Parting is such sweet sorrow ...

Last night was the jolly part. Fortified by wine and food, I think we were all putting on the brave face, enjoying the moment in the knowledge that it wasn't goodbye, that there was today still to come. But today has been that  final service for which we'd prepared, mentally and logistically, and left everyone there, I think, wrung out emotionally. 

I'm talking about church, natch, and the last service with our current Rector as he leaves Dunoon - in the rain and wind that has now set in for the night - for Bishop's House in Oban, two hours' drive to the north. In a sense we're not parting at all, for he will have pastoral oversight of us just as he will of all the other charges of this numerically tiny but physically huge diocese. But that didn't really make today any easier.

His sermon began with laughter and a first sentence which had a camel in it - Rose Tremain's The Towers of Trebizond, which made me howl with laughter when I read it and which might be a good idea to read again. But halfway through it all became more emotional, as the farewell aspect came in, and by the end I suspect there wasn't a dry eye in the church. As this was shortly followed by the revelation, through the intercessions, that the only person now regularly attending Holy Trinity who'd been there when we arrived had died, news that had arrived via her friend as the service began. There was a sense of seismic change, exacerbated by the news. 

But we also had fantastic hymns, especially fantastic with all the singing men now part of the congregation. (Men are an essential ingredient in a good "Guide me o thou great Redeemer" ...). I sang a piece during communion that Himself wrote recently with words from my favourite psalm (91) which seemed especially appropriate today, and at the very end of the service, when Himself is usually playing an outgoing voluntary, we all sang...

I'd had this idea a few weeks ago that it would be a good thing for the congregation to sing their communal farewell, so after we'd all been blessed and dismissed, and the procession began to move down the aisle behind the cross, we all burst into a blessing that has been a favourite of mine since I heard it on a CD of the Northumbrian Community. The words, about going on journeys safely and returning "once again into our doors" were utterly appropriate; the tune, as one man pointed out, reminiscent of something Steeleye Span would sing. I rehearsed the congregation secretly last week, when David was on Bute, so it was a surprise to him and to his wife Sarah, and I think it set us all off again. That's when I took the photo, of them at the back of the church as we're all still singing. I've cropped out the tearful people singing in the pews ...

I'm sorry for all the non-church people who've struggled through this post, but it's my journal and this was today. The rest of the day became increasingly miserable, after we'd all at last left the church and gone our ways - the rain is now pouring down in a gusty wind and there's a yellow weather warning of rain for the next 24 or so hours. We got soaked going for a walk to stop us feeling low - there's nothing quite like a counter-irritant. And dinner was late and now it's almost 1am and I'm still sitting here typing.

And tomorrow there are flittings ...