Heart Beat

This week sees the inauspicious anniversary of the death of William Harvey in 1578. He was a London doctor, credited with being the first to discover that blood circulates around the body, pumped by the beat of the heart. The heart as our life-source, sends oxygen and nutrients through veins and arteries, so that, physically, we as humans can operate as we do. The pump of the heart has, however, become the symbol of what we are emotionally and psychologically. We talk of the ‘heart racing’ when there is physical attraction towards someone; we speak of the ‘heart being full’, may be of praise and admiration of others’ accomplishments; and we articulate the words ‘our hearts are heavy’ when referring to tragedy or crisis in our lives.

Heavy hearts

It is certainly the case that the lattermost ‘heart expression’ is all too true for large swathes of the globe at this moment, as we are facing what is a second world crisis – first pandemic and now the fall-out of the war in Ukraine. As we sit in front of our screens and are confronted daily with heinous atrocities perpetrated against the most innocent and defenceless, such as in Mariupole, our hearts are, indeed, heavy as we stand and watch what was a normal, thriving, Western city suffer such decimation, and its inhabitants reduced to starvation, homelessness and loss of all semblance of life as they knew it.

Broken hearts

In the Psalms, King David writes: ‘the Lord is near to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.’ Jesus echoes this sentiment in Matthew’s gospel: ‘Come to me all you who are heavy laden and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.’ The incarnation of God in Christ is a message from the heart of the Creator and Sustainer that he forever identifies with pain and trauma – with those who are suffering and with those who feel for the pain of others, and it is the responsibility of all those who claim to follow him, to be those who carry burdens and share in the heaviness of heart that others experience. But emphasis should be on the ‘sharing,’ for none of us is expected to bear the weight of the world upon one’s shoulders and heart. On reflecting upon the import of Lent, it is that we who may be ‘heavy in heart’ are driven to prayer and to share with, and inquire of, God what he may be asking any of us to do in response. It is then to understand that it is His task for us, and not the task of the lone stoic with the sense of ‘ought’ around his or her neck. It comes back to the Christian’s understanding of service, which we can do with purpose, but also with joy, even in the midst of pain: holding both these things in tension is to reflect the very nature of the passion and triumph of the cross and resurrection.

Heart restored

So let us go where the heart says but be directed by the one whose heart beats for each one of us, whatever state we find ourselves in.

(With thanks to Revd Alex Aldous, Chaplain of Prestfelde Prep School)

Gritty love

It was St Valentine’s Day this week but rather than share a story of romantic love, here’s a true one about gritty, Jesus-shaped love…

Sing Sing

In 1921 Lewis Lawes became warden at Sing Sing, New York’s maximum security prison. This correctional facility had the reputation of being the USA’s toughest institution but when Lawes retired 20 years later it had become known for its humanitarian ways. When asked the secret of this transformation, Lewis Lawes said: ‘I owe it all to my wonderful wife, Katherine, who is buried outside the prison walls’.

The Angel of Sing Sing

Katherine Lawes was a young mother of three children when Lewis became warden. Against all advice, she took the family inside the prison to support basketball matches. She was determined to help where she could, even learning braille to teach one blind prisoner and sign language to communicate with a deaf-mute prisoner. Many said that Katherine Lawes was the presence of Jesus in Sing Sing from 1921-1937 and she was nicknamed ‘The Angel of Sing Sing’.

A freak accident

In October 1937 Katherine died in a freak accident on a bridge. The following morning Lewis didn’t come to work and an acting warden took over as Katherine’s body was laid to rest in a casket at the family home just under a mile from the prison gates. The next day the acting warden was shocked to see an immense crowd, including the toughest of criminals, gathered at the main gate, many in tears. He knew how much they loved Katherine: ‘All right, men, you can go. Just be sure and check in tonight’. The criminals walked to Katherine’s home, without a guard, to pay their final respects – and every one checked back in. Every one! ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild? As if!’ That’s gritty love – and its impact.

Coping with the unexpected

Across the news this week we have seen terrific volcanic eruptions in Palma,
Canaries, an earthquake in Melbourne, Australia and the increased threat of
energy companies shutting down around the country. In each of these
situations, no-one could have anticipated any of these intrusions in our daily
lives; and the same could be said about so many life-events that cross our
bows – whether it be accidents, illness or, perhaps, the more positive news of
an unexpected rise in one’s salary!

Despite how many risk assessments that we might make in schools, industry,
government or in our own personal lives at home, life always has the
propensity to throw us a curved ball. Aside the need for each of us to take
responsibility for how we conduct ourselves in relation to our world, it is a
challenge to see how we can better cope with the unexpected. Even if we play
ostrich or genuinely hide ourselves away in our homes, we can never be sure
that a roof tile doesn’t strike us! To follow such a line can only lead to a prison
of neurosis, which binds, breaks down human relationship and prevents vision
and confidence in a world to explore and enjoy.

Whilst Jesus was on earth, in his Sermon on the Mount, he pointed his listeners
to nature: ‘Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store in
barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more
valuable than they? Who by worrying can add a single hour to their life?’
Worry is not only unhelpful but can itself be a source of harm, as any
psychologist or neuro physician will concur. But what Christ is underlining here,
positively, is that we have a heavenly Father who genuinely cares and loves us,
in the midst of the unexpected as much as in the humdrum, and as he reminds
us earlier in that Sermon, we are all called to be light and salt in the world, not
hiding away but shining, supporting, and demonstrating God’s love to our
hurting neighbour.

There is, conversely, within the Christian message, the need for us to be
vigilant and watchful and knowing that we need to be prepared for eternity.
Life, unlike what some may say, is a dress rehearsal – the three score years and
ten, or thereabouts, is never guaranteed but can be viewed as an opportunity
not for obsessive indulgence in good works, but rather permission for God to
have his way in our lives by his grace, seeking what the day given to us might
hold, according to his will. That, I believe, will give us a divine perspective on
the unexpected and a readiness to greet each day with joy and gratitude and
our life in the next world, whenever that might be.

(With thanks to Revd Alex Aldous, Chaplain at Prestfelde Prep School)

Is all well?

How often do we say to people, ‘I hope you are well?‘ and then move on without listening to the response – really listening, I mean. Perhaps with so much of concern in our world at present it is perhaps understandable that we don’t really want to hear yet more bad news.

‘When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea-billows roll; whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say: It is well, it is well with my soul!’

Whatever my lot? What a challenge this week – any week – this is. These words are part of a hymn written by Horatio Spafford in 1873. They are no idle words: Spafford knew tragedy. His four year old son died of scarlet fever and then, in 1871, much of his property was destroyed in the Great Fire of Chicago. He worked tirelessly as a lawyer and Presbyterian church elder in the fire’s aftermath to help the 100,000 homeless, and the families of the 300 who died and, two years later, planned a holiday in England and Europe as part of his friend, DL Moody’s evangelistic crusade.

Last minute work complications caused Spafford to delay his departure from the USA but his wife, Anna, and their four daughters (Anna, Margaret Lee, Elizabeth and Tanetta) went on ahead. Tragedy struck again: their ship, SS Ville du Havre, was sunk following a collision with an English iron sailing ship off Newfoundland. It sank in twelve minutes with the loss of 226 lives and only Spafford’s wife out of their family survived by clinging to wreckage. She was rescued and progressed across the Atlantic to Wales where she sent Spafford a brief, tragic, telegram: ‘Saved alone’.

Horatio Spafford set off immediately to be with Anna. The captain of his vessel showed him the spot where the SS Ville du Havre sank and it was after this that he penned the hymn, ‘It is well with my soul‘, quoted above. Later, when he reached Moody, he said: ‘It is well; the will of God be done’. Anna gave birth to three more children but, again, tragedy struck when their only son, Horatio (named after his father and their first son), died aged four years.

Anna and Horatio Spafford’s family tragedies are no doubt much greater than anything we shall face, DV, but can I (can you) echo what Horatio wrote: ‘whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say: It is well, it is well with my soul’? How are you today?

Alone and at peace?

Michael Collins, the ‘forgotten third astronaut’ of the 1969 moon landing, died last week aged 90. I can remember as a 13 year-old boy being allowed to stay up late and watch this historic event on black and white TV. My diary records the mission nightly, with more or less the same comment each day for a week, conveying a little of the suspense of the incredible venture: ‘Apollo 11 still all right‘. After the success of its return, I was then inspired to go out and use my pocket money to buy an Airfix model of Apollo 11 and to persuade my parents to let me have a telescope for my next birthday.

It was, of course, Neil Armstrong who captured the imagination with his ‘one small step’ and, to a lesser extent, Buzz Aldrin, who also caught everyone’s attention back in 1969. Typically then and subsequently, Michael Collins avoided publicity but his role in the Apollo 11 Moon Mission was vital. He was left alone for 21 hours whilst Aldrin and Armstrong were in the lunar module or on the Moon and every time his orbit took him to the dark side of the Moon, he lost contact with mission control at Houston. ‘Not since Adam has any human being known such solitude’ is the reference in the mission log. Collins had the vital task of maintaining a precise orbit so as to ensure the safe return of his fellow astronauts. In addition to being for a while ‘the loneliest man in the universe’, he it was who looked down on the Earth and commented on its beauty and its fragility – a clarion call to environmentalists today.

In his 1974 biography, ‘Carrying the Fire’, Michael Collins wrote: “I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have.” In a world where there is so much striving to be ‘the best’, or to be ‘one better’ this is such a telling comment from a man of great integrity and humility. Can we say this, too, of the role we have in life – and be at peace with ourselves and God?

(A slightly expanded version of my weekly ‘thought for the week’ sent to TISCA Heads and Chaplains.)

A life well lived

In Easter week, the UK nation and our world mourned the passing of His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. This is a man who has stood head and shoulders above so many, in countless different ways, and yet has served the country and his Queen with grace and humility, seeking never to extol his own successes or virtues. Only now has the general populous been privy to the vast array of his credentials and achievements but we have also had illuminating insight into the enormous influence he has held in so many areas of our national and international life.

I also want to add, by way of personal context, that Easter week was also one of mourning for the Reid family as my 96 year old father, Johnnie Reid, passed on, too. Whilst not well known, unlike Prince Philip, he also led a rich, varied and valuable life. Like the Prince he was a Naval man (Merchant Navy), and my Dad found himself working from Scotland to the Caribbean, Asia to Africa. He was a marine engineer and later came to work for twenty years in west Africa (where I was born) before returning to the UK and a multitude of roles and jobs including being a steward in a golf course, a security guard, a maintenance man and a gardener. Like Prince Philip, he was a man of loyalty (married, for example, for 66 years), someone of duty and integrity.

In reflecting on Prince Philip as a family man, he was in Her Majesty’s words ‘a constant strength and stay,’ ‘a rock’ and a source of counsel and refuge. My own father was all this, too, and not least to my mother. These are descriptions, as Christians, which we attribute to God, but it was through the Prince’s own faith and theological wrestling (qualities which I can’t claim for my father), as well as an openness and sympathy for the most ordinary of people that produced in him a spiritual and social roundedness which themselves are legacies for us to emulate. Forthright he undoubtedly was, and unafraid to speak his mind, but we are reminded that it was just before that first Easter when Christ himself, who did not stand on ceremony, overturned the tables in the temple and was open to misunderstanding by the reigning authorities.

In this past week, we have contemplated upon the agony of the cross as well as the triumph of the resurrection, and in our grief for someone so dear who has passed on, we reach out with the deepest sympathy to our beloved Queen and her family (and also to my mother and wider family in our own loss). However, we are also invigorated with Easter rising by so much of what we should all aspire to be in our own calling in life. Prince Philip’s name means ‘lover of horses,’ and ne’er was a name so apt. From expert polo player to dogged carriage driver, the picture of resurrection perhaps cannot be captured more poignantly than by the Old Testament picture of Elijah’s translation to heaven in a chariot of fire. This is one which indeed ‘spurs’ us on not to languish in grief but to set our faces towards the eternal, for as St Paul says in his triumphant declaration of Christ’s resurrection: ‘what is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.’ In the crucible of death all our deeds, words, motives and intentions are tried by fire and what for each one of us is left that stands that is of lasting worth and has indelibly left its mark upon others for God’s kingdom?

We would like to think that over these past few days, the Duke will have received the heartening words from the True Giver of Rewards– ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant, receive the gold award which awaits for you.’ As we have heard, it will not have been just for those things which are noticeable and public, but for the small, personal and unwitting acts of kindness for which he will be remembered – and here again I reflect on my father’s desire to do right by everyone. Prince Philip’s life and influence itself lays down the gantlet to us all and begs the question: what we will make of our lives, whether it be nine or ninety-nine for family, our friends, our nation and for the Kingdom of the Almighty? My Dad’s 96 years also challenges me to consider what being loyal, honest and loving really means – and to sustain these qualities over such a rich, varied and adventurous life.

(Blog with thanks to Revd. Alex Aldous, school chaplain)

Heartbreak

It was on this day (27th January), 65 years ago, that the King of Rock, Elvis Presley, released his first million-selling single ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ achieving the accolade of reaching the ‘top five’ of Country and Western, pop and Rhythm and Blues simultaneously. The lyrics were inspired by a recorded tragedy of a man jumping from a hotel window through jilted love.

‘At Heartbreak Hotel
Where I’ll be–where I get so lonely, baby
Well, I’m so lonely
I get so lonely, I could die.’

As we are all aware, loneliness, this lockdown, has reached epidemic proportions and the homes that people have been confined to through ongoing restrictions have indeed become their Heartbreak Hotels: hearts that have been broken, through not reuniting with friends and loved ones they crave to embrace and hold and have the simplest of conversations with. The ‘Hotels’ may quarantine the body but never the mind, heart and soul. The Psalmist stated that ‘the Lord planted the lonely in families’ but it has become the Hotel of Discomfort that has separated them again and as we daily imbibe our news updates, we share the anguish of all who are in isolation.

It seems almost trite to provide easy religious messages to massage the pain that so many are enduring, but as humans created for intimate relationship, it would be wrong also not to point people back to our Lord. He it was who Himself endured loneliness, not just in coming to this earth, or in the misunderstanding of those who claimed to follow Him, but on the cross when He experienced the desolation of the Father abandoning him – why? so that we could be reunited with Him. It is the cry from numerous psalms that it is in our human desolation and out of our depths – brought on by any number of circumstances – that we call out and look up. It is as we are still before God that we are reminded that He, who knew anguish of soul, is the One who stands by us at the very worst of times. How do we know this? Because it was not only in His becoming like one of us and sharing our experience of humanity in all its glory and its degradation, but through the work of reconciliation on the cross that He restores, comforts and reminds us that we are not alone. Nothing about us, nor how we feel about ourselves or our condition can separate us from the love of God, and it is the promise of His holy and indwelling Spirit that He gives to us – the pre-eminent Comforter – that reminds us that we are not alone.

The monument to Presley’s hit, ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ stood for thirty years in Memphis, but it was torn down to make room for the new Guest House at Graceland – now there’s a parable! We are all, as humans, welcomed into His house and habitation of Grace, but he does not call us His guests, but as friends for ever: the ‘Heartbreak’ for Him is that not more of us welcome the move.

(Reproduced by kind permission of Revd Alex Aldous, Prestfelde School chaplain)

Hope in anxious times

Deadly diseases

In the 1970s, a student who would one day go on to become one of the foremost clinical microbiologists was advised against doing research into infectious diseases. There was no point, his professor told him. Thanks to vaccines and antibiotics, deadly epidemic diseases, such as smallpox, plague, typhus and malaria, were finally in retreat. All too sadly today – as we remember SARS in 2002, Ebola in 2014 and recognise that by 2016 HIV and AIDS (which came to worldwide notice in the 1980s) had been responsible for 35 million deaths – we are now faced with a new pandemic, COVID-19.

God’s to blame?

Epidemics breed fear and suspicion that multiply (along with modern scams, hoaxes and false news) more rapidly than any virus. Often when a mysterious illness erupts the first unhelpful reaction is to panic and the second is to identify a culprit. The White House recently called COVID-19 ‘the Chinese virus’ and in the 1980s, when the cause of AIDS was still unknown, the American Press accused Africans of having sex with chimpanzees, whilst Soviet agents located its origins in US research laboratories. Interestingly, in 1665 at the height of the plaque in London, the prime suspect was God! Lacking any other explanation, crowds flocked to churches, praying for deliverance from what they interpreted as divine retribution for their sins.

There is hope

Whilst God is not being labelled the culprit for coronavirus, in some places it is indeed causing people to return to Him, if not in a church building setting then certainly via online services, discussions, prayer times and seminars. A school chaplain I know reported that in normal times the voluntary Sunday chapel services attracted 50-60 pupils, the online version was now attracting over 200 participants. In society today, as was seen in 1918-20 (during the Great Influenza or Spanish ‘flu outbreak which claimed more lives than those killed in the Great War), this crisis has spawned an outpouring of mass volunteerism and self-sacrifice across the globe. There is hope!

I know Who holds the future

The world is indeed a very anxious place but as we consider the plagues and epidemics of the past, we can also acknowledge that much good has emerged from such times. Whether it’s wonderful literature (some of Shakespeare’s plays were written whilst self-isolating from the plague) or ground breaking science (Isaac Newton ‘discovered’ the laws of gravity when temporarily confined to his Lincolnshire cottage from disease-ridden Cambridge), we can still point to the One who holds our future and brings Hope to the world at all times, and especially in those when tragedy, fear and death are rife. As a well-known Christian chorus puts it, ‘I know who holds the future, and He’ll guide me with His hand. With God things don’t just happen, everything by Him is planned. So as I face tomorrow, with its problems large and small, I’ll trust the God of miracles, give to Him my all.’ (Eugene Clark)

(With thanks to History Today magazine, April 2020, for historical examples.)

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Don’t panic, precious readers of my occasional blog. The title is not chosen as a personal reflection and is not the reason, either, of my silence for some weeks. I have just returned from a school inspection visit in India and the words above leapt out at me from a tombstone. Let me explain…

A passage to India

My visit to India took in the former colonial sanatorium hill station of Ootacamund (Udhagamandulam today – but everyone still calls it Ooty). ‘Snooty Ooty’ of imperial fame, sits at the top of the Nilgiri Hills at 7,500 feet altitude (twice as high as Ben Nevis https://bennevis.co.uk) in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Here in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the British would retreat from the heat and disease of the plains, to rule the southern subcontinent from a mini-Surrey complete with bungalows, libraries, clubs, churches, guest houses and European schools. Many of these buildings still survive and so on a break from the rigours of school inspection I ventured up to St Stephen’s, part of the Church of South India (and pictured above).

In memoriam

The memorial plaques and graves of St Stephen’s are testimony to ‘the white man’s graveyard’, albeit on a different continent from whence that epitaph originates. There’s one to the Captain in the Bombay Grenadiers who died aged 36, ‘drowned in the Kromund river while out hunting with the Ootacamund Hounds‘. Another is to the young soldier who ‘died on this very spot – killed by a tiger‘. (I did see a tiger, my first ever in the wild, on this visit: I was ‘on a course’ for the morning – a golf course I have to admit – and there it was, bold as brass, sauntering from one hole to another: not so much playing with Tiger Woods, but playing with a tiger from the woods!) But, I digress.

Mourning great loss

The saddest memorial plaques are to the wives of colonial administrators and soldiers. There’s one to Georgiana Grace, wife of JC Wroughton, Esq., who was the Collector (of taxes) for the province. She passed away in 1847 aged 30 years ‘leaving her husband and seven children to deplore their irreparable loss‘. Alongside this stone is that of Henrietta Cecilia, wife of the founder of Ootacamund, John Sullivan. Henrietta died in 1838 aged 36 and her stone also bears testimony to Harriet, their daughter, who also passed away prematurely, aged 17 years. The plaque goes on to mention the Sullivans’ eight children who, together with their father, ‘mourn the loss of these the objects of their tenderest love’.

Great joy and hope are there, too

On the face of it these, and other tombs, are illustrative of much sadness and anguish. However, it doesn’t take long to note, too, the hope they also had. Henrietta Sullivan’s plaque concludes with this sentiment: ‘Not however as those without hope but believing that as “Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with Him”‘. Out in the graveyard, positioned between two ancient tombs, there is a new-looking sign which says: ‘reserved’. Poignantly alongside this, is a large headstone which bears the words at the top of this blog, ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep‘. There then follows a verse of a poem by Steven Cummins which concludes: ‘Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there, I did not die‘.

There’s a challenge here to live our lives so filled with faith and love that when we eventually die in an earthly sense, we do so knowing without any doubt that we then enter an eternal life in the presence of Jesus. Weeping at funerals and at a loved one’s death is perfectly natural – but let there be joy, too, when believers are remembered.