My day "off"

Monday is normally my day off. I spent a fair bit of Sunday night preparing for a funeral I had to take on Monday morning. I went into my office early and did the final preparations. The funeral was for the father of one of the paramedics at St John. The family were heavily involved in their local volunteer fire brigade.

There was a great contingent of fire service people at the service. As well as this there was a whole group of people, work colleagues, from St John Ambulance. As people gathered and greeted me I felt both privileged and also a big sense of responsibility.

I recall a fire fighter once describing my chaplaincy people as ".. your flock from out side of the church." That's what I felt like as people came in. They saw me and many said, "Oh you're leading the service, that's good." I felt like here was my "flock" from two different emergency services and felt really privileged to be their representative ministering to one of their families. As I led the pallbearers and casket out through the honour guard made up of firefighters and ambulance officers it seemed like I was among friends, a valid part of their circle, seen as an accepted useful team member. I was invited to ride the vintage fire engine out to the crematorium and loved it. Being allowed into the emergency service culture and comradeship can never be taken for granted. It is a real privilege to be treasured.

At the same time it is a challenge. When they think of "God" or "church" or "Jesus" they think of me .... and what do they see? Am I the true expression of Jesus' Spirit amongst them? Did I do justice to the "Eternal Spirit/God" as I conducted the funeral ceremony? Did they switch off at the religious bits or did I as a true shepherd, couch them in such a way that they could identify with the deeper things? It's a massive responsibility, to help encourage and facilitate the spiritual dimension of people's experience and understanding of life. Am I up to it?

I finished the funeral, put in my December time sheets to Workplace Support, picked up a ham being donated to our Christmas day dinner and finally went home to have a late lunch and the rest of the day off. After lunch I felt absolutely exhausted! I have seldom felt so weak. It was the end of a very very full on week or so, with a whole lot of extras thrown in. I think you run on adrenalin and when the pressure comes off you wilt. I had an early afternoon nap. Then got up and spent hours unpacking and sorting out the stuff in and on my van from the Habitat site.

Today is Tuesday. We have our big community Christmas day dinner on Friday so I am focusing on all the stuff to get ready for that, as well as doing other chaplaincy and church stuff. My life is never dull... but I really do like it that way.