Timing...

When I think back, I can now remember that I never thought I would see old age.  I can’t put my finger on why but I didn’t.

Perhaps I was influenced by the immortal line in the film Blade Runner where the creator of the rogue replicants says to him “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly.”

I was aware that I had been blessed with so many wonderful experiences of God, beyond anything I could justify. I have heard God speaking to me in many and various ways from my childhood. I experienced things on a regular basis which many Christians longed for just once.  God had been so good to me and his light had indeed burned so very very brightly.

This gave me a kind of fearlessness which embraced racing around the streets of London on two wheels, or sharing bunk beds with a recent triad ex–addict without question.

When I really needed God to speak to me, I knew where I could go and how to wait to hear from God.  I didn’t always get a direct answer to my questions, but I always received the next piece of the puzzle.

I had been so blessed and God’s light had burned so bright for me, perhaps I could only ever expect to live half as long.

That is not so unusual amongst the young, of course.  Being old seems such a very long way away, and so incomprehensible when you are in your teens and your twenties.

As I grew older however, other people came into my life – wife, son, daughter. Priorities change.  Plans change.  Whereas once I could be ready to pack bags at a moment's notice for a new experience in life, there were now other people to think about.  Other considerations.  Growing old starts to become more attractive as the time of life when I could relax with my wife after our children had flown the nest.

Mel and I had planned to retire to Oban on the west coast of Scotland.  I would buy a second hand Rib and explore the channels and islands.  We would hold hands and watch the sun setting over the sea.

I forgot about my younger premonitions.

Now of course, we know that will never be. After another few weeks of struggling, I was admitted to hospital last week for more scans.  They showed that my cancer has now spread to my liver and lungs. That’s a full house for the major organs which are monitored for Prostate Cancer.  It is travelling at will around my body.  I have reached the limit of treatment for radiotherapy.  There is no chemotherapy available.  My cancer is resistant to the standard chemo and I am not well enough to even contemplate the only stronger alternative.

The  consensus is that I have entered my last few months of life on this earth.

And so to timing.

Recently, I shared my ambivalent thoughts on retiring (Broken Vessels) and it just so happened that on the day of my official retirement last Friday, I was transferred from hospital to our local hospice in Dorchester.  The timing was poignant to say the least.

I should only be here for a few days this time to get my meds on an even keel and control my pain to give me some quality of life for the time I have left.

Which brings me to one positive thought tonight and the opportunity to express it.  As I face this shortening fuse, at least I get the opportunity to prepare for my death – a luxury which many do not enjoy - and I want use it to ensure that, wherever possible, I am at peace with others.

So to anyone I have hurt over the years, I humbly ask your forgiveness. And to anyone who knows they have hurt me, may I assure you of mine.

In the last few moments of Blade Runner it is the android, the replicant who is about to die, that displays the greatest humanity.  Built to destroy, he chooses to save a life as his last act before the curtains come down on his own – and he saves the life of the person  who has been sent to kill him.

There is nothing so dramatic in my life, but I have often found myself in conflict with others during my ministry and conflict almost inevitably leads to one or both parties being hurt.

Neither is this a death-bed confession (I've got a few months to go yet and nothing to warrent such hype!) but setting things straight is given a high priority in the Gospels.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

(Matthew 5:23;24)

In the Lord's Prayer, our own forgiveness is inextricably linked with our willingness to forgive others.

"Forgive us our sins
as we have forgiven those who sin against us."

Forgiveness shared and exchanged is the only way in God’s kingdom and I both offer and seek this as part of my preparation for what lies ahead.

Beyond that, I would ask for your continuing prayers for my wife Mel, son Isaac and  daughter Iona. They are uppermost in my thoughts and prayers at this time and I would be grateful if you could spare a moment for them from time to time.

For myself, I have found encouragement in the words of Psalm 16 recently:

I keep my eyes always on the LORD.
With him at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
Amen.

Reflections on 7/7

As the 10th anniversary of the London bombings on 7/7 is marked with wreaths, services of remembrance and moments of silence, my thoughts are taken back to that day in a very personal way.

Like millions of other Londoners, I caught the tube into the centre of London that morning.  I count myself fortunate that I was already off the tube and at my destination when the first bomb exploded, tearing through metal, flesh and bone with indiscriminate indifference.

I was visiting my wife, Mel at Bart’s Hospital (near St Paul’s).  She was half way through yet another 3 months in hospital after her near fatal accident in 2003.  It was not going well.  In May she began a final series of reconstructive surgery on her leg and abdomen, attempting to cover areas of flesh which had been torn away by the tarmac and the lorry’s wheels.  After the first operation she was held together with over 120 shiny metal staples which made her leg and stomach look like a giant zip, but the wounds intended to improve her appearance wouldn’t heal, and bit by bit, the necrotic tissue which resulted had to be removed, painfully and hopelessly.

I was in the ward with her when news of the bombs started to come in.  We had already heard an unusual number of sirens outside, and now the hospital was gearing up for a major incident.  Beds were being emptied of all but the most seriously ill.  Patients were being sent home or moved to less acute wards.  Those being admitted for planned surgery were being turned away, and the hospital staff were whispering the latest reports to each other.

Our first reaction was fear.  They wouldn’t try to send Mel home, would they?  With the number of tubes and machines she was linked to, it would have been a nightmare.  We need not have worried.  Mel’s situation was too serious for that to be an option, and so we settled into waiting in the largely empty ward – waiting for whatever would follow.

By now the streets outside were eerily quiet.  Traffic was almost non-existent cut off by the many road closures.  The only sound of traffic was the wail of sirens from ambulances, police and fire trucks, often travelling at high speed along the empty roads.

A television was brought into the nursing station, and hospital staff gathered there in every spare moment to try to glean more information in the confusion which followed the blasts.  Mixed in with the unfolding horror of what had happened, there were fears of more bombs, more attacks.

In the end only a handful of victims were brought to Mel’s ward, and only one stayed beyond a few days.  But the effect on that victim’s life was clear and dramatic.  In the bed next to Mel’s was a young woman with severe lacerations to her face, arms and legs.  She too had parts of her body held together with stiches and staples.  She too had to endure painful changes of dressings and wonder at the long term effects on her life.  But her wounds had not been caused by accidental negligence – they had been coldly and deliberately inflicted in a planned and co-ordinated attack designed to kill and maim as many people as possible.  Mel and I heard her crying with her fiancé and family, day after day as they came to terms with what had happened.

At the end of the day, I remember having to walk home to Brixton – along with many other people for whom it was the only means of getting out of the centre of London.

I also remember all the security alerts on the tube in the days that followed.  In the heightened levels of alert, every suspicious bag or situation was met with trains being stopped, and announcements over the tannoy asking passengers to exit the station immediately.  I remember the calm and stoic way in which commuters responded each time, without panic as we made our way to the surface and tried to work out how to complete our journeys.

Finally, I remember the shooting and killing of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station – one of our two local stations – by police who mistook him for a bomber because of bungled intelligence and the puffer jacket he was wearing.  Yet another victim of the bombings.

Today, 10 years on, what has changed?

For the UK, the focus has shifted from Al Qaeda to ISIS, but the threat remains the same.  Around the world, acts of terror continue on an almost daily basis.  Suicide bombers have become common place and lone gunmen still wreak havoc in people’s lives, claiming allegiance to some misguided creedal cause.

Over the last 10 years, the terror of rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza have been met with the terror of missiles and artillery rounds fired from Israeli jets and tanks.  Iraq and Syria have descended in to the anarchy which has allowed ISIS to grow and impose its brutal power on millions.  The lives of people in hotels and shopping centres in Mumbai and Kenya have been devastated and hundreds of children and young women have been abducted in Nigeria. In the USA, marathon runners were blown up in Boston.  In Europe, cartoonists, journalists and Jews have been targeted with bullets designed to exact retribution on  anyone who believes that the pen is mightier than the sword.

In recent days, tourists were gunned down on a beach in Tunisia, mosques were bombed in Kuwait and Nigeria, and a young white man killed worshippers at a Bible study in the ‘black church’ which had welcomed him in Charleston, USA.

So what is the answer?

Certainly not the law of revenge which seems to dominate the conflict between the Israeli Government and Palestinians.  Certainly not the spiral of violence that we see in some parts of the world as different communities become more and more sectarian, demonising those who have hurt them to the point where retaliations are just as inhuman as the acts which led to them.  Not even the ever higher levels of security and surveillance which affect all our lives and yet cannot detect every threat.

In the long run perhaps the only way forward is one which at first appears weak – yet demands huge inner strength.

It is the path which family members of many Charleston victims have courageously sought to embrace when they faced the murderer of their loved ones in court.

People like the daughter of victim Ethel Lance:

“I will never talk to her ever again. I will never hold her ever again.  You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. But God forgive you. I forgive you.”

Others acknowledged how hard it is to forgive and yet spoke of beginning that journey, “For me, I'm a work in progress, and I acknowledge that I'm very angry. We have to forgive. I pray God on your soul. And I also thank God I won't be around when your judgement day comes.”

In such forgiveness, there is a powerful challenge – the challenge to change.

Anthony Thompson, the grandson of victim Myra Thompson, told the killer, “I forgive you, my family forgives you. … We would like you to take this opportunity to repent. Do that and you'll be better off than you are right now.”

Nor is this simply a Christian response.  Malala Yousafzai hit headlines around the world after miraculously surviving being shot in the head and neck by a Taliban gunman in Pakistan when she was just 15.  Two years later she became the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

When she addressed the UN on her 16^th birthday, she said these words,

“I do not even hate the Talib who shot me.  Even if there is a gun in my hand and he stands in front of me, I would not shoot him.  This is the compassion I have learnt from Muhammad-the prophet of mercy, Jesus Christ and the Lord Buddha.  This is the legacy of change that I have inherited from Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Muhammad Ali Jina.  This is the philosophy of non-violence that I have learnt from Gandhi Jee, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa… That is what my soul is telling me, be peaceful and love everyone.”

In the end, hate can never conquer hate – costly, committed, forgiving love can.