For Uncle Ken

My lovely Uncle Ken, who was an occasional commenter on here, died suddenly the other week. Ken was a person so full of life, it’s hard to imagine that he is no longer around. His going has left a big gap in a lot of people’s lives.

There’s so much I could say about Ken, but one of the things I am most grateful for is that I spent a month in New Zealand with him and Les his wife and Stu and Tash on my world trip in 2019. One of the many highlights of that trip was Ken driving us down the long and so so beautiful Milford Road from Te Anau, past the Mirror Lakes and all that lush green beauty, underneath the snow capped mountains and onto Milford Sound. Les told me Ken had always wanted to drive it himself, having ridden it on coach trips many times before. How wonderful that he got to do this, and I am so grateful to have been there for it.

Ken was first of all mischievous, and then controversial… he liked a good argument. I remember when I was a teenager and had recently become a Christian, Ken saying to me, “The Bible’s book of fairy tales, isn’t it?” Cheeky, mischievous and argumentative; that was Ken. At the time I wasn’t sure how to respond; I didn’t have the words to say, though my tiny experience of reading of the Bible had felt deep and rich. I think I felt threatened by Ken’s outrageous provocation!

My cousin also encountered Ken’s argumentative mischief a lot. His rather more mature view is that Ken was always pushing people, to make sure we knew what we thought and why. So we wouldn’t be people who lied to themselves, with no integrity, which was something Ken hated. I think Stu is right.

The thing that surprised me about Ken, was when he later said to me, with a twinkle in his eye, “But put in a good word with the man upstairs for us, won’t you?”

I’m not sure how open minded Ken was in general, and maybe he was just hedging his bets, but I have a sneaking suspicion he carried a secret slightly open mind about faith; about God, life, the universe and everything. And I think an open mind is probably one of the greatest spiritual gifts there is. In people of faith like myself, a lack of open mindedness is a sure sign of spiritual disease, as much as it is in people who profess no religious faith at all. Faith is something that opens us to doubt. It allows the possibility that there is more to be discovered, more that perhaps we don’t yet fully grasp. It also makes way for hope, because it introduces a question mark to anything that seems final or terrible or hopeless. Maybe this is not the whole story? Maybe we can only yet see part of it?

During my visit to New Zealand in 2019, Uncle Ken introduced me to a little book called “The things you can see only when you slow down” by the Buddhist monk Haemin Sunim. One of the wisdom sayings in this book says:

“Love, not righteous words, can change people’s lives.”

Another is this:

“We should love people like the sun loves the earth. The sun loves the earth without choosing to. It nourishes trees and flowers, expecting nothing in return. It does not withhold its rays, but brightens everything with its presence.”

This resonates strongly with how Ken lived and loved I think, and also with how I believe God loves him. And it resonates also with my own Christian tradition, which offers this simple saying: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13.13 in the Bible)

I have entrusted Ken to the love of God. It’s my way of putting in a good word for him. Not that he needs it at all. I believe that Ken was the apple of God’s eye. And our love for him is a faint reflection of God’s love for him and for all of us.

And because Ken was so full of life, when a reminder of a previous post popped up on my socials the day after he died, I received the gift of these words by John O’Donohue again:

And I realised perhaps my best tribute would be to live life to the full, as Ken did.