Top of the family tree

This morning the phone rang as we were getting ready to go to meeting and just for a moment I thought it was my mother wanting something. Then I remembered – she died 6 weeks ago.

She was 92, physically increasingly frail although mentally alert, so in many ways her death was expected. Certainly she herself had been wishing for it for years, but I had somehow convinced myself that she would go on for ever.

She was taken into hospital on a Thursday with a suspected heart attack although the doctors were not sure what was wrong. I was called and sat with her for 10 hours as we waited for diagnoses and decisions. At the time I was anxious, frustrated and exhausted but I am glad now that we had that time together. I held her hand and interpreted between the hospital staff and her deafness and she stroked my head, something I cannot remember her ever doing before, and apologised for all the grey hairs she had given me.

She was admitted for tests but the weekend intervened and the tests were not done. I settled into a visiting routine shared with my son Matt who lives nearby and she seemed to be improving, finding the energy to complain and demand as usual. On Monday, after I had seen her at lunchtime, she saw a doctor she liked who told her they were still not sure what was wrong. My son saw her in the evening and told me she was in fine form, laughing and joking with him. Early on Tuesday morning came the phone call from the hospital I had been dreading for years. “Your mother’s not good. Please come now.” In fact by the time the call was made sudden heart failure had almost certainly already taken her past any hope of resuscitation.

Since I said goodbye to her that morning I have had a lot to do and think about. I am slowly coming to terms with the absence of someone who had gradually needed more and more of my time - two days a week with her and many more hours organising her care and her finances, worrying about her and looking for ways to make her existence more bearable. I miss her and weep at the most unexpected things but at the same time all kinds of possibilities are opening up in the space she has left.

I am an only child and my father died 22 years ago. Now I am at the top of my family tree, the older generation, the keeper of family memories. More than ever I feel a responsibility to write down what I remember, what I have been told and what I can find out. I made a start when I wrote the eulogy for my mother’s funeral, trying to be fair to her and true to our intense and not always easy relationship. Writing this is another step on the journey.

Standing next to Jesus

I’ve been catching up with my blog reading and one of the themes that has been speaking to me is the question of whether I should call myself a Christian along with the related one of where Jesus is in my life. Big questions and I am still struggling with answers, although helped by reading about others’ struggles.

So I’ll start by trying to share some of the journey which has brought me to my present position. I was brought up a nominal Christian, in the Church of England, read the Bible stories, sang the hymns, went to church as a matter of course but with no real conviction. When I was about 11 years old, standing alone on the back step of our house, looking at the clouds racing across the sky above our steeply sloping garden, I had what I later learned to call a ‘transcendent experience’.

In one moment beyond time I knew that myself, everyone and everything was connected and valued in love. All that I felt and knew in that moment was God and God was everywhere, in past, present and future, in all religions, all people, everything.

I did not know what to do with this experience. The only person I told was my school speech and drama teacher who gently listened to my confusion and gave me books on mysticism to read which helped me to realise that I was not alone in my experience and saved me from thinking that I was special or singled out.

So I knew that God was real, but I was not at all sure where Jesus fitted in to the equation for me. I certainly did not think that I needed organised religion or any kind of church community. The Christians that I knew seemed far too narrow in their belief for me to belong with them. I carried my conviction of true religion inside me but rarely let it connect with the way I lived my life.

And then, 30 years ago, I encountered Quakers when I went to work in Friends House Library in London. I found people who were living a faith without dogma day by day and I discovered Meeting for Worship. That was the real revelation because here I found again the God that I knew and God, the Inward Teacher, was speaking to me, within myself and through the meeting. When I began to listen I knew that I had to change, to commit myself to Quakerism and to act in faith. Of course there’s a lot more to this story and I will try to write more later, but for now I’ll try and go with the questions I began with.

Having become a Quaker, did I become a Christian? Well I believe that that is the journey I am on but many of my fellow-Quakers, and certainly many others who identify themselves as Christians, would disagree and I have to engage with that.

And what about Jesus? About 6 years ago I went to a performance of 'The Mysteries' at the National Theatre – three plays in one day. These modern versions of medieval mystery plays told the story of the world from creation to judgment with actors and audience mixed together in one space. Somehow during the crucifixion scene I found myself standing behind the actor playing Jesus who was carrying his cross. I suddenly felt a real connexion with the real Jesus and almost reached out to touch him. I knew then that my Inward Teacher was there too. It was an intense experience and again I have told very few people until today. I am still trying to make sense of what I felt and how standing next to Jesus could affect my life.

Good intentions

Sometimes it seems as though I blink and a month goes by – or several months or a year sometimes. Does this happen to other people?

I was so happy when I discovered blogging and I really meant to write something regularly but lately I haven’t managed it. I began just reading other people’s and I did respond a couple of times but for several weeks now I haven’t even managed that. It’s been a case of ‘Life is what happens to you when you are making other plans.’ But I have just sat down and read through the Quaker blogs I’ve bookmarked with the help of Quaker Ranter and I’ve been so moved and realise what I’m missing so I’m going to try again.

Perhaps I should worry less and read and write more (or less) and see what happens. I’ll try to give myself a regular slot in the day too and try to share my life a bit more. Please bear with me and keep reading.