R.I.P. Revd Dr. Hugh Rae [1921-2009]

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day."
-- Isaac Watts, O God Our Help in Ages Past


Here's a funny thing - the world is still turning. It was turning at 5am on the 1st of June as I lay unblinking on my bed, wide awake and knowing with cold, distant exactness why the phone was ringing; I would guess it will still be turning tonight. I'm uncertain whether tonight's turning will find me asleep - one thing is certain, it finds my grandfather finally asleep, quickly and peacefully and with less time than it takes to say a prayer.

The primary feeling is one of disbelief, of the unreality of the thing. Up until two weeks ago he was, with the exception of a little tiredness and occasional aches, in good health - barely a week ago my father flew to Japan for a busines trip, secure in the knowledge that when he returned the doctors would have a diagnosis and we could figure out which treatment options were the best. My grandpa barely held on [and it was holding on - I will never forget the pain twisting in my heart, watching him lie in bed, concentrating fiercely, conserving his strength so that he might see his son again before he died] long enough for him to make it back. I know my father well enough to see, with perfect clarity, him sitting on the aeroplane, head in hands, trying to figure out how to forgive himself if he was too late. The speed of it all verges on the absurd - what can you do?

The week of his illness and death was one of brilliant sun. Driving back through the city with my mother in the early evening, window down, there was a incredible softness to the light, the trees and buildings bathed in the kind of effusive glow that makes you want to take photograph after photograph. It has an interesting isolating quality, that light - other people seem to fade into the background, become very much part of the scenery, as if the two of us could have been the only actors onscreen in a film of our own. Chronic sleep deprivation has much to do with this, I know, but the circumstances also tend to relegate anyone beyond close friends and family into nonperson; my eyes have been gritty and tired lately, and I've taken to walking around without my glasses on when I'm in familiar territory, turning anyone outside the metre mark into nothing but a rough person-shaped blur. Distance is a curious and relative thing at times like these.

Recent memories are fragmented and unconcentrated: some important events, conversations are fuzzy and surreal, as if I had forgotten them and been reminded a long time afterwards; the minutae of the day, however, stand out sharply, like a solitary lit window in a long, dark street. The group of us standing around the bed, temporarily lost for words until someone starting singing one of many, many of his favourite old hymns and we discovered something special - our family falls naturally into four part harmonies. The district nurse, standing by the door waiting to give him his check-up, had tears in his eyes - "you all love him so much," he said. "Not many people I see have that. So many people are alone." Or the explosion of laughter as he woke from his fitful dozing to find himself surrounded, murmured amusedly, "eeney-meeney-miney-mo" to the various figures around him and drifted back off.
Other things, too, of a different timbre: the look in my father's eyes coming in the door, almost straight off the plane home, a look that went directly past everyone and took him straight into my grandpa's room before he had time to get his coat off; him knelt by the bed, head bowed, my grandpa's hand in his hair, saying, "I'm back, Dad, it's OK - I'm back"; the aching realisation, watching these things, of what it means to be a son. I'm a Christian, fatherhood and sonship are incredibly important parts of how I see the world: what does it mean when those things are taken away? "I'm an orphan," he said afterwards, with an almost-smile. A joke; a painful truth. We are who we are in relation to those around us, especially those we love - when we are reduced to the elemental core that is at the root of 'I' - what then?

The funeral was staggering. We couldn't fit everyone inside the college's church - they spilled out onto the grass, into the classrooms and under the hastily errected marquee, linked by audio cables zigzagging through doors and windows to bring our voices out to the throng of people that had gathered to pay their last respects, all 350+ of them. There are no words to properly desribe the incredible flood of emotions washing over me, standing there all of a foot from his coffin: sadness, anger, despair, rage, panic, grief, exhaustion, disbelief, but over and above all a tremendous, powerful sense of pride to have been a part of his life. And as the tributes and testimonies were given from family, friends, colleagues, fellow pastors and educators and churchmen of all generations and walks of life, I felt again the incredible, unburdened lightness that I associate so much with sitting in his living room, trading stories and advice and being taught more than I will ever even realise I have learned; I felt the fierce, explosive joy that is our only defence against death, the joy that knows without question that there is more to come. We mourn, yes, but! we do not mourn as those who have no hope.
There are no applause at funerals, though the speeches, especially my fathers, were well worth it. But there is singing. And as the hundreds of voices matched the old pipe organ, note for note, swelling up like light and life and love into the grey Manchester sky, I understood properly what the hymn-writer had been trying to say, and why my grandpa had picked this song for his funeral. And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, W.W. How writes, Steals on the ear the distant triumph song; and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong; Hallelujah! Hallelujah! This life is a struggle, a truly terrible battle, but - we do not fight as those who have no hope. He never did, and even after his death he continues to inspire it in those of us who knew him, because he has shown us that we do have a choice, and that we do have a chance. Not as those who have no hope.

I have had, since I was quite young, an image in my head of what my death feels like, as if that one moment were a summation of my life. In it I am sat on the edge of a cliff looking over a broad, sweeping expanse of red-grey desert, watching a storm thunder and flicker round and about me as the sun sets in a blaze of blood and gold on the horizon; someone I love is sat beside me, stretched out on their back watching the first stars begin to flicker into existence above us, singing gently to themselves. It's not that I think this is how I will die, but if I could paint a picture of the many divergant lines of my life coming together to finish, that is what it would show. And standing in that chapel, feeling a solid wall of the love and respect of three hundred people behind us and several thousand more who sent letters, emails, phonecalls of apology for their absence, as I stood beside his still body I could almost hear him whispering some of his final words to my mother as she sat beside him, leaning in to catch the faint, fading sound of his voice: never be afraid to love, he said to her. You knew, didn't you? We are all of us so very afraid to love, sometimes, but as I stood there hearing the crowd of people whom you loved, and who loved you greatly in return, sing out strong and true in your memory - But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array! - I reaffirmed that vow: never to be afraid to love; never to give up hope.

I am exhausted and - as long as I have gone on here - my brain is as yet unable to fully process what has happened. It's not something I'm looking forward to. Unfortunately right at this moment I have no lighthouse to keep, no cottage to retreat to, no great adventure to occupy my thoughts. All I have - enough for now, surely? - is the feeling and memory of the man the last time I saw him, as I said goodnight and he gently pulled me in to kiss me on the forehead. You have been very much loved, were his words. Well, so have you, I said, to which he replied only, oh, I know. Tonight I will fall asleep reading Konrad and Tennyson, and when I wake - who knows? We read Corinthians 15:50, the one we used to joke had been written about us: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed! Things have moved on too fast for me, I am afraid - I have given up believing the world will still be the same place when I awake. But - and here's the thing, I think - it will still be turning.

At first I thought the world would stop. Then, later, I was angry that it refused to. Now, finally, I understand that it matters very little - the pain, the anguish, the despair, these things will pass away; love does not. He is dead, there is nothing that can change that now. But he was an incredible person, and he loved me, and love? Love endures. So must I.

Extract

Extracted from an odd little unfinished story, 01.05.09


"You've come a long way, haven't you?"

"A long way, yes. Miles and miles: oceans, borders, deserts, mountains; a hundred towns, a thousand roads; countries, continents. Generations. A long way."

"What are you looking for?"

"A way to go home, I suppose, or a reason. Or the courage to." A wry smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. "A heart, brains - so many possibilities."

The captain chuckles and leans out along the porch rail, tracing aeroplane trails in the darkening sky.

"Well, there's good news and bad news, as always. I assume you'll be wanting the sucker-punch first?"

"Of course. Why put off pain you can enjoy right away?"

"Mhm. Well, let me tell you then, kid: I've seen an awful lot of people running one way or the other over the years, and there's only one thing that ever holds true. Nobody ever goes home."

The boy nods, unworried, rolling the old silver coin over in his fingers.

"So I'm beginning to find out - not that much of a kick in the teeth anymore, I'm afraid. What's the good news?"

The boy loses his rhythm suddenly: the coin jarrs awkwardly in his hand and falls, spinning gently. He stoops to catch it, but the old man is faster, he plucks it out of the air and holds it out in his palm, face up: the worn Indian head catches the sun and gleams, bright and sudden. Truth unlooked-for, honesty unexpected; their eyes meet and hold.

"The good news? There is none. But oneday soon you'll wake up, and realise you never left at all."

in which our protagonist finds himself staring sadly at his body from above, wondering how he could have left it this way

"Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help. Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death."
-- Psalm 22


I awake with a start every time, with the taste of hot grey dust still lingering in my mouth. Before I can even lift my head to face the day the feeling fades, and I would give anything to have it back. I dream about the desert less and less these days, as if I am losing it, and it frightens me. It was a risk to take, I know: not just the three-thousand mile trip, the people I'd never met, the carnival madness of the festival, the city on the plateau; these things were all dangerous in their own right, but far worse is the giving of yourself, investing a piece of your soul in something you must leave behind. I have been given something in exchange, a glimpse of the divine and a memory of myself in the company of incredible beings, and every day I use it as a shield against the dead hands that grasp at me as I walk through this city and this life - I hold it crumpled tight in my fist like a love note. Like a promise of hope.

And every day it seems that a piece of it slips away quietly, and I feel as though one more section of my armour has been stripped away, and oneday soon I will have nothing left to ward off the blows of this place. It is a terrible thing to have walked with angels, to have even walked where angels might fear to tread and demons hush their voices to a whisper, and now? Now I lay broken against this dark city wall, struggling to keep my face turned away from these dead eyes in cold white faces, from clammy hands and grasping, bony fingers. When I look around, I wonder what on earth these unliving things would take from me: surely I have nothing they could possibly want? If I was rich, perhaps: if I was famous or beautiful or talented, but I have nothing these dead want to own; my head and my heart and my hands deal in a light that is worth nothing to them, my tongue speaks words that are ugly and meaningless to their ears. No, they would reach into my chest and pull out my fainting heart only to have taken it - they would eat every part of me just for the joy of consuming, until there is nothing left to recognise.

When the sky comes tumbling down around me, when I have sat slumped with my back to the locked door, sobbing raggedly for fear and hatred of all that waits outside it, this is when I wake with the taste of the hot, grey dust in my mouth and the lingering pressure of a friend's hand on my shoulder. And it is in these brief moments, lying with my eyes still closed and the memory of grit in my mouth and nostrils, that I can feel my frenetic heartrate slow and my aching muscles unknot. The dream breathes in my ear, and I can still feel the hard-packed earth stretching out for miles under my back; the cloudless sky punctuated by a hundred thousand galaxies, somehow combining utter blackness and the deep, soulful cry of blues and reds; the bitter lime taste of the alkaline dust on my skin and tongue. Even the fire on the horizon, the madness and joy a half-mile away only contributes to the sense of a totality of peace: when I desire lights and laughter and the sweeping exuberance of life, it is there for me; for now I choose to be alone, and no-one will force me to do otherwise. The chaos and the peace, the angels and the demons, the fire and the sparkling blue-black darkness, we all know how to communicate - how to interact, but when to leave well enough alone. Despite the divisions in my nature, despite my fractured beliefs and the confusion in my mind, I dream myself back to this primitive, mysterious peace: once sensed and never forgotten; once experienced and never yet repeated.

This is the dream that lingers as hot, grey dust in my mouth, that struggles to wrap its fragile skein around my aching and battered body and smooth over the armour chinks in my tired soul. It surrounds me and fills me and makes me promise one thing over and over again: that I will not give up hope. No matter what happens, no matter how far down they drag me or how many pieces of me they try to call their own, there is always this dream of how things were in the simplicity of the desert, and how things will be again. Maybe not there, not in that place or in that way, but I have hope that oneday I will feel clean air envelop me again, and know the clean, open lines of simplicity.

I know that I am not alone. When I feel my father's strong arms around me, when I hear my grandpa's wry chuckle as he jokes with his students, I know what it is to love and be loved unconditionally; when I catch my sister's eye across the room and only we know the joke, when I can almost feel my mother's fingers loosen and flow out across the piano keys and I want to sing and sing and to have a voice good enough to add to the beauty that spreads out through the house - I still remember the early days in this country, an alien lost and uncertain, but being gently rocked to sleep every night by her music from downstairs working its way into my dreams, and waking to his fingers tip-tapping gently at the computer down the hall, weaving a tune of his own in the cold English pre-dawn. Who says he knows love? I know love, says the littlest one.

My head aches as I write this, and I run my hand through my hair as if I could pull it out by the roots, and the dull pounding with it. Eventually I will crawl into bed and lay, no more or less alone than any other night, until the world's lights come back on again and I can pretend that the bleak, ugly dawn that rises over concrete and plastic is the fierce, singleminded heat of the desert, rising in triumph to blaze for one more day, at least - battles won, at cost, in the night. Dawn is no victory, here, it is only a sign of the times: time to get up, time to stop dreaming, time to face reality.

Everyday that I am awake with the dawn, ready and willing to let another piece of me die, I pray, and I promise myself this: oneday.

Oneday, I will see the sun again.

... and your young man shall dream dreams ...

"The heart cannot say, sometimes, but the hand and eye - if steady enough and clear enough - may shape a window for those who come after. Someone might look up one day, when all those awake or asleep in Sarantium tonight are long dead, and know that this woman was fair, and very greatly loved by the unknown man who placed her overhead, the way the ancient Trakesian gods were said to have set their mortal loves in the sky, as stars.

Eventually, morning came. Morning always comes. There are always losses in the night, a price paid for light."
-- Guy Gavriel Kay, Lord of Emperors


EASTER MORNING GHOST

You see this rough and ready frame?
It's walked the world, my silent friend:
I've tasted blood and grit between my teeth
and fought the desert, had it fight me back;
I've felt the Scottish sunsets take my hand
and lived to see the sunrise bear me home,
all weak and bloodied from that other world -
the battles won, at cost, against the night.
This body has its breaks and scars:
the cold white iron of demon claws,
the fiery lines they branded in my side,
my wrists, because I would not let them win.
I've held those demons on a leash,
I've held them by the throat and felt them beg
to be released - I've held them till they died.
This is the man I am, my silent friend,
but who are you?

I sensed you laughing gently in the dark
and knew despair - not mine, but yours,
as if you'd left it far too late to scream,
had swallowed up the sound and choked it down
until it grew and grew, took root and thrived
and wrapped its clinging vines around your spine.
I hear your bitter laughter edged with hope
and cry to see that long-forgotten scream
tear free and blossom into life,
in beauty and in solace and in pain,
like Eden bursting from your troubled breast.
I dreamt you thus - but when I woke
you were a fleeting flash of green
I couldn't place: who were you, silent friend?

I face the morning old, and so alone:
the wanderer and warrior confined;
the old man's eyes within a young man's face.
I put my back against these books
and face the wall, as if my longing stare
could pierce these bricks and gloomy city streets,
could travel on these Easter eagle's wings
and rise, unfettered, to the place you wait.
Who are you, Easter morning ghost?
Your presence fled before I learned your name,
but I can say with certainty and faith -
the faith of old men dreaming dreams
and young men's visions springing into life
- that I shall see you long before we meet.
And so, despite these walls I yet remain
two parts uncertainty, but one part hope.

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August 29th, 2007

Taken from my travel diary, 29.08.07, having just left our mysterious San Francisco hotel for the desert and Burning Man.


We escape the Hotel California with ease, tailgating our escaping stories out into the desert. Should it be so easy? The twisting corridors that echo with jazz and swearing children, the locked doors, the strange surreal once-seen-never-believed lodgers - will they stay forever, once we are gone? Our stories compel us onward and outward, springing the trap behind as we walk on, unknowning. How easy it is for other people to stop, to live: how simple for their aspirations to stretch out, to gobble out a year, five, twenty, flowing forward like water through a breach in the dam.

In the desert, there is no water. Time sits in the sun, writhing until it boils over, saturating each second with paths, possibilities, exploding moments and laughter, laughter, always the smile of a friend along for the ride. Did we die in some forgotten second, lonely and seeking, only to search each other out to live again? Our spirits dance with the contact, our reality misses a step and falls, flailing into the space where our bodies should be. When did we mislay them, these anchors of need and desire? When did we pass so near to each other that space became a dream, that time became the past we left behind? This is where we wander, four creatures of the now and then and yet to be, released into the world together to spread vital discontent like a balm over the trapped, static lives we pass.

The desert grabs hold and refuses to let go, playing God with our expectations, playing with our souls like a juggler plays with fire: we are the flying ones, we are the hypnotic, dangerous, oxygen-consuming flaming brands that linger behind your closed eyes. What will you do with us? We are the vision sent blazing from God, the fiery vision of change. Touch us, and you may burn; ignore us, and you may die of cold. Tonight we are your fire, tonight we are the air, tonight we are the coals you walk upon. What will you take of us?

Tonight we are the desert.

Electric President - "Grand Machine No.12"

I've been trying to listen to more new music lately, partly because there's a lot of great stuff out there, and partly because I caught up with an old friend on MSN a while ago - one I hadn't talked to properly for a long time - and she took a look at what I was listening to and said, "you really DO listen to things over and over again, don't you?"
This is true, I tend to slowly build up a list of my favourites and then listen to them for aeons - sometimes it works, but sometimes [like now] I feel the urge to see what's out there.

I appreciate the quirky, and this song by Electric President fits that inch-perfectly. It's also very subtle, intelligent and subversive, which is never bad. The video is so excellent that if you're not careful you can find yourself missing the music, which though understated is really very good. Yes, it panders to all those post-hippie era indie kids out there, but I feel I can let them have their fun as long as their putting out pieces like this one.

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