Steps walked: 14578.
Furthest point travelled: 1.5
miles. North Middlesex Hospital Chapel.
Face to face non-household
interactions: Four or five, I think.
Track of the day: ‘No Fun’
– The Sex Pistols.
If you came with me now, I could take you to the exact
place where it happened.
I was walking home from offering prayers at the North
Mid. It was warm: the sun was shining, the birds were singing, the sky was a
perfect blue – and I realized just how angry I was feeling.
Some of the angers I could name. Indeed, some of the
angers I could put names to, and faces.
Some of the angers were my fears, and the fear which at
this time is the air we breathe.
Some of the angers I could half-guess at the origins
of, but didn’t really want to think about too deeply.
Some of the angers, I realised, were sadnesses which had
gone wrong, because I wasn’t really sure what to do with them, where to take
them, how to face them.
The birds kept singing across a London fallen not quite
silent, and under a bright light sky I trudged home carrying all this anger. It
didn’t help that my anger made me feel embarrassed, perhaps ashamed, in case somehow
people could see it.
And then I remembered the pilgrimage I wasn’t making; I
remembered the miles between Lindisfarne and Iona that I wasn’t walking; I
remembered why that journey at all.. and it made me feel better.
The Celtic Christianity that’s so popular today is a
lovely thing, truly lovely. It’s hand-woven, fairly-traded, and recyclable…
endlessly so. It’s most definitely environmentally friendly. It’s kind, and
caring, it understands. It’s like getting into a deep bath, after a hard day,
with a not too challenging paperback and a glass of Prosecco. Am I overdoing it?
Columba, the Irish Prince who founded an abbey on Iona
and found sainthood there, ended up on that blessed island in the first place,
because he was exiled from the Ireland of his birth. He was exiled from Ireland
for what today we might call a war crime. He started a war that never needed to
have been fought because he was angry. And the best bit of all? He was angry because
he’d been caught making a crafty copy of someone else’s Bible. And I feel
embarrassed?
The blessings of those Celtic Saints were things of
beauty, but you didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of their
admonitions. You know, they got angry too.
But like Columba, Saint Columba, they took their anger,
offered it to God, and made something beautiful out of it. I’ve been so busy
pretending that I’m not angry, sad, frightened at all, that it’s all just a bit
of a mess.
We can see shadows just as dark places, or we can see them
as frames for light.
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