TheYorkshireTraveller

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Fishing With Sam

Fishing with Sam

I have only fished once since I was a pole net fisherman in the duck pond of Greenhead Park in distant days when I was a boy and the prize was minnows an inch or two long, that we called sticklebacks because of the sharp spikes along their backs, and that was a day’s fishing with little Sam in the stream by the bridge in the field next to the Old Mill House where he lived with his baby brother, and his parents, my good friends Keith and Caroline Vugler, for whom I occasionally babysat.

I liked spending time with the Vuglers. Keith and I became friends when we went to the School of Nursing at Saint Audrey’s Hospital in Woodbridge, Suffolk in 1970. Keith was a musician who had been in the pop music industry and had performed in many places round the world. Equally at home on the double bass as on the piano, his wit and easy humour made him an excellent companion. It was, he said, his compulsion to give something back to the world that had given him so much that led him to become a psychiatric nurse. Caroline was a beautiful young woman from Saffron Waldon. She was kind, talented and the kind of mother every child ought to have. Their children called them Keith and Caroline, and that did not seem out of place in their relaxed and bright
household.

Their home was an old flourmill that sat beside a now sluggish weed-stilled stream that had once propelled the decaying undershot wheel and ground wheat into flour. The mechanism occupied the back part of the composite of industrial and domestic premises that oozed old world charm with its low head-bumping oak beams, duck or grouse doorways, sloping broadboard upper floors, and a fundamental cottagy charm that swept visitors backwards at lightning speed a couple or more centuries into a pastoral idyll that probably never was, but seemed to have been in the sun soaked days of a blueskied summer in Suffolk.

The odd fusion of present charm and the evocation of the Arcadian manners of past generations of millers enchants those whose poetic souls are unrestricted by the demands of reality to see what exhausting drudgery milling really was, and how its impinged on each of the miller’s household, from youngest to eldest, to keep the mill stones turning, maintaining high standards and hitting deadlines for demanding customers, and always so much to do in the hustle and bustle that characterised the lives of agrarian workers in those harsh times and from whose obligations the mill and its operators were neither immune nor excused. Mills, like most worthwhile crafts and enterprises, required continual close attention from skilled eyes and hands, and conferred no repose until the creaking wooden mechanism was put to rest for the night. Only then, when the persistent rumblings slowed to a halt and there was no more need to shout to be heard, did quiet come to that place.

One day, the mill, having been brought to a standstill the previous night, slept on undisturbed, its giant undershot wheel letting the rushing water break against it, but the drive was locked and the great axle beam did not turn that day or ever again, nor the grinding stones roll one over the other crushing the hard won kernels into flour for bread and pastries, for the mill was put from use by the march of progress, and the fruits of the field taken to more modern, less wasteful factories run by sleepless steam engines and ground with greater precision into finer, more useful and better quality flour, and a way of life silently passed into antiquity. Flour dust settled for the last time on the Old Mill, the miller and his family either retired or went to work for someone else, the cornfat rats sought a reliable supply of provender, and eventually the farmer who owned the mill and the land on which it rested let it as a residence.

Now, it was the home of the Vuglers, but not as happy as it had been, for Keith and Caroline were amicably talking of divorce. It was at this time that I went to visit them in a summertime warm day and found the family in the throes of being split, their futures uncertain, and their lives standing as still as the dead mill as they thought what the future might hold.

It seemed like a good idea for Sam and I to go fishing. He had a boy’s fishing rod with a float, hook, and reel, and we took some doorstep-sized wads of bread from the bread tin in the whitewalled kitchen, and set off out of the mill house, across the brown field path to where a small brook was straddled by an unpretentious brick-arch bridge without parapets. Before the water coursed under the bridge, it widened into a little pond about ten feet across and three clear feet deep to its sandy bottom.

The fish were visible to Sam and I as we sat on the grassy bank to lure the prizes onto our hook. Sam was maybe five or six, bright-eyed, inquisitive, and intelligent with all the typical politeness of English children. We spoke of fish and of this and that, but nothing that broached the sombre world of my diminutive friend. Sam knew little about fish, and I knew less than he did. We knew that they should find the bait irresistible, get the hook caught in their lips, and then be hauled wriggling ashore and then … well, we didn’t know quite what came after that what with neither of us ever having caught one, but we figured that we would cross that bridge when we came to it.

The fishes came; good sized ones of five and six inches long, flashing silver in the sunlit stream. These were experienced fish who came and sniffed at the pellets of bread that we had made by soaking bread in water then squeezing the water, and most of the life, out of the paste into round balls that we impaled on the hook before lowering it gently into the water. The fish were not, it transpired, bread eaters, except when shards of our pellets dissolved from the hook and fell free to the bottom, then the fish ate heartily, but we were not deterred. We switched to Plan B, but when we had dug up a couple of reluctant earthworms and threaded them onto the hook, the fish also turned up their noses at meat on the hook.

Nevertheless, Sam and I enjoyed our time together. Sometimes, families breaking up have pressing concerns and often little time for their children and then it is easy to be with such children, and Sam was one and we talked of fish and other burdens that squeeze a young boy’s world at times, but he spoke nothing of his parents, and neither did I.

He had the confident warmth of unselfish children that makes them candid, honest, and congenial. Such souls are exquisite butterflies that summon our life’s summers even as the calendar proclaims a different season, and such a soul was Sam.

We spent the hot afternoon shielding our eyes from the sun, watching fishes sport with us and our inducements, and talking extravagantly as if we were the only ones alive in that green world of the high summertime glow in a deserted meadowfield in the heart of holy Suffolk, when earth, sky, God, man, and boy met in a lustrous celebration of life and its blessings attended by a peace that no spell can bind or break, and that is forever locked within the secret chambers of my heart, and, I hope, still has meaning for a man who once was a beautiful dark-haired boy who on that hallowed day turned the key in the lock that loosens the door to admit life where there is deadness, and makes room for joy by sweeping aside the pain of heartbreak, even if only for a few joyfilled hours.

I hope too that Sam remembers our non-fish fishing day – remembers it, and is still glad.

Copyright (C) Ronnie Bray - 2013

Sunday, April 21, 2013

A Mormon's Easter Thoughts

Easter Thoughts

By Ronnie Bray

A gentle knock came to the front door. Gay opened it to find a man offering her a religious tract. As he did so, he invited her to attend his church, saying, “We are celebrating the death of Jesus. Will you join us?” Gay politely declined his kind invitation, declaring, “We celebrate his Resurrection.”

The interview over, the door closed and Gay was left to ponder his emphasis on the death of Jesus at Easter, rather than on his rising. She told me this when I woke some time later and rejoined the human race. She explained that perhaps she had got herself on her high horse with him. However, considering her highest umbrageous horse is less than a quarter the size of the smallest dwarf miniature steed I doubt that his feelings were bruised.

But, that was not the end of the exchange. During the course of that day, I pondered the conversation and determined that each of them was right to some extent, provided they had not mutually excluded that part of Easter that the other had emphasised. My ruminations led me to acknowledge that Easter is not a single event, but a series of connected and interdependent events, some of which lay far back in human history before the first Easter, some that were significant at the time they took place, and some that reached forwards into a future that was to come, some of which have been, and some that are yet to come.

It became plain that if we divest Easter of any of its appurtenances, even one that seems insignificant, then we do it grave disfavour and diminish its importance. Easter is unchanged by our neglect, but our neglect reduces the blessings we can receive when our meditations and prayers focus on the occasion, because we fail to appreciate the significance and blessings predicated on an inspired recognition of Easter and all its parts.

Access to the complete range of blessings through Easter is God’s method of transforming us into a covenantal relationship with Him, and the means by which he draws us closer to Christ as beings saved by the mystical union that makes us one with Them, and which is the central reason for Easter.

The atonement by sacrifice of the Saviour was established when Heavenly Father brought us, his spirit children that Saint Paul calls, ‘His offspring,’ into life in heaven and prepared the earth to which we would, if obedient, be sent to inhabit mortal bodies to be proven faithful and obedient even when we no longer enjoyed his presence, eventually to return to his presence as resurrected, immortal, and saved beings. It was this opportunity that caused us, his children, to shout for joy, as the prospects were unveiled pre-mortally. The Book of Job refers to this occasion.

Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner stone thereof; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? – Job 38:3-7

Our divine Parent foresaw the need for his sons and daughters to be redeemed from their human frailty, and so He prepared for salvation through the divine intervention of a Saviour to bring those that would honour and follow him to become like His Firstborn Son, even Jesus Christ.

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. – Romans 8:29

This redemption of the human family was the grand purpose of Creation. By means of the Fall of Adam and Eve, and their ensuing mortality, these purposes were moved forward. The Fall was not, as some have thought, a tragedy for humanity, but a necessary part of Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation. We owe the opportunities that mortality presents to us to the Fall, for if it had not occurred we would not be capable of becoming as joint heirs with Christ of all that the Father has, including exaltation.

The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. – Romans 8:16-17

For many millennia, all that humankind could do was trust God and wait for the Messiah who would redeem man from mortal death and from the consequences of our own sinfulness. This redemption by atonement, prefigured in the Old Testament Law of sacrifice, under which animals were offered in symbolic sacrifice of that which was to come. This Law was fulfilled when the blood of Jesus Christ was shed as he suffered and bled on the cross at Golgotha.

We may not know, we cannot tell

What pains he had to bear.

But we believe it was for us

He hung and suffered there.

[Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander]

In everything he did, Jesus showed those that follow him how they should live. He was obedient to the will of his Father, he willingly submitted to the commission his Father gave him, and took upon himself the sins and sufferings of humanity so we could re-enter the presence of God our Father when our mortal journeys are run.

Remembering with gratitude all that went before Easter to make it possible, and contemplating the events of Passion Week that culminated in the death and Atonement of Jesus occasions our remembrance and gratitude, both to Jesus as well as to He that sent His Son into the world, and cause us to affirm our obedience as his disciples, as our hearts rejoice for ‘the greatest of all gifts,’ which is eternal bliss in the presence of God and His Christ.

A Joyous and thoughtful Easter to all.

Silent Move the Feet of Angels Bright

By Ronnie Bray

Many months after Norma died, although I tried to bring back some semblance of normality into my life, I no longer went upstairs to sleep in our bed but slept on the rosy couch we had bought from Neil and Wendy McEwen, and covered myself with a quilt. In the cold winter months, I put on the maroon blackberry-knit cardigan that Norma made for me, and kept the gas fire on a low setting all through the night to save money on running the central heating. Then, if I had trouble getting to sleep, I left the television on and that finally soothed me to sleep just as the radio had done when I was a lonely child in my attic bedroom in Fitzwilliam Street.

We had been very happy there, and I loved the house and its warm memories of Norma that spread through it recalling her joyful qualities and infusing me with an indescribable cosiness, even as I missed her company.

Apart from my good neighbours the Kohlis and the Iqbals, my good friends Silva and John Scott, and Frank Westerby, my insurance man, no one came across my threshold, including those that might be expected to have taken an interest in my well being. Yet, woven through the peaceful contentment and comfort that I felt stirring through the sights and sounds of my memories was as inexplicable sense of something intangible but superlatively real for which I had no explanation until I learned her secret.

After Norma’s funeral, I had gone down to Telford and stayed with Jo, Nick, and their little family. They made me very welcome, and without their love and support, and that of Karen’s family, I do not know how I would have coped with life.

Our marriage was a marriage made in heaven and attended by angels. Norma grumbled about my driving and occasionally felt that I spent too long at the computer. I disagreed about my driving, but conceded that I did at times overdo the writing. Apart from that, there was never the slightest contention between us, and we enjoyed the best relationship of all the married couples we knew, and would not have changed places with any of them, including those of our children.

Our date night was Tuesday, and most often, we snuggled down on the settee with a box of chocolates and some dandelion and burdock to watch an old movie. We laughed, lived, loved, and laughed some more, and this was the tenor of our days with no grey clouds on the horizon of our course, and never a squall, let alone a storm. We enjoyed visiting family, loved being with them and their children, but we were always happy to get back home and relax into our mellowing, ripening, sometimes lackadaisical, but always comfortable, lifestyle. Being home together was the highest joy of our blessed existence.

All of that came to a halt when Norma died and went to her reward, and her well-earned rest from the pain, discomfort, and indignity that she suffered during the three weeks she survived before her illness took her.

My greatest consolation was the unique love that Luke developed for me. Words can never express what I felt from him and feel for him. It is a love beyond the capacity of our earthly understanding, but has its counterpart in heaven where true love is the common language.

Yet, in my lonely times, an indefinable presence comforted me. Even though I was not aware of it, I enjoyed its unseen blessings and sensed its pure love, as if from the hand of an angel.

What I did not know and was not to find out for almost three years was that a sweet and lovely girl, Samara Iqbal, used to tiptoe out of her home late at night to visit my house to see if I was alright. She did not knock at my door, but climbed up on the low wall that surrounded my front garden and peered in through the lace curtains to see if I was all right.

Sometimes, she confided in Gay, she uneasily watched, as I did not appear to breathe, until she saw some slight movement from me that assured her that I was still breathing. Then, once she was satisfied that I was alive and well, she returned home where she prayed to Allah for me.

Although I was deeply touched by finding out about her nocturnal errand, I was not surprised. Since she was just a toddler, Samara had always been a kind and loving girl, eager to please, and with a generous heart concerned more for the welfare of others than for herself. In many ways, she had been a daughter to me, and still is. I remember the times she appeared at my door either with a plate of her family’s celebration meal, or with a summons to go to help fix something, help with correspondence, or eat one of Shahidah’s sumptuous Asian meals with the family. Every visit was attended by an invitation to eat something, and it was very hard to refuse the patient persistent pleading of Shahidah and her eldest daughter, Samara.

There is comfort in knowing that as I slept in my lonely house, a bright young angel took care to watch and see that all was well with me and, while I am not surprised, my life is brighter, my heart lighter and more joyful for having found out that it was so. Well did William Blake write:

… Silent move

The feet of angels bright;

Unseen they pour blessing,

And joy without ceasing

(‘Night’)

for no angel moved more silently, or poured out more blessing and joy than the unseen Samara keeping her selfless watch of love in the dark hours of cold nights over the unconscious form of a grieving widower who felt that life would never again be pleasant. I thank Allah for sending His angel, Samara.

28 October 2002 - 2013

Sunday, April 7, 2013

A Room With A View

Ronnie Bray

I am afraid of heights, and so it was strange to me to discover that as the outside elevator on the Skylon on the Canadian side of the Niagara and Horseshoe Falls took us skywards, I felt no pang of fear even when I looked down at the rapidly shrinking ground. I was a bit miffed at this because I wanted to overcome my fear of those contraptions, and to find that no fear existed robbed me of the opportunity to be brave.

Well, it didn’t happen and so I don’t have a thrilling story of how I overcame a lifetime’s horror and triumphed in mid-air over the demons that scream, You’re going to fall out and die! into the ears of the terrified who unwittingly and without malice aforethought get themselves into situations that they have spent years avoiding. Instead, I have only a story of wonder to share.

The smooth, almost imperceptible movement of the Yellow Bug lift car reached the upper level restaurant without incident. No glimmer of panic gripped my pusillanimous soul nor did my heart waver one beat from its steady rhythm. Almost disappointingly, we were safely delivered, and instantly forgot the ride and its covert nightmare.

Dinner was a superb buffet. Having so easily escaped one terror, I was encouraged to live doubly dangerously and opted for the seafood salad with generous undietary amounts of glistening octopus, glowing pink shrimp, and almost indestructible Alaskan Snow Crab legs. The addition of darkly roasted beef was a gluttonous not so afterthought.

Gay sat, appropriately, to my right, and enjoyed her meal as we exchanged life stories with a young couple across the table from us who, we learned, were one day short of their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

Ahead of me through the curved window that ran around the circumference of the restaurant, I could see the bright golden sun dipping low in the sky. Through the next two hours I plotted its course as it swung westwards and earthward changing into a fiery liquid blood-red disc before sliding below the horizon and lighting up the sky with cherry fingers of light before burning out in a final flurry of crimson and orange pulses to leave a world lit only by starlight.

An ensemble of students from a Canadian Seminary played and serenaded us with youthful but good voices. There was romance in the air as I held Gay’s hand and enjoyed her smile as she talked animatedly to our new friends. As I remembered how much I loved her and why, my mind wandered back through time to our first meeting and all the meetings since and the miles we had travelled together in our new life, and I was overtaken by a glow of true love.

We had both ventured much to be together. Both of us had been changed by the experience of moving our lives in different directions and taking a risk on each other. In spite of the confirmation we had both had that our union was right, we still had to take that walk into the possibility of failure, ride the Lift of Life with all its anxieties, and at least face the probability that we would not succeed.

How strange that neither of us took occasion to express such trepidation. Yet, reflection confirms that neither of us held any real concerns once we had discovered the quality of the other. Having set our course, any fears that may have been entertained failed to materialise, and we always knew that our life together would be good and happy. How good, and how happy, we could not guess. Nevertheless, we have been blessed with pure friendship and with an enjoyment of each other’s qualities that are the bedrock of a happy and successful marriage.

Holding her hand and gazing on the darkening world as the stars appeared through the blackness that came after the sun’s pyrotechnic setting, I half-realised, half-remembered that to overcome most fears one has only to face them to see them disappear, and that a life that was guided by signifiers beyond this world but not outside our experience, was one that could not fail.

Here was love, hundreds of feet above the crashing waters of the turbulent river, safe from the troubles and turmoils of life that destroy peace between husband and wife, away from the rocks of self-interest on which so many marriages fail, raised above ground level to be nearer to heaven and its blessings. I squeezed her hand and smiled as she turned to me, squeezing my hand in return as lovers do.

Then I thought of the loveless ones whose marriages are sad and sorry affairs with little approaching civility as their daily fare: those whose relationships are founded on mutual hostility and dislike, and who never know a tender touch or a soft and encouraging word. The silent contemplation of their unhappy lot chilled the air a little and I felt sorrow for them and almost guilty that I enjoyed enough happiness for more than one joyful family, but found that it was possible only to share the secret with others, but that I could not make them a present of happiness as might be done with money, had that been what was lacking from their lives.

The secret, I determined, glancing briefly at the rainbow-coloured Falls and counting my blessings, was to be completely unselfish and to love absolutely, for perfect love casteth out fear. The long-stemmed red rose that Gay gently caressed with her lips gave assent in lush but tacit beauty.

Ronnie Bray

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Ronnie's new historical novel Luddite Spring serialised at:

http://www.openwriting.com/archives/luddite_spring/

Yorkshire Folk Tales:

http:yorkshiretales.com

Apologetic work:

www.yorkshiretales.com/allaboutmormonism

www.yorkshiretales.com

www.yorkshiretales.com/allaboutmormonism

http://www.openwriting.com/archives/luddite_spring/

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.

4
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;