Fabio

It took some getting used to, having an England football coach called Fabio Capello.  Surely that must be a musical instruction? Fabio didn't speak English but football is, I quote the Football Association, a universal language. 

No point in being sniffy about these things.  Our church frontage is Italianate (apparantly).  Why should we not integrate an Italian front to our national football team?  Success!!   Fabio led our national football team to a glorious qualification for the World Cup finals tournament in South Africa and then . . .

Then Fabio, previously known for his record of successive successes, became as English as apple pie.  He led us to ignominious sporting defeat.  Football is a universal language.  And everyone says the same thing - when England play in the World Cup they get knocked out by Germany (if someone hasn't knocked them out earlier, which very nearly happened).  Fabio speaks our language!  He's entered our culture!  He's integrated - one of us now - remembered for sporting defeat.

It was so different when he was appointed.  Then, from his very limited store of English vocabulary he uttered the priceless comment (on the prospect of being England football coach),

It is a beautiful challenge

That was a first.  No English coach has ever called it that.  Nor with the benefit of a wider vocabulary and the experience of failing will Fabio himself ever utter the phrase again.  A unique way to remember him.  It inspires me to a text from Ecclesiastes for Fabio;

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what He has done from beginning to end.

Fabio has certainly driven me to think less about football and more about eternity.  The rest is self explanatory. 

Except of course the text is really about God.  The unfathomable works of God are a cause for spiritual longing and praising His glory.  The unfathomable works of Fabio became a cause for switching TV channels and planning summer vacations instead.

Hearing

I owe this story to an elderly lady who told this tale about - an elderly lady!

The vicar dropped by to visit the lady who had been taken ill.  Because of her age and the seriousness of the illness it seemed time to prepare for the End.

"Vicar," said she, "You will take my Funeral Service when I pass away, won't you?"

"Well yes, of course, when that time comes."

"You'll do it, won't you?  Not the young curate?"

The vicar was a little alarmed.  He had thought the young curate was quite competent and  liked.  "Yes, I'll do it.  But may I ask why you insist on it being me rather than my colleague?  He's very caring."

"Oh, I do believe he's very kind.  But in the services I can never hear a word he says."

Rites

 

Saturday I was conducting a Wedding.

Sunshine, specially printed Orders of Service, specially chosen music, reunited family and friends, invitations to eat, specially smart clothes, flowers,  official certificates, smiling faces, photographers, bubbles, excitement, congratulations, toasts . . .

Yesterday I was conducting a Funeral.

Sunshine, specially printed Orders of Service, specially chosen music, reunited family and friends, invitations to eat, specially smart clothes, flowers, official certificates, faces in tears, no photographers, no bubbles, no excitement, no congratulations, no toasts . .

In every wedding there is a funeral.  Say it after me . . .

until we are parted by death

What a miserable thing it appears to be that in our most glowingly romantic hour we intone our certain end.  For a Christian this is greatly mitigated by its opposite, courtesy of our Saviour:

In every funeral there is a wedding.

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea.  And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God.  And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." 

Schumann

Robert Schumann is 200 today.



Of course he isn't.  His birthday is.

His short life petered out in an asylum, neither the first nor the last gifted person to live too short a life and despair in part of the short life he had.

Yet as I played Traumerei today (no, the video is not me - he's a proper pianist) I felt that it is better to have lived a short time with passion than to live a long, cold life.

Jesus only lived 33 years and he wept and he shuddered and he sweated as it were drops of blood and he stormed and he cared and he ached and he loved and he cried out.

Whitehaven

I only went to Whitehaven once.  Yet I clearly remember it without my memory being jogged by the killings committed by Derrick Bird last week.

Just as it has come into the media glare for all the wrong reasons, so I remembered it as such.  Before I drove there during a lakeland holiday the name Whitehaven somehow conjured a vision a little like its namesake in Queensland, Australia . . .

I drove over the hill down toward the town to be confronted by something like this, only wetter and darker . . .

A more depressing sight set between beautiful lakeland hills and the sea it was hard to imagine.  And I fully expected to maintain this personal prejudice against the rain-battered bricks of Whitehaven until the day I die for I have certainly never intended to return as a holidaymaker to reassess my view.

My view has been reassessed however as a result of Derrick Bird's actions.  For it was also in the rain that the people of Whitehaven gathered last evening to remember and respect those who were killed last week.   A thousand people.

What is beautiful about Whitehaven is a community where people care and support each other and, however stumblingly, turn toward the Prince of Peace.  Deliberately, or accidentally, they have reflected to us all the character of God in a world that they know better than most sometimes reflects the darkness of another prince. 

Sides

Today I was on holiday.

It being Jesus' resurrection day and professing to follow him, I went to church.

One of the churches I went to was populated mostly by people from Africa. I had not been to this church for perhaps 20 years, and then the congregation was almost entirely British, bigger and more boring.

But why would I go to church on a holiday week?  My daughter put in a word of discouragement -"You don't need to go to church, Dad.  You're a Pastor."

A totally deaf and dumb man was asked why he attended church.  Taking his notebook he wrote,

To show which side I'm on