Thursday 13 July 2006

In Memoriam ELR

Tomorrow is the funeral of Edmund Randall who is a not very well-known person these days, but quite influential in my life and that of the Anglican Church in South Australia. Selected by Bishop Thomas Reed to be the first Warden of the new St Barnabas College at Belair he was, in that small institution, responsible for forming many of this State's Anglican clergy and you can find that story elsewhere.
Yet, he dies relatively unknown outside the small work in which he engaged.
I spent my three years under his tutelage, in particular learning Hebrew and studying Old Testament which was his area of expertise, and am grateful for the quiet patience he exercised. The conservative worship which chacterised his style of institution may leave much to be desired these days, but he was not easily seduced away from the notion that essentially what you had to do was say your prayers day by day. He did not believe that you had to make worship as high as possible, or to have as much novelty as you could in order to stop people from being bored. In this he was both right and wrong. But his stamp on the quality of the worship of this province is undeniable.
Now he is dead. Quite a great age. Losing weight in his early 60s at least meant he didn't die prematurely.
I am thankful for his life, and that mine intersected with his.

No comments: