A Retired Rector's Reflections

Are you a person that likes to visit country churchyards and read gravestones? If so you may come across me doing the same. I wonder if sometimes you’ve come across words that challenge or inspire you.

Memorial inscriptions in churchyards as well as giving some details of the deceased person being commemorated from time to time add a verse or sentence for reflection.

Sometimes the words can be quite sobering. Near the church gate of St Mary’s, Arkengarthdale in North Yorkshire the memorial to Emily Barningham, who died in 1929 aged 40 years, invites us to remember her, with these solemn words:

Remember me as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I, As I am now so must you be, prepare yourselves to follow me.

When visiting Rokeby church, not far from Arkengarthdale, recently I came across a gravestone on which were written the arresting words “with the morn those angel faces smile, Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile” It took me a few moments to recall that they are the final words of the hymn ‘Lead Kindly Light’ written by John Henry Newman.

Many years ago, when I was a curate at Barnard Castle we held the lovely night service of Compline each week in Lent. At the end of one service a gentle and devout elderly lady approached me and said ‘God has spoken to me this evening.’ I was intrigued and decided to call on her and ask what had happened.

She told me how several years earlier her husband had died and he was buried in a churchyard in Teesdale. She couldn’t decide what to inscribe on his gravestone. As well as his name and dates of birth and death, she wished to have some words which could give a passerby something to to reflect upon and potentially give them comfort.

During Compline I had used a traditional prayer which I find beautiful:

The words ‘didst sanctify the grave…’ had spoken deeply to the bereaved lady, and hearing the words had led her there and then to decide to have inscribed on her husband’s gravestone “Thou hast sanctified the grave to be a bed of hope” – such appropriate words.

I was inspired by this lovely lady and her thoughtfulness. Now I ponder what words of encouragement I would choose for a gravestone. What would your choice be?