29th February 2004
Belmont Presbyterian Church
Speakers:
Associate Minister Rev David Gray, (Belmont Presbyterian)
The Very Rev Dr John Dunlop, (Rosemary Presbyterian)
The Rev Dr Ron Savage, (Stormont Presbyterian)
The Rev Dr David Irwin, (McCracken Memorial)
The Reverend Dr Katherine Meyer, (Trinity College Dublin)
Deaconess Frances Wright, (Belmont Presbyterian)
Clerk of Session, John Erskine, (Belmont Presbyterian)
Response from Rev R D Drysdale.
Thank you for the Supper, Rev Winston Graham, (Knock Methodist)
Prayer and Benediction, Rev Hastings McIntyre, (Creagh Presbyterian) on behalf of the East Belfast Presbytery
Rev R D Drysdale Retirement Address
29th February 2004
I think Hilary would like to have said something, but just really couldn't at this point in time.
So, if I may just, on behalf of both of us, say thank you very much for words that really have left me not just tumbled, but also, I think, in some senses, wondering where I go from here. Can I just say thank you all for coming, and especially those of you who have travelled, as I know, some distances in order to be here.
I greatly appreciate your presence. May I say a special word of thanks to David Lapsley for his, as always, thoughtful words in the service of Thanksgiving earlier this evening, and to Father Paddy DeLargy, and to David Gray for their role in the service, too. It was, for me, important to have our local Roman Catholic community represented in this service, because we in Belmont have enjoyed such good relationships, and such good inter-church relations here in this area.
And I hope that long may they continue. At our annual general meeting just a week ago, I said my personal thanks to various people, in particular in Belmont, and to the congregation in general. And so I will not go over all of that again.
I must, however, thank you all for this gift that you have given to me. I receive it as a token of your affection. And with that in mind, I will try to use it in such a way as will honour your giving it to me.
When you are at a dinner party, and one that you are really enjoying, there always comes the moment when you want to stay longer but know that you have to go. Now is such a moment for Hillary and for me. I look back on my ministry in Belmont, and before that in Dundrod and McQuiston.
And I am so delighted that there are people here this evening from both those congregations. I look back on my ministry with a deep sense of gratitude, especially to God, whose grace in Jesus Christ has sustained me over the years. Of course, there were times when I could have made for the hills.
But overall, these for me have been years of fulfilment and creativity. And I have enjoyed a series of ordained assistants, each so different, but each has made a significant contribution to our ministry together. And currently, we have in Belmont an associate minister.
And I am grateful to David Gray for all his help over the past two years and more. And I will continue to follow his future ministry with the interest of a friend. And Valerie, too, will be in our thoughts.
Francis Wright is the second deaconess to boss me, the first being Jane Orr in McQuiston. And again, I am pleased that Jane is here tonight, as she was indeed at our service this morning. Francis has relieved me of much of the ongoing pastoral visitation of senior members in this congregation.
And she goes about everything in her own inimitable style and is loved dearly for it. I am indebted, too, to Andy Adams, and to Cooper Linus for their help in a similar part-time capacity over the past years, and, of course, to the late John Davey, former missionary to India. Over these final weeks in Belmont, Hilary and I have been overwhelmed by so many expressions of goodwill.
That has not surprised us, of course, because it goes hand-in-hand with the people of Belmont as we have come to know you. We will miss so many of you so much. But I don't, I think, go farther down that road, because private and personal emotions publicly shared are always in danger of getting out of control.
We can only manage them, or at least I can, with a certain constraint. So let me leave, for the most part, all of these feelings unspoken, but understood. I have also been fortunate with my friends, some of whom continue as friends from student days, as you have already heard, and others have been gathered along the way.
Your support and encouragement and laughter has been an important part of me. Good friends keep your feet on the ground, strip away any pretentious notions, and never allow you to think too highly of yourself. It's difficult, anyway, to think well of yourself as you hack your seventh golf shot out of the rough on a par three hole, while your friends and playing partners sympathise with your predicament, and all the time you know fine well that what they're really thinking is, take a few more.
For a moment, let me be very personal. It is, I think, a bit unusual, maybe, to reach almost 65, and on the evening of your retirement, to have your mother present. Tonight, I welcome Nanny, as she's known in our family, and I can only wish that at 30, my mind had been as agile as hers is at 90.
I'm delighted, too, to have our family circle here, with the exception of Alan, who's keeping Sky News on the air in London, and our two grandchildren, who are, or at least ought to be, tucked up in bed. All which brings me to Hilary. Anything that I may have achieved here or elsewhere over the years since our marriage has been only possible in large measure because of Hilary.
Put simply, she has been the wind beneath my wings. Someone asked me last week what I was most looking forward to on this final day in Belmont, and I said, my bed in Donaghadee. And so it is, with that thought in mind, and at the end of what has been a long and emotionally exhausting day, as you can only imagine, let me draw this speech to a conclusion.
I leave with you these words from one of my chief and enduring theological and spiritual mentors, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, well-known now in Belmont. Writing from his prison cell in June 1944, and when he knew that the Gestapo would now see to it that he would never return to the life that he had known, he wrote these words in a letter;
“To take leave of others and to live on past memories, whether they belong to yesterday or last year, is now my recurring duty. But to say goodbye goes very much against the grain.”
Thank you, one and all.
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