A Celebration of the
Life of John Phillips
4 August 2012
Saint Faith’s Anglican
Church
Vancouver BC
To hear an audio recording of the Sermon as preached at John's funeral, please click here.
To hear an audio recording of the Sermon as preached at John's funeral, please click here.
When I finished speaking with
Eleanor the morning of John’s death and began my preparations to drive to the
house to be with her, I found myself humming again and again a
nineteenth-century Welsh song that I had recently learned.
Nid wy’n gofyn bywyd moethus,
Aur y byd na’i berlau mân:
Gofyn wyf am galon hapus,
Calon onest, calon lân.
Calon lân yn llawn daioni,
Tecach yw na’r lili dlos:
Dim ond calon lân all ganu
Canu’r dydd a chanu’r nos.
The
English translation of the refrain is a bit more religious than the Welsh, but
it retains the spirit if not the letter of the original.
I’d not ask a life that’s easy,
Gold and pearls so little mean,
Rather seek a heart that’s joyful,
Heart that’s honest, heart that’s clean.
Heart that’s clean and filled with virtue,
Fairer far than lilies white,
Only pure hearts praise God truly,
Praise him all the day and night.
I
have been pondering why this song came to mind on that morning and I think that
I have begun to grasp why. It is an
honest heart that searches and a joyful heart that tells stories about what has
been found and a pure heart that is able to sing, at all times and in all
places, about the searching and the stories.
Genuine religious faith is about
searching for meaning. Indeed the
medieval theologian, Anselm, described theology as ‘faith seeking
understanding’. There are those who
believe religious faith is primarily about doctrines, but I do not share that
view. We are all caught within that web
of mystery we call ‘life’ and all of us, whether we call ourselves religious or
not, seek to understand how this web came into being, how it works and where
its various strands lead us and connect us.
The ‘calon onest’, the ‘honest heart’, spends a whole lifetime in that
search for meaning.
But this search for meaning within
the mystery is not without discoveries.
But once again these discoveries are less about creeds and controversies
than they are about relationships that can only be described by stories. At the heart of the intertwined Jewish and
Christian faiths are the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs, the stories
of liberation from oppression, the stories of an itinerant rabbi from Galilee and
the stories of his earliest disciples.
From these stories we glean meaning for our own life stories and we find
ways to weave our own histories into this tapestry that tells the story of
God’s gracious creating, redeeming and renewing love for us and for all
creation. The ‘calon hapus’, the ‘joyful
heart’, cannot help but tell those stories.
And what better way is there to tell
stories than by singing? In a recent
book about singing in the Christian tradition, Kathleen Harmon describes how
singing involves our whole being as our minds and bodies and our hearts and
souls unite to share our joys and sorrows and our hopes and fears with one
another and with the world. Harmon notes
that singing involves us in the mystery of time. When we sing, time is no longer an
abstraction; it is embodied in us as we mark the tempo and breathe time into
our lungs in order to make music. The
‘calon lân’, the ‘pure heart’, cannot help but sing as an expression of its
searching and its story-telling.
Although my association with Saint
Faith’s began when my wife, Paula, became Rector in December of 1998, my
relationship with John really began last year when I became
Priest-in-charge. Living in Surrey made my
visits to White Rock easier; I could drop by on my way into Vancouver or on my
way home. During those visits I met a
man of faith, a faith that was not afraid to search, a faith that found joy in
telling stories and a faith that found expression in song.
His accomplishments in his chosen
field of research and teaching testify to his inquiring and discerning mind,
surely as great a gift of the Holy Spirit as any other. His commitment to recovering the stories of
his forebears testifies to his sense of continuity and future hope. His love of music, especially of singing, testifies
to his love of community and his love of creating something wonderful with
others.
Today we bid farewell to this man
whose honest heart did not cease to search, whose joyful heart did not cease to
tell the stories of creation, whether great or small, universal or particular,
and whose pure heart did not cease to sing, even when his own voice was
stilled.
Nid wy’n gofyn bywyd moethus,
Aur y byd na’i berlau mân:
Gofyn wyf am galon hapus,
Calon onest, calon lân.
I’d not ask a life that’s easy,
Gold and pearls so little mean,
Rather seek a heart that’s joyful,
Heart that’s honest, heart that’s clean. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment