Séamus Ahearne: ‘AS I WAS SAYING BEFORE I WAS RUDELY INTERRUPTED….’.. (Sometimes associated with the renewal of the BBC after the War….. but not quite correct!) 

An escapee:

I have absconded or escaped. The beach belongs to me. The waves speak. The birds do a flypast. The sun welcomes me. The gentle breeze envelops me. The sand is kind to this walker. I had my early morning of two hours before the ‘intruders’ (People) woke up. Hardly anyone appears. I sit and watch. Those few hours are heavenly. I wipe off the accumulated weight/mental debris of the year. The endless privilege of pastoral life with its demands and challenges never fully met, however much is done. No more thinking necessary. The dredging of the mind and heart for another funeral or another Mass or another event has ceased. It was running on empty by now. The Algarve is a beautiful escape. What a delight and such a gift? 

BAPTISED IN DIRTY WATER:

I glance back towards Saturday with the final First Communion celebration. How did they learn so much? Their excitement. Their conviction in the signing and in the actions. Their spontaneity. Their participation. The smile on the faces. It was playful and lovely. I hope the adults caught something. I did tell them that ‘every day is a school day’. And that they were at the desks and the children were the teachers. It is true. How can the adults, deprive the children of God? But they do and will. May died some months ago. She used to say (quoting her mother) – “These must have been baptized in dirty water.” It is very true but the little ones are very special. Communion is a day and a wonderful one at that. If it wasn’t called First Communion something else would have to be invented. 

PROSAIC AND ANTIQUE LITURGY: 

But sometimes and possibly oftentimes – all of us conspire to make God (and the Liturgy) so formal and unreal that God gets lost and isn’t missed. The Coronation Service (which I didn’t watch) was a celebration caught up in history and faith, and all the paraphernalia associated with Church Celebrations. All the dressing up. The anointing. The crown. We retain vestiges of this in our own regular Liturgies and sometimes seem incapable of adapting/adjusting or even remembering what it is all about. The language too can be archaic as if God has be attuned to the royalist culture- your Holiness; My Lord. The words/actions are formalised into frozen lumps. The Kind/Queen leader takes over. Actions occur which don’t relate to the experiences of those present. The Godly one speaks. the rest are silent. That is so wrong. Now in regard to Matt Barrett – he was flippant, foolish and disrespectful as a guest and to his partner. Some intelligent people can be very stupid. 

‘Humans! I have arrived at a bleak conclusion. They do not want to know what we are capable of. Volition, altruism and kinship. They only consider these questions at some abstract level, they’d rather leave them unexplored, unanswered.’ (FIG TREE – Elif Shafak)

WHAT DO HUMANS REALLY KNOW?

Sitting beside me is Eli Shafak’s book ‘The Island of Missing trees.’ It is very colourful and evocative. It has a family story. It has war. It has plants talking. It has Animal Farm hints. The plants are a little disparaging to humans. The fig tree is somewhat arrogant. It feels very superior even though it admits to being in love with its carer (gardener). It feels too that humans don’t work together and are very superficial. They don’t understand how plants speak to each other and watch out for each other and send out information to fellow plants on predators. The Fig Tree is woven into the storytelling of the book. The writer’s use of words; the manner of sharing history; the sheer knowledge, makes me a tiny bit jealous. How do I know so little? I feel that it does apply to church and faith and ministry. We do too much tidying up as if God depends on us. We do want to structure everything. We act as if we know. But. We can’t fix everything. We can’t understand everything. Faith is complicated. The more we know; the more aware we are of knowing very little. Church and faith are full of mystery. We can’t chain them up. We cannot control. We are thrown into Job 38. Until and unless Ministry comes to terms with the untidiness of faith, faith is deprived of real ministers. So much and so often, people talk of today’s world – where God is gone missing. Where there is an absence of priests. Where people don’t bother and don’t miss God. We don’t have to continue the structure as everything is or was. It is a new world. We find this difficult. We are poets stretching every sinew for words to somehow express in the inexpressible. 

‘Carobs are strong. But unlike us figs, they are devoid of emotion. They are cold, pragmatic and lacking in soul. There is a perfectionism in them that gets on my nerves.’ (THE FIG TREE) 

THE CURSE OF CERTAINTY:

The plants are right. We (humans) are somewhat ridiculous. And church commentators are so often full of dreariness and weariness. The moaners and the whingers are such a pain. Negativity cannot be a faith response. We don’t need any more neat little priests who know everything, who can replicate our past. Our mission is new and different. God is exciting and troublesome and wonderful. So must the ministers be. The new Liturgy has to reflect this. Living. Bursting with exuberance. God teasing us. Creative. Imaginative. Only poets and artists are welcome into such a ministry. We may need wholesale redundancy. All the old certainties are gone and purveyors of such certainty are a hindrance in the new mission. 

THE CORONATION CONCERT:

I did see the Coronation Concert. All the acts were unfamiliar. I had heard of Katy Perry. But that tent of a dress! What really struck me was the 300 strong choir from across the UK led by Gareth Malone. Singing together and including the deaf choir with their sign language. Young Rose Ayling Ellis (Strictly Come Dancing) was a delight. ‘Brighter days.’ Indeed. She has shown how the music of life can be expressed even by the deaf. That was really good. The music of faith has to be a dance with much sign language – because most of us are deaf! The plants are right about us human beings. We may be intelligent but we can be so stupid. 

We’ll know love, little by little, glance by glance. 

Ah, the clay under these roots is so brown!

We’ll steal from Heaven while God is in the town- 

I caught an angel smiling in a chance

Look through the tree-trunks of the plantation

As you and I walked slowly to the station. 

Paddy Kavanagh – Bluebells for love. 

Seamus Ahearne OSA 

17th May 2023.