A quite excellent but difficult funeral

It was a very long funeral for Andrew (here). I have become more tolerant of longish eulogies and it was long. But he was a most excellent man, and there was much to say.
Apart from seeing his eldest son James take on the mantle of the eldest male, I was struck for the first time by how much he looked like Andrew. More than that, there was a very deft touch and insight which was like the ghostly mantle being passed on.
There was a tribute from a priest friend, who, I suppose, was the one of us who was sacrificed to the humiliation of crying and snorting his grief in front of the few hundred people therein gathered. I have been caught before by sudden overwhelming, unexpected grief; so it was not surprising to see numbers of us so afflicted.
Dear friend! We shall miss you. What a gift you have been to everyone who knew you! What a challenge to those of us who struggle to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek but find it too hard! If I could just be as good a priest, or half as good..or a quarter..as Andrew then I would ahve done well.
But I am nowhere close.

A good one

My friend Andrew King died on Thursday. I was aware when we had lunch in October last year that it was he last time we would do so. He has been "ill" for over a decade, though he would never describe himself as 'ill'. With a particularly nasty form of leukemia he has lived on and on with various advances in treatment...some of it fairly rugged.
Andrew was a whistle blower, though again he would never call himself such. He was simply just a bloke who got on with his job and tried to do the right thing. Very perceptive, always gentle, ever-outraged by injustice...against aboriginal people, palestinians, and latterly those who had been abused by the Church.
I think he saw that the sexual and other forms of abuse that people had received at the hands of apparent servants of the Church, both lay and clerical, paled into insignificance when compared with the abuse that those who sort to report such heinous offences were put through.
Put through by indifference, apathy, the game playing of bishops of their lackeys...men who thought they were so bloody pastoral that they failed to see that they were the problem and not the solution!
Amidst all this Andrew was a curious husband, father, and friend. Ever gentle, always true. I shall miss him. We all shall miss him.

Latent racism

Appertaining to the post below southozbloke makes an interesting comment to which I reply:

My mother once told me that she was very impressed with Dr Hedley Beare, who was for some time I think Director General of Education in the Territory.
Her abiding memory was of him making the observation that "Everyone is racist!"
It is of course so obvious that we almost don't realise it. It was reiterated by my friend AndrewKing, who has very keen insight into such issues