Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 38 – Maundy Thursday 

To Read:

‘Fynn, I love you.’  When Anna said that every word was shattered by the fullness of meaning she packed into it.  Her ‘I’ was a totality.  Whatever this ‘I’ was for Anna was packed tight with being.  Like the light that didn’t fray, Anna’s ‘I’ didn’t fray either;  it was pure and all of one piece.  Her use of the word ‘love’ was not sentimental or mushy, it was impelling and full of courage and encouragement.  For Anna, ‘love’ meant the recognition of perfectibility in another.  Anna ‘saw’ a person in every part.

Anna ‘saw’ a ‘you’.  Now that is something to experience, to be seen as a ‘you’, clearly and definitely, with no parts hidden.

Wonderful and frightening.  I’d always understood that it was Mister God who saw you so clearly and in your entirety, but then all Anna’s efforts were directed to being like Mister God, so perhaps the trick is catching if only you try hard enough.

By and large I thought I could understand Anna’s attitude to Mister God but on one aspect I got stuck completely.  Perhaps it was hidden in ‘Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding and didst reveal them unto babes.’  How she managed it I truly don’t know, but in some manner she had scaled the walls of God’s majesty, his awe-inspiring nature, and was on the other side.  Mister God was a ‘sweetie’.  Mister God was fun, Mister God was lovable.  Mister God was for Anna pretty straightforward, not presenting her with any real problem in the understanding of his nature.  The fact that he could, and often did, put a large spanner in the works was neither here nor there.

He was perfectly free to do so and obviously it was for some good purpose, even though we were not able to see or understand that purpose.  Anna saw, recognized, admitted to, and submitted to, all those attributes of God so often discussed.  Mister God was the author of all things, the creator of all things, omnipotent, omniscient, and at the very heart of all things – except.  It was this exception that Anna saw as the key to the whole thing.  This exception was funny, exciting, and made Mister God the ‘sweetie’ he was.

From the Scriptures:

Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”     (John 13v33-35)

To Reflect:

My beloved Lesley-Anne and I will have been married for 45 years on Holy Saturday and for the first time in many years I do not have any commitments in my diary so, on the day between death and resurrection, we will go out for a quiet meal together to say thank you and hold each other a little bit closer.

Throughout our journey together, which has included far more vicarages than any church family should move between (all willingly though), we have learnt the art of holding hands.  (We keep the huggy bits for Sharing the Peace in church and on the sofa at home).  We learnt this happy habit through the wonderful worldwide group called Marriage Encounter.  

Intended for couples wanting to deepen their vows to each other our weekend was on the banks of the Hartebeestpoort Dam just North of Johannesburg at the Cyara Retreat Centre.  Unlike most Retreats there were no formal lectures, no sharing in groups, no compulsory worship.  What was compulsory was that couples were asked to be together the whole time.  Chairs were arranged in pairs.  Talks were given by couples with neither one nor the other being the ‘lead’.  And our name tags carried both our names with your wife or husband’s name being mentioned first.

We spent much time contemplating how we could imitate the love Christ has for us and how we could learn to seeing the ‘you’ in the other in the same way Christ saw us and Anna saw Fynn.  Our model was the love affair between Don Quixote and Aldonza/Dulcinea in the movie Man of La Mancha.  The mad conquistador refusing to let the ‘loose’ woman go and proclaims her to be the Lady he is called to protect.  In the end, as does our Beloved Redeemer, Quixote loves her into being herself….   [this video clip comes with a two-tissue warning]

Anna once again hits the nail on the head;

For Anna, ‘love’ meant the recognition of perfectibility in another.  Anna ‘saw’ a person in every part.

Much time on a Marriage Encounter weekend is spent in Chapter 13 of the Gospel of John, including couples washing each other’s feet, (a challenge for us as Lesley-Anne has very tickly toes).  The most important part of those Gospel words for us was not so much the command ‘Love one another’ but the way of living out that command ‘As I have loved you’.  It’s good, and sometimes easy, to love lovely things.  It’s good to learn that love is not so much an emotion of the moment but a decision for a lifetime.  It is best of all to realise that, when really and truly we ‘see’ each other, as did Anna and Don Quixote, then we reach into each other’s middle and find that Mister God has been there all along loving and caring for everything and everyone.

To love ‘As I have loved you’, is costly cross-shaped work but it is the only love that will help us see the middle in others, reveal the middle in ourselves, and allow Aldonza to become the Lady Dulcinea

 

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

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