The Cure of Souls

Listened to the Australian novelist Peter Carey on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs. No use for religion, he says, And I don’t need the Bible. He might have no need of religion but he hasn’t lost touch with spirituality. One of his records is the wonderful piece by Gavin Bryars, which I’ve heard before, that uses a recording of an unnamed homeless man singing:

Jesu’s blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.
Jesu’s blood never failed me yet,
This one thing I know,
For he loves me so.

I used to do graveside funerals for homeless men (they were usually men) when I was chaplain to a day centre and shelter. We would meet at the cemetery at 8.30am, as these funerals were done before the main programme began. Years ago they were known as “paupers funerals”, and the coffin was basically a cardboard box, paid for by the council. I buried army officers, doctors and lawyers in this way. I would usually read “foxes have holes, and the birds their nests, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head”. When I took these funerals the men from the centre would all shuffle up silently and stand around in the rain. While I was reading the service, cans of Carlsberg Special Brew would be drawn from pockets, and the hiss, hiss of these being opened signaled the start of breakfast.

Another piece of wisdom from my recent supervision group meeting was a discussion on the real role of the priest in society today. Essentially, we concluded, the need has not changed, and we should not change. The old phrase, particularly in the Church of England, was the “cure of souls”. This is not “cure” in the sense of making people better, but simply the care and love for all the people in the place where we have been put; not just the ones we like, or the ones who go to church, or the ones who might go to church if we work on them. We are there to get alongside the bores, the rich, the adulterers, the pompous, the drunks, the comfortable, the agnostics and atheists, the mad, the bad and the sad. The danger of a Church where priests become managers (I speak as one with a management degree) is the loss of this loving, on the street, in the home, round the shops. I am at my best out and about amongst the people; as I shed more of the peripheral responsibilities for maintaining the institution, I can spend more of my time on the core purpose for which I was ordained. I can lean on a gate or stop by the schoolyard or pop round the homes and be with the people. Thank the Lord for that.