Clouds and rain gave way to sunshine this morning and nice long warm day. After Morning Prayer, I listened to the Sunday programme on BBC Radio 4. This ended with a poem written by a surgeon on in a Lancashire hospital Intensive Care Unit, entitled 'I just called to say ...' It wasn't a homage to the Stevie Wonder song of the same name, but an account of his telephone pastoral ministry to the next of kin of patients under his care on ventilation. Half of his day is spent on the phone updating those who wait at home, for better or for worse. The poem spoke of what he has to tell someone at each stage, eagerly awaiting news, unprepared for how long it takes, either for recovery or to death. It was moving and powerful, and gave an insight into the anguish of the healer when all that can be done has been done, and all that's left to do is wait.
The broadcast Morning service, which I listened to over breakfast centred around the Emmaus Road story, today's Gospel. Worship was led by the chaplain and staff members of a hospice, and turned around the journeys people make at the end of their lives. In my sermon for this week, I mentioned that several places lay claim to be the original Emmaus village just outside of West Jerusalem. The preacher, principal of Mansfield College Oxford took it a step further, speaking of several possible roads to Emmaus, all of them different, one hidden, one overgrown and neglected, one dangerous, along a landmine strewn border and so on. It's an imaginative fugue on the narrative, showing how rich are the possibilities for feeding on the Word.
I read Ante-Communion and prayed at the usual service time. Valuable and inspiring though many on-line liturgies can be, sometime I find that I just need to read the texts rather than listen to them, and then be silent, either sitting or walking. There's no substitute for fellowship, for human contact, but the empty space can be re-purposed for waiting on God. Co-incidentally, Roy over in Alicante sent me a quotation from T S Eliot's Four Quartets which speaks profoundly of the mystery of God and the humankind beholding the mystery
'I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.'
Out in the garden, I caught my first daytime sight of the house gecko on a wall, and took a photo which I'm proud of. Then I saw a pair of small grew birds acting as if they were looking for a nesting site. As one of them rested on top of the big garden cactus I took a photo which Rosi later identified as a Spotted Flycatcher. I remember Mother Doreen pointing out one in the forest near her home up on the inland border of Malaga province but that wasd fifty metres away, impossible to snap. So this was another first!
In the evening Rosi called me about booking a flight home, on the 22nd May, as a couple of direct flights to London have been advertised on the BA website., one to London City and one to Gatwick. A quick chat with Kath confirmed she'd be willing to collect me and take me home, and within an hour I had the flight confirmation document. It was booked by Rose from the UK. She was stranded there on a return trip from Ibiza where she has made her home. Decisive action was needed and taken on my behalf, for which I am very grateful. But my hopes won't really begin to rise until this flight proposal is confirmed. Any deterioration here or in UK could change the best made plans. One step at a time on this road. The old order has changed, perhaps irrevocably, who knows yet?
The inbound flight will be mostly of stranded returnees, with fewer people this soon after lock-down wanting to go to London, except for business, or people who missed out on the emergency flights in March, and didn't need to return. It will be good to go home, though there will be far less for me to do there than there has been here, except carry on waiting for that final round of surgery. Clare says that 'elective' surgery is to be re-started soon, though I suspect I'll still have another six months to wait for that.
This morning I saw a man out walking with his young teenage daughter dragging her feet behind, taking advantage of the easing of restrictions on children. I could imagine a girl of her age saying "Oh Dad, must I go out with you, you're so embarrassing." In the afternoon I heard several children's voices out on the road, and through the trees saw three naughty youngsters out together, no parent, no dog in sight. Well, one can expect the young to push the boundaries, having been pent up at home for so long. Good for their mental health, as it's bad for the blood pressure of law enforcers.
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