Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 2 – Thursday after Ash Wednesday

To Read:

I took out a Woodbine and lit up and offered her the match to blow out.  She blew, and I was sprayed with bits of sausage.  This little accident produced such a reaction in her that I felt that I had been stabbed in the guts.  I had seen a dog cringe before, but never a child.  The look she gave me filled me with horror.  She expected a thrashing.  She clenched her teeth as she waited for me to strike her.

What my face registered I don’t know, perhaps anger and violence, or shock and confusion. Whatever it was, it produced from her the most piteous whimper.  I can’t describe this sound after all these years, no words are fitting.  The feeling I can still taste, can still experience.  My heart faltered at the sound, and something came undone inside me.  My clenched fist hit the pavement beside me, a useless gesture in response to Anna’s fears.  Did I think of that image then, that image which I now think of, the only one that fits the occasion?  That perfection of violence, that ultimate horror and bewilderment of Christ crucified.  That terrible sound that the child made was a sound that I never wish to hear again.  It attacked my emotional being and blew a fuse.  

After a moment or two I laughed.  I suppose that the human mind can only stand so much grief and anguish.  After that the fuses blow.  It did with me, my fuses blew in a big way.  The next few minutes I know very little about – except that I laughed and laughed, then I realized that the kid was laughing too.  No shrunken bundle of fear – she was laughing.  Kneeling on the pavement and leaning forward with her face close to mine, and laughing – laughing.  So very many times in the next three years I heard her laughter – no silver bells or sweet rippling sounds was her laughter, but like a five-year-old’s bellow of delight, a cross between a puppy’s yelp, a motor-bike, and a bicycle pump. 

I put my hands on her shoulders and held her off at arm’s length, and then came that look that is entirely Anna’s – a mouth wide open, eyes popping out of her head, like a whippet straining at the leash.  Every fibre of that little body was vibrating and making a delicious sound.  Legs and arms, toes and fingers, the whole of that little body shook and trembled like Mother Earth giving birth to a volcano.  And what a volcano was released in that child!  Outside that baker’s shop in dockland on a foggy November night I had the unusual experience of seeing a child born. 

From the Scriptures:

My child, do not cheat the poor of their living, and do not keep needy eyes waiting. ² Do not grieve the hungry or anger one in need. ³ Do not add to the troubles of the angry or delay giving to the needy.  (Sirach 4v1-3)

To Reflect:

In a previous life I was Rector of the Parish of Belgravia.  No, not the posh part of London which rubs shoulders with Buckingham Palace and has Private Parks for residents such as those seen in the movie Notting Hill.  I was Rector of St John the Divine, Belgravia, just to the East of Johannesburg Central Business District.  Once it was posh, being the place where the first brick houses were built alongside the tent settlements of the first gold miners, but by the 1980s it had lost quite a lot of its polish.

It was not a very desirable place to live and it felt just a little like the East of London where Anna and Fynn lived.  We had much work to do providing homes for those Suffering Domestic Violence, those leaving the Sex Industry, newly released convicts, and the growing HIV/AIDS pandemic.  But our efforts also extended to those living on the streets of the City of Gold.  Each night a team of us would make 100 litres of soup and turn 50 loaves of bread into peanut butter sandwiches which we would then load into a trailer hooked on to my old Ford Escort and take it around the streets to feed those for whom we could not find a home.

One night I came across a homeless man who was staggering from the effects of drink (in those days corner shops used to sell tot measures of methylated spirits to anyone who could scrape together a few cents in payment).  He lost his balance and fell into the gutter.  I stretched out a hand to help him up.  His response was to hold his arm across his face to protect himself and cry out ‘Father, please don’t hit me’….

It does not surprise me to read Anna’s response to her accidentally spraying Fynn’s gift in his face.  Those who have been thrown off by society, those who don’t fit in, those whose pain is so deep that they have found comfort in drugs or drink, are often skittish when their ‘deal’ with the world around them doesn’t go according to plan.

One of the challenges of helping those on the margins of society is that too often we are quick to condemn and reject and blame those who are victims.

How many times I have heard these words about food banks.  “Well, they don’t really need help do they?’ or ‘They should learn to manage their money better,’ and ‘I bet they’ve got a big flat screen TV at home.’  Heaven forfend the person in the queue at a food bank who lights up a fag or has the odour of alcohol about them!

Little wonder that even to this day those who need most help are the last to ask for fear that they may be rejected by those who set themselves up in the business of caring….

This is not the way of Christ.  This is not the way of the one who taught us about the Good Samaritan reminding us that we should not be questioning why a traveller fell amongst thieves (I can hear people saying ‘He should have known it was not an AA recommended road!”) but instead, stopping, helping, funding, and promising to give even more if needed.  This is the way of The One who seeks out the Lost Sheep, spring cleans to find a mislaid coin, waits patiently and with hope for a rebellious child (cf. Luke 15).

Fynn, surprised at Anna’s fear and trying to work through his own anger, solves the problem with laughter.  And because he was able to swallow his questions (along with some freshly chewed flecks of sausage) he had the privilege of seeing fear turned to joy, darkness to light and the birth of a child.

In my, sadly too long, experience of walking alongside those on the edges of society, those who have been rejected by others, I too have seen this.  I have seen lives transformed from fear to hope, sadness to joy simply because a church has decided to open its doors rather than question motives.  Addictions have been fought, lives turned around, faith fanned into flame and all because, when confronted with behaviour that didn’t fit in, church members continued to love and laugh and serve.

With so much joy available, with the possibility of new birth, I can never understand why we do not run to open our arms more often.

Please Note:  These reflections are also published on my blog: suffolkvicarhomes.com on Bluesky as @suffolkvicar.bsky.social, and on my public Facebook page  Suffolk Vicar – Rev Andrew Dotchin.  If you would like them as a daily email please send a request to revdotchin@gmail.com

If you have enjoyed reading them please make a donation to The Clergy Support Trust who provided a  generous grant to help me find the space to compose them.