Requiem consolation

This evening, Clare and I walked to Llandaff Cathedral across the Fields for the Solemn Requiem Mass for All Souls Day. I noticed yesterday on Twitter the time of the service stating that Faure's Requiem was to be sung by the Cathedral Consort choir for the celebration. Faure's rendering of the traditional liturgical texts for Masses of the Dead was slightly at variance with the official one, as he was somewhat more universalist and generous spirited in his theology than was the Roman curia, so it didn't get official approval for use in church and thus was mostly performed in concert like some of the other earlier great but lengthy requia of previous centuries. It has been used liturgically in some Anglican places of worship, however, as it's not exceedingly long.

The music was sung with disciple and great passion by the choir, and the ceremonial was just what it needed to be, using the vast space of the Cathedral choir and sanctuary in a clean and simple way. Beneath Epstein's Majestas a table was set up containing sand trays for candles, the Paschal Candle and Gospel book behind. After the Dean's homily the congregation were invited to receive a votive candle and place in one of the trays while remembering people they love but see no longer. For me it was a matter of remembering my dear friend Mike who died last summer, brother in law Eddie who was buried on this day three years ago, also Mary Jones and Pauline Grainger of the St John's City Parish church who both died earlier this year. On the way there, we walked along the perimeter path close to the family grave in the Cathedral cemetery where Pauline is buried. It still saddens me that I was out of the country when the funerals of three of them occurred, apart from Eddie. An All Souls day experience like this allows me to revisit and pray through the sadness in that numinous space created by the combination of great liturgy, music and architecture. Such a gift, to be grateful for.

All Souls Day and Good News from home

As today is All Souls' Day, I thought I'd visit the local municipal cemetery.  It's outside Garrucha on the Mojácar side, a kilometre along a road in which the first building is the Lidl supermarket, and I needed to buy a few things anyway. It's on top of a ridge overlooking the inland plain enclosed by whitewashed walls, with ample parking, two chapels of repose for vigils before burial and a tree shaded forecourt, neatly laid out. At its centre is a life sized marble statue of a man reaching up to heaven, emerging from the stone base, almost out of it in fact, but shackled to it.  

The inscription on the base says 'Garrucha a sus defuntos'. It's a tribute from the town to all its dead citizens, just as in town, there are separate marble statutes erected in tribute to the hard working women and the fishermen of the town. Symbolic I imagine, of the human spirit emerging from mortal confinement and rising to eternity. Several towns in the region seem to go in for generic tributes to its citizens of this kind. Does it reflect the local abundance of marble and talented sculptors I wonder?

Inside the walls, family tombs predominate. Few are large and ostentatious, and most are arranged in neat straight rows like terraced streets, neat, clean, marble clad, many with modern looking portals, an indication of investment by the living in accommodation for the dead. There are several rows which are plain walls for burials of the kind that predominate in other more urban cemeteries. Here however, even some sections of plain wall have been purchased and reserved for family use. As ever, the necropolis reflects social order, but what is interesting here is number of family tombs, illustrating the value still placed on family in a still close knit seaside community.

Cemetery 'streets' are named after saints, and in each were scattered a number of white plastic chairs, for the use of visitors wanting just to side outside a family tomb to remember and reflect, and maybe to greet passing friends and neighbours. Everywhere, tombs were decorated with flowers and lit candles, and in the area of burial walls, groups of people worked at tidying up, flower arranging and chatting together. Visiting the dead is a convivial activity, and I noticed people greeting each other warmly and cheerfully. Nothing sombre about El dia del Defuntos here. 

Maybe having cemeteries enclosed like this encourages meetings. Unlike the vast open spaces of northerly public cemeteries and crematoria with their gardens of remembrance, in which visitors can so easily get lost, and are so spread out that it's not easy to socialise in such an environment. Some find peace and consolation through solitude, but others through solidarity and kindness in fellowship. Spanish people enjoy doing things together in numbers, like Italians, more so that people do the other side of the Alps.

Back home for lunch, and after lunch the third and final episode of a BBC Radio 4 spy thriller serialised this week, called 'The Good Listener'. It was set inside GCHQ in Cheltenham, during a very serious cyber attack, and painted an interestingly plausible picture of fast moving dramatic events, and posing some challenging moral issues for reflection. It's been good enough to keep me wide awake in siesta time, and comes at a time when cyber warfare is in the spotlight through Parliamentary debate. Talk about 'Play for Today'! Or was it really a kind of covert propaganda designed to get the audience to feel comfortable with existence in a surveillance state? The concern is real enough and with us now.

Just after the play finished, I saw the announcement on Facebook of the election of Joanna Penberthy as the 129 Bishop of St David's, one of the most ancient episcopal sees in the British Isles. It's not just good that Wales has a woman as a bishop for the first time, but that her experience of ministry is so rich and varied, having started as a deaconess, then being ordained Deacon and Priest, serving in ministry as a non stipendiary cleric, as an adult educator, and then finally a parochial incumbent, a much broader spread of engagements than the average Oxbridge educated career cleric. So glad for Archbishop Barry that one of his last acts before he retires in the new year will be her consecration. This is a new start for the ministry of the Church in Wales he has worked for patiently over many years.

  

Half term break - part three

We checked out of our hotel after breakfast and headed east towards Newmarket, then north past Exning where my Auntie Ivy and Uncle Phil were employed in service on the Landwade Hall estate for most of their lives until they died at great age - one of my few connections with this part of the world. We didn't stop to re-visit, as we were heading for Wicken Fen, one of the oldest National Trust properties, and its first Nature Reserve, dating back to the 1890s.

It's an inland domain two metres below sea level, with bog and wetland areas, some of which remain little changed since before the 'development' of East Anglia by Fenland drainage after the English Civil War. Other drained land areas were used for brick making or clay mining. These  have been allowed to revert to their earlier condition, restoring bio-diversity adding to the re-creation of typical regional wildlife habitat - great for bird life, and as a wild life bonus, there's a herd of wild horses.

We were blessed with cold sunny weather, and spectacular clouds, so we didn't stay too long in any of the several birdwatchers hides on our brisk three kilometre walk. Both my Sony cameras were put to good use and some photos I was quite pleased with, albeit disappointed with the quality of the birdie closeups. I think I have much to learn about optimal DSLR zoom lens photo technique.

From Wicken Fen, as the sun dipped low in the western sky, we drove to Kirton, near Felixstowe, to a warm welcome from Eddy and Anne, for a happy relaxed family weekend reunion together.

All Souls awareness

Today being All Souls Day, with us on the move, I realised I wouldn't have any opportunity to join with others in worship, let alone say a Mass for the Departed in thankfulness for those gone before us whose lives have shaped mine - family, friends, mentors, colleagues, inspirational public figures etc. This is something I learned long ago to see as a duty of faith. 

There was a time when this kind of ritual was widely interpreted as an effort to appease or influence the opinion of the Almighty on behalf of the dead, to be traded and marketed as a religious commodity. Daft heterodoxy. What sort of existence is a life without gratitude for its own foundations? 

Well, if you can't attend, let alone say Mass on a day like this, you can still remember with thanksgiving that circle of people whose lives helped to make your own, as far back as you can honestly recall their names and faces. That's what I did today in my morning prayer time. There are many more people there in our past whose contribution to our lives, from ignorance or forgetting, we have yet to understand, or may never know. They are there in background obscurity. Our specific prayers may shed no light on them, but without them we would have been nothing.

 

God's grace at work, since the beginning of time, before history, throughout evolution. Well worth remembering.