Over the Boundaries (3 page)

And the silence of the grave.

She fed us snails and snakes —

Albeit seasoned with flaked almonds —

For breakfast, dinner and tea.

Disgusted, I threw them on the fire,

“And take your chest of private things

Out of my way,” I said. Acquiescing,

She took out a late reader in Gaelic and, reading,

Read out the translation every few lines.

Oh, the wilderness schools,

Out on the coasts

Where young and old gather

To watch a language die.

Fed on grants and schemes

The soul of a nation cannot survive

For it is not on bread alone

That a people lives.

A time of joy also for Jacob who, up until now,

has been travelling the road alone, afraid to

meet his God. He wants to know that he too

is forgiven, he wants to make peace with his God.

June 2000

Children of light

Ever reaching above,

Not knowing the reason why.

Unable to rest

In the multitude of gods

Created here below,

Unwilling to forego

The endeavour involved

In struggling with your God —

Jacob and the angel at Phanuel.

All you ever wanted, in the desert,

In the valley of Jericho,

Was to follow, to know.

Someday I will fall

And not rise again.

You will lift me

As you do now

But will not bring to life.

What an infinitely tender thing

Is death then! The bird

Once courted in the under-bush awhile -

Its warm blood stilled,

Too big a mystery

For one small child to ignore,

Such total deliverance,

Too big for small hands to hold.

Friends are leaving for New Zealand, to visit the North and South Island. Others, as is seasonal, have gone to the French Alps, and a family is returning from Dubai where they tasted of affluence and the sun. And some of us find ourselves, yet once again, in a place we would not trade for all the ’hot’ spots on the planet — by a cosy log fire, stretched out on a thick pile rug, contemplating the warm glow and the shadows of the leaping flames on the wall as the evening light outside fades to darkness. Our lives are gently caving in. We wish our departed friends well and we miss their faces already at the table. A feeling of bereftness, of mourning, is close to the surface, triggered perhaps by absent ones but, more than just this, it is a mourning that encompasses all the mourning we have ever known or been touched by. ’Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused …….Celebration and mourning, so far apart in the range of emotions of the heart, and yet so close at these Christmas and New Year’s festivities.

We sense that we are being divested of this old dress, life. We give it up willingly, surrendering without regret, emotion even since the only true sacrifice was his. He alone did not have to die. He alone was without sin.

Come and meet me with the dress for which you gave up your life, that I might live…words of greeting on our lips at dawn. Our collaborating with God’s grace is a positive act and not a passive one. We give, we enter, because we are received. We go, we love, because we are called. Few perceive this active force at work in our lives — a life outside our own lives that cannot be measured with the human eye or ear. We are coming from the desert where we have emptied ourselves dry. Our hearts are become dried as old bones left to dry in the desert sun. The only love we know and can be sure of is the love that comes shining through our tiny form. Dimly, at first, we see his kingdom come into view and then shining as a million suns as he comes out to meet us on the way, investing us with life that is light and love and warmth, just like he had never gone away. This risen Jesus is our friend, he clothes us with the dress we thought was reserved for resurrection day but is ours today, everyday and forever. Amen.

I had never taken much notice of it before. It stood on a plinth to the left of the altar railing — a plaster-cast madonna figure that looked like countless others that decorated churches all over the country. But on this early autumn day in August 1980, it was to feature in my life in a way I couldn’t possibly have imagined. I was attending mass for the first time in about six weeks after the birth of our third daughter, Louise.

I came in late and took my place somewhere to the right in the back pews. It was where the men, young and old had gathered. Some of the older men had rosary beads in their hands and, with their eyes closed, were fingering the beads and their moving lips bore witness to their silent prayer. They could not hear the celebrant anymore than I could due to the general hum of conversation that floated about. Young men discussing their plans for the day’s football match, the weather, last night’s pub happenings. I closed my eyes to focus my own heart and mind. But I could not ignore the feeling of regret that these young men could not be brought to engage in the act of remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice. But better they, I thought, than the Pharisee-type who held the front pews. His prayer was already ignored. I mourned the demise of the charismatic movement that had helped open up people’s lives to the Holy Spirit. But another, more urgent, feeling was demanding my attention — a feeling of weakness that was threatening to engulf me the longer I resisted it.

I got up to go to the altar in line with all the other communicants but immediately on doing so almost passed out. Still I persisted, thinking it would pass, and continued on the slow advance to the altar rails. I was comfortably dressed in a sleeveless, full-length wool print dress with matching shawl — something I had sewn up myself. The feeling did not abate and I began to wonder if I shouldn’t turn back. But I had come for this, to register my hunger for the bread of life and I continued on. I had reached the altar and could see the priest heading down the queue to me ,but I wasn’t going to make it, it seemed. Just as he was before me and my legs began to crumble under me, the statue to my left came instantly to life, taking on human form, and held me by both arms at the elbows. I opened my mouth to receive the host and, instantly revived, I turned and went down the aisle to my seat. At the entrance to the pew I knelt down and made the sign of the cross, got up and turned to go outside into the morning sunshine.

I called in to the shop across from the church to pick up some groceries. I mentioned to Jimmy, the grocer, when he enquired after my health that I had hust seen the statue of Mary move over in the church whereupon he peered out at me from behind his glasses and, eyes full of mirth, suggested I had been having too many late nights or something to that effect and burst out into a hearty laugh.

The shop was beginning to fill up as the massgoers filed in. A discussion was going on behind my back between a neighbour and the young curate. I heard my name mentioned and, on turning around, was presented with the question, seemingly iniated on the previous night’s Late Late Show:

‘Do you think priests should be celbate?’ articulated by the priest.

I acknowledged the question, looking at the interlocutors and, holding my silence for a few seconds, resisted a quick reply. I could not resist the answer, however, when it did came to me swiftly, and hastily said for all to hear:

"We must be led by the Spirit into all these things.’ The words had the effect of ending the discussion and we all quietly took our leave.

On the way home in the car I was surprised to hear the Lord address me with the words: ‘Didn’t I set you free? Why do you enslave yourself again?’ I hadn’t deliberately set about enslaving myself, I knew, and would have to search deep within myself to find the answers to his question. One fact was indisputable - that I had received a baptism in the Holy Spirit in the company of down-and-outs whilst living in a squat in London. I would have to retrace my steps, mentally and emotionally, and chart my spiritual development from that point. The Lord was telling me that I would have to make some adjustments to my life. All I could do, there and then, was to reply in the best possible spirit: Thy will be done.

via interpretation of tongues, at Cruise’s Hotel, Limerick

I am going to do a new work in your life,

I just want you to open the door.

I am making all things new,

I am beginning today to work in your life,

I just want you to open up the doors.

I have begun you on the way,

I am drawing you to myself;

By the power of my spirit I will bring you

Into the completion of that work.

I want to mould you to be like myself —

You have but begun on this way.

My father takes great delight

You have begun to come towards me.

Let there be no disunity among you.

Be at peace with one another.

The work I have begun in you

I will finish.

I am your God.

I am faithful.

I will bring you to myself.

‘All this in Jesus,’ he said joyously,

Wrapping his sister in his embrace.

Surprised to find him waiting when she turned

In the midst of her isolation,

After all the intervening years —

‘I thought you had long gone,’ she hailed.

In the dimly-lit carriage of the train,

The halting train to heaven,

A woman opposite called out,

Would you return again to London?’

I answered ‘yes’ while he, head on my shoulder,

Moved ever closer in the quietly

Unfolding landscape of my dream.

She waited for me, ballerina-like,

In short flounced skirt of royal blue

As she stood, demi-pointe, by the door.

Not even a protegee, just a fledgling

I had helped take a few short steps,

Nothing more. She had other agenda —

Career-forging, fun-seeking tasks ahead.

Her voice trailed off as the list ran out

And I could not help, could not bridge

The awkward silence with a word

To hold her flight aloft:

Know the gift of innocence you possess,

Know the happiness, child, of which you are recipient,

Not donor in this dark, empty world of ours, I could have

said.

Part of me’s been growing

While part of me’s just been living

And now the part that has grown

Far outweighs the other, way outstretches it

As the blanket of cloud that reaches out to cover

From tip to tip the blue heavens with grey canopy

And silently is made manifest

As the white cap of snow that covers the mountain tops.

Saw the world take shape out of the mist,

Saw a new day begin. As angel or historian

Might preside, saw the dawn of civilization rise

In some far-off city to the east.

God-time, when man’s thoughts scarcely exist –

Lost in sleep, wearied by striving, toiling

And the effort required of building,

Conquering, destroying

And not surprised as he might be

By this new miracle of day,

This new age dawning,

This new beginning.

Winter has set in. Departed

The mists and ‘mellow fruitfulness’ days,

The endless drifting into night.

Daylight comes abruptly

With a sharp nip, a cold fog.

Summer’s lush grass lies

Limp in roadside ditches,

All the flowers are gone.

Hospitality, goodwill, cheer,

New and familiar faces

Round the extended dining-table,

Laughter, merriment, tales.

Within and without the crowd

Much listening to the inner voice,

A warm tear shed to sprinkle

The heavens’ shooting star —

Loved, bereft,

At the start of yet another new year.

Returning from racing and the hunting fields

To log fires and warm fare, neighbour

Greeting neighbour under pink and russet skies

As the sun sinks behind bare trees.

Our lives engaged in age-old pursuits

Though talk is of shrinking markets,

Biological warfare, cohabiting friends.

Remote, austere, not too far removed

From the jousting knights and ladies, the yeomen,

Saints and patriarchs of old, their lives long well run.

Worried that I was alone,

Feeling sick in the bath,

Struggling with the hairdryer

From a reclining position on the floor

And then I saw the little wren

Clinging to the climbing rosebush outside,

The rook perched on the highest branch

Of the beech tree above a flock of sparrows

Busying themselves in the fallen leaves below,

The wagtail dancing on the rails like an acrobat.

Thought of the cats and dogs I had fed,

Who had greeted me with yelps and miaows and excited

faces,

The horses lazing in the paddock

Glutted with corn and blackberries and harvest fare

And cried, ’Hell! Heaven!’ I may be tired,

Slow of limb, dull of heart

And suffering from this or that

But I am not widowed or deserted —

Though it seemed sometime I was —

And am not, even for one iota of a second,

Alone or on my own.

Standing in your doorway,

Love and freedom on my lips

And a young man at my side,

I came in closer view of you,

Lost in rolls of curtain chintz.

You sat in a different era then

Quietly busied with the less colourful role