Easter Sunday

For once, Easter Sunday was a beautiful sunny day. The little church of All Saints was full. The Youth band played cheerful choruses, the Sunday School sung Jabulani. Toddlers ran up and down the aisles. Baby Mercedes gave us all a big smile as she was baptised. The sermon was short and we all got Easter eggs. Young and old celebrating Christ's Resurrection. The best Easter Sunday Ever.

Feeding the poor

A post on Facebook showed pictures of large and elaborate churches and a starving man with the comment: "We just can't afford to feed this man" I am not quite sure what the purpose of the post was. It seems to imply that an opulent Church cares nothing for the poor and hungry. As in so many generalisations, there is some truth in this. Of course Christians should do more. As long as there are starving people in this world, we should be out there feeding them. I know that I for one am not doing as much as I could. Jesus told us, "Give to those who ask you and don't turn from those who would borrow from you."  I sometimes flatter myself that I try to do this, but then I ignore the beggar at my car window and forget to take my contribution to the Church Food Basket on Sunday. I am not supporting charities like School feeding schemes because I have been too lazy to arrange to do so.   There are always good excuses for one's meanness. I give the example of a woman I knew who lived on the street and got a good meal every day at one or other church in her neighbourhood so she could spend her entire disability allowance on drink and I use this to justify not helping one of our parishioners to make sandwiches for the homeless people who hang around Muizenberg.  Because one's giving may be abused, does not absolve one from giving.

But the picture of the Church as being opulent and luxurious is not very accurate. Some churches may be, but none of those I have ever been involved in. Church finances seem to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy and the clergy are expected to exist on incomes that most of us would consider quite inadequate. I don't know how they manage. We should be thanking God every day for their dedication and devotion.

Going to Poetry School

I haven't written anything for quite a long time. I suppose it must be because I have been too busy with Hugh's Poetry School. This regular Wednesday morning session has been very interesting and informative besides being most enjoyable. But it has also been challenging. We have been exposed to different kinds and  forms of poetry and then set the task of writing poems in the specific genres.  I have never been fond of using any formal structure in my poetry, but the discipline of writing something as rigidly defined as a sonnet has, I know, been very good for me. I have, to date, written three sonnets.  I battled over each one for days. But, to my surprise, when we turned to villanelles I found I could churn them out at the drop of a ballpoint. Here is my latest:

The companion

There is someone always following me

I’m sure, I’m sure, there’s someone there.

but when I turn, there’s nothing I can see

In the soft rustle of the dry leaves of a tree

and in the sighing grasses I can hear

there’s someone always following me

Sometimes walking alone beside the sea,

the splashing of his feet tells me he is near,

but when I turn there’s nothing I can see.

However fast I run I cannot flee

I try to hide away, but everywhere

I go there’s someone following me

That sound like the faint buzzing of a bee

I know he’s breathing at my back.  I fear

to turn, although there’s nothing I can see.

What can he mean by it? And who is he ?

What does he want? Why does he care?

He never speaks; he only follows me

and when I turn there’s nothing I can see

God and the tooth fairy

"I believe in God like I believe in the tooth fairy" That is what somebody said recently and this made me think about the silly stories we tell children. In my family, it wasn't a fairy that rewarded a child for losing a tooth, but a mouse.  I'm afraid that our house-mice were rather unreliable tooth collectors and often forgot to exchange them for sixpences(the going rate then). Four children, very close in age lost teeth so frequently. My kids soon lost faith in the ritual of placing a tooth in a shoe under the bed.  I wasn't sorry. Although this kind of thing was expected of parents, I never really liked telling lies to my children, even lies as white as those about mice and teeth or about Father Christmas. I know that as a child I was relieved to find that it was my dear kind Dad that put presents by my bed on Christmas eve and not a scary old man who climbed down chimneys like a burglar. I didn't mind mice, I thought them harmless and rather cute, but I never liked fairies. They were too much like mosquitoes. I was determined not to believe in them. I am glad I was never introduced to the idea of a tooth fairy. A mouse exchanging money for a tooth was much easier to believe in. My children had all seen mice. Infestations of rodents were common in houses in Zambia. One could understand a mouse liking a tooth to gnaw on like a dog gnaws on a bone, but what would a fairy want with a tooth?
Where did the idea of a tooth fairy come from? Is it an American invention? Did they arise spontaneously there or were they brought over the Atlantic from one or other Old Country. (something for me to Google?) For that matter where does the idea of fairies come from? The fairy story is a very old tradition in Europe, but what gave rise to it? I know that there are people who are sure they exist and swear that they have seen them. Ruby Reeves, an artist who lived near us in George had fairies living in her garden. She would visit them and talk to them often. She wrote about them and painted many beautiful pictures of them. My daughter, Dorothy, said she had also seen them there when she and a friend went to Ruby's house. But my daughter was schizophrenic and suffered from other delusions too.

I can't remember if I ever told my grandson about the tooth mouse. I am sure I didn't ever mention fairies. But I suppose even such a sceptical child as he, believed in Santa Claus too when he was very young or at least pretended to. For all my children, the belief in this unsavoury old guy died out early, but the custom of hanging up stockings lasted until late adolescence. Why don't we all do that? Keep the Christmas stockings and leave Santa out of it. Isn't it better for children to know that what we tell them is true, or at least as close to truth as we are able to get.










 

A sad summer

In the last few months there has been so much sadness. I suppose, living in a retirement complex, just one step removed from an old age home I should expect it.  After all it is the period of our last years that we spend here, but it does seem that a particular angel has been unusually busy. Since September at least five inmates, (actually I should call them residents) have died. I was able to avoid some of the memorials,( I find what are called "celebrations of the life of..." particularly harrowing) but felt obliged to attend Beryl's "celebration."  Then my dear friend, Helen, died suddenly. It was hard for me to get over her loss. Just the week before she died I had been to see her. She seemed in good health only a bit frail. We had laughed and joked just as we always did, so it was a great shock to me. The very next month, I had to attend two memorials on the same day. Annette's in the afternoon and Livinia's that evening. I was very fond of Annette, but it is Livinia that I miss more. I would see her every Sunday, at Capricorn Pick n Pay, picking up Malawian congregants for church. Then battling her way from her car, up the road to the church door, a short journey which took her several minutes, the stroke she had suffered had disabled her so much. After the service, she would always had out the sandwiches that she had made to the homeless people who would be sitting by the side of the road, waiting..

In December the whole country mourned Madiba's death.  I had hoped that 2014 would be a happier year, but it is only the second week and there has been dreadful news of floods and other disasters. Yesterday, saddest of all, my dear friend, Joanne's husband died unexpectedly. All the other deaths have been of old people(in their eighties or nineties), one mourns, but quickly comes to terms with the loss. It is something one is somewhat prepared for,  but he was only fifty two. My heart goes out to her and her children. Her son is quite a young boy, the daughters still at home. I wish I could do or say something to make their burden a little lighter. I can only pray for them. My faith and my relationship with the Lord has helped me though the bad times, like Mike's illness and death and the crises with Dorothy. It must be so hard for those without faith. People always tell you that time heals, but I know from experience, that there are some losses that one never gets over. After time the pain dulls, but it never goes away.

Something Geoff and Ann told me has upset me too. Their granddaughter, Francesca, developed anorexia. Apparently her condition was so bad that she had to be hospitalised. Ann said they were afraid that her life was in danger. What a dreadful disease it is. Like being addicted to a lethal drug, or possessed by an evil spirit. It is so hard for parents, who often blame themselves and are also often blamed by others too.
Well, I think I have gloomed and doomed enough. It is time I went to bed.

READING POETRY

I am a poet myself, at least I call myself a poet, so why do I find so much poetry difficult to read. I have just down-loaded "Ariel" by Sylvia Plath onto my kindle(Kobo actually, I must be accurate about such things) and have been battling through it for the last hour or so. I don't deny that some of the lines speak to me. Some are upsetting; cause shock or even pain. Some are quite beautiful in their lyrical quality, but, on the whole, the meaning behind them eludes me. Surely this ought not be so. You would think that knowledge of the process of producing a poem would make it easier to tease out the meaning of a piece of verse. Of course it is true that I have never actually learnt to study poetry, or if I have, it was at school and so long ago that I have forgotten all about it. To the truly literary, no doubt, the meaning of Plath's lines is perfectly clear. It is rather bruising to my ego to find that to me many of her poems are quite obscure and that I have no idea what they are about at all.

A friend once told me that she likes to find something mysterious in a poem, that she enjoys puzzling out hidden meanings. I understand what she means, but I am afraid that what I write is somewhat shallow. There are no interesting hidden depths.When I write, what you see is what you get. That is why I was surprised to hear that my publisher has been asked for permission to include one of my poems in a school textbook. Of course I was pleased and flattered, but rather puzzled. What could they possibly want to do with it? -- analyse it? You might as well analyse a recipe for spaghetti.

Anti-bacterial soaps

I have just read in a post on Facebook, that antibacterial soaps have been temporarily banned in the USA. This is great news. I wish they could be banned all over the world - permanently. Bacteria, like all living creatures should be treated with kindness and respect. They may have a bad name, but actually very few of them cause us any harm.  (Probably less than 0.001%).  The rest are totally innocuous and some are even beneficial.  Of course you do often need to remove an excess of these little bugs from certain places, like the palms of your hands or the surface of your chopping board or  dinner plate. In that case, just sponge them away gently with mild soap and water, don't poison them with harsh, harmful chemicals (which do no good to your skin or to the environment,)  and then rinse them down the nearest drain so they may end their days usefully, helping to clean up effluent and make it safe enough to be discharged into streams and rivers.( Sewage works depend on bacteria to do this job.) It has been scientifically proved that plain soap and water is just as effective as most antibacterial agents and there is very little benefit in using expensive chemicals. In fact it may actually be harmful.