I am married to a Scot so we celebrated Burns Night on January 25th, despite being in exile in England. My husband recites the Address to the Haggis written by the poet Robert Burns and at the end of the recitation stabs the haggis with a flourish, as is the tradition. He uses a sgian dubh (a small ceremonial knife) to do this which belonged to his father, and which his father wore to work every day, tucked into the long socks he wore under his kilt.
Why on earth am I telling you about this?
Because recently after taking part in an ecumenical service, a very different poem written by Robert Burns came to mind. Burns’ poem about an insect sprang unbidden into my mind while I was reflecting on taking part in Ecumenical Vespers in honour of the late Pope Benedict at Westminster Roman Catholic Cathedral, at the kind invitation of my brother President of Churches Together in England, Cardinal Vincent Nicholls.
Burns’ poem about the tiny insect he spies crawling on a woman’s hat is written in the Habbie dialect and form, and sees Robert Burns musing that the insect does not observe class distinctions and regards all human beings equally, as potential hosts, and so lands on us all. Burns concludes his poem with these words,
‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’
English translation: help us see ourselves as others see us!
I think these lines sprang up in my memory because the kind and generous invitation to the Moderator of the Free Churches Group (currently an ordained woman) by the Cardinal was an invitation to me to cross over a threshold into the shared grief and memories of those present who belonged to a form of the Christian tradition which was not my own. I was invited to share in the memories of those who had loved and respected Pope Benedict for his intellect, his rigour, his deep theological exploration of Jesus of Nazareth, his generous engagement with others, his prayer, and his long ministry and service of Roman Catholicism. For a moment during the service of evening prayer, with the Psalms sung in English rather than the traditional Latin, I was able to enter a space with other Christian brothers and sisters and see them differently.
The Service of Evening Prayer was beautiful. The Motet by Henry Purcell was sung by the choristers,
Now, now that the sun hath veil’d his light
And bid the world goodnight;
To the soft bed my body I dispose,
But where shall my soul repose?
Dear, dear God, even in thy arms,
Then to thy rest, O my soul!
And singing, praise the mercy
That prolongs thy days.
Hallelujah!
The sermon was given by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Williams, apparently without notes. The generous ecumenical welcome enabled us all to participate and to worship profoundly. The music of hymns and responses sung by the choir was beautiful. The closing hymn was “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” (written by Charles Wesley, Anglican priest and poet, and the cofounder of the Methodist movement with his brother John). Cardinal Vincent told me he had chosen this hymn because it was sung at the funeral of Pope Benedict and he had found himself following the Pope’s coffin as this was sung, moved to tears at the lines, “Changed from glory, into glory”.
You might still be asking why is she telling us this and where do those lines of Robert Burns fit into this reflection?
After the service concluded there was a reception to which all guests were invited, and Cardinal Vincent (again without notes) spoke of his greatest and deepest memories of Pope Benedict during his visit to the UK. At this moment he chose to remember Pope Benedict speaking and telling stories about Jesus with a group of children who listened intently and carefully. Cardinal Vincent chose not, at that moment, to remember a man described as God’s rottweiler, a theological conservative or traditionalist, author of 60 books, a reflective theologian Pope, but rather someone who kept a group of children enthralled and in doing so was fully present to them in that moment.
I continue to reflect on how we see ourselves and how others see us. We can delude ourselves about who we are, how we interact with others, how we behave, how we present ourselves. Others may misread us, not grasp the whole of ourselves and focus on a tiny part of who we are and what we do. We may, in our memories be partial and incomplete.
It is only in our relationship with God that we are fully known, attended to and seen in all our incompleteness and frailty, and in that relationship to be “changed from glory, into glory”, redeemed and transformed to be the person God created us to be. In Psalm 139 we celebrate that it was God who made us and that there is nothing in us which God does not see,
“Your eyes see all my days”.
Whatever our character, and whatever we are and do, at the last and at the end of our days we stand before our Maker and cast before God “our crowns”, lost in the wonder, the love and praise of God. We are all creatures of a Creator God who creates and re-creates us, and all the world.
Every blessing
Revd Helen Cameron
Moderator of the Free Churches Group