A conversation with Rev. Micheal

Content note: In this conversation there are references to death, funerals and reflections on the cremation process.

I’m late to my call with Anglican Priest Michael Payne. The reminder message on my calendar app didn’t go off and I’m out walking. I realise because I receive a polite text message enquiring if we are still meeting. 

It’s the 24 March and yesterday was the year anniversary of the first lockdown. Marie Curie had curated a day of remembrance. I’m angry about a lot, all day. It starts with an ill-advised foray into Twitter where I see a tweet where someone says they don’t want to keep wearing masks and keep distance after 21 June. It ends with the phrase, ‘We’ve done enough to protect the vulnerable’. I makes me so sad and so full of rage. I try hard to remember guidance from a podcast the previous day – about responding and not reacting, and letting go of, or discharging, anger in skilful ways. I don’t manage it. I’m incensed by a government that seems to be dodging an enquiry about the deaths of so many, while its members have directly profited from essential procurement. That they then stand in silence and light candles for the assembled media, while dodging any transparency and accountability makes me livid. I’ve not managed to shake off those feelings overnight – so set out on a long, distracted walk. It feels a bit like another overwhelming blendsay, on what might be the 312th day of March in who knows what year.

I rush into explaining the context of the residency and it takes me a while to settle into what becomes an inspiring and nourishing conversation. Michael has been serving the parish that encompasses Westcourt Park and Riverview since Summer 2019. He is originally from Sevenoaks in Kent, before leaving to study theatre at university in Scarborough. He then moved into lecturing before re-training as a secondary school teacher before his calling to the church. He didn’t grow up in a church going family but I sense a clear thread of service and community through his working life. His personal journey with faith was shifted by two, very significant bereavements in close succession and loss becomes a theme of our conversation.

We begin talking about what a regular day during this very un-regular time is. Michael’s day is split much into two parts. The morning is usually spent on desk work and then he will collect his children from school and cook, he’s a very hands on Dad to 3 younger boys (with an older son at work) While it has not been possible to have regular services and the usual face to face work of the church, his main focus has been to be available for pastoral support. And of course to conduct funerals. There have been lots of funerals.

It’s not just the number of funerals that has been so different, and I sense draining. It’s the way they have had to happen. Instead of meeting with the bereaved, everything is done by phone. This means that at the actual service Michael may not recognise who he has been speaking to. He’s found that the funeral directors have often helped navigate this. Usually after a funeral he would wait by the flowers so that anyone who wanted could seek support or comfort. But now he has to leave, to keep people safe – the mourners, himself and his family. 

I ask what support he has, holding and supporting so much loss for so long must be hard. The lay reader and his team check in and support him, and his family are a source of strength and comfort. He tries to keep some separation but this is no ordinary job, where you can leave work stress at the desk. To be called to be intimately involved in the life, and death of a community, is not something you can put down at home time. I wonder a lot about who cares for the carers.

Michael shares the story of a recent, surprising, conversation he had with the person who runs the local crematorium. As a body is cremated, this person is responsible for checking and monitoring the process. There is viewing window into the cremation chamber for this purpose. Viewing the cremation is also something that members of the Sikh and Hindu community sometimes request, in accordance with their faith.  The person that Michael was speaking to reflected on the honour of being the person to witness these final moments of another humans earthly existence. As the celebrant of the funeral, who says the final prayers and blessings, and in a crematorium pushes the button to draw the curtains around a body, Michael has always thought of himself as the person who sends ‘them off’. This realisation of the next steps, the body being moved and the cremation witnessed, and that the same person may do this six, seven or more times a day, has moved Michael. It’s both humbling and expansive.

I talk about the bereavements my family have experienced, and how the pandemic has disrupted our traditions. Usually we would bring the body home the night before a funeral and my family would gather, pay their respects and then follow the hearse to the funeral. None of this has been possible. I have attended three funerals for family members and a friend over a specialist web broadcast service. It feels an odd skill to know how to navigate this technology. I didn’t share with Michael how I have learned how to funeral at home – to create a ritual space through what I wear, where I watch and how I approach and end the service. This arose from sitting on my sofa to watch the first online funeral and feeling really out of sorts afterwards. How we mark life events matters.

Michael tells me about the parish that St Aidan’s serves, Westcourt and Riverview Park. Two large areas of housing, schools and shops to the east of Gravesend. Riverview Park on the hill, looking out over the Thames is very residential. It’s a predominantly white, working community where people take pride in their homes. There’s not really a community centre to speak of, no village green.

I think about my walk around Ebbsfleet and how culture, design and our approach to housing may be atmoising us into ever smaller units. My sister lives in Sweden and I remember being fascinated by housing estates that had no walled gardens, with shared communal spaces for socialising and play. Apartment blocks with communal facilities that encouraged sharing.  The phrase, the Englishman’s home is his castle springs to mind. I notice the ways it can also be a very isolating and reductive place, behind the neat lawns and the net curtains of propriety. 

Westcourt, closer to the church, is less affluent than Riverview Park. It’s where Michael lives. He really appreciates the diversity of the place which has a growing West African community, some of who are part of St Aidan’s congregation. Michael’s predecessor was a Back African man who worked hard to build the congregation. Michael was concerned that as an incoming white man he might lose some of the black community members, he’s really pleased that hasn’t been the case. We talk about different attitudes to race, he’s aware of racism, a certain closedeness in some parts of the community. It's challenging, he sees the role that some sections of the media, play in shaping and legitimising less tolerant world views. As a faith leader he takes on challenging these views, providing alternative, loving and inclusive stories. 

The church is, hopefully, re-opening for Palm Sunday with an in person service, although the online work will continue for some time for those who are unable or unsure about returning in person. Michael is preparing for this return to face to face work, aware that it will be strange and tiring as we begin to meet in person again. He’s hoping to open up the IT suite that is part of the church community buildings, to support families who may need employment – both through practical access and in developing their IT skills through a Lottery Funded project, Make it Click . He also wants to re-invigorate the loneliness ministry, he senses there is much work to do to tackle the isolation of the last year.

We talk about how he thinks there will be lots of people struggling with grief in different ways. He notes that many people died alone, unprepared and quickly. That many family members may feel that the spirit of that person has not been able to move on. That maybe it hasn’t. This is part of Christian practice commonly termed exorcism but which I learn is more accurately called deliverance ministry because the whole situation is looked at, including freeing the person from harmful thoughts as well as spiritual deliverence. Michael is so matter of fact about this, I find it fascinating – we have a pedestrian conversation about something that feels very far out of my understanding of the world. I think about my families practices, how seeing a person’s body has always helped me process that ‘they’ have gone. How it’s been an important part of the process of letting go, how when it hasn’t happened I sometimes think I catch a glimpse of them. I also think about the person at the crematorium, bearing witness to the material departure of so many.

At this point I walk past the preparation for a funeral. Spread out, masked, and dressed in black groups of older white men chat in hushed, East London accents. There are floral tributes on the street outside a house, to be gathered up and taken to the service.

Michael tells me about a presentation from the Bishop of Tonbridge the day before which has stayed with him. In it Bishop Simon referenced how many young people feel they have lost a version of the future – that all seems to be in ruins. I’m interested in how we focus on a story that people get Covid and die, or don’t. Leaving out that many people are experiencing long term, chronic health conditions triggered by Covid. That these people’s are dismantling and re-arranging their lives and hoped for futures. That this health burden will be a challenge for all us. 

One particular moment from the Bishop’s presentation stuck out, a child who said his father had caught Covid and didn’t die. And he wished he had. This made Michael think about the dramatic increase in domestic violence during this period, how for some people bereavement may offer safety and freedom. We pause – there’s nothing to say here. I feel very lucky that I am safe in my home. 

Someone on the street walks past me, printed on face mask is a skeletal jaw and neck. Like a La Calavera Catrina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Calavera_Catrina

We notice that in general we maybe aren’t very good at talking about death and dying in the UK. There is no sensationalism in our conversation about death, it feels very centred and simple and honest. 

I ask Michael if he can recognise a connection between his theatre experience and being a Priest. He mentions that Bishop Simon had shared how trust in professions centred on the word, politics and journalism, are losing respect. Whereas professions centred on the body, nursing and military still receive respect quite widely. Maybe this is because as lying has become more blatant and less called out in public life, we are losing trust in the word. Through his ministry, an embodied practice, Michael is the hands and feet of Christ when he at work in his community. Connecting word and body in service. He notices that is what theatre does – it connects word and body, in public. This floors me. It’s so simple, and it articulates something I sense but have never been able to describe.

We talk about how artists are often in forefront of holding authoritarian governments to account. How the arts also feed our spirit. That they are vital to healthy public life and personal wellbeing. 

Michael is proud of his family – he’s proud to be raising sons and proud of the young men they are growing into. He has been talking openly with them about Black Lives Matter, about gender rights. He’s hopeful about how will be in the world. He’s proud of Gravesend and its people. He recognises the community spirit I’ve described in some of my blog posts.

As we finish our conversation I ask Michael what he’s most looking forward to on a personal level. He’s tentatively hopeful of a holiday by the sea with his children, they have a place they go to regularly and he thinks they all need this break and time together. He’d like a pint in a pub with his best friend, to go to a library or mooch around a charity shop. To just feel ok with being out in Gravesend. The everyday stuff we used to take for granted.

I finish the conversation grounded in myself and feeling expansive. As I walk home past the boxing club near my home I recognise some of the mourners from the funeral earlier, some part of the service must be happening here, or maybe it’s one last visit? Our conversation stays with me, and provokes more conversations with my husband about death and grief and word and body. I feel so, so grateful for this opportunity and these meetings, I am sure that they will nourish me as a human and an artist for a long time to come.