Pre Match Nerves

Pre Match Nerves

Hi friends,

I don’t know if you have strolled around your local cemetery recently after all they can be rather unsettling places with a, certain unease about them.

I am now in the last few weeks of un-ordained life and that is rather unsettling and although I have kept myself very busy the emotional roller coaster doesn’t appear to be abating.

This morning I found myself slow stepping around the cemetery which is just a hundred yards or so from my new home. I have found a rather picturesque route that brings me into the graveyard via a pretty little wood that at the moment accommodates a vast harvest of flowering white garlic. A Heron has made himself a very substantial nest high in the trees which makes for a fantastic watch tower for the modest river and livestock that flows through gently on its way. I have what feels like a significant incline to negotiate which in reality is probably only a slight gradient yet is more than enough for me to blow a little and indeed a little bit more. After scrambling over a few rocks and over intimidating tree roots I make it into the lower end of the cemetery grounds. In this remote corner where the deceased have long been dead I have a multitude of options and this occasion I take a right along a path that leads to some of the oldest and most dilapidated tombstones in the Borough.

I never considered it before but in my wisdom I have decided that cemeteries hold much sadness but also much beauty and over the last few weeks I have been drawn to this place to consider my future ministry.  The recent walks have been thought provoking as I think about all my Argos work friends and wonder if I am now nothing but a distant memory. The company email account is now well and truly closed and if it wasn’t for social media would our friendships be over? I certainly hope not.

And then the landscape and my minds attention focuses’ on the intimidating and enormous gravestones. This corner is very old, paths are rapidly decaying, I found a grave from 1862 the oldest one I have spotted so far, and it is apparent that not many people come down this way anymore. Many of the graves are badly damaged the stone inscriptions are so badly eroded they are unreadable and the names have a distinct feeling of long ago, there is a Walter, and a Florence at least 3 or four Alfred’s, and even a Fanny thrown in for good measure (or maybe a little humor) . Flowers aren’t in this part of the cemetery anymore; the only thing growing is the grass. Are all the loved ones deceased?

As I climb the hill I think about the ordination ceremony, I desperately want to talk to anyone who will listen to me talk about it but I fear I am boring people to death and intentionally make the effort to say nothing. I think about some of my friends who will be ordained alongside me for whom life appears much more stressful than my own right now. I’m mad, in fact disappointed at myself by offering what I thought were words of encouragement to a dear colleague which in fact had the opposite effect and actually exacerbated my friends feeling of frustration and anxiety. Others have personal worries and concerns and I just feel awful that I can’t do anything to help other than to keep my mouth shut and not put my foot in it again. The butterflies come and go and pass through like the Red Arrows over a palatial palace or airshow somewhere and before I know it I have arrived in a more lively part of the cemetery.

Fletcher my dog pulls on the leash, a sure sign something is stirring and indeed I wasn’t to be disappointed as ahead two large rabbits disperse a bit like the aforementioned Red Arrows breaking away from a formation. They run for their lives and dive into the sanctuary of some well matured bracken thicket bushes of some description fearing that Fletcher would eat them alive. Where I walk now there is more recent gravestones from the seventies and eighties and dead rotting flowers are apparent across the landscape, I am stopped in my tracks by the most splendid gravestone that wouldn’t have looked out of place at The Vatican and on further inspection I discover it was that of a young professional boxer who died at the mere age of just 24.

If my friends don’t come to my ordination will it still be special? I think to myself. Why on earth am I thinking that? I also consider. What if it rains heavily on the day will all the guests fit into the house? What if there is not enough cake and teabags? What if I get someone’s name wrong during a funeral? What if I get the time wrong for a Baptism visit? What if the vicar thinks I am utterly incompetent? What if I fail my interview with the Bishop? What if, what if, what if? When does the roller coaster ride ever finish? Does it ever finish?

As I get to the top of the hill I can look down into the valley and many hundreds if not thousands of gravestones can be seen. It is a sad picture but has a real essence of beauty about it, so many lives, so many deaths, so many stories, and so many tears over so many years. And as I look at the tombstones I read about lost children, parents, brothers and sisters. Flowers are plentiful and great attention is paid to the little piece of ground where loved ones are laid to rest. Large mounds of earth with beautiful tributes and mementoes lay on freshly dug soil and I am reminded about the fragility of our existence and limited time on this planet.

I leave the stillness of the cemetery grounds to the rumbling noise of the busy road for the short stroll down to my house. I am shaken out of my meditation and reflection of what has passed before me and what lies ahead. The mind is alive, the will is strong, the reality is difficult and the future is nerve wracking.

As I approach my front door, I l think about the words I have heard a lot over the last few days I keep hearing, John 15:16 ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit--fruit that will last’.That encourages me, and troubles me, it excites me and frightens me, and I suspect I am not alone in feeling this among the ordinand community being ordained in just a few weeks’ time. Please pray for us all.

May God be with them, with me and with you, now and always.

See you,

Alextheanglican.