich crop of local northern festivals. On St Oswald's Day, 5 August, we joined up with St Oswald's Church across the river to celebrate evensong in honour of the saint who was the midwife of the Northumbrian mission in the seventh century. The Blessed Virgin Mary, honoured with Catholic Christendom on 15 August, is one of the three patrons of the Cathedral along with Christ and St Cuthbert. On 25 August we honour St Aebbe, Prioress of Coldingham and a friend of St Cuthbert. And tomorrow is St Aidan's Day, another high day in the Cathedral calendar. And that's on top of the Transfiguration (6) and St Bartholomew (24)!

The Cathedral choir is of course on holiday but visiting choirs from the UK and all over the world spend a week in residence working extraordinarily hard to sing the eight choral services of the week, including no fewer than three on Sunday. Sometimes they have booked their visits three years in advance. Our visiting choirs love the experience of making music in this Cathedral and of living in such a beautiful environment. We do our utmost to make them and their supporters welcome so that they know how much we value their contribution to the liturgy.

Tomorrow we go back to Durham for September. There is a lot of sorting out and tidying up to do in the Dean's office. There is the round of final meetings to chair and farewell interviews with each of my senior colleagues. There are valedictory events both formal and informal. And then there is the last service of my Durham years and of all my years in stipendiary ministry on Sunday 27 September at 1530. I can't pretend to be looking forward to the deep emotions that will be stirred up within me: in some ways it's a day I wish did not have to dawn.

But I know that good farewells are important for those who leave and for those who are left behind. God will be in our bitter-sweet partings as he has been in everything else down the years. Life is always gift. The end of summer is a passage to the rich autumn harvest of the abundance of the year and the years. For all that has been, thanks. To all that shall be, yes!

Retirement: an interim report from Haydon Bridge

Six weeks to go, give or take: retirement is charging down the slipway. 40 days - the same as Lent. But the prospect sometimes feels more like Lent wound back in reverse, as if retirement day, far from being some kind of Easter, is more like Ash Wednesday, a day to mourn and give things up.

No point in pretending: there will be so much to lose. It's not just the life and worship of this wonderful community here at Durham Cathedral. It's the end of forty years of full-time stipendiary ministry as 'clergy'. Not the end of priesthood, of course - that vocation is till death us do part. But it will mean the end of the way I have been called to exercise it over four decades. And that's symbolised by the names of the places where I've been privileged to minister during that time - Oxford, Salisbury, Alnwick, Coventry, Sheffield and Durham. So many memories. So much learned. Such a rich time of gifts. Yes, there have been periods of struggle and pain too. But at such dark times, these places and their people have been compassionate, wise and forgiving. They have been wise teachers. I owe them a great deal.

But as we always say at Lent, 'giving up' creates space to offer life in new ways, be open to new opportunities. 'New lamps be lit, new tasks begun' says George Bell's hymn. That's the entire point. And this weekend I've begun to glimpse this in a new way. We've spent 48 hours in Northumberland, Haydon Bridge where we shall retire, beginning the long process of turning a house into a home. It's hard work to dismantle one home, especially when you've been happy there, and start to build another. But for the first time I began to glimpse what new gifts await us as we let go of the old.

I'm thinking of simply homely things. A neighbour invites us in for coffee. The Vicar and his family call in with a bottle of wine and a welcome card. Locals help us out in all kinds of practical ways. The folk at the pub are genuinely interested in who we are and when we'll be arriving. The church clock chimes the hours reassuringly - reliably five minutes late, just like Christ Church in Oxford. Local trains trundle over the level-crossing fifty yards away. We take a late stroll and linger on the ancient bridge across the Tyne enjoying the warmth of a summer evening. Sunlight pours into the front of the house each morning and lights up the rear each afternoon and evening. We sit contentedly on the patio drinking coffee.

As it's Sunday we go to church. It's even nearer than the railway station, indeed every bit as close as Durham Cathedral is to this Deanery. It's dedicated to St Cuthbert because his body probably lay on the site of the little Romanesque church up the hill on its long journey to Durham. Cuthbert has been our constant companion and guardian these twelve years so it's a comfort to know he is here too. Jenny and I sit together in the nave as we look forward to doing for many years to come. It's good to be 'lay' as well as 'ordained'. The Vicar presides at the liturgy with care, and preaches thoughtfully about the Living Bread and how the eucharist should shape our life together as a Christian community. Afterwards there is coffee and we meet a lot of warm-hearted friendly people. No-one needs to be told who we are or where we live. The village grapevine has done that long ago.

These are simply glimpses of the future, hints of horizons that are yet to come fully into view. Who knows what life is going to be like after September? I've learned the wisdom of Woody Allen's famous joke. 'How do you make God laugh?' 'You tell him your future plans.' On the other side of this threshold, so much is unknown, inevitably. There's no way to discover what lies beyond except by crossing it - that's the nature of a rite of passage.

We need to have good travelling companions when we cross boundaries. That's why we have farewell rituals, however much of an ordeal they are. They are a chance to say thank you, and maybe sorry, but above all to affirm the relationships that have meant so much to us and will continue to do in years to come. I won't deny that my last Sunday, 27 September, is not a day I look forward to with eagerness. My emotions will no doubt be in turmoil. But as we have all found, when our lives are offered within the life of the people of God, loss has a way of being transformed into gift, even if we don't always see it that way at the time.

So to have eaten our first meal, and slept our first night, and worshipped on our first Sunday in our future home feels like a big step forward on this strange but rather wonderful journey. Because Ash Wednesday always looks forward to Easter when life begins again.

A Dean is Captured on Video

Now less than eight weeks to go to retirement. It’s coming up so quickly….

I’ve been clearing out the study, deciding which books to keep and which to discard (many are called but few are chosen!). It’s a thankless task but occasionally it throws up something that makes you stop and take stock. Today I came across a historic video of one of my predecessors. He too was retiring and this short documentary was put together by Tyne-Tees TV to mark his eight years in Durham. I needed a break so I sat down to watch it.

Some of you will remember Peter Baelz who was Dean of Durham from 1980 to 1988. He had been Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, so another in the line of distinguished theologians who have held this office down the centuries. (His predecessor had been Eric Heaton who had taught me Old Testament at Oxford in the 1970s.) But it's not an aristocratic bookish don who comes across in this endearing TV portrait but a wise, kind and thoughtful priest who had evidently relished his years at Durham and come to love the Cathedral and its people.

The film follows the Dean round the Cathedral and its environs. As he walks, he chats amiably about what it means to be Dean in such a place. Interestingly, he begins not by rhapsodising about its history or heritage, its music or its liturgy, but by telling us that the Dean’s role is like being the managing director of a small business. He points out that the Cathedral gives employment to nearly 100 people engaged in a whole variety of tasks. We meet some of them, including a young stonemason who explains what he’s doing and why it is so important.

You sense that the stones of Durham have come to matter to the Dean in an almost mystical way. But not as an end in themselves. They exist to serve a higher purpose, and this is about human beings, communities, ultimately God himself. He speaks lovingly about its saints as his companions: Cuthbert at one end of the Cathedral and Bede at the other. A cathedral, he suggests, travels through time as a symbol of the enduring values of religious faith. (He is dismissive of the ‘Land of the Prince-Bishops’ signs at County Durham’s gateways because, he says, they suggest a backward-looking church whereas Christians today must always look forward to the future in hope.)

He has a lot to say about the choristers and the Chorister School where they are educated. (I recently came across a delightful photo of Peter Baelz in the cloister on the day of his installation as Dean, surrounded by a gaggle of laughing choristers.) He shows off the newly-constructed sports hall with pride, explaining how tricky it is to build well in such a sensitive historic environment. It sounds as though the Cathedral’s daily choral worship gave him special pleasure and inspiration.  

Having watched this delightful piece, I tweeted that I wish I’d seen it twelve years ago when I arrived here as Dean myself. Someone asked me why, and what I drew out of this documentary.

It’s not so much what he says about cathedral life and Durham in particular. I’d already worked full-time in cathedrals for a decade and a half when I arrived here. No, it’s much more to do with his personal style. There is so much to admire in the way he goes about his business, something refreshingly ordinary. There is not a trace of self-importance in him: witness the little touches like waving to people as he cycles past them in the College, his personal interest in the people he meets, his curiosity in the way he talks to that young stonemason about his work, his affectionate relationships with the choristers, his personal enjoyment of his home, 'the best house in Durham', where my wife and I have lived during these years. 

Even late in our working lives, I suppose we all invoke our role models to help us make sense of our roles. I’ve always believed that the essential priestliness of a Dean lies close to the heart of what makes him or her credible as the head of a religious foundation. In Peter Baelz, the Cathedral had a Dean who understood from his own experience of parish life what it meant to be the leader of a faith community. On the basis of what I had read about him, I had already spoken about him some years ago in a lecture on Durham’s Deans as one of the wisest and the best. Today I have come to see why that instinct was right, why I recognised in him a true 'reflective practitioner'. Which is why I couldn’t have done better than to watch the video twelve years ago.

‘How are you feeling about retirement?’ asks the interviewer. He replies that part of him will be glad to be free of the burdens of the role, but another part will be hurting for all that he has come to love in Durham and that he is going to miss sorely. Well, I still have a couple of months’ ministry as a Dean to go. When Michaelmas comes, part of me will be relieved, it’s true, but another part - a very big one - is going to hurt badly. How could it not when I've been privileged to live and work in such a marvellous place and with such wonderful people?

But watching the film, I thought to myself: it’s never too late to learn from the people who inspire us. These last few weeks could still be a time to learn and to grow as a priest. God willing.

Seasons of Durham Life: July

People don't always believe me when I say that in cathedrals, the diary in June and July tends to be more full than either Advent and Christmas, or Holy Week and Easter. If you've read this blog before, you'll know that I heartily dislike the word 'busy'. So let me just say that at this time of year there is quite a lot to do.

What is it that fills these July days?

Much of it is end-of-year services and events. Thousands of people come through the doors to attend them, most of them young. There are several consecutive days of big lively school leavers' services for church schools across the diocese. There are more than a dozen University graduation ceremonies that occupy the best part of a week. The ancient schools founded by the Cathedral, Durham School and the Chorister School, hold services to mark the close of the school year including Choristers' Speech Day. And at the end of a long series of valedictory events, the last Sunday of the choir year comes round when we say a fond farewell to choristers and adults who are leaving us. (For more, read my last blog on this site.)

But this isn't all. In every cathedral's calendar, summer ordinations are high days. They bring great gatherings of people from across the country (and beyond) to celebrate the rites of passage into different phases of public ministry. In Durham, we ordain the priests and deacons at separate services over a weekend, the priests on Saturday evening and the deacons on Sunday morning. This year I had the privilege of conducting the ordination retreat and preaching at both the services. This was poignant for me because I was ordained deacon 40 years ago this summer, and, as regular readers know, shall be laying aside stipendiary public ministry early in the autumn. So the ordinations gave me an opportunity to reflect on what I have learned in that time and to share a few insights with those who are now embarking on this great journey.

The week after the ordinations, July brings two big services that are quintessentially 'Durham'. The first is the Miners' Gala Service on the afternoon of the 'Big Meeting' that brings over one hundred thousand people into the city to celebrate Durham's mining heritage and the lives of the working people of the North East. It's a sight you won't see anywhere else in England. The Cathedral is always packed out. It's a most moving service at which the year's new banners are processed in with their colliery bands to be blessed by the Bishop. I've blogged about it before. Someone said to me in my first year here that I would never understand Durham Cathedral until I had been to this service and seen for myself how the people of County Durham claim this Cathedral as their own.

The other big service takes place the next morning, Matins for the Courts of Justice. Like the Miners' Service, this is another colourful piece of sacred drama, but in every other way it's a complete contrast. This gathering to celebrate the Queen's Peace brings together senior people including Lords Lieutenant, High Sheriffs and High Court judges from the four counties of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham and North Yorkshire. The High Sheriff asked me to preach this year at my last such service. Since I was speaking to an audience that included many people from the legal profession, I spoke about the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, Archbishop Stephen Langton's role in creating it, and the significance of the Great Charter's religious origins.

Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick towards 27 September when our Durham years come to an end. There have been so many 'last times' this summer, farewells not just for the summer holidays but for good. No doubt I'll write more in this vein as our retirement horizon comes into view, as it must once we start saying, as we shall have to in August, 'next month...'. How swiftly it all flies by. 'Life's but a passing shadow' quoted Rik Mayall in his final TV interview before he died. Those words of Shakespeare were etched on a sundial on the house opposite ours in Salisbury in the 1970s. I used to look at that verb sap out of my study window a dozen times each day. But its truth is coming home to me now as the days grow perceptibly shorter. 'Summer's lease hath all too short a date.'

But we want to enjoy this last Durham summer to the full while we can, to be present to each day as our time here draws to a close. In De Caussade's great insight, it's a call to practise the 'sacrament of the present moment', to see all of time as the gift of God, our yesterdays, our todays, our tomorrows. This is an incredibly beautiful place in which to have lived and worked. We have been, and are, surrounded by wonderful people in the communities of the Cathedral and of this part of England. Our lives have been touched and changed in ways that we can only just begin to glimpse, even if it will take years to appreciate them for what they really are.  

If you have the stamina, you can read the sermons I've mentioned on my other blogsite, http://deanstalks.blogspot.co.uk.

On Reaching a Certain Age

This is the 23,741st day of my life.* One more day of grace. Today is the Ides of April.** More personally, I reach the emblematic age of sixty-five. I can now draw my state pension.

Sixty-five doesn’t carry the significance it once did. Gone are the days when you would be summoned to the MD’s office on your birthday to be given a carriage clock (an eloquent symbol of mortality?), a slice of cake, listen to farewell speeches of varying sincerity and be toasted with a glass of bubbly. Some retire earlier, many later. As readers of this blog know, I am staying on for a few more months. I am not ready to become history just yet. But when that day comes later this year, I don’t think, somehow, that I shall spend my days pruning my roses. There are fresh ways in which I hope I can be useful in retirement to church and wider community. Who knows?

But this is not a blog about retirement. What today marks for me has more to do with the prospect of ageing or, as we used to say, growing old gracefully. And in that respect, this does feel like a significant threshold even if not perhaps a momentous one. It’s reinforced by two other anniversaries that coincide with this 65th year: having been forty years an ordained minister, and twenty as a dean. As I look back, I realise how hugely life has changed during the time I have been ordained, not least in the nation’s religious attitudes and in the culture of the church itself.

I've set aside some months after finishing full-time public ministry to reflect on two things. The first is what other roles might be awaiting me in the ‘third age’, however short or long it may be. That’s the retirement question. The other, is more important: what the years ahead will mean for physical, personal and spiritual health, for the deepening of intimate relationships, for creativity and the enjoyment of life’s gifts, and for journeying purposefully into truth and into God. This feels like an unknown region for now. It will need negotiating with care and self-awareness with the help of those with I am fortunate enough to travel with on this journey of being a human being and a Christian.

‘Old age’ can be a rich and fertile time of life. We know this from those we see flourishing in their sixties, seventies and eighties. Clergy are privileged to have a lot to do with those whom we call ‘senior’. It is wonderful when the elderly flourish, giving so much to church and society through volunteering and the sharing of their lifetime’s experience. There is a beautiful wisdom that comes with age that the Bible, like all ancient civilisations, prizes highly. There are the pleasures in spending time with the young – our grandchildren if we are fortunate to have them, but, as I have also discovered here in Durham through my involvement with choir and school, many others as well. There is the gift of time to reflect on the world in new ways, cultivate the imagination, become more of a contemplative. I hope I can appreciate more and more the sheer wonder of being alive. These are all things I look forward to and hope to have time to enjoy.

It's not so wonderful when we see elderly people who have become diminished through pain, bereavement, suffering and disability, or by the more imperceptible ways life shuts down through disappointment, loneliness, loss of hope or physical weakness. Clergy spend much time with the vulnerable, sick and dying. I wonder how well I would – may have to – cope with the loss of my faculties, failing memory, dementia, incontinence or loss of physical function. I ask myself how gracious I would – may have to – be if I were to become dependent on other people for everyday tasks I don’t even think about right now: communicating, eating and drinking, personal hygiene, getting around. What if I could no longer watch a sunset, read a book, walk the fells or listen to the music of Bach? These disabilities are not unique to age, of course. But every year that passes makes them more likely.

And today as I flip the calendar, I can’t help being sharply aware that an even more daunting threshold awaits. One day it will be time to say farewell to this life. There is no evading the hard truth about mortality. It doesn’t do, the nearer we come to dying, to pretend any more. Philip Larkin’s chillingly great poem ‘Aubade’ plays with our ambivalence as we contemplate ‘unresting death, a whole day nearer now’. ‘“Most things may never happen”: this one will.’ He criticised religion, ‘that great moth-eaten musical brocade / Invented to pretend we never die’ – a brilliant trope, if a cruel judgment on the gospel that has sustained me for a lifetime. But I have learned a lot contemplating that poem. It’s been in my mind since a close colleague and friend dies suddenly before Easter. He was four years younger than me. It has concentrated my thoughts. As the seventeenth century Bishop Jeremy Taylor knew when he wrote his two classics Holy Living and Holy Dying, it's important to think about your own death, and how you intend to live the rest of your life in the light of that certainty.

I have a hunch that symbolically, to turn sixty-five makes it more difficult to ignore – at least, if I want to live the last phase of life honestly, wisely, thankfully and well. And of course joyfully and Christianly – ‘in sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead’ as the funeral service puts it. The Ides of April sometimes fall in Lent, sometimes in the Easter season. This year it’s Eastertide. That helps my thoughts on ‘reaching a certain age’ to be shaped in the light of Christian hope, which is how we should always think about ageing, mortality and death. It's hope in Christ crucified and risen that illuminates each day we are given to enjoy and grow old in. While we live it makes us wise, and generous, brave, loving and good. And when the end comes, as the hymn says, ‘it takes its terror from the grave / and gilds the bed of death with light’.

Meanwhile, I shall spend much of this 65th birthday on a train with my wife travelling to the other end of England for a conference. A kairos threshold embedded in ordinary time. There’ll be plenty of opportunity to gaze out of the window and ponder landscapes as they hurry by and think the thoughts that emerge. 'Each a glimpse then gone forever.' An apt metaphor of life.

*23,741 = 365 x 65 + 16. The sixteen are for the leap years.**Ides on 13th of every month except 15th March, May, July and October.

 

A Retirement is Announced

I announced my retirement today. It’s not something I’ve ever done before. I don’t expect to be doing it again. So you’ll forgive a soliloquy to mark the day.

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.