(something that mattered hugely to my father and in which he ‘found’ himself most fully in recent years13): the founding fathers of SR and (because one father was now dead), a daughter, too. Peter turned to a psalm in his prayer book to be read by Jewish mourners after the death of a loved one, so we decided to make that our text.
It was a profound time and is impossible to recapture adequately here, but as we honoured the life of this beloved father and friend together and tried to make some sense of his life and death in the midst of our grief, something amazing happened as the Word came alive and our hearts ‘burned within us’.
Psalm 42
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God:
when shall I come and behold the face of God? (vv. 1–3)
In the shock of our grief, we had forgotten that this psalm had been so much at the heart of my father’s pilgrimage in the Holy Land: itself a psalm of pilgrimage, and somehow able to draw all our pilgrimages into one. He described his longing for God at the headwaters of the Jordan14 as ‘my almost insatiable concern for God, not just for knowledge of God but a more insatiable thirst again than that’: the intensification of a lifetime’s prompting, the mystery of going deeper into God, the ‘living water’, who, in the very process of satisfying, creates the thirst and desire for more. It was our prayer too. It echoed our longing and need to know God amid the barrenness of our loss, and there were also echoes (for me, at least) of ‘For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known’ (1 Cor. 13.12). This was the beginning of orienting ourselves to a new place and way of seeing and experiencing things; my father had passed over a threshold where we could not yet go: ‘Where I am going you cannot come . . . I give you a new commandment . . .’ (Jesus to his disciples, John 13.33–34).
My tears have been my food day and night,
while they say to me all day long,
‘Where is your God?’ (v. 3)
Although at first it was difficult for us to get a sense of this in relation to my father’s life, as we sat and listened to the psalm in my father’s voice, we began to be honest about some of the difficult and darker strands of his life: particularly the Oxford years, of which he wrote:
If I had wanted some trials by which to refine my calling, they were there all right. At the time, Oxford philosophy – and such was its influence, much else besides – was largely in the grip of logical positivism, a movement that reduced Christian belief either to nonsense or simple moral guidance . . . It was not a comfortable time, not least because no one, certainly not those with whom I worked, had very helpful ideas of the way forward. It was good because intensive study day after day developed my capacity for concentrated thought, but the options open to theologians like me were very limited, and it was a deeply frustrating time.15
More recently, he referred to this experience as a ‘black hole’ (his words) and began to speak more openly of the experience of having his doctoral thesis rejected and his agony and shame in feeling completely misheard and misunderstood: ‘a misfit’. He was offered an MPhil instead and refused to accept it, and for years there was a lingering sense of bitterness in him in relation to it. The years at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton had their difficulties, too:16
Those were interesting years, gathering the best scholars and helping them work together, while also establishing regular consultations, bringing together leading specialists from around the world to meet regularly to address special topics, but the tensions with the seminary and the politics of the time inhibited the potential there and when it became evident that I had brought the place as far as I could without further assistance, and none was forthcoming, it seemed right to retire from there and get back to work.
These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the procession
and led them to the house of God,
with joyous songs of thanksgiving:
a festive multitude. (v. 4)
And yet we remembered how (as for the psalmist), no matter what he might be going through, regular, faithful worship was always such a priority for him.17 The deeply formative rhythms of prayer and worship established through his years at school, college and seminary, with their daily dynamic of reorientation to God, were continued through his involvement in a series of local churches. He was committed to the daily discipline and nurture of the ordinary things as well as the highbrow. Preaching, pastoring and regular participation in celebrating the Eucharist were essential to his vocation; so, at times when his jobs were in more secular settings, he was careful to develop his priestly role and presence in local worshipping communities:
Which are the most reliable companions? Scripture, Eucharist: consistent living in and participation in the church’s life is terribly important to me, and constant exposure to that. That’s why I really do rely very heavily on the church. For me a lot of these things are like living in a house of abundance and simply drawing on that, rather than going for particular ways of thinking. The abundance is around all the time.
He often felt quite on the margins of things but nevertheless treasured his many years as an Assistant Priest at St Mark’s, Londonderry (West Midlands), together with All Saints’ (Princeton), Christ Church Canaan (Connecticut) and Great St Mary’s (Cambridge); and he found his role as the Van Mildert Canon Professor (Durham University and Cathedral) particularly fulfilling, enabling the academic theologian and the priest in him to come together in new ways. He was also a well-known face at evensong in both St John’s and King’s College Chapels (Cambridge), which he loved to attend with Perrin whenever he could – right up to the week before he died.
Why are you downcast O my soul?
And why do you throw me into confusion?
Hope in God, for I will yet praise him
for his saving presence. (v. 5)
Worship and praise were fundamentally for God’s sake and central to his whole vision and understanding of full human being and society, ‘shaping and aligning our desire with the Lord’s’.
My God, my soul is downcast.
Therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and Hermon and of Mount Mizar.
Deep calls
