Dear Friends,

Don't worry, this is not a precursor to some great announcement, but I am going to confess a slightly guilty pleasure I have in leave-taking. Not that I ever want to leave anywhere, I've never been one to be constantly planning my next move - which perhaps explains a life time of failure at chess - and when I have had to leave a place I usually do so with a fair amount of grief. However, once the shock of the end has come upon me, there can be something quite heartening, perhaps egotistically, in the rounds of farewell visits and events which mark the period before departure. It can be a time of feeling appreciated, cherished even, in a way that the humdrum of simply remaining in a place never achieves.

Of course, as Christians, we are called to remain, to abide, to give time. As Jesus tells us in his farewell discourses to the disciples at the Last Supper in the Gospel of John, we are to abide in him and he in us. At the Community of the Resurrection they used to say (with a gleeful twinkle in their eyes) that each brother only ever got two parties, one when they professed and one after they had died. No sentimentality there, and indeed in that they were true to the Benedictine vocation of commitment to a particular place and a particular group of people, for life, not unlike the vocation of marriage.

A particular farewell I enjoyed was when I was 18. I had spent a year in the south of Italy. I had an early flight, and getting back from an all night goodbye party with all my friends, I found I had an hour before I was being taken to the airport. I sat down in my kitchen, made myself a cup of lap sang souchong tea and began to read my first novel in Italian. I was on my way to study at Cambridge and life was full of vibrant possibilities. What had passed seemed like a wonderful awakening to what was to cone. It was raining so hard that I had to wade knee deep through puddles to get to the airport. My baggage was way over the limit, but those were the days when such things really didn't matter. 

We live in a time now, where leave taking is nothing but painful. I write having just got back from Hansel's funeral, which was a lovely send off, with a stellar tribute from Rose, looking absolutely resplendent. But it was bitterly sad that we could not gather together as a church family to participate in this goodbye.  

All of which led me to wonder, as we come to celebrate this feast of the Ascension, what it was like for Jesus to leave this earth and go home to heaven. I often thought of the sadness and confusion of the disciples, represented perhaps by Mary Magdalene's longing to cling to Jesus in the garden just after the resurrection. I've often thought of the theological implications , how Jesus' incarnational presence to a few people in a particular time and place is transformed by the ascension into a presence for all people, at all times and in all places. But strangely enough I've never really considered it from Jesus' point of view. One of the key points about the Ascension is that Jesus is fully human, as well as fully divine. And this humanity means that there must have been an experience which we can relate to, even if such an experience is way beyond our imagining - what does it feel like, for example, to pass from time into eternity? 

I wonder also what it felt like for Jesus to say goodbye to his closest friends. The text does not leave time for tearful farewell, for a hug or a handshake or a tear, he is suddenly taken up into the clouds. Of course he knew that they were not orphans, that in a real sense, they abiding in him and he in them, that he would be with them to the end of the age, but none of this begins to answer my questions. Nor can we know what it felt like as a human to be subsumed into the godhead, what is was like to be reunited (although of course they were never separated) with his Father in heaven. Of all the great feasts and dramas of the church's year, this one is the most mysterious, the least humanly relatable in some sense. 

And yet because Jesus ascended, the experience of ascension will be revealed to us all as we too, one day, will transition from time to eternity, as we too will be reunited with our Father in heaven. And of course this means that we too will have to temporarily say goodbye to our loved ones on this earth. And that leave-taking will be hard for them - but we can only imagine what it will actually be like for us. In the meantime, as Juliet says to Romeo, parting is such sweet sorrow. Sweet because we remember the good about somebody as today we remembered the wonderful things about Hansel. But on this side of the veil the sorrow is real, as no doubt it was for the disciples when they received their rather disturbing message from the angels, 'Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven?' And if we, with them, look for a while up to heaven, may it be to inspire us to go out and spread the good news on earth.  

With love and prayers,

Fr Ben   

On Tuesday, Brenda wrote this homily for me to read about the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale - well worth a read, especially as we pray for our NHS.

Today it is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. With all that is going on in our lives at present how could we not remember such a formidable lady who our present day nurses and carers have so much to thank her for in how they carry out their duties.

Florence was named after the Italian city in which she was born.  Her parents enjoyed travelling around Europe and chose to have their new baby in Italy. She was baptised on 4th July 1820 in the Villa Colombaia where the family was staying. Florence’s faith was very important to her all her life and she said it was a call from God that gave her the vocation to become a nurse.  

Florence is probably best known for her work in the Crimean War.  When she and her recently recruited nurses arrived at the hospital in Scutari in the Crimean Peninsula in November 1854 conditions were indescribably bad.  It was dirty, vermin ridden, there was a serious lack of supplies and medicines, no decent food for the patients, and the death rate was extremely high.  The patients were shown little care and attention.  Florence was determined that all this should change for the better. She set too with much opposition from the medical staff already in attendance and the authorities back home in England.  She and her ladies scrubbed clean the entire building, ordered new supplies of clean bedding, bandages and other essential equipment as well as making sure the patients were given healthy food to help regain their health.  The nurses also made their own uniforms.  She made sure the authorities got in supplies of medicines that would help the casualties recover.  Florence redesigned the layout of the wards and her ideas are still in use today in our hospitals such as the design of the new Nightingale Hospitals which incorporated her ideas.  She insisted that beds were a certain distance from each other to make sure no cross infection and that patients should be given some privacy.  She also introduced night duty for the nurses.  She is best known for walking round the wards throughout the night with her lamp to make sure the patients were not in any discomfort.

Florence is understood to have said the following to her nurses about their vocation in 1873 (just four years before HI was dedicated!)   "Feeling God has made her what she (the nurse) is, she may seek to carry on her work in the hospital as a fellow worker with God.  Remembering that Christ died for her, she may be ready to lay down her life for her patients".   In those days all nurses were female which is not the same today but Florence's words still resonate with our present day situation.  Think of the number of nurses and care workers, both male and female, who have lost their lives doing their duty in looking after Covid 19 patients.  

There is much that could be said about Florence Nightingale because she made many other changes to how the sick and needy should be looked after. She also introduced the idea of statistics for recording purposes as well as making sure the Government of the day took her ideas seriously.