Wrestling

I’m writing this blog in Wimborne, Dorset. It’s a lovely place. I’d like to live here again. I grew up here and have fond memories of the place. Funny how memories can be rose tinted. I also have memories of not enjoying life here, or maybe more accurately, not enjoying school when it was too hard, or friendships when they went wrong. You know, the stuff that happens in every life. But, whenever I come back to Wimborne, I feel I’ve come home. I loved my formative years here. I was steeped in my faith here. There were lots of good people here when I was growing up and I’m thankful to them all for the way they lived their lives in front of me and gave me some pathways to walk. Thing is, I’m here today because I know this might the last time I can do what I’m doing. I’m sitting in the kitchen of mum’s bungalow. Mum died just over a year ago and the bungalow has sold. We’re in the process of selling and it takes a little time. At some point in the near future I won’t be able to stay here. So I’ve made what is probably one last visit. And I’m also here to visit mum’s grave. A month ago we held a small graveside service, just the family, and laid mum’s ashes in the ground. She’d be pleased with the plot. She looks over Wimborne, the place she was born and was living in when she died. We laid a headstone to mark her life and her death. I wanted to see it again. What surprises me is that I’ve felt quite strongly about wanting to come and visit. I’m not sure why. I talk to people through my work at St. Catherine’s Hospice all the time about this kind of thing and yet I can’t explain it. And here I am. And when I went to her grave this morning, I felt more emotional than I have at any other time after she suffered a heart attack and then died. I have some thoughts as to why this is so, but I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that I’m wrestling with a whole load of thoughts and emotions. And what I also think I know is that wrestling with thoughts and beliefs is a good thing. I am reading a book titled “Die Wise” at the moment. I’m reading it partly because of my work at St. Catherine’s, partly because I am a minister who takes funerals, but partly too because I am convinced that we don’t wrestle enough with death. And our own death in particular. (If you’re wondering why I’d write a blog like this at all, you’ve probably made my point for me!) In this book, the author, not a Christian, makes a powerful claim: that we would do well to wrestle with the truth of our death. it’s not a morbid thing. It’s about facing the truth and living well in the light of it. I think that’s what the whole book of Ecclesiastes is really about. And the author understands wrestling to mean to dance! Dancing requires a proximity to another, a choreography that makes something meaningful and it strikes me that is a very Christian thought: we live in a fallen world and wrestle with what happens and why it happens in the light of the truth we know about God. When we do that well, it becomes a dance. It becomes a dance of love. It is a dance we learn to dance. It is a dance that embraces life and death. It is a dance we dance on God’s great dance floor. We chose a verse to go on mum’s headstone and we chose it partly because she believed it with her whole heart, and partly because we who are left believe it too: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Phil. 1:21). So, in my wrestling, I’m learning to dance. And to dance is to live and to live well in the truth about my death.