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.

Seasons of Durham Life: June

Midsummer. Not that you'd feel it most of the time. The cool grey spring has slid imperceptibly into a cool grey summer. In previous Junes after evensong, we'd sit on the bench outside the Deanery front door drinking tea (or if it was a festival, G&T). Not in 2015. But whatever the hue of the sky you get to love these long northern evenings. Southern guests can't believe that the sky is still light at 11pm. There have been auroras on rare clear nights, I'm told, though the Cathedral, berthed like a great galleon a few yards outside the Deanery windows blocks out all sight of the northern sky so we haven't set eyes on them. 'Decanus Borealis' has yet to glimpse Aurora Borealis. It's on my bucket list of must-see sights before I die.

At Christmas and Easter, people jokingly say to deans, 'this is your busy time'. I never like admitting to being busy - it doesn't fit with my concept of how a priest should be, having time for God and time for people. A few Lents ago we launched a rather good project with the hash tag #NotBusy and its own website. It was meant to help us all live in a more reflective prayerful way and not be overwhelmed by activity. So I smile and say, 'well yes, there's a fair amount to do. And it's all good'. (You may recognise that last bit as the upbeat catchphrase in the brilliant TV comedy series 2012. Accentuate the positive.)

In cathedrals however, June and July are just as full as the run up to Christmas and Easter. At the tail end of the Easter season comes Pentecost, and then several weeks of end-of-year celebrations and events. Schools have prize-giving and leavers' services. In Durham, this includes several days of packed leavers' services for local authority schools in the area. The Cathedral Education Department is occupied with visits at a time of year when schools are keen to take students off-site and plan imaginative excursions and projects. The Cathedral Friends, a fine body of far-flung people who support us with great generosity hold their annual festival. There are concerts and recitals. The University has four full days of vast graduation ceremonies. Hard on the heels of all this come the summer ordinations (this year in early July so I'll come back to those next month).

And of course the visitor season is in full swing. June and September are 'Saga' months when most of our visitors are adults who have chosen vacation dates that will avoid the school holidays. It's not so much children and youngsters that our more senior guests are avoiding, I suspect, as the absurdly inflated prices many outfits charge holidaymakers the moment summer term ends. This isn't true of us of course. I'm sure you know that we don't charge a penny for admission to the Cathedral: we believe that hospitality to holy spaces should be without payment or condition for all who wish to come in. This 'public benefit' costs us around £2 million each year, and voluntary donations come nowhere near to matching it. How to make up that sum and keep Cathedral finances stable is a continual challenge for the Chapter and our Finance Office. 

Meanwhile, the great works on our £10.5+ million Open Treasure project continue. The precinct has been a building site for months; but at last, the scaffolding is starting to come down, and the historic buildings round the cloister are beginning to be revealed in their full glory following intensive conservation. The new exhibitions they will hold will be installed at the turn of the year. These will be fully open in a year's time, and will transform the way we display the amazing array of treasures that we hold in our collections. These include priceless Saxon and Norman manuscripts, early printed books, artefacts like the incomparable Saxon cross that go back to St Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne community, no fewer than three copies of Magna Carta, gorgeous church plate from the post-Reformation period... where do I stop? To exhibit these wonderful things in the monastic dormitory, the medieval kitchen and a new collections gallery will make for marvellous exhibitions in their own right. But we want the exhibition timeline to interpret the Cathedral's Christian past and present in ways that will help visitors understand why it is here at all. 'Open Treasure' doesn't just mean creating a rather splendid museum. It means telling the story of the Cathedral's life and community across the centuries, and pointing to the treasure that is nothing less than the gospel itself. It will become a vital part of our mission and Christian outreach.

For me personally, the month has been a time to take stock. The summer solstice has fallen exactly one hundred days before my retirement in September. This same month I notch up forty years as an ordained minister and twenty as a Dean (eight in Sheffield, twelve here). At the start of the month, the Prime Minister's and Archbishops' Appointment Secretaries visited Durham to look at what was needed in the next Dean. They met a lot of people within the Cathedral and in the wider community of this city, county and region. They will compile a report that will help the committee that leads the appointment process on behalf of the Crown. Words I'm hearing frequently are 'succession' and 'legacy'. It has to happen, of course, and I'm pleased for the Cathedral that it has already begun. But it's odd knowing that this activity is taking place around me while there is much work I still have to do, not least try to leave things in an orderly state for the Acting Dean and my eventual successor.

So no further valedictory thoughts: I'm not ready to become part of history just yet. For now, I want to go on being as present as I can to the Cathedral, valuing the time that is left for the gift of serving in one of England's most remarkable holy places. I have loved being Dean here, and am saying to myself more and more fervently with each day that passes, Laus Deo: Praise God! The sun may not be shining much up here. But as we come to the end of another month, I have so many reasons to be profoundly thankful.

And who knows? If the skies clear for long enough, I may get to see the Aurora after all.