A darkness on the edge of town

"You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word .... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue." 
(C. Joybell)

 

It's certainly true that you never know how much you rely upon something, accept and expect, even cherish something, until it's not there. At the end of June, three Vodafone masts somewhere out on the South Downs spluttered and fell silent. I'm aware that some parts of Brighton and it's suburbs were without Vodafone mobile coverage for three weeks. There was a palpable darkness at the edge of the town. My own little mobile was silent for a week, but these eerily quiet days over-lapped with my beleaguered BT landline finally admitting defeat, which also rendered my broadband speechless and my laptop comatose.
I live in a small street that's usually disproportionately noisy and which forms a horse-shoe in and out of a busy, in-yer-face main road. There's an exuberant little primary school across the street, with the playground leaning onto the road. There's usually some manner of building works banging away somewhere nearby. My next-door neighbours, with three new babies as part of the extended clan, are from Liverpool: I love them dearly, but they would be the first to admit that the Liverbird larynx comes with integral speakers! And speaking of birds, my beloved seagulls are the running commentary to this city; at worst, like a particularly overwrought Jeremy Kyle audience. In short, you actually have to retreat to find silence or to experience real loneliness in this area.
Although I live on my own and still don't really "know" many folk in this area, I'm far from reclusive. I think I'm a friendly soul. I'm interested in people and expect most to respond warmly or at least civilly. Yet for several days, the enforced lack of communication behind my closed door felt isolating and frankly worrying. With no access to even emergency calls, it may have been natural to fret about fire or footsteps on the stairs at night. Facebook was sullenly closed to me for a few days and I even found myself totting up how many of my daily free online bingo tokens were lost. I couldn't update this little blog and am still trying to catch up on posts I wanted to add; I worry that I've lost phrases and even thoughts I'd been unable to commit to screen. Can you ever actually lose a thought? Surely my own conscience is the most precious hard-drive ever created.
What left me feeling bereft was loss of contact from those who've become part of my daily routine. Most of my closest friends live in London or beyond, but even my neighbour here will text me to say "Cuppa?", expecting me to respond with "Five mins". Technology has expedited and streamlined our communications with "free talk minutes", "txt spk" and character regulated "tweets". Even personal emails promote abridged friendliness and abbreviated emotions, with "LOLs" and "smiley faces" rendering exclamations of joy unnecessary and rather embarrassing.
The Yorkshire novelist, playwright and broadcaster J. B. Priestley was a man who knew how to work and play with words, becoming a Doctor of Letters in his later years. He once noted that the more elaborate our means of communication become, the less we actually communicate. My own shelves of words often make me wistful for the worlds of Austen and the Brontes, with rounds of perfumed letters preserved in initialled trunks under the bed and earnest, totally unseasonally attired lovers riding across sodden moors, collapsing in a consumptive heap on the threshold. Usually choosing to walk around Brighton, I often arrive back at my own front door seriously bedraggled after a trip to Aldis. I actually have a couple of vintage trunks under my bed but the only secrets they store are stockings, hot water bottles and spare bedding. There's a man who walks his rather snooty dog "Heathcliff", often stopping to let him poop by my roses (the dog, not the owner). But I digress: even the largely emotionally sterile, character-economic, technical truncations of the internet won't stop a digressor.
 

 

I'm the first to admit that I usually have something to say and can talk. A lot. I like the art and science of words: these seemed fine reasons to start a blog, over a year ago now, when I was unemployed. But I also appreciate silence and always find myself looking for what's left unsaid when the conversation has ended. There's a precious silence in the closest relationships; an emotional recognition and communion negating words. Yet sometimes things must be said, the surety of feelings needs to be voiced to uncertain hearts. Sometimes words won't flow, stemmed by too much self-doubt or fear of offending, too much anger or pain, even too much love.
Doubt is the natural enemy of love. The unspoken may provide poignant memories but regrets are too dried and crumbly to rest prettily in a purple ribbon. For every pair of star-crossed lovers confounded by fortune, there will be dozens of chances choked upon and broken bridges languishing by a bank of missing planks. God gave us the security of silence but also a wealth of words and the luxury of language. Talk to each other, listen; you really can't successfully do either one without the other.
The word "communication" comes from the Latin for "sharing". Open communication lends itself to community; harmonised interests, values and intimacy. And yet it seems that enhanced routes and almost time-travelling speeds in modern communication have led to inappropriate over-familiarity, contempt and apathy. And when those routes fail, we feel almost socially excluded. We assume the landline, mobile, email or social network will be there tomorrow: the idea, opportunity, emotion or even the person may not be. If our connections were reduced to one letter a month and a steed galloping up-country instead of current upload speeds, we would surely say more in that letter. My Mum and Dad never let the sun set on a problem in case one of them might not be there to see the sunrise. Not a sentiment shared by BT and Vodafone it seems.
Two prisoners in adjoining cells will talk to each other by knocking on the wall. The barrier between them becomes their route of communication; their separation becomes a link between them. Knock knock?

  

"Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true."
(Charles Dickens)

"Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
 (George Bernard Shaw)

"If the darkening sky could lift
more than one hour from this day
there are words I would never have said
nor have heard you say."
(Carol Ann Duffy)

 

"Darkness On The Edge Of Town"  Bruce Springsteen)

 

  "Everybody's got a secret, sonny,
Something that they just can't face,
Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it,
They carry it with them every step they take.
Till some day they just cut loose;
Cut it loose or let it drag them down;
Where no one asks any questions
Or looks too long in your face,
In the darkness on the edge of town."
(B. Springsteen)

 

 

Great and small

"Three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love."

(1 Corinthians 13:13)

 

Sometimes, things just fit together in this wee blog; just as sometimes in life, tiny baby steps take us to a place where the bigger picture may suddenly be hugely appreciable. I'm indebted to my gorgeous friend Christine, who I first met when we were mini-kilted convent girls and re-united with on here, for sharing the "Ten Ways to Love" with me. I'm also grateful to my new friend Anthony for sharing the wonderful "drummer" version of "How Great Thou Art", performed by members of the World Outreach Church. I don't know much about WOC, beyond that they're an interdenominational and pastoral ministry, originally based in Tennessee, USA: you can find them at: www.wochurch.org. As a frustrated drummer who hasn't got her bodhran organised yet, I've listened to this version of a much loved hymn over and over until finding the right post for it.
The words and music here seem to compliment each other seamlessly; a real marrying up of the simplicity of little ways of grace and the greatness of being. And in fact, Christine's marriage to Colin and Anthony's with Abby are both inspirational unions: this post is for them.
I've had a couple of friends moan that some of my posts are too long. This may or may not be shorter, but how long is a piece of string before it ceases to be a piece and becomes a length? Similarly, my sister and brother-in-law fret that my blog seems too Catholic; other Catholic friends, who are infinitely more learned about the church then me, feel "it isn't Catholic enough". All I can say is that I try to make this blog as open and honest as possible because that is what I crave from people and from life. Brighton, friends, being Catholic, animals, poetry, flowery frocks, Springsteen and treacle tart all make me happy. I suspect at least some of these things will make some other people happy too; for others, this humble blog will never be enough of one thing or may seem too much of the other.
I'm actually hurting about something right now, critically aware of my own smallness. This blog generally and this post at this particular moment are my own little steps to the bigger picture; if it can soothe somebody else then I also feel blessed by that.
The little steps in the Ten Ways to Love are literally as old as the hills on the Sinai Peninsula. They may appear removed from the grandeur and solemnity of the Ten Commandments, but look again. If we could all truly achieve these Ten Ways to Love, surely we wouldn't need to be reminded not to lie, cheat, steal or harm?
May each sunrise bring you hope and every sunset, peace. May all your little steps bring you into being as great as you can be.

 

"How Great Thou Art" World Outreach Church

 

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."

(Mother Teresa)

"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."
(Lao Tzu) 

"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."
(Carl Sagan)

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see".
(C.S. Lewis)

"One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak."
(G.K. Chesterton)
 

"Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message."

(Malcolm Muggeridge)

 

  

 

A very special service

"Fear is the enemy of love."

(St Augustine)

"The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind."

(E.B. White)

I really didn't want to go on Jury Service. I felt unprepared and ill equipped to formally "judge" others' actions or intent. Three weeks on and after a particularly harrowing case that reduced me to tears in court on more than one occasion, I feel privileged to have been randomly selected. I was fortunate to have been kept in a confined space without the usual diversions with eleven extremely conscientious and caring people. All cut from very different cloths, we wove ourselves together comfortably and seamlessly by the end of the trial. Faced with disturbing evidence and the raw emotion of some of the witnesses, my fellow jurors restored my belief that there are good people and true out there.
Obviously, I can't say much about the case and the private lives of those involved have already been ripped apart and raked through, however necessarily. Graphically evidenced for us; the terrible collision of lives bruised by lack of self worth and faith; the inexorable impact of an abuse of affection and a failure to protect innocence.
I've only had a couple of boyfriends in my whole life; it may be that I'm a singularly unappealing individual, but I prefer to think my single status is largely due to not wanting to compromise my values and beliefs. I've certainly preferred to wake alone on a cold winter's morning than to lie in fear for anyone or anything entrusted to me, whether that be a child, my sanity or my soul. There but for fortunate and grace, I guess.
Our jury, in equal numbers male and female, admitted to losing sleep during the trial and feeling deeply shaken after our verdict was given. We had become aware of the enormity of relatively small words such as reason and doubt. I think we all gained a new respect for the resolve of the judiciary and the resilience of the surrounding administration.
There was a child in this case who is, thank God, alive and safe. I feel profoundly changed by my experience, if only that I feel more securely me. I hope to stay in touch with a couple of the jurors and would be genuinely delighted to cross paths with any of them in the future. It occurs to me that "jury" can be a very special service. And yet still nothing compared to the beautiful and terrifying responsibility of parenting; at it's finest, a life sentence.

"Unloving"

(Carol Ann Duffy)

Learn from the winter trees, the way

they kiss and throw away their leaves,

then hold their stricken faces in their hands 

and turn to ice; 

or from the clocks, 

looking away, unloving light, the short days 

running out of things to say; a church, 

a ghost ship on a sea of dusk. 

Learn from a stone, its heart shape meaningless, 

perfect with relentless cold; or from the bigger moon, 

implacably dissolving in the sky, or from the stars,

lifeless as Latin verbs. 

Learn from the river, 

flowing always somewhere else, even its name,

change, change; learn from a rope 

hung from a branch like a noose, a crow cursing, 

a dead heron mourned by a congregation of flies. 

Learn from the dumbstruck garden, summer’s grave, 

where nothing grows, not a Beast’s rose; 

from the town veil of a web; 

from our daily bread: 

perpetual rain, nothing like tears, unloving clouds; 

language unloving love; even this stale air 

unloving all the spaces where you were.

"I think the thumb print on the throat of many people is childhood trauma that goes unprocessed and unrecognized." 

(Tom Hooper)

"Skinny Love" Birdy (version)

"And I told you to be patient 

and I told you to be fine; 

and I told you to be balanced 

and I told you to be kind; 

and if all your love is wasted 

then who the hell was I? 

Who will love you?

Who will fight? 

And who will fall far behind?" 

(From "Skinny Love", Justin Vernon)

"Childhood is a promise that is seldom kept."

(Ken Hill)

God's tap on man's shoulder

"There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder." 

(Charles Morgan)

My friend Suzanne, who's known me for at least half of my life and cares about me deeply, called me a "singleton" last year. As a hopeless romantic, I was quite stung by this (affectionate) description: no-one who loves the idea of being in love and identifies themselves with loving others wants to be seen as unloved. She also told me I should have been born in medieval times, when princesses lived in ivory towers and knights were bold. I don't believe the flats that have sprung up at the end of my little street really qualify as an ivory tower, and although there are some very fine and bold men in hosiery and thigh-high boots around Brighton, my guess is they're not out to dally with a damsel.

St Valentine's Day is, of course, an exercise in canny consumerism, exploiting the poetry of flattery and the currency of insecurity.The Catholic Church doesn't even fully verify that there was indeed one saintly Valentine whose story peculiarly lends him to the patronage of romantic love. There have been several sainted Valentines in fact: today's feast day may be an amalgamated celebration of their kindly and chivalrous traits.
The Ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia was devoted to love and fertility and occurred around the middle of February. By all accounts, the festival could be a bit of a riot, sometime even involving sacrifices; it was abolished by Pope Gelasius in the fifth century. It's been claimed that during Lupercalia, men drew women's names out of a jar at random, then coupled with them, probably just as randomly. Hmm, not a whole lot of chivalrous love going on there then.The practice was reintroduced in the Middle Ages, but in a more modified way: names would be drawn to initiate courting couples; the origin of today's guess-who-it-is Valentine cards?
The earliest recorded association of today's date with romantic or courtly love is credited to one Geoffrey Chaucer in "The Parlement of Foules", in 1392. "Courtly love" applied the language of the law courts to the intrigues and rituals of attraction and romance; courtship. Around 1400, Princess Isabel of Bavaria established a "High Court of Love" in Paris, dealing with love contracts, betrayals and indiscretions and violence against women. The court was founded on 6th January, the feast day of a Bavarian saint named Valentin. Today, we have the Jeremy Kyle Show.
The medieval concept of courtly love was noble and chivalrous; although it was usually conducted in secret. And it wasn't expected to be practiced between husbands and wives: marriage was often a detached, contractual matter involving allegiances, land and titles. Essentially, courtly love embraced erotic desire and spiritual attainment; it was at once both illicit and morally idealistic. It was innocence, tenderness, devotion and passion. I agree Suzie; get me to an ivory tower and quick. And yet this evening, on a feast steeped in the traditions of erotic love at it's purest and most self-sacrificing, my local tavern is proudly advertising it's "Valentine's Day Speed Dating Massacre". With reduced booze. And scampi. Dear Lord. Such things can only have a kindly-hearted singleton running for the chamomile and honey, clutching "The Complete Robert Burns".
Whatever the origins and associations of the feast, whether there was one St Valentine or twenty, the truth is that love and romance can be very much alive today. Love isn't restricted to an era, a class or to dramatic situations. It lives in hearts and minds, in familiarity and the every-day, irrespective of ivory towers or high-rises. Like Kindness and Fidelity, two of it's offspring, it's often depicted as a weakness or feyness nowadays, particularly in men, but I agree with Gandhi that love is the prerogative of the brave. There's a feeling of kinship in romantic love that empowers and engenders a will to protect as much as to be supported. The bonds of true love may be imperceptible, but they can be inexorably binding.
Do I believe all this? Yes. Do I still want to be princess-lifted out of my own little ivory tower? Yep. Did I get any Valentine's cards today? Er...no. Suzanne would say I don't put myself "out there", although I dread to think where "there" may be. Certainly not my local boozer. And like most so-called singletons, there's a lot going on in here. I'm a bit in love with where I live, I love my friends and family, I'm soppy with next door's cat and Jonathan the Seagull (treats the back garden like a hotel); I love my faith in other people and in God. I rather like my blog. I still love the idea of being in love; I believe in marriage, not just as a social institution but as a sacrament. There are a lot of us about; intelligent, practical, independent people who believe that love is for every day, not just for 14th February.
Many wonderful people have spoken beautifully about love in all it's guises of course, infinitely more eloquently than I ever could. I've included a luxury selection of quotes here; like chocolates for the soul, the sort you should never give up for Lent. I've also included Van Morrison's lovesong "Have I Told you Lately"; he wrote it less than twenty five years ago, but it's rightly acclaimed alongside the works of Burns and Dante. Originally written as a prayer, it's just timeless; it will probably remain one of the most played wedding waltzes for the next few decades.
If love didn't appear to come through you front door today, or even pop up on your iPhone or laptop screen, may it find you in the pockets of wherever you call home, and may you greet it in the corners of your smile.

*Happy Valentine's Day, Ms Suzanne Pinkstone!*

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." 

(Lao Tzu) 

"Where there is Love there is Life." 

(Mahatma Gandhi) 

"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge." 

(Thomas Carlyle) 

"Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit." 

(Khalil Gibran) 

"Love is a friendship set to music." 

(Joseph Campbell) 

"My love is like a red, red rose 

That's newly sprung in June: 

My love is like the melody 

That's sweetly played in tune." 

(Robert Burns) 

"Let no one who loves be unhappy, even love unreturned has its rainbow." 

(James M. Barrie) 

"Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat." 

(Ben Hecht) 

"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." 

(Mother Teresa) 

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." 

(Martin Luther King Jr) 

"Forgiveness is the final form of love." 

(Reinhold Niebuhr) 

"I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit." 

(Khalil Gibran) 

"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another." 

(Thomas Merton) 

"Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope." 

(Maya Angelou) 

"A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love." 

(St Basil) 

"For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self." 

(John O'Donohue) 

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls." 

(Khalil Gibran)

"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair." 

(G K Chesterton) 

"Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age." 

(Anais Nin) 

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." 

(Aristotle) 

"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love." 

(St Francis of Assisi) 

"Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds." 

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) 

"Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition." 

(John O'Donohue) 

"Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds." 

(Will Shakespeare) 

"For true love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have."

(Antoine de Saint-Exupery) 

"The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others." 

(Vincent Van Gogh) 

"To love another person is to see the face of God."

(Victor Hugo) 

"Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day." 

(Barbara de Angelis) 

"Real intimacy is a sacred experience." 

(John ODonohue) 

"The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one." 

(Honore de Balzac) 

"Had we never lov'd sae kindly, 

Had we never lov'd sae blindly, 

Never met - or never parted - 

We had ne'er been broken hearted." 

(Robert Burns) 

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." 

(Dr Seuss) 

"Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail." 

(Kinky Friedman) 

"You are like nobody since I love you." 

(Pablo Neruda) 

"Have I Told You Lately" Van Morrison

"Oh the morning sun in all its glory 

Greets the day with hope and comfort too; 

And you fill my life with laughter, 

You can make it better, 

Ease my troubles, that's what you do. 

There's a love that's divine 

And it's yours and it's mine,

Like the sun; 

At the end of the day 

We should give thanks and pray 

To the One."

"Know you what it is to be a child?"

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live."

(Pope John Paul II)

"Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of today. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief"

(Francis Thompson)

I wanted write something respectfully dedicated to the memory of Tia Sharp and all the children who have suffered physically, mentally or emotionally at the hands of those they should have been most able to trust. A couple of people have warned me off doing this, particularly as those charged with or bailed on suspicion of Tia's murder must be afforded the due process of the legal system. But one thing is irrefutably clear at this stage: the death of twelve year old Tia was concealed by members of her own family. When I read that Tia's mother had been told her own mother was implicated in Tia's murder, I wanted to weep for her.

I was very fortunate: I had both my parents until I was sixteen and my mother lived through to her late eighties. My Dad was very much a father-figure and I was still my Mum's "baby" even when she herself needed cajoling to eat and support to get to the bathroom. Whatever the political, social or even geographical distances between my only sister and myself, we are bound together as "family" due to my parents' devotion to each other and to us.

Sociologists will tell you that, in human terms, a family is basically a group of people linked by consanguinity, affinity or even co-residence. In many societies, it's the principle institution for the socialisation of children. Cloning aside, we are unable to choose our families as we do our friends: close ties formed voluntarily and independently can often prove stronger than blood. However, when affinities are cultivated within domestic familiarity but without Nature's biological safeguarding, the picture can sometimes become very distorted. Today, there is an apparent disintegration of the traditionally structured family: due to the devaluation of marriage and longterm, formal partnerships, the kind of procreational vagrancy that seems to permeate some sectors of society, and the horribly premature sexualisation of children. Tia's grandmother was pregnant with Tia's mother when she was only two years older than the tragic schoolgirl at the time of her death. When I was 14, I was dreaming about ballet and still plaiting my hair everyday.

Recent research in the United States has estimated that from the year 2000, there would be more "step-families" across America than traditional nuclear ones; one in every three Americans would have step siblings or parents. I have no wish to offend anyone whose family is comprised of "step" or "half" relatives; I have several friends in such situations where the well being of all the children is paramount and where love and respect are natural perimeters. Yet it's alien for me to grasp how Tia's mother could accept her own ex-partner, the now-accused Stuart Hazell, as her current step-dad; or indeed for Tia to suddenly view her mother's former partner as her new step-grandfather. One of my friends recently explained to her son that they were going to meet his "new Daddy", to which he smartly replied: "How did he get to be my Daddy without me knowing anything about it?"

I recently asked a Catholic priest if I should invite some people who were in need stay in my home, knowing that they would be unlikely to respect my privacy and property or the sacredness of my late parents' things. I admit that I was devastated when he suggested this was the ideal, God-given opportunity to throw open my front door as well as my heart. I was relieved when another priest, who I consider to be a friend, advised that it wasn't uncharitable to protect my home if I felt at all unsafe. God doesn't want us to be capricious about who we invite into our homes or our hearts. He bids us to respect and cherish the precious gifts He's given us, to keep them safe; nothing can be more precious than the innocence of a child.

"Innocence is lucky if it finds the same protection as guilt."

(Francois  de La Rochefoucauld)

 

God Bless Tia.

Looking and Leaping...

It's long been my own opinion that if your heart leaps, you should follow it...

“Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.” 

(John O'Donohue)

 

...have a blessed landing.

 

God's heartbeat doesn't skip

"The heart is the only broken instrument that works"

(T E Kalem)

Colleen writes a lovely blog called "Thoughts of Grace" . She has a very gentle turn of phrase which is also extremely resonant. About ten days ago, she posted about the reassuring "click click" of her beloved husband's mechanical aortic valve replacement: for the past fourteen years she's been able to hear his heartbeat without a stethoscope. Colleen also wrote that sometimes we forget to listen for the heartbeat of God.  I'm often silenced by the beauty of the words of others these days and this was one such moment.
I recently read somewhere a quote from The Book of Ezekiel, about God giving man a singleness of heart and replacing our hearts of stone with tender ones of flesh. Lately, I've been struggling to keep my head above the waterline with many things: trying to keep up with friends' relationships, stressing about what people think of me, counting pennies instead of sheep at night. My own little heart is not so little as it's enlarged on one side and a common or garden chest infection has introduced a wee atrial flutter: beat beat beat skip skip beat. This could be due to many things, including stressing over all of the above!  Of course I've focused on it and have been drawn into myself. I listen to "outside" noise looking to be irritated by it, I listen to the opinions of others, I listen to background music; and I get hung up on the irregularities of my own heartbeat. What I really need is to be quietened by the constance of the heartbeat of God.
God doesn't succumb to stress or atrial fluttering. His beat never skips. It's the primeval pulse, the essence of vitality, peace and reason sought by the new age crystal practitioners in Brighton's North Laine as much as by the suited and booted church regulars taking their love to the altar, their babies to the font, and their flowers to the cemetery. Listen; and you will find it in the murmur of well wishers, the unsolicited greetings of strangers, in birdsong and the cheerful nonsense of children, in the rhythm and ritual of the Mass, in the ticking of your late father's watch, in the certainty of your own name from another's lips. It's in the hush at either end of each day, it's the breathing space before words spoken are heard, it's the soft echo of longing, remorse or forgiveness of everything unsaid.

My Mum was a petite lady whose frailty in her later years belied the strength of purpose of her own enlarged heart. The congenital failure which claimed her last beat started with a hole in her heart, discovered after scarlet fever as a child. During one of her last cardiac checkups in 2010, the consultant was incredulous that although the left side of her heart was barely functioning, she was still alive. Ironically, whatever her faults and the fallouts of her Norn Irish temper, my Mum was known to be all heart. After Dad died, Mum and I clung together through the tantrums of my teenage years and she indulged my penchant for various indie, protest-pop and rock bands. Once introduced by me, she and Bruce Springsteen got on like a house on fire. She came to see The Boss at Wembley Stadium, leaning on a walking stick after a hip replacement (Mum, not Bruce) and stood for his four hour show, thumping the ground to her favourite songs. She later complained that, although she thought he was "smashing", he could have played for a bit longer for the money. Towards the end of her life, as Mum grew more weary of being housebound, I would often chivvy her into watching the music chart show on TV; I can still hear her today saying such and such a tune had "a good beat". Somewhere in the brash eighties production of "Dancing in the Dark", I can still grasp her walking stick keeping tempo. I wasn't there when Mum's heart gave up the beat; in the dreadful fester of days afterwards, I have no idea when her rhythm slipped in step with mine. Now when my heart skips, I can feel my Mum beating for me, just as she did from before I drew my first breath.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard God's heartbeat loud and clear during a Mass for the Sick. The service took place in the Hampshire parish where my Mum is buried, and where I've since made some very dear friends. As one of the seven sacraments, "Extreme Unction" was known as the blessed anointing of those who were terminally ill. Since 1972, the Roman Catholic Church has used the name "Anointing of the Sick" and the sacrament is extended to all those who are suffering in mind or body.

 Photo: Gigi

Photo: Frances

The Anointing of the Sick is given to restore and strengthen the body and the spirit; and to enable a state of grace for any continuing journey with pain or anguish. That Sunday, I watched other people after they had received their blessing, with a slight smile and an upward tilt to the chin. Several people I spoke to said they felt such peace after the mass. I also felt that the congregation and the men who were anointing them were moving quietly in step with the heartbeat of God. Intention, purpose and effect seemed to beat as one. 

When my little cat Sooty was terminally ill, with a chest tumour that was growing over her own heart, I often pressed my cheek to her fur for the familiarity of it and also to catch her brave little heartbeat. I miss her terribly, and often find myself reaching across the stillness of a moment to rekindle that scent and softness; her beat. When I'm even more still, I feel I can catch other inexorable rhythms finely underpinning every traffic hum, every tick of every clock in my home; and yes, my own sporadically dysfunctional beat beat beat skip. I believe we live between God's heartbeats, carried by His constancy. When our own hearts flutter and finally fail, I believe our names are still found by others in His comforting rhythm. His pace is oblivious to our progresses, stresses and turmoil: His love doesn't miss a beat; He is the pacemaker of the world.



"In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart"

( Mahatma Gandhi)

"If I Should Fall Behind"  Bruce Springsteen

Waiting For Eros

Photo: Gigi

I took this picture on the last day of a holiday in Australia a couple of years ago. Saying a fond farewell to the sights of Sydney whilst walking through the glorious Hyde Park that cuts across the city, I stumbled on this couple strolling through, fresh from their wedding at the nearby cathedral. Her gorgeous white dress was training along the dusty central path and they were oblivious to the skateboarders, tourists and city workers with their lunchboxes and newspapers. It was the most natural thing in the world for this couple to walk together through the park in bridal gown and morning suit: they were in love and happy and proud of their union. It remains one of my favourite holiday snaps: although there is nothing essentially Australian about it, it is unique. I truly hope they're still married and still head over heels in love.

Closer to home, last night I caught the late bus after a pizza with a friend. At one of the main stops out of Brighton city centre, a young man pleaded with our driver to hold the bus while he hunted for a pen and paper: he had met a very pretty girl that night and she was stood at the same stop waiting for another bus. This was his last bus home but he desperately wanted to write down his address and mobile number for her and hers for him. The driver initially said he couldn't wait with a bus full of passengers; then the boy and girl both said they had fallen in love. He looked about seventeen and quite sporty, she was maybe a year or two younger, fresh faced and mini-skirted in the cold. He stepped onto the bus and said his name was Mark and that he believed he had found The One For Him: could he please have a pen and paper? She then stepped onto the bus platform and said they would write on their hands if someone had a pen. She was embarrassed but just as ernest; she'd tried writing on her hand with eyeliner pencil but was scared the writing would smudge.

Everyone downstairs on my bus, including the driver, looked for writing materials. Various pens and pencils, envelopes, Sunday papers and even serviettes were found. Someone even offered them a tenner to catch a cab to both their homes so they could travel together. In the end, our driver waited the extra three minutes until Ellie's bus pulled into the stop. The pair kissed like seven year olds before Mark tore upstairs to wave at her in the other bus. We all applauded and the everyone told the driver it was absolutely fine when he apologised for holding up the bus. The woman next to me was in her late sixties and coming back from bingo. We shared her tissues to dab at our mascara for the rest of my journey. Something else quite wonderful happened which I can't imagine happening in my old hometown of London; as each of the passengers alighted at their stops, we all said goodnight.

The day before my romantic bus journey, I was at a wedding in Hampshire. Nothing that unusual, except maybe that the bride is seventy and her new husband was eighty in December. It was a very moving ceremony and also very intimate, even though the church was packed with friends and extended family. The Catholic parish priest gave a memorably affecting homily, which again found me nearly in tears. He spoke of the many words for Love in ancient Greek, found in the scriptures and other texts. In particular, there are four distinct words for love in it's various forms.

"Agape" translates in modern Greek as "unconditional love", and has been appropriated by Christians to express the love for and from God. Transcending physical attraction, Agape describes the deepest high regard, respect and sacrificial love.

"Storge" describes natural affection in both modern and ancient Greek: the innate bonds between parents and offspring and family members; kinship, shared history and acceptance. "Philia" describes love between friends and comrades, including affection, familiarity, loyalty and a sense of community and equality. Apparently, it thrives among bus passengers late at night in Brighton!

As does "Eros", the passionate and physical love of both courtship and marriage. Although Eros encompasses desire and longing, there is also the feeling of oneness and a connection of the spirit: the priest on Saturday spoke of finding The One who would help you get to Heaven. This phrase in particular has stayed with me. He also spoke of the validity of marriage at any age and of love whenever and wherever it's found. We frequently say love is blind. I believe the opposite is true. Love is seeing clearly and purely, clairvoyance and realisation. When we truly love, we see properly, beyond any mask or distortion, any barrier or limitation.

I'm a real sucker for soul mates. I discovered the writing of the late, beautiful John O'Donohue a while ago; his book "Anam Cara", literally "soul friend", is on the special books' shelf in my front room. If someone visits and either picks it out to read or comments that they know and love it, I know we're going to be friends. Call me old fashioned (it happens rather a lot), but I do feel that the sacredness of marriage has suffered a sad demise. I know couples who have lived together happily for years and who feel totally committed and devoted to each other without the making of vows in front of an altar; I also know many who have seen marriage as a formalised "long" relationship, a tax convenience and a shared account. Divorce is now seen as much more acceptable and generally a fix-it or getout clause: divorce rates are actually in decline these days, but this may be because the number of people getting married is the lowest it's been for 150 years. Marriage rates started to decline steadily in the heady seventies. Again, I have dear friends who are divorced and my intention is not insult them or blame them for current trends. I simply feel that the sacrament of marriage has been variously dismissed or too easily and loosely entered into.

It's been my personal choice to remain unmarried because I want to marry a soul mate. The word spinster no longer means a single woman of marriageable age but has become a term of ridicule, laced with rejection. I know single men who remain celibate are open to even more misunderstanding or abuse. I simply never want to marry for comfort, for security or for the sake of it. I know if I make those vows I will want to keep them, yet I have no wish to pledge myself into a loveless union to keep my family and bank manager happy. People frequently think being alone implies loneliness; I believe I would be far lonelier in a marriage or committed relationship where I wasn't fulfilled emotionally, spiritually and physically. I believe I have great love in my life, in the forms of Philia, Storge and Agape. I also still believe Eros is out there for me. So I'm totally heartened when I see a teenage declaration of love at first sight move a bus full of Saturday night weary folk. I feel moved to hear a Catholic priest acknowledge the precious role of tenderness and desire within marriage whether the couple are eighteen or eighty. And I'm enchanted to think that somewhere in New South Wales a lovely couple may be sitting down to breakfast, blissfully unaware that their wedding day stroll through the park still inspires my dreams of happy ever after.

"Bring Me a Higher Love"  James Vincent McMorrow