Michael Louis Hedley

On the Metro today I noticed a young mother with her baby in a pram. She was lost in thought. Suddenly she looked down at her child and smiled. Her face was transformed. Love beamed out with the power to light a thousand lanterns.

So, it's Easter Monday, we all seem to be agreed on that, yesterday Easter Sunday also known as Easter Day, filled with memories of times past and do you remember when moments of childhood and beyond. The day before seems problematic. In church notices it's Holy Saturday, in newspapers simply Saturday, shop opening hour listings as Easter Saturday, as did Metro Information boards, Sports commentators and in general parlance. (This coming Saturday is Easter Saturday). Then it was Good Friday, everyone seems to agree. Good, as  in the old English meaning of Holy. What was the day before that? Maundy Thursday. What's that? It's from the Latin word Mandatum which means a command or order to do something and refers to the command from the Lord, 'love one another as I have loved you.' There's a thought. Happy Easter.

I always like to spend a bit of time during this special week to get stuck into something that's going to take me forward, so I was delighted to hear that Richard Rohr's new book was available. This wonderful teacher has produced something remarkable. I have enjoyed reading, pondering and sharing his insights in his perhaps final work,  I hope it's not, but he hasn't been well recently.  The Book: 'The Universal Christ' (How a forgotten reality can change everything we see, hope for and believe) A small measure of the man and his thinking is contained in the dedication of the work. "I dedicate this book to my beloved fifteen year old black Lab, Venus, whom I had to release to God while beginning to write this book. Without any apology, lightweight theology, or fear of heresy, I can appropriately say that Venus was also Christ for me."

As I was quietly working away on the long table in the Lit and Phil yesterday I noticed a young student nearby working away on Middlemarch by George Eliot. She was typing away whilst watching a T.V. production of the book. Exams clearly beckoning. I thought I must pick up the book again myself, one of the great novels. As I was reflecting on the great issues of her book I remembered something she wrote that had resonated with me a long time ago and I had sent as part of a birthday greeting to someone close. 'Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.'

I've just finished reading A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter which he wrote in the Sixties and  a sentence of his has been running through my mind since. 'The more clearly one sees the world, the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.' (page 154)

I thought that my voyage had come to an end at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time had come to take shelter in a silent obscurity. But I find that Your will knows no end in me and when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart: and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders. (Rabindranath Tagore)

Be wary of accepting an unwrapped sweet from a man walking his dog.

Let it go. Let it go. What, let it go? Yes, let it go. What even that? Yes that too! Let it go. In the words of W.H.Auden Saying Alas To less and less.

St Francis could be overwhelmed with gratitude before a piece of hard bread or praise God for the breeze that caressed his face (Gaudete et Exsultate 127)

I do love new authors, but there is a great joy also in revisiting an old friend on the page, with that in mind, I have been dipping into Graham Greene's short stories, or as he often called them entertainments, and particularly 'May We Borrow Your Husband and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life. This gave me cause for thought - '.....at the end of what is called the sexual life the only love which has lasted is the love that has accepted everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.'

If you don't transform your pain you will always transmit it especially to those closest to you.