Temps perdu
I HAVE always found January slightly depressing — something of an anti-climax after the festivities of Christmas. I realise that the Christmas season continues, but the memories of childhood emotional highs are difficult to outlive, and the older I get the more I recall the delights of former days.
It is also the time of year when my father died, and, while we hardly had a bad relationship, I don’t think I ever understood or fully appreciated him. He was a working-class man, the son of Eastern European immigrants: a cab-driver, who worked incredibly long hours and seldom took holidays. He would work until midnight on Christmas Eve to earn money to buy us all wonderful presents; and yet I resented him for not being sufficiently excited when I woke him up six hours later, screaming about what Santa had brought me.
I never properly told him how grateful I was for all that he’d done and sacrificed — and, if I am honest with myself, didn’t show him enough respect. I don’t mean anything formal, but just an implicit acknowledgement of his worth and dignity. I suppose that’s not uncommon for children, and, until I became a dad myself, I didn’t realise what fatherhood was about; but, each January, I still feel a ripple of guilt.
Nunc Dimittis now
TELLING others how you feel about them is so vital; I see this often when people are close to the end of their lives, either at home or in hospital. Recently, I gave communion to a terribly ill woman, and, after a few moments of prayer, asked her whether she needed anything else.
“No,” she said, “I’m fine. I’ve had my time: a wonderful husband who loved me so much; a fabulous family; lots of friends; and I’ve been able to tell all those close to me that I love them. I’ve been able say thank you. Because of that, I’m at peace.” Then she smiled, held my hand, and thanked me.
She died the following morning. I was the last person to give her the sacrament.
A question of taste
A YOUNG mum came to see me last week to enquire about the church, and ask about what we believed and what we expected of her. It was all rather encouraging, and most of her questions were straightforward, enthusiastic, and easy to answer.
I assured her that, yes, her children would be most welcome, and not to worry about noise. She then asked about the availability of an alternative form of host. I assumed that she was going to ask for one that was gluten-free, and I could smugly explain that we did indeed have those ready, and that we were always extremely sensitive to our congregational needs.
“No,” she said, “I’m fine with gluten, but it’s my daughter. She really doesn’t like the flavour of the ones she usually gets, and wondered if you do them in any others.”
For one of the first times in my life, I was speechless. All those years of seminary, and this never came up. O Lord, yet another crisis in the Anglican Church!
Downwardly mobile
HERE in Canada we introduced Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in 2016. I had seen enough suffering by the terminally ill to support the legislation initially, but now I have changed my mind. The whole thing has become darkly ideological. There are even moves to include mental illness as a justification for the procedure.
I have had two direct encounters with MAID, the most recent being when a woman asked whether I would support her application, because she was depressed, lonely, and without hope. We introduced her to a community where she felt welcomed; gave her a laptop that someone kindly donated; connected her to the world of the internet; and she hasn’t mentioned assisted dying since.
I have no idea whether she would have been accepted, but the fact that people in emotional pain consider death as a solution says so much, and shows that we who supported the policy were wrong.
I know that supporters of the new legislation in Britain claim that there is no slippery slope, and that the controls are iron-clad, but we heard the same here nine years ago. It may be a cliché, but I’m afraid that some slopes are very slippery indeed.
Speaking in tongues
I WAS supposed to be In Israel and Palestine right now, but that was cancelled for obvious reasons. I have spent a great deal of time in the region, and once lived there for almost a year, but there is one incident among all of my experiences which has never left me.
It was during an especially dangerous period for suicide bombing: people in both communities were frightened, and I was travelling from Bethlehem back into Israel — about the only non-local to be doing so at that time. In front of me, a Palestinian grandfather and his grandson were arguing with a soldier behind the security barrier. I could follow some but not all of the conversation.
Then, suddenly, the little boy lifted up his shirt to reveal a package taped to him. I remember thinking, “It’s a bomb. This is madness. What a ridiculous place to die.” Others obviously agreed with me, because alarms went off, soldiers rushed forward. And then there was silence.
It was a colostomy bag, and the grandfather had been arguing about his out-of-date papers preventing him from taking his grandson to a Jerusalem hospital. An officer came forward, opened the barrier, and let the boy and his grandfather pass through. “Good luck,” he said, in Hebrew. “Thank you,” said the man, in Arabic.
The situation is obviously far more complicated than this mere story, and I know it well enough not to be naïve or even too optimistic, but, beyond the clashing, tearing narratives, there is humanity in the depths of suffering. I have seen it repeatedly in the places where it would be least expected, and I still cling to the essential Christian hope and prayer that, somehow, the Holy Land can be made the place it ought to be.
The Revd Michael Coren is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, and a journalist. His latest book, Heaping Coals: From media firebrand to Anglican priest, is published by Dundurn (Features, 29 November 2024).
