Called to care

We make many assumptions about other people's lives and their living of them, based on our own apparently similar experiences; but our experiences are not the same. Even a shared experience will be lived differently by those who share it, not only as it happens, but also in recollection and in its effects. The individuality of the essential truth within any experience, as well as the equally individual psychological, emotional, and physical experiences deriving from it, places our personal reality – whether accurately perceived or not – even further from the grasp and understanding of others than is the outer reality of the experience itself.

I recently came across a quotation I had written out years ago in one of my books of such things. For some years I have kept a written record of passages that registered with me in some way when reading; the underlying reason being that the experience of reading them touched me in some way that spoke of their potential for further thought. I have no doubt that other readers, if similarly inclined, would produce entirely different collections of quotes from the same books. We would, as it were, each find different fruit in the experience of the same tree. Everything discovered would be part of the tree, and we could each point to the words we had found, though our registering and interpreting of them may not speak to others as it does to ourselves.
If we spent time dwelling on this “food for thought” we would no doubt discard some items, perhaps many, but from others we may manage to tease out the meaningful heart of what had touched us in those words, and then, perhaps, we would be able to convey the fruit of our thinking to others. The fruit we had found would have fed us, and, bit by bit, such feeding, along with all the other small touches we experience, would bring about the beginnings of an overflowing: a gentle and unstoppable pouring, through our own giftedness, of God’s love into the world. This is all part of the individuality of the essential truth within any experience. We must hope to make sense of what seems to speak to us, not only for ourselves but for the potential benefit of those whose paths we cross. In my own way, this is what I attempt to do here: to unravel the threads of my ongoing soliloquy that I may better understand my own inner self, and through that better understanding, find and offer something that may in its turn speak to another.

The author of the recently reread quotation had apparently gathered bits and pieces which touched him in a particular way: in a way very similar to my own recording of whatever words spoke to me. He had eventually used them to form the basis of a book which brought them into a form which could be passed on to others. The gathering and keeping; the sorting and re-writing; the wish to pass on the heart and soul of something felt to be of importance; this all seems so familiar to me.
And the subject matter, drawing me as it does with its echoes of highlands and islands –primarily of Scotland, but by association within my memory and longing, also of Ireland – only serves to strengthen the feeling that the indefinable up-welling of emotion accompanying my thoughts of such places is something very real, very important in my life, and worth passing on to others.
The author’s harvesting of words also says something similar about my faith and my journey, the reassurance coming from a realization that there are others who experience the same feelings that are so important to me. It is simply through awareness of the existence of such persons that I find I am not alone in my solitude, nor lost in the losing of myself to the power of love and life. The author is one of these others, and he has not allowed fear, self-doubt, or timidity, to keep him from achieving his aim.
At the end of his introduction, he writes: -
'What I have done in this book is a very simple thing. I have taken the little ships of tradition and custom and legend and history, and I have towed them into port. For years, forlornly and apart, they have floated among my note-books, or drifted past the treacherous shoals of memory. Now they have come to the anchorage of the printed word.' (Alistair Maclean. Hebridean Altars.)
He also writes, 'Whoever brings a gentle mind to what is written here, may He bless, who loves us all, and, as they read, may each catch a vision of The One Face.'

The considerable and constant pull exerted on my mind and heart by these places is a form of meaningful friendship. Regardless of the length of time between my visits, we are inseparable; and though there is an ongoing relationship, it is of course one-sided, and could never be regarded as anything but an unrequited love. And yet, the land itself continues to call me in its own indefinable way, as though local and individual histories from such times as the Highland Clearances, and the Irish Famines, are still reaching out to those who are able to hear their whispers. It seems that the comparatively small part of my blood belonging to these lands, insists that I acknowledge its capacity for fighting well above its weight. Part of the ‘fight’ to which I am called by these ancestral links is the remembrance of those long gone, whose fearful voices still cry out with a longing not to be forgotten - a longing within themselves that someone, somewhere, should always remember them, and a longing cry that can never be forgotten by the one who experiences it.
In some way I am linked to them; they know me as their friend.

In a sermon on The Incarnation, Ronald Knox said, 'It would be a poor doctor who should never call again when his patient had passed the crisis; it is a poor friend who loses interest before he ceases to be of use.' (The Pastoral Sermons.)
Surely, it is a poor friend who loses interest whether or not he is of use. Friendship is not a using of one person by another; it is an uninhibited two way sharing of strengths and weaknesses, which is not barred from any particular aspect or corner of people's lives. It is complete, and it is ever-present, with or without the physical presence of the friend. It is being companions; spending time together, or surviving long absences through having previously spent time in each other’s company; it is sharing the highs and lows, the wonders and the ordinariness of life. A real friend is felt as a companion even when not present, as the reality of the relationship brings a trust, and a knowledge of the permanence of the other's care.
It is in the knowledge that there is someone who will always care, that strength and peace may be found.
In our human friendships, in our remembering of those who have journeyed before us, and even in a consciousness of past desperations and needs in the landscapes to which we are drawn, we each have the ability to bring a constant caring to those who may have no other friend to bring it to them.
However little we really understand each other’s experiences and the emotions aroused by them, there are common threads that run through them all. Above and beneath all degrees of sickness and health, poverty and wealth, exhaustion and strength, ignominy and honour, is the common theme of our humanity. In so many men and women, recognition of the evils and injustices in our world is buried so deep that they are unable even to know that we are all equal, as members of the human race, and in the eyes of God. And, above and beneath that truth, and even less known, is the Spirit of God constantly breathing into the lives of every one of us.

The strength and peace we bring is not our own; the caring is not entirely our own.
What we bring is the compassion of Jesus, and the wonder that is the Holy Spirit.
In spending time with others, we bring them to a meeting: the meeting of Christ in us with Christ in them; and in all such meetings, let us hope that we ‘may each catch a vision of The One Face.'
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