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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 14 |
Aug/Sept 1998 |
THE ROMANIAN
ORPHANAGE
& THE BRITISH ADDICT
My Mother is a social worker
and I found, no matter how much help she gave me, I could be off drugs
for a few days I'd always go back and get more.
So she got me on the Princes
Trust Scheme, the scheme was for 12 months then, it is only 12 weeks
now, and as part of the course, we went to Romania working in the
orphanages. I found that very helpful because I was in another country
and I couldn't get hold of the drug, so I could take it and leave it.
I knew there was no point in going on because I'd be there for 3
months and there was no point in letting it worry me, so I got on with
it. But when I came back, my girlfriend had left me, left me with the
house, with a mortgage, for another fella. So I went down hill,
started using again, tried to "top" myself, but this led to
meeting the partner I am with now who is a social worker and a friend
of my mother's. Between us we've been back to Romania twice for a
total of six months altogether
Romania really opened my
eyes because, no matter what problems I have, you could not compare
them to the problems those children have. My problems were like a
small pebble in a big ocean in comparison to what these children have
to go through. They'll never have a chance. The first two or three
days, there was 170 of us out there altogether, working on nine
orphanages. I've seen 16 stone bricklayers breakdown and cry; I was
very upset myself for the first week, but I was no good to the
children that way. I had to get my emotions together, but it is
extremely hard because I have children myself and even though there
have been times when I have been sat there with no electricity, at
least they have got parents that love them.
IS IT REALLY
FAILURE?
The
poet Francis Thompson, born in Preston the son of a doctor, was a
so-called failed medical student, and a failed student for the
priesthood. Eventually, he ended up on the streets of London because
of his addiction to Opium. Yet it was in this darkness and despair
that he wrote some of his most profound and spiritual poetry. The
most famous of these poems is "The Hound of Heaven", where
Thompson compares Christ to a Hunting Hound, that will not give up
the chase, until it finds that which its looking for. The constant
message Thompson felt in his weary addicted soul was "All
things betray thee, who betrayest me".
Sometimes in
the deep down depths of addiction, one can feel that not only do
other people not really care, but that God himself could not
possibly be interested, or involved. In fact in this life and death
combat, spiritual things, seem an enviable luxury.
But
the Gospel tells us a different story. Like the woman caught in
adultery, there are many people today who feel on the edge of real
life, feeling misunderstood and not fit for the temple. Yet the
Gospel tells us, that it is especially these people on whom Jesus
has compassion. They are for Him.
All Christian ministry
which is at the heart of things, is a ministry against any
obliteration of the human face of Christ. "For Christ plays in
ten thousand places, lovely in eyes, and lovely in limbs, not His".
It is a ministry of life over death, whether that death comes
through famine, oppression, Aids or addiction. The fly which crawls
over the face of a starving child, crawls over the face of God.
Somebody like the addict Francis Thompson, and the woman
taken in adultery symbolise for me the poor and the marginalised,
the little ones of this world. And Christ in his ministry of
reconciliation, later allows this adulterous woman to touch his body
and anoint him with precious ointment, and appears first to her
after the resurrection. He gives Francis Thompson the gift of being
able to write enduring spiritual poetry, that will touch human
hearts to the end of time. He accepts, He welcomes home, He doesn't
keep a track of past records, He reconciles the irreconcilable.
We are invited to share in this ministry. The price of
not recognising Christ in the poor and the broken is a heavy one to
pay. In the story of the rich man and Lazarus who lay at the gate of
the wealthy man, the rich man is sent to Hell, not because he was
rich, but because he failed to see the poor man at his gate.
Christ's presence is an ambiguous and hidden one. He is where he is
least expected. But as we see in the woman taken in adultery he is
where humanity is most under threat.
It is interesting
that the person who saved Francis Thompson, from almost certain
death, was a prostitute. She gave him a place to stay, and shared in
a simple yet profound way, something of the ministry of Christ,
breaking through our sometimes rather pained lives.
The
question Jesus put to his disciples "Who do you say that I am?"
is the question which is there in the life of every person who is
suffering. Through our work at St. Anne's House, especially with
young addicts, and others, we recognise that Christ has given these
people the unique power to stand in his place and ask of us "who
do you say that I am?"
On the cross the every days
and every nights of humanity are commended into the Father's hands -
so there is always hope, always reconciliation, always love, despite
our built-in inadequacies.
I thank God for the Hound of
Heaven, who will not let go in his search for me and all humanity
and even on the darkest day it is as Thompson wrote:
"Is
my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly"
John Michael Hanvey |
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