TheYorkshireTraveller: November 2012

A Little Book of Love

Dedicated to all whom I love,

and whom I dare hope love me

There is a lot of love in the world – but still not enough! These stories are meant to encourage us to love a little more, to love more people, and to share the joy of love especially with those in whose life love has not yet been a blessing. Love is the greatest of all Christmas gifts.

These are true stories about love, and touch on love for those we have chosen to love, love for those we ought to love, love for our friends, love for helpless creature, love for those nature has fitted us to love, and love for those who have found place in our hearts not because they have any right to be there, but because of the largeness of our warm and tender hearts and the blessing of our all wise and loving God.

The greatest characteristic of love is its constancy. Love survives misfortune, unwise choices, human follies, and it bridges our own disappointment to keep its tireless span touching the far banks of life where those who dwell would otherwise be outcast and scorned.

Robert Browning’s identification of love as that which ‘alters [not] when it alteration finds,’ is the hallmark by which the mettle of our own hearts is tested. It is the standard by which Almighty God measures the worth of souls.

And in the long journey of life, the only hope we have that our time has been well spent is in direct proportion to the love we have for others, whether they are great or small, worthy or unworthy, or deserving or undeserving according to the way we judge them.

These stories illustrate ways in which love has been selflessly given by different people in different circumstances, but whose common gift to Life is their love. “Go thou and do likewise.”

White Robed Angel

It was the beginning of November 1997 - The patients knew she was an angel – that white robed figure who slowly and silently moved through the dim night hours in Ward Eight of Huddersfield Royal Infirmary. Some people do not believe in angels, and I understand why they do not. But I do!

Angels come in all shapes and sizes. Their existence does not depend on whether people do or do not believe in them. Most think of angels as diaphanous spirits floating down from heaven to minister to people in times of need, before returning to ethereal realms. This angel was not visiting from heaven. She was an earthling, who did not know it, but was on her way to paradise.

The angel’s name was Norma. We had been married for almost thirteen years when she became ill. Initially it seemed to be nothing more serious than a sore throat. She took a turn for the worse, becoming hoarse, tired, and weak. I drove her to the hospital, insisting that a doctor examine her. The doctor ordered tests and x-rays.

The test results and x-rays came back. The young physician was taciturn, avoiding my gaze. “I think we’ll keep her in,” he said. “We need to do further tests.” I wheeled her into the reception ward, hugged her long and hard, and left for home. When I returned with her necessities, she was in bed in Ward Eight

She was gratified that something was being done and after some rest, she was more like the happy, laughing woman everyone knew. I spent each day with her and she had many visitors. Friends and neighbours flocked to see her, bringing her flowers, fruit, chocolates, and the mandatory energy drinks.

Her happiest day was the Sunday when three of her four surviving children visited. They spent the day talking, remembering, and laughing. She loved to laugh, but her greatest attribute was her impulse to loving service. Although now enfeebled by disease, she obeyed the divine impulse to serve others, shuffling painfully through the ward, seeing to the needs of others.

A young girl, struggling to come to terms with life, lay listless and morbid. Tattooed, pierced, her arms bearing the scars of frequent self-mutilation, ostracised by her fellow-patients, brooding, and depressed. Norma encouraged her to think positively about herself and the possibilities of her life.

In the bed across from Norma was an old lady. Everything she ate came back. Norma soothed and comforted, encouraging her to take a little nourishment to get strong enough to fight the illness that was sapping her vitality.

One elderly Indian woman spoke little English. She had many visitors at one particular time of each day, but for long periods after that, she was alone and unable to join in conversations. Norma, who spoke no Urdu or Gujerati, sat on her bed and painstakingly made contact. She understood how important it was for people to have human company if they were going to feel good about themselves.

Many others, scattered throughout the large ward, were grateful recipients of Norma’s ministration. She was often up in the night, comforting those who were feeling lost, or lonely, or who were anxious, or unable to sleep. It was not easy for her to move around, because her illness sapped her strength, and made walking difficult.

However, it did not stop her from visiting and helping. The nurses and doctors praised her enterprise, appreciating the value of spiritual support in healing.

In the next bed was a woman in her thirties. It was she, more than any other, who attracted Norma’s most profound compassion. She was a tender little thing who apologised every time she opened her mouth. She was so anxiety laden that it was painful to hear her. If she dropped a crumb onto the bed covers, she apologised, looking as if some ogre was going to punish her. She repeatedly complained that she was being a nuisance, and felt that she caused trouble for the staff.

One night, she called for a commode. After using it, she began to cry that she was sorry, that she was sure she had made a mess. Would they forgive her? Norma assured her that everything was all right. She spoke softly and encouragingly.

The young woman came and sat on the edge of Norma’s bed. Norma took her hands in her own, looked her in the eye and spoke softly but directly. “You have a Father in Heaven who loves you.”

These were the last words she heard. She smiled, the only time Norma had seen her smile, and then died.

How fitting that the last words she heard in mortality were words of love, assurance, and hope.

The White Robed Angel had performed her ministry. Three weeks later, she was herself called to a better place where, I do not doubt, she continues to minister to fragile souls who need to learn that through all the disappointments and anxieties of life, they have a Father in Heaven, and he loves them.

True Love

It was an extraordinary story, but I was not surprised. I called my old friend Mike Wright, having heard that he had had some serious health issues in the last couple of weeks, and those I had spoken to confirmed that he was lucky to be alive.

Mike and Millie have been sweethearts ever since the brash young tar was impressed by the dimples on the pretty face he found himself standing next to at a football match, and they have been together except when Mike was chopping through the high seas on the HMS Ladybird.

Four heart attacks in less than a week had Mike thinking seriously about his funeral service and Millie’s widowhood, the same dark thoughts that troubled Millie as she held Mikes hand in the dim quiet of the hospital ward knowing that she must be braver than she felt. The last attack resulted in Mike struggling to hold onto life as his ambulance raced down the hard shoulder of the M62 to Leeds, blue lights flashing, the insistent siren demanding clearance, giving the lie to the nurse who told Mike there was no emergency but Mike knew better, seeing, as it were in vision, his funerary service, and Millie weeping inconsolably and alone.

The heart surgeons at Leeds Infirmary hit Mike with clot busting chemicals and took him down into the bowels of the hospital where they pull off their everyday miracles. He saw his heart on the screen pounding reassuringly, saw the murky puff of radio-opaque dye squirted into his arteries, endured the surprise of the hot flush start at his head, rolling down his body, and exit through the soles of his feet as he wondered what the heck it was!

As the surgical team talked amongst itself, seemingly insouciant, a slender wire snaked its way through the hole they had punched into his femoral artery and wriggled into his heart, aiming for the stenotic section of cardiac artery plainly detailed by the fluid.

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A miracle of micro engineering called a stent sat at the end of the catheter and, when in position, the balloon inflated spreading the expanded metal keeping the cholesterol plaque apart and restoring circulation to the coronary arteries. A check by the eminent surgeons and a second stent was shunted up behind the first to secure the site from closure, then, after a night in the Coronary Care Unit, Mike was on his way to recovery and eventually a more leisurely return trip by ambulance this time sans siren and lights to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.

Millie entered the room with apprehension. She did not know whether Mike was going to make it or not and after so many years even the fleeting thought that her best friend and husband might not survive pushed her heart up into her mouth causing her to tremble with fear. She scanned the glimness, finding Mike in the futuristic gloom surrounded by tubes and machines that interpreted and reported his condition, peeping and chirruping like a battery of electronic birds to the accompaniment of a flashing demonstration by multitudes of micro-sized Christmas tree lights.

The nurse technician scrutinised the screens and illuminated displays, his face betraying his anxiety, as he perceived some behaviour in Mike’s heart that should not be. Two nurses were holding Mike’s hands, one either side of the bed, as Millie fearfully drew near. One reached for Millie’s hand, placing Mike’s hand in it as her counterpart laid Mike’s hand on the bed and left.

At the very moment Mike and Millie touched hands, the scrutiniser gasped, exclaiming that the screens and indicators had suddenly shifted to register all his readings just as they should be.

“Let go of his hand and let me check it when you are not touching him!” he said, his voice urgent.

Millie laid Mike’s hand on the bed and he checked the screens again. Mike’s heart beat a little faster but apart from that all his signs remained steady and first-rate. Millie took his hand again and his heart slowed to normal limits, and everyone relaxed. There was muttering and head scratching from the disbelieving care team at what they had witnessed.

The touch of the hand of Mike’s True Love had calmed his troubled heart. He had lain passive and terrified among hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment designed and built by human genius. Nursing, medical and radiological experts who had jointly spent more than two hundred years developing their skills and cunning had treated him.

He had received hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pounds worth of wonder drugs to calm him, break up the clots that had caused the death of parts of his heart muscle, medicines to stop the pain, calm his anxiety and prevent the formation of new clots, and while all these had been essential in bringing him back from the edge of the grave, it was a miracle that no individual brilliance can reproduce, no drug can imitate, and no machine can generate: a miracle only achievable by the touch of the hand of one who is truly loved and who truly loves.

Emma Rae McKay wrote to her husband, David:

How much have I remembered you?

As much as night and day!

Not any thoughtful moment have you

Ever been away.

From sunlight to moonlight, and

From darkness to the dawn,

Your image and my love for you

Have always lingered on.

What more could I have done, dear one,

To show my feeling true?

What more is there in life, my love,

That I can offer you?

Maybe there is nothing more that anyone could offer – except, perhaps, life itself, through the touch of a healing hand when only True Love will make the miracle. For the God of Miracles wrought the greatest miracle of all when He sent His only Son so that we should not die, because He is the God of True Love.

Behold Thy Mother

I watched the mothers, some young, and some not so young, that had carried their fretful babies to the back of the auditorium at the stake conference.

Though quite different women, each held their little ones close in roughly the same way, swaying gently, cooing into their ears, and enticing them to sleep.

The scene before my eyes misted over and changed. In my imagination I saw their babies grown to manhood and womanhood, and I knew what they would never know: that their mothers carried them, bore them, held them, sacrificed their time, comfort, and health to love them through bleak and cheerless days, troubled and tormented nights, and did whatever the moment demanded to make them well again and restore their sweet smiles of baby peace.

Sadly, children grow up forgetful of every sweet or troubled moment spent on them by their loving mothers.

Once assumed, motherhood can not be laid down. It endures beyond the narrow confines of mortality into the broad and sweeping reaches of eternity, where the attributes of matriarchy are acknowledged as essential characteristics of deity.

The wages of motherhood are not paid in full during mortality. A mother’s labour does not stop when her heart beats its last, and her breath slips from her with a sigh.

Mothers know this, but undertake the role with love and thanksgiving, accepting that ingratitude will often reward their efforts to render help or advice.

Each memory of the earliest months and years are imprinted into the mother’s heart, and burned into her brain, but the child often forgets, acting as if those days had never been, and that makes for the worst kind of pain.

Mothers are not perfect. There is no prior requirement for would-be mothers to be faultless or expert. Even so, most strive for perfection, and many get close enough to pass with honours.

Children of any age who harbour the expectation that their mother should be perfect are labouring under a delusion whose identical twin is the idea that life will be fair. The best that can be said of any mother is that despite her imperfections, she tried always to do her best to raise her children well.

This upward striving, often against her intrinsic nature, is the willing sacrifice of a mother’s loving heart, swiftly turned from her own interests when the badge of “Mother” is pinned to her breast. She is always ‘mother’ although the direction and intensity of her role changes as her family grows.

Now a girl, little more than a child, nursing a newborn that demands all her devotion so that he can live, be healthy, increase in wisdom, and grow to adulthood.

Now a mature woman with three or more little ones tugging at her skirts, juggling her time, coping with the many calls and tasks that fly at her with the velocity of an autumn wind, answering the call to motherhood without diluting the love, care, and tenderness she imparts to each of her charges.

Now a matron, watching her teenaged children hover on the edge of maturity, but who still desperately need to hold onto her hand as they unfurl their wings, poised to try them in the wide blue arc of their unfolding lives.

Now a grandmother with smiling eyes, silver hair, and tears in her eyes cradling her grandchild and remembering those that, too often, have either forgotten her or else remember but do not take time to call her, send her a letter or a card, and who decline to make the best gift of all and visit her, even for a few moments.

Then a great-grandmother remembering little with clarity, her wrinkled face reverting to angelic gentleness when she is visited by sweet children whose parent’s names she has forgotten.

As Jesus hung on the Cross of Calvary, he made provision for his mother by commanding John the Beloved, Son, behold they mother. In these few words, Jesus defines our responsibilities to our mothers.

How appropriate, that in the hour of his passion, as he made perfect Atonement, he recognised the part his mother had played in preparation for his becoming the Saviour of the World, and that he made provision for her to be comforted and cared for at the very moment of his death through the good offices of one whom he loved and trusted.

In the Fellowship of the Cross Jesus teaches us about mothers and the regard and esteem that he and his Father in Heaven have for them.

Through this, we come to appreciate the truth about the exalted calling of motherhood, in fulfilment of which mothers go to the edge of the grave to bring their children into the world.

What is equally true is that mothers never stop loving their children, even when their children are ungrateful, unkind, and, sometimes neglectful.

When I was young, I was disappointed that my mother had not made me better than I was. My feelings towards her changed when I realised that she had done her best, and I began to appreciate all that she had done for me, rather than count what I considered to be her failings. Since then, I have felt much better, and so has my mother.

Whatever our mothers may or may not have done for us, they gave us life, and nurtured us according to their imperfect best. To each of us, especially we who have not managed to be sufficiently grateful, the Voice from the Cross commands,

“Behold thy mother!”.

Breakdown in Barnsley

Norma and I were travelling home to Huddersfield after visiting June and Fred in London. Our Lada Riva was laden with the goodies that characterised June and Fred’s regard for us and made our car sit down on its suspension.

We had passed through north London, reached the M1, and driven about ten miles from beginning of Motorway, when the rear end started to roll gently, indicating a flattening tyre. I pulled on to the hard shoulder, and changed the flat tyre for the spare.

We drove at a good lick until we got about twenty miles south of Barnsley, when the same thing happened again. The back end swung a little, and I knew that another tyre was losing air.

We had used the spare, it was almost half past one in the morning, we didn’t belong to a rescue organisation, we had no mobile phone, the motorway was virtually deserted, so I decided that we would keep going and try to reach Huddersfield on the flat tyre. That seemed like a reasonable thing to do, so we tried.

About half a mile later and the tyre began to be shredded by rolling under the rim. Then, as strips came loose, they flapped against the underside of the body every time they came around and threatened to make a hole in the bodywork.

It was terrifying at first, but then as piece after piece was ripped from the tyre until it was all left lying on the motorway the knocking was replaced by the rumbling of the rim on the road.

In the mirror I saw sparks from the rim, and eventually the rim went flatter than the missing tyre. By this time I was more than a little afraid of setting fire to the vehicle if we continued, so I slowed and got off at the next exit.

We crawled up the exit for South Barnsley, then at the roundabout turned right towards the town. We didn’t make town. The car was by this time unhappy, complaining with every revolution of the flattened rim.

I pulled into a side street next to a red telephone kiosk and parked. The telephone didn’t work! I walked around the corner and a hundred or so yards away stood the warehouse of Gent’s clothing manufacturer.

The place looked shut up and dark, but a lone light shone from a small hut used by the security man on the gate. I went back to the car to get Norma rather than leave her alone in the dark in a crippled car.

Together we walked to the security hut and the guard let us in. I explained out plight and he, against company policy, let us use the telephone directory and his ‘phone to try to find a tyre repair service.

Tyre repair? Not in Barnsley, not at that time of night! So I telephoned our bishop in Huddersfield, but he was a very heavy sleeper. I was left with just one option and that was to call our friend Louise Scholes.

Louise answered the ‘phone on the second ring, and after I told her of our predicament, she instantly agreed to come and rescue us.

We thanked the lone sentinel for his kindness, and left him in the still dark night to keep his watch. Linking arms, we walked back to our poor little car, feeling buoyed up by the cheerful response we had from Louise.

The walk to our ravaged car took less than five minutes. We sat inside, warmed by the balmy night air, and the restoration of hope.

Fifteen minutes later, a cream coloured Mercedes estate wagon rolled around the corner. We were rescued! That makes the elapsed time from hanging up on the call to Louise’s arrival a staggering twenty minutes.

I was no slouch when it was a matter of driving on the motorway, but it took me a good forty minutes to reach Barnsley from Huddersfield with all four tyres inflated, but Louise had cut my time in half.

Not only had she shaved twenty minutes from my record, but also she had made sandwiches and a flask of hot drink before she hurtled to our rescue! The woman was a wonder, and a blessed miracle.

After our 2 am repast, we transferred our belongings from the Lada to the Merc, and then put the flat tyred wheel in the back and she sped us through the night to our home, helped us carry our stuff into the house, and then she went back to Edgerton to the bed she had abandoned to help us.

Early next morning, she called. She had taken the flat tyre to the garage to be repaired and had picked it up and was ready to take me to my car and do whatever needed doing to get it home. The car was still in the side street by the trashed telephone box sat on the rickety scissors jack.

While fitting the wheel on, I noticed that the tarmac under the back of the car was soft and smelled of petrol. Inspection revealed that the flapping pieces of tyre had broken the rust from the bottom of the petrol tank and all my precious fuel had escaped in the night.

I had a fibreglass repair kit in my toolbox, cleaned off the tank, stuck a big patch of fibreglass wadding over the lacework, smeared it with the resin, and left it to set.

Louise then drove me to a petrol station and we put a gallon in her tin, drove back to the Lada, tested the patch to make sure it had set, poured in the fuel, turned the key, and the good hearted engine roared into life.

I thanked Louise for her goodness, thoughtfulness, and selflessness, and she was gone as if shot from a gun. She was no slouch. I drove, much slower, back to the petrol station and filled the tank before driving home, safe and sound, having been rescued by the angel in the flying Mercedes Benz.

I have often thought of Louise when I have been asked to help others but experienced some hesitation, and then felt ashamed at my reluctance, and, in the same spirit that Louise showed to us, cheerfully said, “I’ll be right there!”

It always feels good, and I know it always will.

Even now as my body is not as reliable as it once was, and as my strength fails, and when movement is increasingly painful, I hope that I can always summon the strength and spirit to follow the example that was set before to me by a lady snug and warm in bed many miles away, who did not hesitate to respond to my plea for assistance, and who transformed what should have been a simple rescue mission into a function, complete with catering and a next-day follow-up.

The amazing thing is that she took time to cut the crusts from the bread and to wrap the sandwiches in beautiful damask serviettes! That extra touch, together with the crystal goblets from which we drank our hot chocolate at 2 30 am in a side street on the outskirts of Barnsley add that touch of self that transmute our acts of service into acts of giving of ourselves, which is the very heart of selfless succour, and not only helps the predicaments to which they are addressed, but change lives as they do so.

The Little Fisherman

During military service, I served a year on Cyprus, ‘The Jewel of the Mediterranean,’ where the friendliness and generosity of the Cypriots impressed me. Yet I was to meet a man whose friendliness and generosity impressed me more than any other man I had met before or since.

His name was Andreas, though he was seldom called that. He was small; no more than four feet six inches tall, and his head was disproportionately large. Therefore, his friends called him Fezzaz, meaning ‘big head.’ Remarkably, he did not seem to mind, perhaps because he knew who and what he was and was completely at ease with himself.

We met in a café overlooking the beach in the poorer part of Larnaca. Andreas was sitting with some friends who were giving him a hard time, making him the butt of their jokes while he played the part of a fool, responding to their jests and cruel taunts without rancour or anger.

Eventually, his companions tired of their game and left. He then moved to my table and uninvited sat down and began to talk to me. His doing so was not motivated by a desire to convince me that he was not the buffoon he had given the impression of being for the sport of his friends.

He told me that he was a psari – a fisherman. With his small boat and a net, he wrested an uncomfortable and uncertain living out of the waters off Larnaca, a small town on the south coast of the historic island. He expressed himself in remarkably good English with charming and poetic fluidity, rescuing me from the necessity of having to speak in my version of Greek.

His talk and manner revealed that here was a man strangely wise and profoundly serious, markedly different from the Fezzaz who had, but moments ago, played court jester to lesser men.

He led the conversation with gentle ease and demonstrated an exceptional grasp of human nature and world affairs. During our tête-à-tête, he reminded me that it was Easter Saturday and that midnight would bring the anniversary of the Resurrection of the Christos, the Saviour Jesus Christ.

“Will you be going to church tonight?” he asked gently intoning the words. I replied that I had not thought of going.

“You will come with me.” It was not a question, nor yet a command, but it was irresistible. He rose to leave and I followed him.

Shortly before midnight, we joined with the hundreds in the procession in the dark streets of Larnaca. Each carrying the symbols of Easter: a lighted candle, a hard-boiled egg, and a piece of bread.

The candle represented Jesus Christ as the Light of the World, the egg the symbol of new life in his Resurrection, and the lump of bread was the symbol of Him as the Bread of Life.

We moved along with the crowds over rain bright cobblestones into the candlelit church from the narrow street. In silence we stood as the Pappas intoned the devotional, our thoughts directed backwards to events that transpired not too far away due east of where we stood and which had transformed human history.

Although my Greek was less than perfect, I understood some of the bearded, dark-robed priest’s word, and what I could not grasp I felt. It was good to be in that place.

The devotions over, he led and again I followed to his dwelling. His home consisted of one room ten feet by ten feet that served as dining room, living room, and bedroom. An adjoining passageway with a door to the outside served as a kitchen and washing place.

There were two beds, in one of which Andreas’ wife slept, waking as we entered. He spoke to her in his soft voice. Leaving her bed, she crossed to the small bed and woke their two sleeping children, who immediately arose and went into the big bed, falling back to asleep almost instantly.

The candle was extinguished leaving us in the dark to undress and go to bed. I climbed into the children’s still warm bed, falling almost at once to sleep, but not before musing on the events that had led me to this setting.

I understood that I had entered a different world and was now in the presence of angels.

Bright sunshine poured in through the small high window and warmed us awake late on Easter morning. We rose, dressed, took turns to wash at the cold-water sink, and then sat at the rickety table to share breakfast of goat’s milk cheese, black bread, and restful, undemanding camaraderie.

Breakfast done, his family lined up outside the street door. We shook hands, embraced, said brief but heartfelt goodbyes in Greek and English, and then I walked away from a friend who had penetrated deep into my heart. I never saw or heard from him again.

I did not learn his last name, and I could never find my way back to his welcoming door in the warren of small streets that filled the spaces between the buildings near the shoreline of that ancient town. Yet, I shall always hold his memory dear and remember the valuable lessons that he taught me.

He taught me that it is possible to reach out to strangers and make friends of them.

He taught me that you do not have to be rich to have enough to share.

He taught me that no man need be ashamed of his poverty or lowly circumstances if he enjoys the richness of a soul that is trusting and generous.

He taught me that the greatest gift is love and validated that truth by his life.

Andreas, whether he is called by his name, meaning leader of men, or by the uncomplimentary Fezzaz, is truly a child of God.

Though small among men and lacking in physical beauty, he is possessed of a grace that exalts him. He was apparently without fault, seemingly perfect, though he would be quick to deny it.

Here is a man who uncomplainingly accepts the derision of others, and exhibits the characteristics of Him whose Resurrection Morning celebration he bid me attend.

It is said that Christ walks among men in disguise. Having met and walked with Andreas, I believe that may be so.

God Be With You ‘Til We Meet Again

God be with you ‘til we meet again;

By His counsels guide, uphold you,

With His sheep securely fold you;