After a quietly lazy morning, I was collected and taken to do a funeral service at 'the Res' this afternoon for an elderly lady who was for over 25 years a local lollypop lady - school crossing patrol officer - on Cowbridge Road West. As I read the 23rd Psalm, the words 'thy rod and thy staff comfort me' took on unexpected meaning. I mentioned this in the brief account of her life which the family had asked me to give on their behalf, but I didn't see many smiles of comprehension from the congregation. I guess that for most, familiar words wash over them on an occasion like this.
The drive to Thornhill just at the height of the school run traffic peak took double the usual time. We arrived punctually, but the outgoing funeral was running late, so we had a delayed start anyway. The Crematorium attendant seemed to be looking after two chapel services at the same time, whether from staff absences or cut backs I do not know, but the usual atmosphere of calm and comfort prevailed.
I was dropped off at St Michael's College on the return journey, as I was scheduled to preside at a Family Eucharist. I tried out an experimental children's eucharistic prayer draft, tabled at last week's CofE General Synod, which contains several phrases of a dialogue between child and parent, reminscent of that used in the Jewish Passover supper ritual. This was received with appreciation by many. I'd like to think that the concept could equally be adapted for use in other Eucharist Prayers for children - that it might go viral?
I had supper in College and sat next to a student from Ystrad Mynach, my home town. I found out that he was born the year I left for University. That made me feel rather long in the tooth! After supper I walked home across Llandaff Fields in the quiet darkness - so much more pleasant than enduring the heavy evening traffic on Cardiff Road. I then drove over to Ely for my second bereavement visit of the week, this time an old man who had driven a crane in Cardiff Docks throughout his working life. This is the second crane driver's funeral I've done in the last few months.
I finished the day watching a BBC4 dramatised documentary 'Love of books - a Sarajevo story', all about the rescue of a collection of 10,000 old islamic books from a Madrassah library while the city was under siege in the 1990s. It was movingly told recreated through video clips and staged drama portraying those war torn years.
At the time, when we were living in Geneva, I was profoundly shaken by the Bosnian war. It seemed such a devastating and barbaric assault on the great twentieth century project of making a modern multi-cultural society work, and showed what people risked doing to hold on to their culture, identity and dignity in the worst of circumstances. It took me a trip to Sarajevo, in the year after the lifting of the siege to start learning about the struggle of many of its citizens to hold on to the kind of society they had achieved and valued, and come to terms with my own deep feelings of crushed liberal optimism.
Islamophoba and different kinds of equalities prejudice are still present in Europe and Britain today, poisoning relationships, promoting power hungry ideologies and distorting the political endeavours of mainstream politicians. The world said 'Never again' after Auschwitz, then after Sarajevo and Srebrenica, but unless we learn the lessons of history, expose the bullies and stand up to them and their ideas, unless we teach about justice and reconciliation and fight for it with liberating truth, we may well see history repeat itself.
Memories of that time haunt me still. I shall not sleep easy tonight.
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