Address given in Hampstead Parish Church by the Dean of Lincoln, the Very Revd Philip Buckler, at the Funeral of Sylvia Fry on 24 August 2011
I will tell you a mystery! said St Paul, We shall not all die, but we shall be changed…..
Today we mark another scene change in Sylvia’s life: and of course such changes were of the essence of her work. Anyone who can tell the Barchester Chronicles as did she with Bill, or indeed all the remarkable plays and performances they staged over the years, must have become very used to change, to countless different scenes.
And yet despite the many and varied characters she inhabited, there was about Sylvia a poise that I am sure enabled her to become so many different people whilst very much retaining herself. Such poise, of course, was rooted in her profound faith in God.
Through all the changing scenes of life
In trouble and in joy
The praises of my God shall still
My heart and tongue employ
Singing that hymn at Evensong on Monday I thought how exactly it caught Sylvia’s life as I had seen it. For as Brian has told us, she had a full and far from easy life, yet throughout it all was that ever growing sense of God’s presence and reality – and of this her life sang praise.
Her strong faith was neither blind nor brittle, it had been forged in facing the trials of life as well as the wonders of love and discovering God in all things.
This led her to that poise, that trusting, which was continually nourished by God’s love and the love of those around her – especially her family and of course Bill himself. To them our hearts go out in their loss, but they are proud to tell of their gain over all these years with Sylvia.
I think it was Pilgrim’s Progress that I first saw Sylvia and Bill perform together. Subsequently I was pleased to have them perform works under the dome of St Paul’s. But whether in the grandeur of that setting or in the confines of a small parish hall, the praises of God did still their heart and tongue employ.
Whether in performance on stage or quietly day by day in life, Sylvia had about her what I have described as poise, but might also be illustrated by those words of Francis Thompson read by Christabel [printed after this address]. For she seemed most certainly to have sight of the world invisible, to be in contact with the world intangible and to have some understanding of the world unknowable. These she had grasped and they held her, infused as they are by love, by the presence of God himself.
But one of the things for which I was particularly grateful was Sylvia’s complete lack of the nonsense that so often is found in religion. Unsurprisingly so when we try to hold faith and God in our own hands. She was free of such nonsense because she knew herself to be held by God in his hands.
I have valued the poetry Sylvia wrote and published in the parish magazine. In particular her delight in angels. Her poem Rebuked by an Angel reflects on our world with all its problems which can at times seem overwhelming:
The world was in pain, and we were sharing the hurt,
Made crueller by the dark. There wasn’t a way out.
And then the angel spoke; his voice was fierce, impatient:
The only dark you’re locked in is outside.
At baptism you were given a candle.
Why don’t you light it now? What’s keeping you?
That one candle can light your inner dark.
Its flames can dance, its warmth can glow,
So those outside may feel a different air,
May even learn to hope because you hold it there.
Another scene change now, but one for which Sylvia was well prepared – yet not prepared I suspect for the full wonder of God’s loving presence to which we commend her this day. For that exceeds all that we can desire or deserve. It is part of that mystery of which St Paul spoke when he told of that final change when this mortal body puts on immortality and we know that Death has been swallowed up in victory – the victory of God’s love shown us in Jesus Christ.
But let the last word be from another of Sylvia’s poems entitled Angels Dancing:
There should always be angels with us,
Happily holding our hands,
Guiding us into the kingdom of God,
Where they know that we know we belong.