In Laurence Binyon’s Poem about Autumn he
says ‘now is the time for the burning of the leaves’. Of course
it’s not really about Autumn except the Autumn of one’s life
experiences. He goes on to say ‘ now is the time for stripping the spirit
bare’. That’s more like it. That’s the only way we can stand
before a suffering world,where still there is mass starvation. Thousands of
innocent poor people dying before our eyes on news bulletins,where we are
warned in advance that some of the images we might find disturbing; little
children being born in the wrong place at the wrong time with no Madonna’s
to save them. World Aids Day continues to bring to our minds the thousands still dying from this pandemic awful illness.We’ve had quite a bit of our own sadness here at T.H.O.M.A.S. as well. Two of the young people we have walked with over the last year or two felt they couldn’t go on any longer and the illness of meaning took its toll. Sad, Sad, lonely road. And of course here in Blackburn we have been at the forefront newswise of the controversy surrounding Muslim women wearing the Burkha or the veil. Life; death; controversy goes on year in and year out. Part of stripping the spirit bare is about acknowledging our often very false starts, failures and helplessness before so much world pain and the pain that is within the often innocent individuals who are just trying to live a life, and find some meaning, some love. Of course the year has had some good things. Young people here moving successfully through rehab onto Stage 2 and beyond, a fantastic former school that our rehab is moving into which can accommodate double our present number; former clients getting married, babies being born and baptized. One of our local Anglican Canons at the Cathedral and a leading local Muslim woman have open discussions in Blackburn Cathedral and the interfaith dialogue continues – glimmers of hope. The two young men who died were great guys and as I said at one of the funerals, no life is a waste and we are all challenged to dig deep for the meaning of things. It was only two years ago that the awful Tsunami disaster occurred on Boxing Day. I will always have the image on one of the news bulletins of a young father walking out of the flooding and wreckage carrying his dead baby boy. It was then that I thought, here was a child conceived in love, carried in his mother’s womb in love for nine months and brought into this world with love and hope. That life was not a waste. The child born for us this Christmas, in the non-descript stable of Bethlehem, is still the hope of the whole cosmos and of every human life, acknowledged or not. In the bleak midwinter he comes, and in the pain and utter awfulness sometimes of the human condition, asks to be born. |
