"Walking Away"-For Sean : C Day Lewis

"Walking Away", describes the loss C. D. Lewis feels when taking his son to "[his] first game of football". He feels he is watching his son "go drifting away". He has "had worse partings" yet no parting annoys him as much as this one: "but none that so gnaws at my mind still".

Choristers walk a lot. If you've ever wondered how they produce the exquisite sound that is our privilege to enjoy day after day let me tell you they do it by walking.

It begins when they walk from the Cathedral School to the Song Room.

Early in the morning - too early for most children - they respond to the bell rung by the head or deputy head chorister and they line up. Sleepy heads huddled into cloaks, the boys in black, the girls in blue, on wet winter mornings. Again in the evenings they walk through the cloisters dutifully.

It continues when they walk in and out of Church. Processing, prepared, poised. Yes, our choristers physically walk. But they also walk in the sense we heard of in our first reading.

King Solomon set about building a glorious temple not dissimilar to this holy and beautiful Cathedral. But before he began to organize his labor force and manage the project God said it would only succeed if he and all the community walked in God's way.

"If you walk in my statutes, obey my ordinances and keep all my commandments by walking in them ..... then I will establish my promise with you and will not forsake my people."

Similarly, this building was built not only by labor and design but by the habits of dedication, rehearsing a way of life, a path, a daily round, a common task.

These children, as part of the core of our life, have walked in the worship of the Lord and have set us an example. As we say these days: they have walked the walk.

But the time has come for them to do a different kind of walking; they have to walk away. Some are walking off to holidays to return in September. That's easy.

Some have to walk away from us for ever. Actually, we hope very much that they will keep coming back but there's no escaping that they're about to lay down their life as a chorister. Having walked one routine for as long as they can probably remember we say goodbye to them.

In the words of C Day Lewis we can see how 'selfhood begins' for these children in this walking away. They're ready to fly this nest; they'll go places personally and musically as yet unimagined. But they have to let go to achieve that.

And again they show us the way. We cannot hope in this life not to grieve. We're people of attachments and everything in us says 'stay' - 'I know this place.' Like Peter, even in the chains of our prisons, we sometimes need to be told to get up and walk.

As the poem says: we find walking away an ordeal. Yet there are points in our life when it's like the computer that's ceased and we need to make ourselves walk away or else nothing can happen. Or perhaps like Peter we don't get any choice and it's circumstances that make us walk away from what is precious to us.

We are irresolute clay; sometimes we need the fire of the kiln of grieving if our selfhood is to be glazed and finished. But it is the partings that so gnaw at us.

Perhaps there's something fitting in the last event of our choral year this year being a funeral, for eventually of course we will all of us walk away from life itself. Our last awakening, as the anthem put it, will walk us into the arms of God. That is, in the end where all our walking leads and where it justifies itself, or not. Bring us, O Lord to enter and dwell in the house of one equal music and one equal eternity.

Tom, Tim, Tom, Christian and Tom. Emily, Pippa, Lois and Katie. Thank goodness the girls had different names! You are letting go of your life here. And we are letting go of you; but remember what it is you walked away from.

And remember that you ever walk towards your last awakening, one equal music and one equal eternity.