The Wayside Chapel\u2019s Reverend Graham Long has bronchiectasis, a condition that made him cough without notice and a laugh that sounded like a \u201cportable cement mixer\u201d. But despite that, James Valentine made it clear it should be Long that read his weekly note \u2013 not Valentine.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe insisted, however, that it was to be my voice,\u201d Long said at Valentine\u2019s memorial. \u201cHe wanted each of his shows to have light and dark, light and shade.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted the mood to have movement, loud, soft, serious, sad, and hilarious. So, with his reassurance, I gave it a go, and I was hopeless.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did cough, and I did crackle, and James acknowledged that our start was less than glorious, but he just knew that there would be a place in the heart of Sydney people for these stories.<\/p>\n
\u201cJames loved that I described my own role as a tower of weakness. We give our illusions glorious names: spirituality, religion, career, purpose, meaning, ambition, and other such pretensions, but true greatness of spirit, true love is revealed in those who simply delight in others.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou, James, were always having fun and always including others in the fun, and when it was time to die, you even used that event for the good of us all.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing higher or more wonderful that can be said of a person but that they were good, and you, James, were truly a good man.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wayside Chapel\u2019s Reverend Graham Long has bronchiectasis, a condition that made him cough without notice and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-450582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}