One day he just started walking, he didn't really have a plan, he just set off, his heart was broken, his life had been turned upside down and he could not hold things together so he walked. His story is not filled with wonder like the story of Forest Gump who ran across the United States and filled his life with extraordinary things, but his heart was broken just the same. I suspect that he walked to find himself, for he had lost the him that he once was, in the face of his parents death the security of a good job and a nice home paled into insignificance.
Peter's story is not unusual, of course though his situation was unique to him, and he was certainly a unique character,walking led him to Blackpool where he met a kindred spirit, a friend with an equally broken heart. Eventually they shared a flat, two friends bound by tragedy.
He had a habit of walking around the town and popping into the shops to offer his own special blessing. His parting blessing to me was always with the wag of a bony finger and the words Gawd bless you my dear.
He was a man of routine, you could set your watch by his daily walks, he knew where to find a hot meal, a listening ear and a cup of tea, and he could always talk us into giving him just one more shirt or jumper or pair of shoes. It would be easy to say he was happy in his simple life, but I suspect a closer truth is that he was trying to keep something alive, and that thing was the divine spark that made him, him...
I meet a lot of folk like Peter, each with their own tale of brokenness and heartbreak, often sensitive souls who find the world of hard knocks too much to take and simply step off the treadmill into another world, sadly that world is often full of drug and alcohol addictions, easy to fall into almost impossible to climb out of without support. These folk are not the scum of the earth, as in all walks of life there are manipulators and liars, but there are many good folk too. Good folk, trying to keep something alive. that divine spark that clings to hope.
But it is not just folk like Peter who despair, it is not just those hit by tragedy or poverty who know what it means to try to keep something alive, to try to cling onto the very essence of their humanity, seeing it as something precious and valuable.
We live in a world full of demands and needs and sometimes those demands tell us lies;
You are not enough!
You do not have enough!
You will never be enough!
We are pushed to achieve, we push ourselves to achieve, demands are placed upon us from within and without, demands that deny that innner spark, that precious essential part of us that needs to be nurtured, cared for and kept alive. All too often that inner spark is quenched by demand upon demand, and alcohol and drug addiction don't just emerge in the homeless/ poor communities like the one I serve.
Pain, doubt and loss of hope are no respecters of person or wealth, and atempts to quench that pain with something, anything are lets be honest understandable. Look at the recent story of Peaches Geldof, we cannot know the pain she suffered loosing her mother in such a tragically similar way to the way her children have now been left.
It would be easy to judge, she had money, a lovely family, fame...
The Independent newspaper reports today:
Ms Geldof reportedly had an overdose in 2008 and had a history of drug taking.
In her final interview, she said that becoming a mother had been a “really healing process”.
“Before, I was not at peace with myself about it because I was just traumatised,” she said. “That’s why I was living a chaotic lifestyle. But now I have the kids I can heal the situation. It’s so good in every single way, really.”
But as it turns out, she could not heal herself, just as Peter could not heal himself, in the end she overdosed, in the end he died of a heart attack, he had refused treatment for his leg and eventually suffered from gangarene, his system could not cope.
Their stories are both stories of loss, storiesin which there were glimmers of hope, little Easters, mini resurrections, and yet they are both gone. Did they loose or have they simply moved from this place to another, met on the road by the risen Christ who has welcomed them with open arms and healed their hearts?
I ask because I am fed up with triumphalistic Christianity, because too often it demands to muchof us. Earlier this week I critiqued an article by James Mumford commenting on the BBC 2 series Rev, I return to that now because I think it makes huge claims for transformation;
Rev's operating assumption is that faith is individual. The Rev Smallbone's prayer monologues are purely personal. Faith is not something held in common. Nor is it transformative. Which is, rightly or wrongly, what people of faith think it is. Perhaps the show's most wonderful character, the drug addict Colin, is a parishioner Adam is genuinely friends with. But there's never a question of faith freeing him from addiction.
Once again I do not agree, for although I have from time to time seen big transformations and even healings take place I am more and more convinced that the grit of faith is worked out in the everyday choices to struggle to keep something alive. I have watched recordings of the series several times ( there was so much in there) and see much evidence of both community and transformation, but what is so often missed by those looking for shiny, big and explosive answers is the truth that resurrection and transformation just don't very often happen like that.
Peter could have become a bitter twisted recluse, instead he became a part of the community and knew love, that has showed through by the number of people asking about him over the last few weeks, by the Police Officers who took time off to come to his funeral and who stopped me in the street to tell me how meaningful it was, and how they had known and loved Peter for who he was.
Likewise Peaches Geldof will be mourned, and while her funeral was attended by celebrities and Peter's by ordinary folk they are both gone, but she found hope however slender in her children, and he found hope in his friends. These are not triumphalistic stories but they are small stories of grace.
We walk on from this point, and as we do we probably have questions, we may wonder why Peaches,Peter and the fictious Colin's lives were not so transformed that they became the good upright people that triumphalsim expected them to become. We may wonder if God really exists at all? We may be confused, grieving or simply left feeling numb in the face of so much darkness, but that is precicely where new life begins, and we need grace to see it.
Another blogger, Rev'd Al Barrett tells his story here from his blog, This Estate we're in, I was particularly struck by these words:
You won't let me go... perhaps it is in that truth, in that divine embrace that we find the strength to go on trying to keep something alive, and when we can't maybe then hell becomes heaven for us as we are welcomed home...
"Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but…at supper time, or walking along a road…He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks." –Frederick Buechner
Painting: Emmaus rd, Mine.
