[written and delivered by Luke Y. Thompson, Nov. 20, 2009, at Sherborne Abbey in Dorset, England]
Not long before he died, Peter Graham started a Facebook page.
Probably not everyone here knows what that is, so let me explain: Facebook is an Internet social networking site originally designed for college and high-school students to network with each other. It’s grown a bit beyond that now…but I’m not sure “86 year-old retired vicar” was ever in the imagined demographic.
Now, let me tell you why that’s significant. I live in Hollywood, and work in the media, and the way older people are so often portrayed is exemplified by Grandpa Abe on The Simpsons: Scared, senile, conservative, stuck in their ways. Now, I’m not saying my grandfather was never stuck in any ways…for example, I don’t think he could ever bring himself to eat a whole banana. But if it ever became clear to him that he was set in a way that was detrimental – he worked to change it. I’m told he used to smoke heavily…but not while I’ve been alive. And far from fearing the new, he embraced it as best it suited his purposes…he was my first ever cinematographer, combining his then-brand-new Betamax camcorder with my youthful, unpolished script attempts. He was one of the first in the family to really embrace email, on which he would often debate me about the awful things “my country” was doing – that’s how he always phrased it, “YOUR country” (It’s not all my fault!). And his personal page is still standing on Facebook.
A few years ago, I remember helping him deliver the local village circular, to approximately 25 houses, at least one of which had a frightening dog. I looked through the circular myself, and in it was a column he had written. I asked him if he had any older ones, and he obliged showing me a binful of back issues, and I said, first to myself and then him, “This is too good to only be read by 25 people.” I asked him then if he’d let me set up a website for him, where people across the ocean who needed to read an intelligent, progressive Christian thinker could interact with him. And he liked the idea…but the fear of spam took hold, and he said he didn’t want that; however, he’d send me the columns each month, and I could do as I pleased with them.
So I ran them on my site. The first or second time I did, one of the readers left a comment: “Can we clone your grandfather?” I said I thought he’d been plenty fruitful and multiplied the old-fashioned way, and besides, you’ve got ME… I’m the watered-down version. Later, I got him to take reader questions, and he got quite a following that I’m not sure he entirely knew about, but would have loved. If anyone here follows movie websites based out of Los Angeles, you would recognize some of the bylines of people who read his words…one of the creators of the movie “Snakes on a Plane” sent me his condolences when he heard the news. Peter Graham was larger than life…and judging by the turnout here today, he’s also larger than death.
My grandfather shared many words of wisdom over the years, and while I didn’t always agree with all of them, there are one or two I like very much. The first, is that he said we should always endeavour to act as if there is no such thing as giving of offense, only taking offense…and we won’t do that.
The second is a bit more oblique, but just as significant from a man of the cloth: “There are very few absolutes…and one of them is that there are very few absolutes.”
I don’t know if the love he tried at all times to walk in counts as an absolute; but I can say that it was felt – and is missed – absolutely.
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