Haircuts and homecoming

The third and final reflection from Llandaff Diocese’s Clergy School in York

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This time, the journey seems longer on the way home which is strange as the experience, for me, is often the opposite.

We stop a few times for food and comfort breaks although the traffic is unusually kind, and the time it takes is a little over six hours.

The Mass which sent us on our way, as food for the journey, was simpler and quieter than the others through the week. A reflective moment at the end of a few days away, nestled by the city of York, washed in the sun.

Fr Mark Preece, the Archdeacon of Margam, gives a tender homily which gives a focus to haircuts. He’s not giving barber tips or free beauty products, says in self deprecating terms that he’s probably had the same hairstyle himself since he was six. We laugh, but he turns to the Acts account of Paul’s trim.

“At Cenchreae he had his hair cut off, because of a vow he had made,” we hear from the first reading, read with gentleness and a soft pace.

The trim comes with a pledge, it’s an expressive move for something which lay deeper in Paul’s heart. It’s a cut with an edge.

Fr Mark reflects on what we have gained and learned these last few days.

Like a hairdresser’s assistant, he brushes up the lost locks from the floor, hands them back to us and pats us on our way, perhaps feeling a little better about ourselves.

After Mass, there are some gratitudes shared. These kinds of events don’t just happen. Not everyone is able to be mentioned by name but hopefully everyone who has played a part will know the part they have played and, through the gifts they have given, feel a little bit different.

Earlier, we listened to Professor Simon Oliver of the University of Durham who talked about exchanging gifts and took us on a detour from the Ascension of Jesus and round about to the Pentecost Gifts of the Spirit. He explored with us how Jesus is known now by those who have not seen and not heard, left us with the question: how do we make Christ known today?

Each speaker this week has brought their own style and study to us in an engaging and sometimes entertaining way. It’s been an enlightening and yet ‘light’ time away together. There have been no dead ends or cul-de-sacs.

I know about cul-de-sacs. I was brought up in one. A straight line of 26 Council homes but with an escape route of a lane where we could sneak to the shops or play in the Chicken Lanes (there were no chickens) or crawl beneath the factory fence, climb the drain pipe and eventually fall into a vat of water, coming away with a fractured arm.

I was in my twenties when I told my parents the truth of the incident of the factory fracture.

Since the plastered-arm days of my seven year old fall, my right arm has served me well. The time seems to have flown by. Sometimes, the journey has felt quick. But there have been many water falls and factory fractures along the way.

There have been just two memorable haircuts I’ve received in my life. The first was at the age of eleven or twelve when I began my crew-cut days. As a self conscious idiot of a kid I immediately regretted it, convinced that people were looking and laughing at me as I walked home. So I took that walk of shame with my jacket over my head.

People looked at me.

At the beginning of our week, on the first night, in the lovely little church in Bishopshill in York, where Christians have worshipped for a thousand years and more, Canon Ian Mcintosh shared some personal stories which drove him to desire a church that was turned upside down and inside out.

Quite often we have every right to feel bad about ourselves, as individuals and a Community of Faith. We want things to be different, to wish and want that life was not as it is. But our fractures need time to heal. Water falls are often only talked about years later. And I learn not to cover my head in haircut shame although the need is always there.

Earlier in the week, Canon Michael Leyden said something like, “The Incarnation is not God wanting to know what it means to be human. He doesn’t. He invented it! God wants us to know what it means to be human.”

So that’s our calling. To discover what it means to be human with all its haircuts and covered heads and fractured arms.

Within an hour of returning home, I do a quick turn around, change my clothes, adorn the black and the collar, pick up the oils and the Blessed Sacrament and move on to give the Last Rites to a dear parishioner whose journey through this life is drawing to a close.

But this is no cul-de-sac. No dead end. Something else and something more feels tangible. All we’ve gleaned this week, the life of Jesus, risen, ascended, glorified seems somehow closer. The journey home is not so far away.

Sometimes, though, the journey home does seems long and lingering. Like today. But, like today, I had great company as Fr Ben took to the wheel, and wound his way along the way home. There are always travelling companions. I’ve been blessed with mine.

“Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit,” I say as I anoint our dear friend.

This week, as we loitered in York, another dear friend died. Fr Terry Doherty. He had been my training Incumbent. I remember the first time I met him, as I stepped off the train in Barry, just a few months before my ordination. I was, at that time, without a Title Parish, and time was ticking by. He took me out to Lunch. Probably each of us was checking out the other, trying to work out if this would work.

It seemed to work and I’m grateful for the time I spent in that parish with him and the other fantastic travelling companions of Merthyr Dyfan. In the days of his dimming, Fr Ben has cared for him so well.

Oh, the second haircut of significant memory? I’m at St Stephen’s House, just a year before meeting Fr Terry, as I try to train to be a priest, thirty years ago, with long hair, ponytailed and proud, grown since I was an undergraduate.

It drops to the ground in long locks, and I’m left with cropped hair and a French fringe.

Then, I didn’t make the connection with my eleven or twelve year old self. I didn’t walk home with my head covered. Didn’t care if people looked at me.

But, if I’m honest, I did feel a little bit different

Anyway, I’m home now.

And I feel a little bit different.

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