IN FROM THE EDGE Val Farrell

No secret this, you’ve known it for years, but it is news, I promise you that. Please be ready to hear it as if for the very first time. This my news for you, could just take your breath away, so get ready. I’m not asking you to humour me, but do please trust me that this is good news; the kind of news that can make a real difference. Ready? Here is my news for you. “You have five senses, five ways of getting to know the world about you.” Now I know just about everyone knows that much, so why am I insisting that my news for you is new? I’ll tell you why, listen.

A little while back I was ill and not just in my body. I am a lot better now, thank you, and I owe most of my recovery to real live people, people a lot like myself except that they work under the banner of the N.H.S., the National Health Service. Not everyone is aware that much of the great work the NHS does is outside of Clinics and Hospitals. In fact much of the work the NHS does to make people better is done in peoples’ own homes, as it was very recently for me.

Most of these real live people are paid for what they do. But that does not stop me from singing their praises. When it became obvious that I was ill, I was able to turn to the skills and learning of committed professional medics with their whole array of injections, pills and metered measuring machines. That part of my healing raised my awareness of life, what a gift it was and how I could all too easily miss out on it.  But once the medics had done their work for me, a team I scarcely knew of, a team embracing the very heart and spirit of the NHS, came to my help. These people made sure that the work of the medics was not wasted but rather that I was able to use that work to re-build the person I know as me, myself.

I remember how silly I felt when I first them. Among the exercises they recommended for me was breathing, breathing for heavens’ sake! I thought I knew all about breathing since I’ve lived a long time and have drawn an awful lot of breaths in that time. But I soon found that there was more to breathing than just breathing. With their help I began to appreciate the simple act of taking a breath and anchoring my very daily living on the rhythms of my breathing. And that’s not all. In learning to appreciate and learn from breathing I very soon came to appreciate a lot of other fairly basic things in my life, like the five senses for instance.

Just imagine living on planet earth, a world packed with beauty and riches and being unable to get in touch with any of it. What misery! A bit like the joke about the Golfer who thought that being sent to hell was not that bad when he was told it had a 36 hole well-kept Golf Course until that is he discovered that there were no golf balls there. And that of course is why I’ve been banging on about our five senses being good news. Living without them would turn our lovely planet earth into Hell on earth, literally.

And there’s more. Besides our five senses we have been given other gifts to help us appreciate things. The first of these”extras”, the one I’d like you to think about until next we meet, is the sheer gift of having to wait. I don’t mean the boring kind of waiting we sometimes do on wet days, although that too has its merits. No, I especially mean the waiting we do that is packed with hope and purpose. It’s easy to forget this gift of waiting, but it too, like our five senses, can teach us to appreciate the very gift of the life we have been given. So until next time, just wait.

SWEATING IT OUT AT THE JORDAN

THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD

A poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins nudges and tugs at my thinking as I prepare myself for the Mass of this coming Sunday, the feast of The Baptism of the Lord. The title of the poem is "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, not Day". You can read it further down.

The beautiful window above looks at everyone in our church from the left hand side of the sanctuary, close to the Baptismal Font. It occupies the front of an alcove and is lit from behind by artificial light; a Light Box designed by my unworthy self many years ago.

I'm hoping that Hopkins' poem will help complete the picture before we renew our Baptismal vows together.

Our Christmas crib was cosy and rosy with that big handsome shepherd cuddling the lamb once again catching the eye of all who passed. Don't argue about historicity with those who come to kneel at the crib. They will be miles ahead of you and will have no need of any kind of biblical criticism. Where the heart is, truth has a safe haven.

It all began to fall into place on the night of our "Carols by Candlelight" service. Whatever the turnover of the cash registers on the High Street, those who gathered to sing that night, had no need of bargain offers of anything. They knew exactly what it was all about. BUT..

We've already begun the task of dismantling Christmas. The cards have come down from around the house and although the big handsome shepherd stays for a few more days, come Sunday he will be back in the cupboard with all the others until next Advent. BUT..

Though we may dismantle the bric-a-brac of our seasonal celebration we need not cast away the gift that IS Christmas. Look for him not among the stowed-away things that briefly warmed our winter days, nor yet among the gifts we placed beneath the tree. Look for He who IS Christmas not in any of these but rather look for Him, and find him, among the losers gathered for John's baptism at the Jordan. Unlikely though it may sound, it is there you will find him and hear him acclaimed, "my son, the beloved".

What abundant hope surges through us as we hear the Gospel for this feast. There among the storm-tossed and the confused, the guilt-ridden and the desperate we find "My son, the beloved" . We may have done our best to keep up appearances at Christmas time, but in real life we can simply be our own "sweating selves" for "the Beloved" has come to join us. He stands along side us as his Father's plan for our salvation starts to unfold, laying upon his son, the burdens of us all.

The Poem:

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

OH TO BE IN ENGLAND

All On An April Evening 

April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road.

The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road;
All in an April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry;
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet:
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feet.

Rest for the Lamb of God
Up on the hill-top green;
Only a cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.

All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

THE FRIENDSHIP BUSINESS

I am, of late, greatly troubled by Dandruff; Dandruff of the most severe and noticeable kind. Should you find yourself sitting behind me at a church service, all too often a funeral, please don't feign ignorance of me for the snowflakes I shower around. Notice me still and if "being of good courage" matters to you at all, please, please, greet me yet as friend.

"FRIEND", did you hear that, "friend"? An abused and sadly often, an abusive term. Facebook, (yes you'll find me there) tells me that I have no less than 120 friends. I've only just now checked through their names and found many that were new to me. Yet I'm glad they're there; people whose domestic details are new to me yet by their very presence can introduce me to other cultures, other worlds, other friendships.

But No! You're right of course, I do not regard someone to chat to on subjects in which I have little interest, or people with a ready answer to the great questions the day such as Dandruff, a fit test for entry under the heading of "Friend". I am more inclined, as so often when I emerge from barren times, to turn to William Shakespeare. 

In Hamlet, finding his son Laertes delaying his passage  abroad, Polonius, his father, delays him yet further with these words of advice on "Friendship".

"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; "

Forget Facebook, in the world of W.S. do you and I count as friends or is it enough to be able to help with Dandruff?

MY NEW BLOG

is at:
www.evalfarrell.blogspot.co.uk
val

IN THE DEPARTURE LOUNGE

Well, it looks like I've got here at last, the Departure Lounge. Funny really how things have turned out. In the past, where I've spent so much of my time, I often joked when I found myself in a take-off area, especially when the uniformed staff passed through on their way to duty positions. "Got to trust them, boys," I would say, "your life is in their hands". Then everyone laughed, said I was a character. Not so much laughter now. Too busy. For a start everyone wants to make sure they've left the right forwarding address. It can't be all that long before they come to collect not just our goods and chattels, but us. So we quietly get on with things, the all-important "last things."In the meantime, I count my blessings.

I'm quite comfortable here in this Retirement Home. True I could improve the food so long as I was not asked to actually cook it. And I have many thoughts for general improvements, but I have closer concerns that seem to matter more, even if they actually don't.


Crowded around me this night are those I call friends, my books. They seem to have known that I would write this piece tonight for they have come close to me showing off names, titles, even dates. Some shout out insults to me like, coward, and fraud. They want to know why I've spent so little time with them and yet dare to call them friends. I don't know what to say. I may not have listened to  them all that often, but I wouldn't be without them for the world. And I'm very glad they're here with me now, in the Departure Lounge.


I don't know how long more my face will fit in here either,  with staff and passing staff, remembering how I once was, things I said and how I've changed. I've even come to wonder if it matters. Even my books. Let's be honest. Some I came across by accident and they seem all the better for it. They came to me bearing the names of strangers wanting only to be friends, eager to sit beside me as I read. Perhaps now it is my turn. Perhaps I too should leave my friends to the flow of chance, toss in the odd photo or postcard from days gone by and let what mystery may happen simply happen. Who knows who will make what of it?
So last words about me, by me. An epitaph no  less:

 Alas for me,

But I must own it so,

That in my time, 

I showed my self of brittle and uneasy substance made.

Time laboured hard

To work me true 
 And left me,

Now his measuring sands complete their course,

This one prevailing hope,

That in another day

There yet may be,

Some,

To remember me

With forgiveness 
and with love.