“Kate was realistic, practical, kind, thoughtful, hugely intelligent and quick witted, full of life and cultural interests, funny, & brave in the adversity of the MND which she did not want to define her.” If this was a responsive Eulogy I would expect to hear a congregational Amen.
A woman of words, she chose many of the words to be read, sung and prayed at her funeral service. They express what mattered to her most – of life and literature, of faith and love, of hope and humanity, of God and beauty, of the tears and laughter, of the tragedy and comedy and history that are woven through the story of every human life.
Kate was born in Barnsley in 1950. Rick remembers a happy childhood of a big sister whose initial resentment of the baby brother usurper turned into a lifelong alliance. Kate was always there for Rick, from the times she sat on him to calm him down to helping him pass the Baptist Church SS exam – in which he scored higher than her! The mature Kate of the rapier wit informed by the best of English literature, was entirely evident when in an argument with Rick 8, and Kate 12. He made the mistake of calling her an idiot. Her response, “The devil damn thee black thou cream faced loon. Where got’st thou that goose look” (Macbeth Act 5 Scene 3) Incidentally, the only recorded time Kate showed any interest in football was in 1997 when Barnsley FC were promoted to the Premier League. It gave her the chance to show off her local history, the club having been founded by the Rev Tivverton Preedy - as she remarked, "such a Dickensian name".
Kate excelled at school, took a first in English Lit at Kent, graduated M.Phil from Oxford and began her working life at University of Aberdeen. There she met Alastair, they quickly engaged and married – later Kate explained the rush that Alastair wanted to go grouse shooting, a comment without rancour, but with that sardonic humour both warm and forgiving of human foibles and failings, including her own.
Marriage and the care of her children became a life focus for Kate over the growing up years. I met Kate, Alastair, Ruth and Alex in 1984 when I came to be minister at Crown Terrace Baptist Church in Aberdeen. During those years Kate and Alastair were deacons, both were preachers, and our friendship quickly developed. Kate wrote dramas and skits to go with the theme of the service – she was such a script writer – her portrayal of Laban, the sleazy Del Boy father in law, played in the church by a man of impeccable integrity who relished the hand rubbing, trilby-wearing con-man, outwitting Jacob. Kate looked back on those days as formative when church was fun and a safe place for folk to explore their faith.
When the Duries moved to Stirling Kate immediately began rebuilding her social networks, opened up educational and teaching opportunities, and made new friends. She began her 30 year association with the Open University – teaching courses on Shakespeare (of course) Victorian Literature (ditto), Byzantine Art (What?), The Northern and Italian Renaissance,(Yes these too).
Kate was a lifelong learner, and a lifelong teacher. She believed passionately in education as a doorway to richer life and enlarged opportunities, a pathway to a stronger sense of self and a way of building confidence in others. She was an educational socialist – access, support, opportunity for all who want to learn. She was a consummate teacher. At the OU she was well known as a tutor who believed in her students, no matter where their starting point. One student told me, “She never told me I wrote badly; she always showed me how to write better.” The quality of a teacher is evident in feedback that is informative, formative, and aims to be transformative.
Kate’s warmth and acceptance of people as they are made her an ideal counsellor for Cruise. And "Blessed is the book group that has a Kate Durie; they shall never be boring.” Kate was one of the best listeners I’ve ever known – I remember sending her the well-known words of George Eliot, whose name was near the top of her literary Canon: “A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
Later in life when Alastair and Kate separated, she moved to Edinburgh and quickly established new roots. A church where relationships could be formed towards friendship, and where faith could grow; reading groups, a poetry group and a Shakespeare group and a revelling in the cultural richness of theatre and art galleries, cinema and open doors days. Ruth remembers on one Open Day sixteen visits to various historic and architectural places of interest. She remains astonished at the vast amount of historical scandal Kate carried around in her head, about artists, poets, architects and other notables.
Education, learning and teaching defined Kate’s approach to all of life. She taught more than history, art and literature. She taught her children how to cook; she collected recipes like poems. Her OT Victoria learned a lot about books and literature in those conversations that interweave with all kinds of carers. She loved the animals that shared her home, from Caleb to Zac, and a succession of cats – she loved cats and quoted chunks of Kit Smart’s My Cat Jeffrey. Hospitality took on a warm, broad, welcoming embrace in Kate’s home – home- made soup (carrot her speciality – her friend Phyllis 40 years on still makes that recipe!) baking, conversation and small talk, and a sense of gladness and gratitude oozing from Kate towards those who sought her company. “What do we live for if not to make the world a little less difficult for each other?” (George Eliot)
Kate and I spoke every few weeks on the phone. That always included an oral exam on what I’d been reading, an exchange of family news, and often a two person seminar on things literary, theological and historical. She introduced me to so many fertile furrows, and I gave her pointers for good theological reading. Not sound and safe, but searching and risky. This was a reader who was reading with critical appreciation, Rowan Williams before he became Archbishop. She hadn’t only read C S Lewis – she wrote about him, lectured on him in the United States, and was one of the first people to present C S Lewis as other than an evangelical apologist above contradiction.
When it became clear that Kate was unwell, and she was eventually diagnosed with MND, she set about adjusting her life in order to prepare for a very different future. She wouldn’t call herself brave, more pragmatic, practical, determined to outwit a condition that would gradually diminish her possibilities. All we had known of Kate’s problem solving skills, practical common-sense, inventive mind, and spiritual resilience made her determined to resist the encroachments as long as she was able. For a time she still strode out, this time with a cane. That cane she wielded as a sword against the enemy. Then the mobility scooter and Sheila and I on one of our visits were recruited as her minders as she took it out for a test drive along the obstacle course of Balcarres St pavements.
In one of our recent phone conversations we recalled one of the first literary conversations she and I had. Kate came up after the service and said, “You quoted Robert Browning.” Yes I did. “It was from Paracelsus.” Yes it was. “It was perfect. I’ve always said Browning shouldn’t be quoted by preachers, he’s too dense. You proved me wrong.” Away she walked. The words come back as words of defiant hope, but without denying the pull of despair: “If I stoop into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, it is but for a time; I press God's lamp close to my breast; its splendour soon or late will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day.”
Kate’s Christian faith was never based on already found answers. Her mind was too sharp, her mood more interrogative than declarative. She had grown beyond the various iterations of Christian faith too ready to settle for certainty, and too impatient of mystery, too worried about not knowing. In the theological sense Kate loved mystery, and refused steadfastly to reduce God to manageable proportions or propositions. She trusted the humanity of Jesus, his tears and his anger, his compassion and patience, the sheer gratuitous fun of turning water into the best ever wine. She could entrust herself to the Lord of all faith, whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe – Christ, the master carpenter, using those tools that shape and form us towards Christlikeness.
Kate had no real interest in Chalcedonian metaphysics. She knew God’s final, definitive Word became flesh and dwelt among us, in Jesus. That she knew. For everything else we see through a glass darkly…beyond that she was certain that faith, hope, and love are essential in every human life – but the greatest of these is love. And Kate loved those she loved deeply, faithfully, with that daring risky combination of realism, passion and self-giving on her own terms. So much was taken from Kate in these last months. But not her faith. Yet another of my debts to Kate is she introduced me to the poet Denise Levertov. I finish with Levertov’s poem, written when she too was suffering her final illness:
Suspended
I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummeted.
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
I never knew Kate - but these words are a true eulogy
Posted by: Angela Almond | October 23, 2021 at 12:23 PM
I only knew Kate when she and I were both in Aberdeen, although Alastair preached two or three times in Torbreck/Culduthel church in Inverness. I'm sorry to hear she has died. As ever from you, Jim, a warm, perceptive and insightful tribute.
Posted by: Dave Summers | November 04, 2021 at 10:08 PM