The Frightened Motorcyclist

On my way to college in the morning, if I time it right, I come across the frightened motorcyclist. I can see him or her from quite a distance away as the brake lights glow like a beacon from quite a distance. On drawing closer, I can see that it is a small cc bike, the type of moped that is not quite a scooter - not quite a motorbike.

The brake light is almost constantly on as I follow it at around 20 miles and hour through the quiet side roads. The intrepid traveller seems so focussed on the danger of the task that there seems little pleasure in the sensation of travelling. Their backpack seems to add to the burden of the journey. Helmet on tightly, hands in protective gloves, raingear ready for bad weather. They travel along with their feet off the footplate, soles down, ready for the need to stop and connect with the security of the road surface.

It struck me this morning that this is a very good example of the way that people (including myself on too frequent an occasion if I’m honest) live out our Christian lives. We protect ourselves with layers that prevent us from feeling the impact of our journey, saving us from hot and cold of contact with life. We brace our feet, ready for the possibility of a crisis. We keep the brakes on, not because we need them – but just in case…

What would happen if I got on the motorbike of my Christian journey and travelled the road with the wind blowing my face and hair, brakes off, full throttle shouting “YEE-HA!” fully connected, exhilarated, and trusting in God to keep the bike on the road? I think I am about to find out as I start the new phase of my life in God and with God. Its going to be quite the journey!

The End Of The Year

It is time for reflection and sighing at the thought that the old year has nearly finished and the new year is about to begin. It has been a mixed year but good overall. Jonathan successfully did his Junior Cert. Jessica went back to college. I passed my exams and went into my final year of training. Mum has recovered in a way that none of us thought possible when she was so ill in hospital during the Summer. Jessica went on a whistlestop tour of California with a brief foray into Mexico. Jonathan and I saw the delights of New Brunswick in Canada and Montreal in Quebec. I saw Florence and Pisa during a study trip with the college. Wow we did a lot of travelling.
The curacy rounds have kicked off and there are 18 parishes and 14 of us. It was a good year to be looking in the Republic but I don't think the list suited those in the North as well. having said that, it is a challenging process and it has invaded my brain more than I thought it would. I trust God to sort it all out but I'm sorry that it is impossible for all to be settled about initially. I am also sorry that the process seems to be so hard on the class cohesion. Perhaps that will assist in the natural dispersion of us all at the end of the course. I wonder though where I will sent the class Christmas cards next year.
So what do I wish for the new year/ Jonathan's safe return from skiing in the States for the next week. Happiness and peace for the family. For Mum to be able to continue living at home. I wish you all the best the season has to offer and that you feel that God goes with you into the future

Curacy List

So here we are. After 3 years it is finally our turn to wait anxiously for news of where may be available to hang my cassock and set down semi-permanent roots. After 3 years of looking at my home and wondering how on earth I would try to pack it up (and even more importantly - how on earth I managed to collect together so much stuff!) I know that I will have to make decisions about the house but these will have to wait until I know if I can use it easily for any potential time off. Jess will live there and Jonathan will too eventually assuming that college and work in Dublin is on the cards. It would be good to still have a "my room" to retreat to.

I have lived there for 20 years and it will be odd to acclimatise to a new home. I look forward to the work and the challenge but the getting there will be an issue. I can see my self constantly finding that the thing I need is in the "other" house.

The other big question that needs answering is where Jonathan gets to go to school. Newpark has been very good for him and I know that he would be heartbroken without being able to finish it. At least he has his ski trip next month.

Those That Serve

I am biased. I have a brother who has been a member of the Garda Siochana for the last 20 years. I think that in any organisation there are those who are the rotten apples and those who do their job above and beyond the call of duty with compassion and empathy. I believe my brother Andrew is one of those. When visiting his home towm in the West Of Ireland I have always been struck by the warmth of greeting that he receives from so many people living within the district he has responsibility for. He takes an interest in his local community and is involved in projects for the elderly including accompanying them on an annual trip to Dublin, and many other things. I know that there has been many occasions that he has been unable to leave a problem at work and has felt frustrated that he couldn't do more for a grieving family or a child in difficulty. Quite simply, he is one of my heroes.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, he was out in the squad car on a call and arrived back to the small Garda station where he was the only Garda on duty to find that his own car had been vandalised. Vandalised so completely that it is a write off. All bar one of the windows had been smashed and the body work is also damaged. It would appear that this act of cowardice was personal. No other car was damaged in the area.

I think we take forgranted those in our uniformed organisations. We forget that we are protected at land and sea as we are so rarely worried by threats to our security. We, as a nation of increasing individualism, are so quick to stand up and shout when we feel that we have not been treated fairly and demand our rights but so much slower at saying thank you. Last week members of the fire service were injured trying to go about their business also. Are we shouting as loudly as we ought in their defense? We are not. Why?

So today, if you know anyone in these organisations doing their best in increasingly difficult circumstances and under increasing budgetary pressure, who is still willing to go that extra bit because we are lucky enough that they still care - don't forget to say thank you for a job well done. It may well have been a long time since they heard it.

Thank you Andrew!

Women In The Church

I have had the pleasure in my short journey into ministry so far to be positively affirmed as a woman. Last year at the Woman's World Day of Prayer, two Roman Catholic nuns made a point of expressing their delight that the Church of Ireland ordained women and their regret that this avenue was not open to them. Today at the tea following the Ecumenical Harvest Service I was approached by another Roman Catholic nun who said that she would be praying for me and that she was delighted that I was approaching ordination as she felt regret that she could progress no further with her own vocation, a doctrinal glass ceiling. It is both humbling and daunting to realise that I am regarded as a representative of my gender as well as myself.

It was with this in mind that I was very disturbed to read in the Church Times over the weekend about the Curate, Rev Yvonne Hobson in Cornwall who has received another death threat in a continuing campaign against her. The postcard that the lastest threat was written on was found in a Bible in her stall in the church. She had just returned from leave of absence following a series of threats last year which included a hate letter campaign. How awful is that? A person called by God to further the work of the Kingdom threatened by backward looking individual, too cowardly to engage publicly with what they profess to believe.

I am unfamiliar with the direct challenge to my vocation on the basis of my gender but I am conscious that I do not have the acceptance I would wish from all around me. I am saddened by intolerance and have spent time this weekend thinking about my own intolerances with interesting results. It is the kind of self examination that takes a lifetime of checking into rather than a weekend. I find it hard to deal with intolerance as it speaks of feeling superior to another individual or group. What a dangerous concept. Jesus mixed with those who society dismissed, He didn't see the labels given by others, so why do we insist in doing so, and worse, applying some of our own?

Tomorrow I hope to attend a debate in Trinity College on the subject of the role of women in the church held by the Theological Society. Funny how things come together when you're are thinking about stuff.

Heavenly Father spare us from the idea that we are any better - or any more called -than anyone else. Amen

Back To School

The Summer is over, the chance to manage my own time has gone, the routine has kicked back in. I am at the end of my second Pre term Week. Last week we did a module on marriage issues. It was a really peculiar place to be as I fell between the two states, neither married nor truly single. I could relate to some of it and not to others. Ironically the week we discussed it was the week of what would have been my 21st wedding anniversary. I wonder how different life would be if Julian hadn't died.

Week 2 held the thrills of youth work. I am relieved to discover that I don't need to have the zany hyperactivity of a Saturday morning children's entertainer to have a chance to succeed and that there are lots of resources out there to help me cope that don't involve copious quantities of Valium! It has been one of those weeks that need time to inwardly digest but the more I heard the term "unchurched" the more uncomfortable I became with it in the youth work context at least. I prefer "unsupported by the church" as it has less of a them and us feel to it and seems to draw gentler boundaries. Unchurched almost suggests blame for the condition to me but I feel that more often people do not realise that they can gain support for this life through the Christian community if it fulfils its true purpose. Unspoken and unconditional support that does not necessarily require initial contact to be so conformist.

Jess is readjusting to life as a student and all that suddenly losing a full time job entails. Jonathan is mooching through life and playing hockey. We have just discovered that he can do one of his work experience modules with the Gardai in the West of Ireland, courtesy of my brother.
Mum is progressing well and leaves hospital on Monday after 3 and a half months. I hope and pray that things settle down well with the new care schedule and it allows her to remain at home in the long term.

Thats about all folks, the postings will be sporadic but I hope to continue them. Even if I'm the only one reading them!

Difficult Memories

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my heart not only being broken but completely obliterated. On the 13th of September 1988 a policeman arrived at my door and tried to kindly break the news that my husband of 11 months and 13 days had died in a traffic accident on his way home from work. To say that I loved him is an understatement. To say that I have learned to forget him is an insult.

I always felt that WH Auden expressed loss so beautifully in Funeral Blues:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

He did not choose to leave me and I know that he died loving me as his last words at the accident scene were for me. It is impossible to explain the grand passion that was our relationship. It had an intensity of feeling that still haunts me in dreams many years later. I had a feeling that we would not have much time together (a gift from God) and boy did we pack a lot in. I realise that I have written this much without speaking of Julian by name. He was a once off. He had a difficult adolescence and had lived quite a life before I met him. I was seen in some circles as his stabilising influence but I think that by the time he met me he was just ready to seek a sense of home and I was more than happy to be that home. I never doubted his love and felt bathed in its sunshine.

In the days after he died, I couldn't eat or sleep. I couldn't fathom the rest of my life without the love, care and light that he brought to me. The intensity of that pain is with me still in a reflected form. I still miss him with an ache that will only be relieved by being with him again.

Julian couldn't sing a note or hold a tune but he still sang to me Van Morrison's "Have I told You Lately That I Love You". Up at his grave in Enniskerry on Saturday I could still hear the song in my mind. I have loved, do love and will always love the man who promised never to leave me if it was his choice. He is buried where he asked to be laid at rest a couple of weeks before his death. I miss him.

I do wonder what our life would have been like if he were still alive and I am a realist and I also wonder what problems we may have had by now and if our relationship would have survived them. I will always wonder these things but there is one thing that I am sure of - we will have the chance to meet again in the life after this one when every tear wil be brushed from every eye. Thank God for the hope in the future. I still miss him.

I still miss him.