Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Easter Day

To Read:

It slowly began to make sense, the bits began to fall into place.

Something was happening and it made me cry;  for the first time in a long, long time I cried.  I went out into the night and stayed out.

The clouds seemed to be rolling back.  It kept nagging at the back of my mind.  Anna’s life hadn’t been cut short; far from it, it had been full, completely fulfilled.

The next day I headed back to the cemetery.  It took me a long time to find Anna’s grave.  It was tucked away at the back of the cemetery.  I knew that it had no headstone, just a simple wooden cross with the name on it, ‘Anna’.  I found it after about an hour.

I had gone there with this feeling of peace inside me, as if the book had been closed, as if the story had been one of triumph, but I hadn’t expected this.  I stopped and gasped.  This was it.  The little cross leaned drunkenly, its paint peeling off, and there was the name ANNA.

I wanted to laugh, but you don’t laugh in a cemetery, do you?

Not only did I want to laugh, I had to laugh.  It wouldn’t stay bottled up.  I laughed till the tears ran down my face.  I pulled up the little cross and threw it into a thicket.  ‘OK, Mister God’, I laughed, ‘I’m convinced.  Good old Mister God.  You might be a bit slow at times, but you certainly make it all right in the end.’ 

Anna’s grave was a brilliant red carpet of poppies.  Lupins stood guard in the background.  A couple of trees whispered to each other whilst a family of little mice scurried backwards and forwards through the uncut grass.  Anna was truly home.  She didn’t need a marker.  You couldn’t better this with a squillion tons of marble.  I stayed for a little while and said goodbye to her for the first time in five years.

To Reflect:

Over the years of writing these Lent Reflections I have found that I have fallen into a pattern as to how they are written.

Soon after Christmas I finally decide what the topic of the Reflections will be (if you have any ideas please send them my way) then, after the February meeting of General Synod I spend a week or so on the Isle of Bute (thank you Clergy Support Trust for your generous gift to make that possible) where I lay out the shape of the reflections and write the words for the first 10 or 15 days.  During Lent I tend to write five or six days at a time over a weekend.  And then comes Passiontide when, if I’ve been listening to the One Who Loves us Best well, I find the words are written out of my day-to-day experience of the season – which is why occasionally they arrive in inboxes slightly later than usual…

This year has been no different and I’m not planning to change things as divine whispers need to be listened to.

The latest happened only last week .  I had been at Durham University for a few days and visited the cathedral looking for a gift for my beloved, (I chose a sterling silver necklace with a Holy Spirit Dove on it).  While there I found two olive wood hearts carved out of a single piece of wood.

My heart leapt as I picked them up and, as Fynn did with his copper bangles I now hold and cuddle them each day; praying with them as they remind me that we are all in each other’s middle.  As they move through my hands I remember especially the people of the land of the Holy One which has always known too much grief and war, death and disaster. 

These two hearts, though from a fallen tree, are very much alive as they bring my middle closer to the middle of those close to me, closer to those suffering pain and bereavement, and even closer to those who live lives of anger and hatred.

They also remind me that, somehow, Mister God goes through my middle – especially on the days when I have wandered away from that big love – and we are forever entwined.

In some sense, as Fynn discovered, no other markers of our passing – in the end not even these two wooden hearts – will be needed for then, as the Good Book reminds us we shall be known as we are known….

For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³ And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.     (1 Corinthians 13.12-13)

As Mother Julian, herself living through a time of war and struggle that came with both the Black Death and the Peasant’s Revolt, taught us, regardless of death or perhaps because of one particular death and resurrection, reminds her readers, ‘All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well’

I felt sure that somewhere Anna and Mister God were laughing…..

May you have a wonderful and blessed Easter and come to live the truth that the risen Christ has escaped the tomb and made a home in your middle.

Please Note:  These reflections are also published on my blog: suffolkvicarhomes.com on Bluesky as @suffolkvicar.bsky.social, and on my public Facebook page  Suffolk Vicar – Rev Andrew Dotchin.  If you would like them as a daily email please send a request to revdotchin@gmail.com

If you have enjoyed reading them please make a donation to The Clergy Support Trust who provided a  generous grant to help me find the space to compose them.