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Elaine Kennedy is part of the Edges Team and a member of the Operational Management Team of T.H.O.M.A.S. | ||||
The rain was coming down in sheets as I went to see the last of our drop-in clients out at the door.Worried about the wet step,I told them to watch out as the step was slippery.Last out was a middle-aged man who looked as though he might have been a flower-power hippie of the sixties.To my slippery warning he turned and slowly said:"man ….the world is slippery."What a profound remark!Yes,the world is indeed a slippery place.None of us has a continuously firm foothold guaranteed for life.No flat gritted paths throughout life ’s journey for any of us!For some it is an ice-rink from beginning to end.There is so much fear to trip us up.Fear of facing our truths,fear of acknowledging our inadequacies and failings,or brokeness and ordinariness.Fear of not surviving.. At the drop-in,and at St Anne's house in general,the times I feel most inadequate,and slipping badly along my rocky road are when I meet people whose conditions both mental and physical,as well as social,are so extreme as to be completely beyond my reach.I struggle to accept that I can ’t cope with certain aspects of the work I have been called to do. I keep asking myself:"Who does care and reach out to certain people?"Last week a lady came in huge distress.She became absolutely unapproachable.The violence of her language;her emotions and her very aggressive behaviour were way beyond those of someone who is very drunk and will eventually be appeased by patience,love,a firm hand and lot ’s of tea!Yet here was such despair;such fear of everything;such vulnerability in a world ill-equipped to cope with extreme brokeness and certainly not encouraged towards compassion for those of us whose very core is in swirls of black turmoil and extreme devastation.And there are many such people walking our world alone-what happens to the many whose darkness is not manageable in the usual ways? Where do they go?Where do they sleep safely?Is there anywhere at all which does not feel slippery to them,or are they constantly on a moving slope of stones and dark rubble,shielding themselves by hitting out and creating impenetrable walls through which no-one can reach?I felt soul-destroyed at my inability to reach out to her at all. So many people are born at the top of a slippery slope,with seldom a chance of standing up and walking steadily.Childhoods spent in physical,mental and sexual abuse;neglect .What hope of ever walking a stretch of flat gritted road?We have discovered many times in our work here that when life has always been a fearful tread,it can take another lifetime to learn that it is possible to tread a better path.It ’s so difficult in this world of ours which is getting more slippery by the day.People are struggling to maintain moral standards;church institutions are fearful of extinction;communities are breaking down;family life is under threat;pollution;global warming.Even Mother Nature appears to be slipping into oblivion!How can any of us hope to tread a better path?I believe the answer lies in the simple messages of the Gospels.Love one another.The call is to every member of the human race;including the perpetrators of sectarianism and all other oppressive sects and the many who make up the sea of selfishness which is destroying us all.We are not asked to like everybody. We are not asked to have the same opinions and habits.We are commanded to love one another. I witnessed the arrest of a young shoplifter in our precinct last month.In the crowd which had gathered,the usual comments flew around:"In my day …" "Lock ‘em up …"Throw away the key …""Flog ‘em …""Where are the police?.."etc.The language of the Morally Outraged!I don ’t condone shoplifting and I believe that we should pay back for our own mis-deeds,but I can honestly say that the many of our clients at the drop-in who have had prison sentences over the years,not one has ever said that it wasn ’t fair and it wasn ’t their fault.Without condoning though,we need to develop compassion. True compassion ,which can only happen when we look at ourselves in the face of the person who is being handcuffed ,it is to weigh up ones life,ones own luck,advantages,brokeness,on a pair of spiritual scales.St.Benedict,says that more will be expected from those to whom more has been entrusted.How much more slippery has someone ’s road been than mine;so far!?To the seemingly Morally Outraged:how much was entrusted to you?How much can you see round the corner of your own journeys?How much,or how little, would it take for life to make the ground slippery under your feet?Sudden redundancy;unexpected deaths;devastating diseases;rifts with children;being alone with sorrow and guilt.Sometimes even God seems to have slipped through our fingers;hard to hold on to;like a slippery eel. The message of the gospels is for us today just as much as it's ever been.As a human race,we must hold hands in common acceptance of our sameness and our smallness,helping one another along the unsure road.It is our only hope of sure-footedly treading the higher paths. For today,though,I can only keep trudging in my very inadequate way.I pray that somewhere is someone who is able to reach out to those beyond my reach, like that poor lady whose conditions of life have opened my eyes even wider to just how treacherously slippery our world can be. |
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