Wanted – Lodgings For Unemployed Single Man -- By Ronnie Bray

Landlords coming across the want ad, ‘Wanted – Lodgings for Unemployed Single Man’ might be forgiven if they don’t excitedly get in touch with the advertiser to offer their accommodation.  It is reasonable for those renting rooms to be sure that their prospective tenants have the means of paying their rent. 

If the homeless had described himself as a ‘gentleman with private means’ it would give encouragement to landlords, especially those that have had their share of rent-skipping fly-by-nights, because most landlords don’t let their accommodation spaces for love.  They are in the lodging business to make income. 

If the lodging seeker had been more forthcoming about his life-style and intentions for the future, someone with a room to let might have been prepared to take a risk on him.

It has been said that an optimist is someone looking for a room that takes his saxophone and piano accordion along on the hunt.  How much in need of a tenant does a landlord have to be to open his doors and arms wide to someone that carries with him the means of annoying his other tenants? 

Let’s play fly-on-the-wall to find out how this particular unemployed single man spends his time.  Why shouldn’t we?  Landlords are only human and the old adage ‘Once bitten twice shy’ is at the front of every landlord’s mind.  If it isn’t, then he is either new to the business, or else he has been lucky. 

There are always certain risks when you open your home to strangers.  It makes sense to learn as much as possible about a potential client and the more you know about him the better you are to make a sound decision about whether or not to take him in.  However, all that is known is that he is unmarried, out of work, and needs a place to stay.

We have a room to rent, times are hard, but we must be careful, we feel justified in being cautious and so we followed him discreetly to acquaint ourselves with his character.

A few days and we had our summary.  It was not encouraging.  It noted that he keeps company with dubious characters, drinks with working men but never buys a round, and he is known to take meals with contemptible people.  He seems comfortable when he is with outcasts that some believe are the dregs of society, the lumpenproletariat. 

He talks a lot, is generally soft spoken, and, strange to say, most people enjoy listening to him.  He dresses like an out-of-towner, talks with a northern accent, and wants the polished speech of genteel urbanites.  

More disturbing is the observation that he has attracted the attention of the police, who, it is said, are watching him closely.  He has a small gang of permanent followers that are as impoverished as he is, so we presume that they too live on the generosity of strangers. 

A red flag was raised by the particularly harsh way he spoke to a group of evangelists.  It looked as if they were trying to make him into saying something they could use against him, but he was too smart for them and called their bluff.  Loudly he denounced them as heretics - and worse.  The result was that they were quite humiliated and shuffled off muttering excitedly that they would make him pay for what they took to be his sarcasm.  Whatever they thought, it was clear that he felt justified in exposing their hypocritical cant and superficial religiosity. 

When speaking to others he was so gentle that he put them at ease.  Most people liked him and moved in closer to him as if they were old and comfortable friends.  This made us think he might have a split personality, such as a Mr Nice Guy and a Mr Nasty.  We were not the only ones that thought that.  Some even thought he was mad, or drunk, or in the grip of a malevolent humour, and said so.  Others nodded in agreement. 

The summary concluded that he was either a wonderful or a dangerous man, depending on which group your ear got caught in, and which you believed.  It was not helpful to us because it didn’t tell us whether would he murder us in our beds, pay his rent, bring outcasts home to disturb our peace, set fire to the house, or run off with our daughter?  We were just as indecisive as we were before.  He didn’t seem like a lot of trouble, but would he have our rent money? 

Then the matter was taken right out of our hands because he was arrested.  It looked as if his goose was well and truly cooked because some powerful people brought accusations against him.  We knew he was different, but the complaints showed a side of him that knocked us right off our buffets. 

He was accused of anarchy, plotting to overthrow government, and of making himself more important than local and national authorities.  It was told he had run amok in a market, assaulted people, and had upset their stalls.  Some said he was mentally ill, paranoid, a megalomaniac, and a danger to life and limb.  We had had a close shave!  It was even charged that he intended to destroy a national monument and then build a better one by his alleged magic power. 

Others said he was a political activist, a revolutionary leading an army of terrorist insurgents that would attack the city at night, overthrow the administration, and set up his junta.  His wandering habits and his parleying with all and sundry was really a secret campaign to recruit fellow radicals to his cause. 

They dragged him quickly to trial.  His trial was unusual because witnesses flatly contradicted each other.  Some opined that witnesses had been paid to lie and there would have been laughter in court as one witness after another contradicted each other, except the court dealt harshly with any that didn’t take its proceedings with absolute gravity. 

He was pronounced guilty of everything they charged him with.  It was obviously a pre-determined verdict.  However, what was even more unusual was the chief justice’s announcement that he was sending the case to the Supreme Court for sentencing. 

Some demurred at verdict, but did so quietly, on grounds that no defence was mounted.  The homeless man was not represented, and didn’t open his mouth in his defence.  By any legal standards, it was clearly a mistrial, but it was evident that the court officials were not willing to risk losing control of the situation and relinquish the opportunity to have the ultimate punishment of death imposed. 

When he was set before the senior judiciary the prosecution was reluctant to define the charge for which it sought the death sentence.  The transcript of this part of the trial reads:

Chief Justice:        What is the charge against the accused?

Prosecutor: Don’t you worry about the charge.  He is clearly guilty.  If he were not guilty, we would not have brought him here!  Just sentence him to death.

Chief Justice:        No charge, no trial!  If that’s how you feel, then take him back to your court and deal with his offence.

Prosecutor: We cannot do that because we are not authorised to pass a sentence of death.

After that things went badly for our almost lodger.  The high court avoided its duty to uphold the law by giving in to popular clamour that ensured he was put to death.  It was as just as a lynching in the lawless Wild West.

It was all over in a very short time.  He was sentenced to die, taken, and then executed.  No appeal, no plea for clemency, nothing offered in mitigation, no sense that justice had been served.  For most of the citizens it was just another hard day in their hard lives. 

Nevertheless, the executed man was not forgotten.  He was talked about all over town.  We learned much more about him than we had found out for ourselves.  Some of the accounts seemed far fetched, but those telling the stories were honest folks with nothing to gain by lying.  Some had seen him heal sick people of ills such as lameness, paralysis, and blindness.  Others said he had fed big crowds of people with a few scraps of food. 

One said he turned ordinary well water into delicious wine.  Another that he had changed the weather, and more than one said they had seen him raise the dead.  It was hard to know what to believe. 

We solved our lodger situation by renting the room to a weaver.  There was nothing unusual or outlandish about him.  He paid his rent, made his cloth, and sold it in the market place.  He was easy to feed, very quiet, the children liked him, and apart from his snoring we hardly knew we had him. 

Late at night, my wife and I talked about the homeless man and what it might have been like if he had come to live with us.  I was unsettled because there were too many unanswered questions.  However, my wife, simple soul that she is, said she liked him because he had a kind face and smiling eyes.  She said she thought he would have been a good lodger. 

And then, and I know it’s a funny thing, but I was in the city centre a few weeks later when one of his people was talking about him to a crowd, and he talked about him as though he was still alive – and still looking for lodgings! 

It is amazing how some people manage to look serious when saying daft things.  This fellow was saying that the homeless guy still needed a lodging.  That’s when I lost interest and skirted the crowd to make my way home.  The world is mad enough without making more madness.  I could still hear him going on about the dead man until I was almost home. 

When I got back home I told my wife what I had heard, and she quizzed me as if I was the one on trial.  I had no choice but to tell what I had heard, expecting her to laugh.  But she was not amused.  She looked at me in that way she has when she wants me to listen carefully 

“Is that exactly what you heard him asked?” she asked.  I had to admit that it was not exactly word for word.

“Then what was it?  What did he say?  Exactly!” she returned.

“Let me see,” I needed time to think. 

“Ah, yes,” I said when I had collected my thoughts.  “He said, ‘This man you delivered to be killed has been raised from the dead by the power of God and is alive today.’  He also said that the man’s name was Joshua, and that God has made him both King and Messiah.’”

“Messiah?  King?  And then what?” asked my bold - getting bolder - wife.

“Well, that’s when I started to leave.  I had heard enough to know it wasn’t something I wanted to get mixed up in.”

“What did the others do?” 

“They seemed thunderstruck.  Their mouths gaped open.  Some began to cry and pull out their hair, and they all wanted to know what they ought to do.”

“And then?”

“Then this big fellow told them to change their ways and be baptised in the name of homeless Joshua and that if they did God would wash off their sins and then they would be given a special Spirit.  When I heard that it seemed so reasonable that I almost wanted to go back and join them.

“What else?” demanded the curious one.

“He said that this applied to people in all parts of the world, and told them to save themselves by finding safety in Joshua.”

“I must go to them,” said she.  “I must become one of them.” 

“Hold on!” I said, seeking to prevent her making a fool of herself and me.  But she was determined and went out through the door to make her way downtown.  I couldn’t let her go alone so I went with her.  Anyway, I still had a couple of questions that needed answers, although, being the sensible one, I had my doubts that it was anything worth our while. 

I thought the whole thing absurd, but I detected a funny feeling in the air, much like the atmosphere when a big thunderstorm is coming, and I knew my lady had felt it.  And then there was this peculiar urge growing inside me and before I knew it, we were in the crowd hearing about Joshua. 

The longer I listened the more it made sense to me.  I mean about the lodger thing.  It transpired that the homeless man, Joshua, had told a man that asked to join his band he was welcome to join him but that if he did he would be homeless, because although foxes have dens, and birds have nests, the Son of man, that’s what this Joshua he called himself, didn’t have a place to lay his head at night. 

Hearing this I felt ashamed that I had ever hesitated to take him under our roof.  But what could I do about that now?  My wife and I talked with his chief follower and found that though he is no longer homeless, it was not him that needed lodging in the first place, but us that needed him as our lodger.  They told us he had gone into heaven to his Father and his God, but has promised to live with us as our Comforter. 

We went home with the funniest feeling I have ever experienced.  It was as if my heart was bursting with joy.  Well, we were both exhilarated by what we had learned and come to believe. 

We talked and talked for hours through the night about the homeless man, warming ever more to him as we did.  As we were talking excitedly at what the day had uncovered to us, we were silenced by a knocking on our door. 

We looked at each other in the feint glimmer of the oil lamp.  The question "who is it?" hung on our lips unasked.  I looked through the window to see the Homeless One. 

“It’s him, wife!”  I shouted.  “It is the Homeless One!”

“Well then, open the door!” husband she shouted, standing and taking off her apron. 

Hurriedly I unlatched the door and invited him into our home, and into our hearts.  Before he crossed our threshold, he said,

“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” 

He came into our home with his aura of light.  But not only light, but joy.  And not only joy, but hope, and not only light, joy, and hope, but peace, a perfect peace so profound that we while cannot understand it we are nevertheless transformed by it. 

Our Lodger now has a permanent home with us.  Moreover, he has promised us a permanent home with him. 

© 2010 – Ronnie Bray

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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 

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.

© 2013 – Ronnie Bray