nothing is written

I can’t quite believe I get to write sentences with the words cancer/terminal/died yet again.

On Monday afternoon my step-dad died. It was five months to the day since my mother died, and 72 days since my mother-in-law died. They all had cancer, faith and years of treatment which finally was no match for the chaos inside their bodies.

It is strange to have written those words to various friends and colleagues at certain points over the last few months. In some ways death feels very normal right now. Like playground bullies and icily-beautiful women, death is profoundly less intimidating up close than it is from a distance. I fear it less today than I did a year ago, and I don’t think that I have drifted into paranoia – I mean, I don’t worry about other members of my family getting sick and dying. There aren’t that many of them left anyway.

But who am I kidding? We’ve chucked the microwave, upped the fruit & veg and I’m back to my old hobby of entering half marathons and running them very slowly.

It’s aliveness that I’m pursuing.

It was after my mother’s death that I realised that I was experiencing something odd in the midst of the grief; happiness. It seemed bizarre at first until someone wise joined the dots for me; he talked about ‘exquisite grief’ and it suddenly became clear that experiencing the pain of missing someone does not mean that life becomes grey. Grief is not necessarily welded to depression. In fact, the root of the word links it in with the carrying of something heavy. It takes strength to do this and the work is not without reward. Maybe, in some way, the deeper the relationship one looses, the better prepared one is for the carrying. It might not be a lighter load, but perhaps one is able to take it further. I don’t know about the details or reasons, but I do know that my wife and children and friends are richer rewards to me these days than ever before.

Remember Dumbledore’s pensieve? I want one of those – to be able to pour my thoughts out into a bowl and examine them as an observer.

Too often I feel like my mind is full. My default position in times of stress is twofold; I sweep the floors in our house and my mind goes blank. Somehow the cleaning helps and I just have to wait for the fog to clear.

The possibility of joining Harry and watching memories as an invisible observer is so appealing, but like the rest of the saga, it’s too far from reality to translate literally. So I’ll just have to make do with writing self-indulgent blog postings instead.

I’m pregnant with words.

There’s something brewing in here. I was talking to a publisher about writing on grief and she mentioned that they were considering doing something on prayer and loss. I had to duck out of the conversation at that point because I have no solutions or suggestions or tales of success on that particular topic right now. But the rest – the story of how this year has been the hardest, fullest, brightest, saddest year of my life – there are lots of words coming there.

I know how to plan a good funeral.

Honestly, I reckon there’s a niche market out there and the events of this year have fast-tracked me towards some kind of vocational qualification. I’d recommend a bit of Sigur Ros for accompanying music, particularly this:

Forgive the jargon here, but this one’s for the flock.

Every once in a while the word revival makes an appearance among the faithful. Like some astronomical phenomenon that slices the skies its warning signs are often quickly followed by a sparky display of light and power. Pretty soon it seems like every believer who’s in the know will be transfixed by its power; head, eyes and heart straining to catch whatever stardust falls from its trail.

It’s happening right now. In Florida, so they say. I don’t know any more than the basics of the equation – (guy with tats + divine healings) x media exposure = great excitement – but I’ve heard a couple of stories.

I picked up the first one third hand last week. It concerned a woman whose husband has been impacted by the recent events in Florida. She returned home one evening to find blood in her front room, trailing to the bedroom. There she found her crimson-stained husband, doubled over in what I can only assume was a unique combination of post-adrenaline woosiness, drastically-crashing blood pressure and pure, unchecked agony.

She asked what on earth had happened.

‘The Lord told me to self-circumcise.’

The second story is this. I was talking to a friend about it all. He was cynical – I mean, really cynical. He went after the guy in tats – questioning the authenticity of the claims being made – as well as the integrity (and intellect) of those flying out to get a slice of the action. He made sense at times, but mostly his blanket declarations that it was wholly corrupted just sounded like the mirror image of those voices who claim that everything the guy with tats says right now is touched by the divine.

I love the smell of dualisms in the morning.

It’s hard to hold opposing truths in the same mind. It’s hard to see good and band, corrupted and innocent, utterly stupid and profoundly wise in the same place. But I suspect that what’s going down in Florida right now is a mixture of both.

In fact, I’d go further. I don’t think we need to obsess so much about whether it is or is not branded by the divine – or, at least, we don’t need to look at the numbers or the tv exposure or the level or mainstream interest or even the quality of healings in order to make up our minds. I think that God deals in a different currency to all that. He doesn’t just put on a show or try to make occasional headlines. He deals in partnership with those that follow him, and it’s the impact on those people – and the impact they then have on the world around them – that really counts.

It’s probably bad form to quote yourself, but here’s a bit I wrote once before:

‘I heard that Jackie Pullinger brought up the subject [of the ‘revival’ in Toronto back in the 90s] among a number of Christians over a series of visits a few years back. She told them the story from her perspective, of how over in Hong Kong, amidst the drugs and the gangs and the death, they had all heard of the phenomenon that was taking place.

“Rich Christians were jumping on airplanes to visit the place where the laughter was,” she said. “We thought to ourselves, It will only be a matter of time before they board airplanes to visit the places where the crying is. We waited. But you didn’t come.”’

Click here and you can see a sample chapter I wrote about another ‘revival’ I once experienced. Unlike the current one this was smaller, but no less powerful. And it made a dramatic impact on the lives of those living near it. The only trouble was the fact that it took pace among a poor, unimpressive community. Who’d want to hear a story like that?