Arise and Go

I saw a woman this week whose very stance moved me. We were driving through Rosses Point in Sligo when I caught sight of her standing on the shore. She had little regard for the traffic which surged past her – holiday makers on the way to the beach on a rare hot sunny day in April – because her focus was out at sea. Her dress and hair are blown back against the gentle contours of her body as she waits, summer and winter, mindless of the elements. Her arms are stretched out in anguish, fingers grasping the air and eyes closed in longing and prayer. The sculptor has called her ‘Waiting on Shore’ and I could feel the pain of her aching heart, encased in bronze. She stands in memoriam for men and boys missing at sea and wives and mothers who await their return.

Coming and going are part of the natural rhythm of life. Sligo is Yeats’ country and, before we left its rugged beauty, the man and I trod the narrow road which leads down to a tiny jetty and gazed through the misty rain in wonder at the tuft of land which inspired his best-loved verse. The little isle of Innisfree in Lough Gill is covered with trees and it’s hard to imagine a glade there, 'bee-loud' or otherwise. Yet it’s not difficult to understand how a genius mind, charged with thoughts of politics and theatre and the occult might long for a place of quiet rest.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

Peace is a rare commodity, especially when you’re far away or people you love are far from home. We’re on our own this weekend. Daughter and son-in-law are back in South Africa embarking on their grand tour. We enjoyed having them here with us for a few months – they are an inspirational couple whose dedication to life, health, fairness, creativity and excellence are infectious. They push boundaries in each other and unwary companions and we love having these amazing people in our lives. But they’re away again, leaving us waiting on shore. The others are in Milan, London and Reading – living life without us and growing up and away.

Moses knew the feeling. He stood on a mountainside gazing into the valley below where his adopted son was fighting a battle. And yet the patriarch was not entirely useless – while he held up his hands the young man was winning and when he grew weary and gave up, the youth was overwhelmed. Sometimes I think that the waiting with outstretched arms is harder – but it’s mine to do and like the lady on the shore I want to remain steadfast.

In the ancient churchyard of St Columba’s in Drumcliffe stands Yeats’ grave. I cast a cold eye on life and death and laid a bluebell on the headstone in gratitude for the beauty of his poetry and then, although not on horseback, I passed by. For as long as he lived, Yeats heard the call of Ireland. My children travel with my blessing. May none of them forget who they belong to and where home is, no matter how far they roam.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core. (WB Yeats)

Jesus and Chocolate

It’s the end at last. With Easter falling so late, this has been the longest term ever. Who moves these feasts? Last week, pupils and teachers alike were overwhelmed with coursework, essays and deadlines and now it’s the holidays!

I spent the weekend in beautiful Donegal with friends. The views were wonderful and I strode out in the early morning along one of the many paths crossing the peat bogs around Carrigart. It was a grey dawn with the kiss of a crisp breeze but it was so good to get out into the real world and away from the press. Ahead of me lay a small, glassy reservoir into which the bracken-covered hills peered to see their reflection. Errigal’s head was poking above the horizon.

I was thinking about valleys. In the last few weeks we’ve finished all the stories begun with such enthusiasm in January. No happy endings: we left the gorgeous Gatsby (the image of Robert Redford in a pink suit is engraved forever on my mind) floating lifeless on a lilo with his arm tracing a red swirl in the autumn leaves, Holden Caulfield is holed up in a sanatorium and Meursault and Francie Brady are facing the consequences of the murders they committed – one in cold, and the other in very hot smeared-all-over-the-wall, blood. It’s Francie who sums up the sense of complete desolation, ‘How can your solitary finish?’

We were discussing symbolism in the Great Gatsby and wondering about the tragic Valley of Ashes. I mentioned the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ and only one pupil recognised it as a biblical allusion. Does no one go to Sunday school any more? The valley is a metaphor for the low place, the place without light or hope. It’s the place inhabited by most of the characters we met this term. My sixth form told me they were suicidal after reading these bleak texts. I also felt like I needed my soul restored, hence the walking alone in Donegal.

Psalm 23 talks about still waters. As I gazed at the surface of the water rippling ever so gently in the morning’s breath, I meditated on who does what. The shepherd leads, restores, comforts, prepares, anoints and blesses and all that is required of the sheep is to recognise his master’s voice and follow. Sounds like a great deal to me!

My feet were wet as the black bog juice seeped into my walking shoes but my jarred nerves began to settle and some sense of peace returned. Perhaps we appreciate nature more when we’ve been cooped up with books for too long. Perhaps we appreciate life when it comes after death.

It’s Easter this week. Jesus and chocolate – what more could anyone want? Good Friday is all about death and horror and sacrifice – I’ve promised myself that I will watch The Passion. But on Sunday it’s about life and hope and morning…if you believe. My solitary can finish.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Time's Discipline

I visited one of heaven’s waiting rooms the other day. Old people’s homes all smell the same and it’s hard to fight against the swamping sensation that they’re soulless holding centres from which the inmates will finally be deported back whence they came. Dust to dust.

My elderly friend still has all her marbles and talks avidly about her years living in India as a young woman. At home she enjoyed the company of a bird which occasionally flew round the living room and finally came to a sad end concertinaed against the wall. The lady misses her feathered friend so her son-in-law painted an excellent likeness of the bird which now hangs above her bed: a songless imitation of the original, but the next best thing.

Will there be birds in heaven?

I went to see the wonderful Derek Jacobi playing King Lear in the Grand Opera House this week. He’s seventy-two years old and he can still produce a compelling stage performance. I don’t know whether the actor has ever considered the merits of sheltered dwelling, but as poor Lear he is cast out to face the elements, having been duped by the two ugly sisters who previously protested love to their father. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses to play the ‘Which of you shall we say doth love us most?’ game and, Cinderella-like, she is excluded and banished to France.

Lear’s descent into madness is distressing and the examination of the relationship between an ageing parent and his daughters is relentless. Old age leads to a gradual loss of identity as the balance of care shifts and the elderly person begins to feel useless and unvalued. Lear asks, ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’ And the reply comes, ‘Lear’s shadow.’ Only death awaits those who feel such loss of substance.

In many a sermon I heard a warning that I could be run over by a No 39 bus outside the church and where would I spend eternity? Can eternity be spent? I think that there is actually a very slim chance of being hit by an omnibus, but there is a 100% chance that I will be dead. In King Lear, Edgar says,

‘Men must endure/Their going hence, even as their coming hither:/Ripeness is all.’

By ripeness he means readiness - a preparation that is mature in its acceptance that we have lived long enough and it’s time. Death is a fact of life and as we get older we will attend more and more funerals of our peers. How then do we live? In celebration of life! – filling each waking moment with words and people and nature and song.

‘It is the time’s discipline to think
of the death of all living, and yet live.’ (Wendell Berry)

Dwelling too much on death is a waste of the very time whose passing we mourn. Flowers set us an example in their glorious, if short-lived, explosion of colourful praise to the Creator. As I write my husband is pruning the roses so that when their moment comes they will bloom well.

If I had another life,
I would spend it on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn’t mind being a rose
In a field full of roses.

Fear has not occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question.

(from Roses, Late Summer by Mary Oliver)

The Wind Blows

When I was a little girl I asked Jesus into my heart. ‘Come in today, come in to stay, come into my heart, Lord Jesus.’ What was that all about? How could a grown Jewish rabbi enter the cardiovascular system of a ten-year-old?

Religious belief is a funny thing. You embrace it long before you understand it and when you’re old enough to subject faith to reason you can never quite escape the feeling of safety and certainty that comes with childlike conviction. Nor should you want to. In a world of horror and mayhem and chaos and collapse, physical and political, it’s important to have a refuge.

I now understand that it’s not Jesus who visits the believer but it is the other one, his invisible self or spirit, known as the Holy Ghost who indwells. He’s harder to tie down and Christians have been arguing about when and where and how and to whom he comes for years.

What would life be like without metaphor? The Holy Spirit is at once dove, fire, water and wind and like all of these will not be tamed. He is who he is and cannot be constrained or contained by denominations or creeds. I love his mystery and his invitation to come and join him in the great romance of the Trinity.

I was out walking this morning, hood up against the breeze blowing briskly on the cusp of spring. I decided to try not to think and just listen. The wind picked up as I strode to higher ground and it ‘druthered’ through the trees – mostly the evergreen pines where there is enough foliage to offer some resistance and produce the swirl and swish of air fighting to be free. When I turned the corner onto the Ballyrogan Road it blew fiercer and harder, licking my chin with its sharp tongue. In one place the trunk of a palm tree had been snapped in two leaving the top upended on the road like an ice cream cone. It was good to get the winter cobwebs cleared.

I have a friend who is into things spiritual and she told me about a funny incident that took place this week. She is a teacher in a local primary school and one day after school Harry, the caretaker, stopped at the door of her room and asked her if she’d been burning incense. She said no and he described a smell he’d noticed as he passed her room – an aroma, a perfume, a scent… My friend could think of nothing and wondered if it might perhaps be the Holy Spirit so she proceeded to expound some biblical truths to the janitor about how God’s presence can manifest itself in surprising ways. Harry was content, if a little bemused.

It was as she was packing up her bag to leave that my friend caught sight of some wooden sticks poking out of her pencil pot. She had brought them from home to use in her craft lesson but they had been sitting in a sweet-smelling oil diffuser all over Christmas and were still impregnated with the perfume. Not the Holy Spirit after all then! She giggled all the way home and was still laughing at herself hours later.

No harm came to Harry because faith is ridiculous and often the believer looks foolish, but joy and passion are infectious. As for my friend – she has learned that the ‘fragrance of life’ is not in her room, but in her.

‘The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.’

This is my Song (an extract)

Joy hated Sundays. She knew it was supposed to be a day of rest because God took a break after six days creating the world. But with her father being a professional Christian he was busier than God and there was no rest for him or the family. They were always up early, despite protestations that it wasn’t a school day. Her father was usually boiling eggs – a Sunday treat, and the only one at that. Throughout the day there were to be no ball games, riding bikes, listening to the radio (they didn’t have a television) or practising the piano. If they wanted to read it was Sunday books only.

No sooner had the soldiers of white toast been scoffed, than Joy and her two sisters were shoehorned into stiff Sunday clothes and marched to morning Sunday school at Oldpark Parish church. There they sat in circular classes according to age, with a teacher in charge of each group. They sang songs about Jesus owning the cattle on a thousand hills and then they had the lesson. They heard a Bible story, often illustrated by flannelgraphs – felt figures which stuck, or more often didn’t stick, onto a green baize cloth draped over a square piece of hardwood.

Joy's favourite was a picture of a chasm in which prowled a hungry-looking tiger. There was no bridge to get across until Jesus came and made a way to escape the clutching claws of the wild beast. There was homework too – passages of Scripture to learn and recite. Joy was good at this, because she went to elocution lessons, but some of the other children squirmed uncomfortably when it came to their turn. They stuttered though the first verse and then tailed off, looking at their shiny patent feet. It was worse than school and although no punishment was meted out for failure, the sense of shame and embarrassment was chastisement enough.

Joy always wondered why they weren’t allowed to ask questions. She had loads: If Jews didn’t eat pork, why was there a herd of pigs nearby for Jesus to send the demons into? On the Sunday before Christmas, when they sang, ‘Away in a manger’ one bold, bad girl asked the Sunday school superintendent how Mary and Joseph got pregnant when they weren’t married. Mr Burch shuffled on the platform and fiddled with the Church Army badge in the lapel of his second best jacket. The best was kept for weddings and funerals. He muttered something about an angel and a dream but Joy knew in her heart that there was mystery here and it was probably rude.

On the whole, Joy liked Jesus. Her parents were addicts and scoured the Belfast Telegraph for more and more meetings to attend, especially special missions for children. No matter what the denomination or venue, the formula was the same: lots of community singing followed by a rousing talk and an appeal. One such event was held in the local Free Methodist hall and hosted by Child Evangelism Fellowship. It was mid week and Joy was tired from learning spellings in preparation for Miss McIlroy’s Friday test. If you did well, you got to sit near the back of the room. The seating arrangement was changed after the test every week and the dunces who scored the lowest marks were moved nearer to the front. The goal was to get to the very back of the room next to the radiator and near the door. A crate containing tiny glass bottles of milk was plonked down there every day and if you were clever and quick you could snatch one before it curdled in the heat.

Joy didn’t want to go to the meeting – it was always a battle with her, and the family usually ended up hot and bothered with their eldest daughter pouting selfishly. Although she stood dutifully for the singing, in her heart she was still sitting down with arms firmly folded. Her uncooperative moods didn’t last long though because even at the tender age of ten she was a devotee of the well-constructed sermon. She could see it was an art form and one which she practised herself at every opportunity. This time it was the gospel in a nutshell. Plastered onto a board was a huge picture of a nutshell large enough to contain several kernels of truth. These poked out from the shell and the speaker extracted them one at a time and expounded their meaning. When displayed together the phrases made up a verse from the Bible which declared that God loved the world so much he sent his son down from heaven, where he’d been perfectly happy, to be crucified on a hill far away and if you could just believe that this was a good thing for a loving father to kill his son then you could live forever, not like Jesus because he died hammered onto a wooden cross with blood on his head from the crown made of thorns and the hole in his side where the soldiers stabbed him. Simple!

Joy's parents smiled down at her beatifically, apparently oblivious to the irony that their offspring weren’t allowed television because it might damage them and yet they were subjected to this horrific story of injustice, suffering, pain and torture on a weekly basis. It was too horrible to be believed and yet Joy did believe – every word of it. This Jesus didn’t die for long. It was all right in the end because when his friends came looking for the body it wasn’t there. He was standing in the garden with holes in his hands wearing a white dress and gazing up to heaven where the angels had a special seat for him and a hero’s welcome. The pianist was playing softly in the background as the speaker asked if anyone wanted to go to heaven and meet Jesus.

Joy wanted to very much. She knew she was a sinner because she heard that she was every week. Sin was second nature to her – first nature according to the preacher – and she wanted to wear a white dress and feel clean. She was always being naughty. Once she and Eleanor were playing boyfriends and girlfriends and Eleanor kissed her on the lips. Joy had also kissed a boy on the lips when he promised to buy her a bag of butter balls from the corner shop near the school back gates. Then there was that time when Eleanor made her take off all her clothes in her neighbour’s garage and the two of them marched round while the big boys in their street stared at them. They promised to give her loads of comics but her parents arrived and took her home where her father smacked her on the bottom. She never did get the comics. She really wanted to be good but it was too hard. She started to cry. Maybe Jesus could help. She made up her mind and gingerly raised her hand. The singer sang, ‘I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.’

One of this week’s spellings was hallelujah – H A L L E L U J A H.

Selves

At the beginning of a lesson with Year 12 a boy greeted me with, “Can I ask you a rhetorical question, Miss?” I replied that he could but said that naturally he wouldn’t expect an answer. He nodded and looked at me. I looked back at him, waiting for the question. It didn’t come. Finally, with a smirk he said, “That was it. That was the question.”

Questions are funny things. This week my son-in-law, working as a locum in the A&E department of a Belfast hospital, tended a patient who had a nasty cut on his chin. He was rather the worse for wear (the patient, not the doctor) and Sam was trying to engage him in conversation as he carefully stitched the wound. After giving a few grunted replies the patient felt he should at least try to enter into the dialogue and asked Sam, “So, what do you do yourself then?”

In church on Sunday, our pastor told a story about the actor, Kirk Douglas, who apparently enjoyed giving lifts to hitchhikers. One such traveller, recognising the driver as someone famous blurted out, “Do you know who you are?”

Often we know the answer to our questions, but we’re making conversation and exploring our own and other people’s thoughts and opinions. Like the inner child we haven’t quite outgrown, we are always asking “Why?” I have lots of questions - most of them, it has to be said, for God. As I get older there are more and more imponderables and fewer easy answers. When I was a university student I knew a lot more, or thought I did, than I do now. I was a passionate evangelist and loved the certainty of religious conviction. Nowadays, God seems inscrutable and mysterious. Less sure, I still love the adventure of faith, the listening and the hoping and the wondering and the waiting.

Jesus liked to ask questions. Picture the scene: a blind beggar sits by the side of the road, desperate and needy and Jesus says, "What do you want me to do?" Wasn’t it obvious? Isn’t it still? I know there are times when I’m looking for direction and God says, "What do you want?" The will to choose and decide is a precious gift which is ours to exercise every day.

I may have mentioned GM Hopkins before. I love how the poetic agonies over his faith are infused with an irrepressible joy in God’s creation. He asks the big questions but doesn’t lose heart when he cannot arrive at a definitive answer. Hopkins believed in ‘inscape’ - that everything has an essential ‘isness’ - a self which screams out a singular aspect of its Creator.

Even trees, or especially trees. In Binsey Poplars, He laments the wanton felling of a row of aspens and lambasts those who ‘hack and rack the growing green’. Their loss is described as a death and a travesty for generations to come. There is an implied suffering as the destructive strokes ‘unselve’ the beautiful scene. By destroying nature we attack its very essence, and with it impoverish our own selves. Could it be that like the flowers and birds our only purpose is to reflect the glory of I AM? Every petal and feather, like every person, is a tiny piece of God. That’s who he is or at least that’s how we can catch glimpses of a little bit of who he is. He is so vast and we are so small that we can only understand if he draws us pictures, like a parent with a palette. In As Kingfishers Catch Fire Hopkins can hear creation cry “What I do is me: for that I came.” The Forestry Commission would do well to think on that as they rush through the sale of tracts of woodland without any safeguards.

It’s not as we worry or question or debate things to death that we understand, but as we are quiet and soak in the beauty of the Creator as reflected in created things that we know, find a self and are known. And that has to be answer enough, for now.

"Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

Softly, softly

January – the time of new beginnings! One of the things I love about teaching English is opening a brand new book and reading from chapter one. It’s an exciting moment as I and the eager (and not so eager) pupils embark together on an adventure of discovery. And such variety! From Digory and Polly bursting into the attic where Uncle Andrew rises like a demon from the chair to Scout, Dill and Jem daring each other to touch Boo Radley’s house and, with sixth form, wondering about the mysterious Gatsby reaching out towards the green light across the bay and meeting the troubled Meursault walking behind his mother’s coffin in the raining sun. From Narnia to Maycomb, to the American Dream and Existentialism, it’s entering new worlds and knowing we will never be the same again.

I was handing back a homework essay yesterday to a Year 13 boy when I informed him that I was going to tell him something which he would never forget – something that would live on in his memory after I was dead. He was intrigued; the whole class was intrigued. I wrote the word ‘full’ on the board and explained that this is the only time that the double consonant ‘ll’ occurs at the end of a word; all other words ending in ‘ful’ have only one ‘l’ – beautiful, joyful, thankful, hopeful… By the way, did you know that there are only four words in the English language which end in ‘dous’? I’ll let you think about that.

Speaking of new worlds, TV offers the same opportunity. This week I watched the documentary on RTE 1 about Ulster songstress of the 50s and 60s, Ruby Murray, who wowed crowds with her husky tones until her crooning career was cut short by the advent of filthy Rock n Roll and she descended into alcoholism. Her name may live on as rhyming slang for an Indian meal but she still holds the record for having five hits in the charts in a single week in March 1955.

The programme was called Ruby and the Duke and Peter Wilson (aka Duke Special) interviewed Ruby’s son and daughter and others who knew her in her heyday. Her story has been repeated so many times in the show biz/music industry: a meteoric rise to fame and success followed by a collapse into self-destruction and obscurity as the next new thing deposes the old. The highlight of the programme for me was the magical moment when Brian Kennedy sang one of Ruby’s hits, Softly, Softly accompanied by Duke on the piano. Absolutely gorgeous!

People may come and go; we will come and go, but some things are eternal – like good literature and good tunes. This is supposed to be the bleakest and darkest week of the year. Read a book or sing a song and live long.

Softly, softly come to me
Touch my lips so tenderly
Softly, softly turn the key
And open up my heart