kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth

Abide With Me

I mentioned in a comment on August 5th that my brother-in-law had died, and that I was having trouble finding the words to use for a post about his death. Now is, I think, the time to put that right.

James died on July 30th; he was 43 years old. He’d been very ill for a long while, never really regaining his health after being seriously injured in a motorbike accident some two years ago. In that, he broke his back and was permanently paralysed. After a very long stay in hospital he did have a few months where he was able to get around a bit in a wheelchair, and for a while we thought he would be okay, though obviously very limited. But gradually complications began to take a hold of him, and his health deteriorated. He spent the last six or so months of his life in the Sue Ryder Care home, in the Old Palace, Ely. We knew four months ago that he wasn’t going to be recovering, and had just been helplessly watching him deteriorate in front of us. They were extremely good at Sue Ryder, and kept him as comfortable as possible; but sometimes he was in a lot of pain. Although he was, thankfully, peaceful at the end.

James was a great guy, but a bit of rogue too. He had a wicked sense of humour. He was quite a spiritual person, and we often used to have some really quite deep discussions about God, Christ, faith, and the Church. But, along with many people, he never found a way to express that spirituality through organised religion. He was grateful for visits from a couple of Priests in the last weeks of his life. I’m quite sure that, despite all the difficulties in his life, he had made his peace with God at the end of it.

The funeral took place yesterday, August 12th. It was a good funeral, as far as funerals go. There were a lot of people there, and the Church was quite full. Lots of his friends and family were able to be there. Richard, a fellow Reader, who led the service, managed to get the balance of the funeral just right.

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The Passion Flower

We’ve had Passion Flowers growing in our garden for quite a number of years. They are beautiful flowers, one of my favourites in the garden. But this year I thought we’d lost the shrub that had continued to spring up every year, year after year. I thought it had been strangled by the other shrubs growing around the area — I hadn’t been able to trim them up last cutting season, so they were all a bit overgrown.

Today I was trying to tidy things up a little. And right at the back of another bush, there was some Passion Flower growing through. Just one piece had grown up the back of the bush, and when it got to the top spread itself out, until it covered quite a large area on the Berberis. There were a couple of flowers in full bloom. Although they were completely inaccessible — so the picture I’ve used here comes from where I find many of the images I use on the blog: stock.xchng, a very useful site.

When I see a Passion Flower, I often think of the story that goes with it. I first read the story in a hand-written book that came from an elderly aunt. But I’ll copy a piece here from the BBC’s h2g2 site — which is similar to Wikipedia.

The Passion Flower

Unusually for such a story it has a well-documented and undisputed origin. Jacomo Bosio, a scholar, lived in Rome in 1609. He was working on a treatise upon the crucifixion when an Augustinian friar of Mexican birth showed him drawings of a remarkable flower. After much prevarication (and a rather liberal interpretation of the facts) he agreed to include the drawings of the flower in his book. The symbols of the Passion of Christ were many and varied. The unique corona represented the crown of thorns. The ten sepals and petals represented the Apostles (except Judas and Peter, who both distanced themselves from Christ prior to the crucifixion). The five anthers were the five wounds on Christ’s body, and the three stigmas the nails. The leaves were the spear that pierced His side, and the tendrils the scourges that flayed His flesh.

Click here to read the full article

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