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At the pharmacy there’s a queue, because only two people are allowed into the shop at any one time. At Greggs the queue is even longer from 8.00am till around 9.30 am, because it’s the favourite breakfast takeaway for folk going to work or school. The coffee and bacon rolls are very good, and very good value – I’m able to confirm this from personal experience!

If it’s worth waiting for, people don’t mind waiting. Patience isn’t a problem if you know that, when your turn comes, you’ll get what you hope for. But there’s another kind of waiting. It goes on and on and on, until it seems there’s no end to the waiting.

Advent is when we rediscover the importance of waiting for God. “They that wait for the Lord will renew their strength,” said Isaiah the prophet. True enough. But sometimes waiting can be frustrating. Maybe that’s because we’ve become used to getting things done quickly. We value immediacy, right now – from making coffee, to ordering online with delivery today or tomorrow, to binge-watching a TV box set so we don’t have to wait for weekly episodes. Take the waiting out of wanting is one of today’s most powerful marketing promises.

So we need Advent to slow us down, to train us in patience, to recover the wonder of waiting. Here is Isaiah again, this verse is not so well known, but an important word from the Lord to hearts becoming impatient with long term promises.

“Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you: he rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him.” (Isaiah 30.18)

 The story of Jesus, from Advent to Second Coming is a story punctuated by waiting, allowing God’s purposes to be worked out in God’s time, at God’s pace, and to our blessing. Mary receives the annunciation that she will have a child named Jesus, the Messiah, the Saviour, Emmanuel. Nine months later we are in Bethlehem, and not long after the baby is a refugee. Please don’t overlook that dark corner of the Christmas story. Joseph, Mary and their baby were fleeing from the violence and terror of murdering soldiers. Christians of all people should understand the importance of welcome and protection for those fleeing for their lives.

The Bethlehem refugees waited in Egypt till Herod died and the threat was past. They re-settled in Nazareth and Jesus waited 30 years, “growing in favour with God and all who knew him.” For three years Jesus healed, taught and lived the life of one utterly obedient to the Father. There was a lot of waiting, because as John regularly says throughout his Gospel, “His time had not yet come.”

But come it did, and Jesus was crucified and buried. That three day wait was too much for the disciples. Rather than wait for the promise of Jesus rising from the dead, they panicked, ran away, hid themselves, kept busy, and gave up – anything but wait for something that was never going to happen. But happen it did. What started with angels and celebration at Bethlehem, came to an earth-juddering halt on Calvary. Until early on the third day! Just as the sun was rising, the Son was rising, and indeed as angels once announced his birth, now angels announced “He is risen!”

But still the waiting continues. “Wait in the city,” Jesus says, “till you are clothed with power from on high.” Pentecost comes and the Gospel overflows from the hearts of disciples now filled with the Holy Spirit, flowing out to the ends of the world and to the end of the ages. And the waiting continues, as we await the second coming of Jesus, the One to whom every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth.

This Advent, we will try to learn again that God’s purposes don’t work out to our timetable, nor to our agendas. As Isaiah said, “The Lord is a God of justice.” He will make things right. Why?  “The Lord longs to be gracious to you: he rises to show you compassion…” No wonder Isaiah goes on to say, “Blessed are all who wait for him.”

Those queues outside Gregg’s are their own testimony. Experience has shown those folk that it’s worth the waiting. You can almost hear those words of Jesus in his favourite teaching style. If waiting at Gregg’s is worth it, “How much more” is it worth waiting before God, in quiet trust, in patient faith, and with hearts open to the coming of Jesus into our world, into our community life, and into our hearts. Live this week with Isaiah 30.18, and discover again the Lord who longs to be gracious to you, who rises to show you compassion, and who blesses you as you wait before him,

Late sunset, those last minutes when, filtered through a forest, the sun can be looked at as what the mystics might have called a dazzling darkness, the interplay when shadows are illumined and light is shaded.

Combined with silence, interrupted by our own footsteps and the friction of sleeve on winter jacket, those 40 minutes of walking at dusk are a form of invisible mending, frayed strands gathered back into the weft, and the garment of our days good to go, for another day.

I was at one of the Glasgow Baptist Churches on a pulpit exchange Sunday. I had chosen what I thought were well known hymns. We would finish with “How Firm a Foundation You Saints of the Lord.” Problem. The organist didn’t like playing the usual tune. I tried to be persuasive, diplomatic, and patient. He wasn’t interested, and said he would choose the tune and play it and it would be fine.

So I preached, and we came to the last hymn. The first verse goes like this:

How firm a foundation, you saints of the Lord,

Is laid for your faith in his excellent word.

What more can he say than to you he hath said,

You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled.

On a June summer evening, in a wee Baptist church, we sang this rousing, faith-building hymn to the tune for “O Come All Ye Faithful”, a tune forever embedded in winter snow and Christmas trees. Try it for yourself! The last line was sung by a startled then near hysterical congregation, trying to sing with devout seriousness: 

You who unto Jesus / You who unto Jesus

You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled.

I can no longer sing this verse without praying for inner calm. But the truth at the heart of that first verse is as true now as it was when it was written. The foundations of the church of Jesus Christ are firm, rooted and anchored in the promises of God.

All of this came back to me when I was reading Psalm 33 in preparation for Service this Sunday. Not only is it Remembrance Sunday, which brings its own solemnity and time for reflection on the costs of human conflict. But looking ahead following COP 26 the world faces major challenges on climate change, the COVID pandemic continues to have a global impact, major refugee movements and famine threats in Afghanistan, Yemen and other parts of our world. Many of the firm foundations we have relied on are beginning to feel decidedly shaky.

So these words from Psalm 33 are precisely the promises and prayers which still provide a firm foundation for our own lives, the life of the Church, and indeed the future of God’s good creation.

“We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our strength and shield.  In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.  May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.

To wait in hope isn’t the same as giving in. Another great hymn we don’t sing often enough has the lines,

Save us from weak resignation, to the evils we deplore…

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving Thee whom we adore.

We wait in hope before God because we have learned that God is our strength and shield, and we trust in his holy name. Hope is the opposite of shoulder-shrugging, I can’t help it resignation. Hope is when faith is at its most defiant. Hope is when we stand beneath the cross with broken-hearted disciples, and head with the women for the tomb with its immovable rock, and find that the immovable stone has been moved, and the crucified is glorified. And our hearts rejoice in hope.

We wait in hope because God isn’t finished with the church, and the church isn’t finished. How firm a foundation! What more can he say than to you he has said?  Our wee church in Montrose (like every other Christian congregation) is built on the firm foundation of God’s promises:

“You are fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” Ephesians 2.19-20.

So as Psalm 33 says, “We wait in hope…” Not wild unrealistic hope, but the settled confidence that God can be trusted. Not passive let’s do nothing hope, but hopeful living, hope-filled praying, acts of hopefulness and hope-building. Not fingers crossed and hope for the best hope, but an inner assurance that God keeps his word, and we can trust his holy name.

We are in a time of flux, unpredictability, and multiple crises. Anxiety and uncertainty can easily slide into despair. But our faith has a firm foundation, and so does our hope. What more can he say than to you he has said…”He who did not spare his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all, will he not, with him, freely give us all things.”

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.

Some of the best theological reflection and insight is provoked by reading biography. I learned that from the Methodist preacher W E Sangster. In his book on The Craft of Sermon Illustration he claimed there were very few bad biographies. He claimed that almost every one he had read contained a life story, a lesson in human psychology and relationships, and often an exploration of a particular life's purpose, significance and context. 

Every year of my reading life I've read a number of biographies. Sangster was right. There aren't many that were unproductive, uninteresting or barren of ideas worth pondering. Over the years I've read the life stories of people such as Aggrey of Africa, Karl Barth, John Chrysostom, Denise Levertov, Elizabeth Fry, Albert Einstein, Frances Ridley Havergal, Marie Curie, Dag Hammarskjold, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dorothy Sayers, Baron Von Hugel, Evelyn Underhill, Shirley Williams, Beethoven, Van Gogh, Charles Dickens, Keir Hardie, Jonathan Edwards (theologian), Jonathan Edwards (triple jumper), Sir Alex Ferguson, Sheila Cassidy, several US Presidents, British Prime Ministers. I think all of these found their way into sermons, or the thinking that gives birth to ideas that helped me understand better those who take the time and trouble to hear me. They also encouraged me to love and puzzle over the world in which we live, and to better interpret and care about the longings, hopes and fears of the human heart, especially my own.

Some highlights not listed above include:

H.R.L. Sheppard. Life and Letters, R.E. Roberts I think the most perceptive and psychologically sympathetic biography I've ever read,

The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mary Bosanquet – one of the earlier critically appreciative accounts that avoids making Bonhoeffer a hero, and succeeds in portraying his inner tensions between the moral complexity of his world and the personal integrity of a Christian pastor and disciple.

George Eliot. A Life, Rosemary Ashton – which combines literary criticism of the novels with careful attention to the woman who wrote them. Ashton knows well the culture and society of Victorian England and fits Eliot into that richly textured context.

George Macleod, Ronald Ferguson – an outstanding narrative of one of Scotland's great personalities, and one of the Kirk's most irascible and beloved ministers. 

The best biographies are an attempt to understand a life. Each is a written book seeking the truth of the living document that is a person, character and story. Helen Waddell. A Biography, Dame Felicitas Corrigan meets those criteria. It is beautifully written, meticulously researched, and unfolds the life and character of Helen Waddell with humour, humanity, and the undisguised affection of one scholar for another. 

You're entitled to ask, who is Helen Waddell anyway? Here are some extracts from the dustjacket:

"She was born in Tokyo, of missionary liberal minded parents, and was grounded in the Scriptures; but her father would encourage her to explore a Shinto temple while he quoted Greek poetry and a shaven priest gave them sweet cakes from the altar. Later her father died on the eve of retirement and her stepmother became a domestic tyrant. But Helen was a free spirit whose mind could not be controlled. Her early maturity was extraordinary. At the age of nine she felt a "sheer reverence" for Latin; in her early teens she was already a thoughtful rebel against religious orthodoxy…

Her first literary success was the Lyrics Translated from the Chinese. But it was Oxford, with the offer of a Fellowship, that enabled her to undertake years of research into medieval Latin literature, in Paris, London and resulted in the remarkable flowering of The Wandering Scholars, Medieval Latin Lyrics, Peter Abelard, and The Desert Fathers."

I bought this book on publication in 1986 and read it for the first of three times, and I'll read it again soon. What makes a book worth re-reading is what that book does to you, the reader. We are introduced to a mind of great originality, a translator of poetry whose work showed as much genius as the originals; you can test that by reading her. In Waddell, intellect and imagination, emotion and spirituality, historical research and lyrical precision, came together in a woman denied many of the opportunities that would have enabled freedom to flourish in a male dominated academia. And despite the limitations of her life, she produced what have been called "striking and original masterpieces that are amongst our (20th) century's greatest treasures."

Corrigan writes about Waddell's theological mind:

"This is what gives her writing its vigour, power and personality: unconsciously she brings her spiritual perception, her faith and her humanity to bear upon and interpret the matter in hand so that they become the drapery of thought which is weighty yet simple and intelligible. She was possessed of a kind of interior sanctity that saw truth as a living thing expressed, not only in revelation, but in the myriad relationships of facts, circumstances, and the realities of nature to one another. (p. 175)

Felicitas Corrigan spent 10 years editing Waddell's letters and papers, and preparing this biography. She never met her, but in the reading and editing she gained a sense of Waddell's fragile health, emotional insecurity, capacities for faithful friendships and the long haul of lifelong relationships.

Having Corrigan as her biographer ensured that Helen Waddell's scholarly work and ways of working, were given their due. But more than that, Corrigan as a nun, spiritual director and expert musician (she was organist of Stanbrook Abbey from 1933-1990) was that rare biographer, sympathetic without being sentimental, critical without being judgemental, and with the skill to compose harmonies out of the notes and chords of a life like that of Helen Waddell.

Corrigan is able to admire Helen Waddell's brilliant intellect while doing justice to a heart capable of joy and agony, confidence and self-doubt, exuberant conversations and silent withdrawal. She had taken the trouble, and had the patience, to listen and allow her subject's life to speak for itself. That's what makes this biography a rich and satisfying story of a life too interesting told, too humanely honest and understanding, and therefore too spiritually significant to be forgotten. This is the precise opposite of celeb tell all gushiness – it is an exercise on how theology can be a lived human document. 

More tomorrow, this post is long enough. 

There's always likely to be an argument about what matters most, who we are, or what we do. Now and again someone comes along and shows how daft that distinction is. Such people's actions flow directly from who they are; in such people action and being are congruent. Bobby Gemmell was a man like that.

As a young Baptist pastor in High Blantyre from 1967-71, Bobby gathered a large crowd of local lads at the church for games, friendship and a safe place. The clerical collar, polo-neck jumper, jeans and Chelsea boots were his preferred dress code. These were important early statements of Bobby's effectiveness as an approachable and reliable presence in a local community.

When in 1972 he preached at Drumchapel Baptist Church as a possible candidate, his sermon was interrupted by a chip pan thrown through the church window mid-sermon. Thinking there was no chance he would now become their minister, the congregation learned from the start that Bobby sensed God's call as it came through desperate people's calls for help, and for attention and to be heard. The right man in the right place – as he would often be for so many people.

Drumchapel in the 1970's was tougher than almost anywhere else in Scotland. Bobby and Marion, with their three young children moved to Drumchapel, and Bob kept doing what he always did. In the context of a small church community in a large housing estate with huge challenges for those who lived there, he asked how the good news of Jesus could be shown and shared. He quickly realised that the problems of a crowded and socially deprived housing estate couldn't be solved by a wee church just doing its usual thing.

The church gave him permission to go part time and qualify in social work, a move that enabled him to begin tackling the systems and attitudes that made life in his neighbourhood so hard for folk. He took time to learn where the levers were, and what the mechanisms that ground people down no matter how hard they tried. Poverty and addictions, violence and insecurity, truancy and criminality all have root causes, and they have to be understood and confronted, and resources found to start to sort them.

For that to happen someone has to be an advocate for the vulnerable, a voice for the marginalised, and a presence amongst those who need a trusted friend who will be there in the dark places. Bob was what he did, and what he did flowed from a grace often humbly unaware of the way he invited and attracted such trust. Some people talk about speaking truth to power. Oh Bobby could do that, but he could also teach truth to the powerless, the truth of their worth, the truth of God's love, and the truth that keeps hope alive when so much else tries to kill it.

Throughout his ministry, (and Bob was a minister of Christ his whole life from ordination till the day he died), Bobby saw the Gospel as showing the love of Christ to 'the least of these'. For 5 years in Glasgow, Bobby was a pioneer minister in social care, overseeing the Elpis Centre for homeless girls to help them off the street, supervising several flats for people with addictions, and advising on various other expressions of Christian social care within and beyond the Baptist communities in Scotland.

This was a man who heard Jesus parable as the core of his calling – "I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink, sick and in prison and you visited me, naked and you clothed me…" Bobby never spiritualised those words; this text he took with glad and serious literalness, 'forasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it for me." Forget the more sophisticated hermeneutics of suspicion and reduction. He lived by the hermeneutic of trust and compassion and a vision that could see behind a presented persona, a person to be related to, cared for, listened to, understood, helped – and in that person the presence and call of Christ. 

Bob Gemmell loved Scotland, especially the Highlands and Islands. When local authority funding dried up and the Elpis Centre faced closure, Bob found generous and widespread sponsor support for his walk of the West Highland Way, and prolonged the life of the Centre and the provision for its residents. Dozens of men from Glasgow whose lives were a long struggle with addictions, were taken to the beauty and healing quietness of Colonsay to stay in the manse for a week or two. Bob took the island church services, and arranged whatever travel, catering and activities were needed to make a holiday for people whose lives had previously been so restless, and driven, and often despairing.

He returned for some years to Baptist Ministry in Duncan Street Edinburgh, then moved into social care for the elderly. From then on he was bi-vocational, preaching most Sundays, available for pastoral support and spiritual direction, and managing a number of care homes until his retirement about 15 years ago. Even since then, he was regularly preaching, helping out local churches as interim minister, and always, but always, a warm and sensible advisor of those looking for spiritual guidance, common sense, and a friend to walk some hard miles with them. 

Bobby's daughter Fiona shared a lovely and loving tribute about her dad yesterday. Amongst the words she used three seemed to sum up Bobby's way of being: fairness, humility and generosity. These are barcode qualities of Christian service. Justice, the right of each person to have a chance in life, to have support when they're in trouble, to have a friend in the loneliest places. Humility, the capacity to achieve so much without ever thinking they have, the gentleness that doesn't force the issue but persuades, and hopes and stays faithful. Generosity, which is essentially self-giving, that habit of the heart that looks at people and situations and responds with what they have to give, to make it better.  

Bobby's wife Marion, described Bobby as 'a sower of seeds'. Much of his ministry and investment in people was like Jesus' parable of the sower. Like Jesus, throwing seed all around him, not worried about where the seed landed, knowing that some of it would grow and some of it wouldn't. But on he went, sowing, scattering, and believing in the power of the seed. Bobby Gemmell's combination of shrewd realism and non-judgemental acceptance of people where they are, was a gift of the Holy Spirit. He rarely tried to double guess where the good soil was – he sowed seeds, of encouragement, accompaniment, kindness, understanding, and always, a loving respect for 'the least of these.' And he rejoiced every time the green shoots began to show.

Bobby's theology arose out of his lifelong struggle on behalf of those who needed a supporting voice, or a second chance, or someone to believe in them, or a strong advocate who knew what he was talking about and could push back at systems that are seldom designed to fulfil their own purpose of social welfare and supported living. And so for Bobby, theology shaped his political vision, and both arose out of a robust ethic of Christian love and a Christian humanism by which each person is valued because made in the image of God. Bob saw the inherent dignity in people, looked on each person as God-loved and one in whom Christ is to be met – 'inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these…you did it to me.' And undergirding his theology, politics and ethics, his deep love of Christ crucified for the sins of the world, and risen in the triumph of love over hate, hope over despair, and forgiveness over every guilt. Bobby's vocation was to make that Gospel credible by enacting and speaking the love of God.

On a last personal note. Bobby and Marion have been our friends for over 50 years. Bobby married Sheila and I in High Blantyre in 1972. We have stayed good friends, and though years could go past without us seeing them, they have been guiding landmarks in our own ways, as we too have tried to live the Christ-life in the service of the church and beyond. Many people will miss Bobby; but many, many people will also thank God that, by a providence we can never explain or second-guess, Bobby Gemmell touched their lives, and sowed seeds that made life better for them. Bobby was one of very few people I've known who actually lived out Frederick Buechner's definition of vocation: "Vocation is where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need."     

Today I invite you to read a poem. It was written nearly 400 years ago by the Church of England priest, George Herbert. Not many people read him these days. The language is as old as the King James Bible, and it comes from someone who had served the King and court, but who chose to be a country parson rather than a royal diplomat.

One of my treasured books is an early Victorian edition of the poems of George Herbert (1863). I was given it for my 40^th birthday by my good friend Kate. She was a passionate teacher of English literature to generations of Open University students, adult literacy classes, and anyone within earshot who wanted to learn the beauty and power of our language. I spoke with one of her students the other day, “She never told me I wrote badly; she always told me how to write better.” (The previous post is the Eulogy prepared for Kate's funeral)   

Reading a poem takes time, and patience, and a willingness to be spoken to in the deep places.  Many of our best loved hymns are poems, set to music. Words are one of the important ways that God speaks to us, guides and comforts us, and leads us into truths that change us. So here is Herbert’s poem:

LOVE

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
            Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
            From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
            If I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here":
            Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
            I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
            "Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
            Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
            "My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
            So I did sit and eat.

LOVE is the name Herbert gives to the Christ. In this poem Herbert imagines the conversation between Christ and our hearts every time we come to the Communion table. As sinners we don’t feel worthy. Our guilt gets in the way of our joy. We need forgiveness every time. Sin embarrasses us, shame humiliates us, and we wish ourselves away from the One we have wronged.

But, says Herbert, each of us is a guest. 'Quick-eyed Love' sees our reluctance, hears our regret and knows our guilt, and reminds us 'who bore the blame'. That’s why I read this poem from time to time at our Communion services. It's a reminder that we are guests, that Christ is the one who issues the invitations, waits to welcome us, and says who is worthy.

The time will come when we will be able again to hold Communion services in our churches as openly and freely, without the current health restrictions. It matters so much that we aren’t able to sit alongside each other. We can’t fully enact the fellowship we share in Christ by serving each other and passing bread and wine one to the other.

But Herbert’s poem reminds us of the most important thing: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst.” Whatever else does or doesn’t happen, it is Jesus’ table, we are his guests, and the living Christ is present.

When we come to the Communion table to share in the Lord’s Supper, Christ the saviour is there. Love bids us welcome. The same generously open invitation shines from the much loved words of the Communion Order of Service:

Come to this table, not because you must but because you may,
not because you are strong, but because you are weak.

Come, not because any goodness of your own gives you a right to come,
but because you need mercy and help.

Come, because you love the Lord a little and would like to love him more.

(The book pictured above is one of the best one volume introductions to Herbert and his poetry.) 

“Kate was realistic, practical, kind, thoughtful, hugely intelligent and quick witted, full of life and cultural interests, funny, & brave in the adversity of the MND which she did not want to define her.” If this was a responsive Eulogy I would expect to hear a congregational Amen.

A woman of words, she chose many of the words to be read, sung and prayed at her funeral service. They express what mattered to her most – of life and literature, of faith and love, of hope and humanity, of God and beauty, of the tears and laughter, of the tragedy and comedy and history that are woven through the story of every human life.

Kate was born in Barnsley in 1950. Rick remembers a happy childhood of a big sister whose initial resentment of the baby brother usurper turned into a lifelong alliance. Kate was always there for Rick, from the times she sat on him to calm him down to helping him pass the Baptist Church SS exam – in which he scored higher than her! The mature Kate of the rapier wit informed by the best of English literature, was entirely evident when in an argument with Rick 8, and Kate 12. He made the mistake of calling her an idiot. Her response, “The devil damn thee black thou cream faced loon. Where got’st thou that goose look” (Macbeth Act 5 Scene 3)  Incidentally, the only recorded time Kate showed any interest in football was in 1997 when Barnsley FC were promoted to the Premier League. It gave her the chance to show off her local history, the club having been founded by the Rev Tivverton Preedy – as she remarked, "such a Dickensian name".    

Kate excelled at school, took a first in English Lit at Kent, graduated M.Phil from Oxford and began her working life at University of Aberdeen. There she met Alastair, they quickly engaged and married – later Kate explained the rush that Alastair wanted to go grouse shooting, a comment without rancour, but with that sardonic humour both warm and forgiving of human foibles and failings, including her own.

 Marriage and the care of her children became a life focus for Kate over the growing up years. I met Kate, Alastair, Ruth and Alex in 1984 when I came to be minister at Crown Terrace Baptist Church in Aberdeen. During those years Kate and Alastair were deacons, both were preachers, and our friendship quickly developed. Kate wrote dramas and skits to go with the theme of the service – she was such a script writer – her portrayal of Laban, the sleazy Del Boy father in law, played in the church by a man of impeccable integrity who relished the hand rubbing, trilby-wearing con-man, outwitting Jacob. Kate looked back on those days as formative when church was fun and a safe place for folk to explore their faith.

When the Duries moved to Stirling Kate immediately began rebuilding her social networks, opened up educational and teaching opportunities, and made new friends. She began her 30 year association with the Open University – teaching courses on Shakespeare (of course) Victorian Literature (ditto), Byzantine Art (What?), The Northern and Italian Renaissance,(Yes these too).

Kate was a lifelong learner, and a lifelong teacher. She believed passionately in education as a doorway to richer life and enlarged opportunities, a pathway to a stronger sense of self and a way of building confidence in others. She was an educational socialist – access, support, opportunity for all who want to learn. She was a consummate teacher. At the OU she was well known as a tutor who believed in her students, no matter where their starting point. One student told me, “She never told me I wrote badly; she always showed me how to write better.” The quality of a teacher is evident in feedback that is informative, formative, and aims to be transformative.

Kate’s warmth and acceptance of people as they are made her an ideal counsellor for Cruise. And "Blessed is the book group that has a Kate Durie; they shall never be boring.” Kate was one of the best listeners I’ve ever known – I remember sending her the well-known words of George Eliot, whose name was near the top of her literary Canon: “A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”

Later in life when Alastair and Kate separated, she moved to Edinburgh and quickly established new roots. A church where relationships could be formed towards friendship, and where faith could grow; reading groups, a poetry group and a Shakespeare group and a revelling in the cultural richness of theatre and art galleries, cinema and open doors days. Ruth remembers on one Open Day sixteen visits to various historic and architectural places of interest. She remains astonished at the vast amount of historical scandal Kate carried around in her head, about artists, poets, architects and other notables.

Education, learning and teaching defined Kate’s approach to all of life. She taught more than history, art and literature. She taught her children how to cook; she collected recipes like poems. Her OT Victoria learned a lot about books and literature in those conversations that interweave with all kinds of carers. She loved the animals that shared her home, from Caleb to Zac, and a succession of cats – she loved cats and quoted chunks of Kit Smart’s My Cat Jeffrey. Hospitality took on a warm, broad, welcoming embrace in Kate’s home – home- made soup (carrot her speciality – her friend Phyllis 40 years on still makes that recipe!) baking, conversation and small talk, and a sense of gladness and gratitude oozing from Kate towards those who sought her company. “What do we live for if not to make the world a little less difficult for each other?” (George Eliot)

Kate and I spoke every few weeks on the phone. That always included an oral exam on what I’d been reading, an exchange of family news, and often a two person seminar on things literary, theological and historical. She introduced me to so many fertile furrows, and I gave her pointers for good theological reading. Not sound and safe, but searching and risky. This was a reader who was reading with critical appreciation, Rowan Williams before he became Archbishop. She hadn’t only read C S Lewis – she wrote about him, lectured on him in the United States, and was one of the first people to present C S Lewis as other than an evangelical apologist above contradiction.

When it became clear that Kate was unwell, and she was eventually diagnosed with MND, she set about adjusting her life in order to prepare for a very different future. She wouldn’t call herself brave, more pragmatic, practical, determined to outwit a condition that would gradually diminish her possibilities. All we had known of Kate’s problem solving skills, practical common-sense, inventive mind, and spiritual resilience made her determined to resist the encroachments as long as she was able. For a time she still strode out, this time with a cane. That cane she wielded as a sword against the enemy. Then the mobility scooter and Sheila and I on one of our visits were recruited as her minders as she took it out for a test drive along the obstacle course of Balcarres St pavements.

In one of our recent phone conversations we recalled one of the first literary conversations she and I had. Kate came up after the service and said, “You quoted Robert Browning.” Yes I did. “It was from Paracelsus.” Yes it was. “It was perfect. I’ve always said Browning shouldn’t be quoted by preachers, he’s too dense. You proved me wrong.” Away she walked. The words come back as words of defiant hope, but without denying the pull of despair:  “If I stoop into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, it is but for a time; I press God's lamp close to my breast; its splendour soon or late will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day.”

Kate’s Christian faith was never based on already found answers. Her mind was too sharp, her mood more interrogative than declarative. She had grown beyond the various iterations of Christian faith too ready to settle for certainty, and too impatient of mystery, too worried about not knowing. In the theological sense Kate loved mystery, and refused steadfastly to reduce God to manageable proportions or propositions. She trusted the humanity of Jesus, his tears and his anger, his compassion and patience, the sheer gratuitous fun of turning water into the best ever wine. She could entrust herself to the Lord of all faith, whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe – Christ, the master carpenter, using those tools that shape and form us towards Christlikeness.

Kate had no real interest in Chalcedonian metaphysics. She knew God’s final, definitive Word became flesh and dwelt among us, in Jesus. That she knew. For everything else we see through a glass darkly…beyond that she was certain that faith, hope, and love are essential in every human life – but the greatest of these is love. And Kate loved those she loved deeply, faithfully, with that daring risky combination of realism, passion and self-giving on her own terms.  So much was taken from Kate in these last months. But not her faith. Yet another of my debts to Kate is she introduced me to the poet Denise Levertov. I finish with Levertov’s poem, written when she too was suffering her final illness:

Suspended

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted.

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

"A man who loves the trees…" That's me! I climbed them as a boy oblivious that risk assessment might one day be a thing. But all the time I was strengthening muscles, and every tree climbed, was helping me attain a higher perspective from which to view the world. Trees have always been my friends, and if that sounds a bit sentimental, so be it. 

"A man who loves trees walks among them on a dark day…" Yes, that too. Within four days we received news of three deaths, each of them a loss felt at the heart's core, because each was a friend for 51 years, 48 years and 37 years respectively.

So I was walking among trees on a dark day of sorrow at such loss, of grief known as a wound that slices through the whole being. Several recently acquired sadnesses weighing on the heart, and the feeling that identity-defining stories are now closed books on a shelf that can't be opened again.

Love is never free in the exchanges and gifts of friendship. Every true and enduring friendship has its own inherent and gladly paid costs. Often enough such self-expenditure is informal, given and not demanded, but each encounter is a strand binding us in a covenant to care, to be there for and with, and to share in the happiness and hardship of each mile of our human journeying.

"A man who loves trees walks among them on a dark day for the solace he has taken always…" Solace, the gift of our presence which, when shared, becomes consolation. The verb to console describes a coming alongside to bring solace and comfort. So sometimes what I need is trees not talk, aloneness not company, silence not words. Which is why yesterday I found myself walking among the trees on a dark day, doing the work of inner adjustment to the loss of three friends. 

Wendell Berry has written many poems and essays on trees. This one is less well known than it should be:

A man who walks among the trees

walks among them on a dark day

for the solace he has taken there always

from the company of the elders,

and suddenly he sees

such a grace as in all his going

he is always going toward

though never in his foreknowing:

among duller trunks and branches

a dog-wood flower-white

lighting all the woods.

Now if much of the above seems morose then I've made one of my points. But there is more to be said and Wendell Berry says it in this poem which describes the experience of light on dark days, and the grace we are always going toward. On a dark day, in the woods, suddenly we see such a grace that falls across the paths of our going, lighting all the woods.

Yesterday, looking along an avenue of autumn trees, that "dog-wood flower-white lighting" shafted across my path. (See photo above). And that grace which is gift came as a moment of recognition, an unintended so unexpected encounter with a young deer which lasted several minutes of mutual gazing through the low hanging branches.

The thing about loss, sorrow, and grief, is that like all our strong emotions, it takes something outside of ourselves to interrupt them and help us regain emotional and spiritual equilibrium. That is neither to deny the sadness of loss or tranquilise the reality of our sorrow. Rather such graced interruptions allow us to recover enough presence of mind to know more deeply what we have lost, but without forgetting all that we have gained.

"A man who walks among the trees

walks among them on a dark day

for the solace he has taken there always…"

As one example, that 37 year friendship involved fortnightly phone calls, literary conversations, shared support when life had its dark days for either of us, mutual affection, respect, trust and what can best be called in Hebrew "hesed" by which is meant faithfulness, steadfastness, dependability, personal friendship as unspoken but unmistakable covenant.

In numbering the gifts of such a presence in our lives, we catalogue what is no longer accessible by their presence in our lives. But we also enumerate the blessing and joy of having them in our lives, the privilege and burdens of shared confidences and hopes, the sheer miracle of human commitment which grows into understanding, knowing and caring for this person who has chosen us for friend. 

That's the thing about good friendships. As Berry spells it out, such companions are a dog-wood flower white lighting all the woods – including those where we walk, on dark days.