Claire-shaped

Two funerals down, two to go.  Yesterday’s got to me a little.  I didn’t know the person we were committing to God’s care, but I knew the rest of the congregation.  All five of them.  All women, gathered sadly and quietly to say goodbye to a man.  

I learned a little of what it was like to stand at the foot of the Cross yesterday.  To be one of the women.  To be regarded as part of what they were doing, to be acknowledged as a bridge in the process, to be expected to articulate something of God, in terms they knew and recognised and which spoke into their guts.  

Any one of my wonderful male clergy friends would have done a great job of that funeral.  But yesterday, I was thankful that I am Claire-shaped.