My Memories - Chapters 1 to 4

My Memories

Chapter 1 Plum Jam and Jeyes Fluid

I have, down through the years, extolled the merits of the 1930's model. It was built to last. “Engineered with quality” might be another way to put it. Perhaps these are phrases I have used to describe my own self image. I suspect that what I am really acknowledging is that the statues of Queen Victoria tend to cast very long shadows. Victorian values, epitomised by the raising of one's cap to acknowledge an adult and giving up one’s seat on the bus, were held in great regard and I am still more concerned with taking part than I am with winning.

Perhaps it is for this reason that I find the idea of sledging on the cricket field incongruous. I mention these things because if you are going to follow my journey it is only right and fair that you should have some idea of who I am. That means, as I see it, understanding something about my background and my views on things and with that in mind I will begin at the beginning or nearly so.

Upminster has very little of note save its windmill to distinguish it from those many other townships which have long since disappeared into the dreary bureaucratic concept of an anonymous London Borough. I was brought up there in the days when it was part of the County of Essex. That meant that its cricketers wore three scimitars on their sweaters and were put to the sword by every other cricket team including Somerset. However we always lost gloriously and with an appropriate amount of humour.

I was born in August 1938 and a year later World War II broke out. These two facts were ones which my father always spoke of in one breath. When old enough to do so, I drew the obvious conclusion about the unanticipated nature of both events. I did so particularly bearing in mind my father's decision in 1937, when he and my mother married, to buy a house not far from Hornchurch Aerodrome and directly under the flight path from Pienemunde whence came Hitler's rockets and doodlebugs

For a young male growing up, World War II had interesting aspects. I spent much of my early life in a cupboard under the stairs of our 'three up two down' semi-detached house. I knew no better and assumed that all children slept in cupboards. I now realise of course that mushroom cultivation, as practised by the enthusiastic home gardener, is conducted on a similar basis and that furthermore middle management in commerce has yet to emerge from similar treatment. The door is opened, food is thrown in and the door is closed again.

The Second World War became far more serious for me when our next-door neighbour was provided with an Anderson air raid shelter. This was built in her back garden and was given to her because she was the oldest inhabitant in our road. It so happened that she also subsisted, for the purpose of treating some deeply mysterious ailment, on a diet comprising in its major parts of cabbage and milk stout. I was of course too young to appreciate the full significance of these facts at the time. I only learned of them later when my mother told me about them.

Because our family was next-door to the air raid shelter, we went into it last but one and I therefore ended up positioned immediately to the rear of the senior citizen who came in last. I cannot begin to describe the full horror of the long hot summer nights in that confined space and that precise location. All I will say is that they left a lasting impression on me and coloured my view both of cabbage and milk stout for a very long time! It took my parents some considerable effort, when our own Anderson shelter arrived, to persuade me that it would not also generate the unforgettable aroma which I had come to view with such dread.

Apart from this, the remainder of the war passed uneventfully, although there were moments of alarm such as the discovery that a gift of "new laid eggs" to my father from a grateful client had lions stamped on them. This meant that they were in fact in his possession illegally.  This caused my father several sleepless nights dreaming about the arrival of the food police.

It had been necessary for my father to acquire eggs whenever possible due to his slaughter of the chickens so carefully raised by my mother. She had planned to provide us with a steady supply and to have some left over for bartering purposes. Saturday was the day when I had to go and purchase straw for the chicken coop and on this particular day, because my mother was poorly, my father was commissioned to clean it out. This involved removing the old straw to go on the compost heap and scrub the floor of the coop ready for the fresh straw. Unfortunately my father had used neat Jeyes fluid and didn't remove it from the tongue and grooved flooring and so the chickens drank it. Fifteen laying hens and their two mothers died that day. News of the impending tragedy came from the unnatural crowing sounds emerging from the chicken run. When I went to investigate I observed the hens seeming to lean up against each other before one by one dropping to the ground until all was silent. This did not include my mother who, having heard the racket and arisen from her sick bed, came to investigate. Her description of my father and his activities is best described as colourful, protracted and very uncomplimentary and left at that.

There was a silver lining. I buried the chickens in a circle round the plum tree which the following year provided an over- abundance of plums. We had plum jam for the next three years which seemed to me to be a bit excessive. It also kept reminding my father about Jeyes fluid.

Chapter 2 Confirmation or long trousers?

My schooling began in an air raid shelter but continued in more normal surroundings at the conclusion of the war. I should mention in passing that our garage roof proved to be an excellent collector of shrapnel because of the gunfights which took place between aircraft overhead. This proved to be useful in the bargaining processes which took place when I started school. For example the right sized piece of shrapnel could acquire three good conkers or 10 cigarette cards.

The street party which was held to celebrate the end of hostilities began a gradual return to normality with the arrival home of brothers, fathers and uncles. It also led to England being bowled out by Australia for 52 runs. I learnt this from an elderly gentleman to whom I listened for some time while eating an iced lolly. I didn't understand much of what he said, largely because I knew nothing about cricket, but it was enough to impress upon me that the game was important. Clearly 52 was not enough and there was a gentleman whose name was Jack Crapp who I was told had lived up to his name and was therefore not worthy of his place in the England team.

Reflecting on that incident I am reminded that I had walked a mile each way on my own to get my iced lolly. That is something which I would never have allowed my own children to do a generation later although at the same time the situation cricket-wise had not changed much although Mr Crapp had retired.

A year or so earlier in 1947 there came a significant moment in my life. It was probably engendered by a number of events like, for example, the replacement of something called "nutty slack" by proper coal. Nutty slack was a substance produced by the National Coal Board to keep people amused during the long winter nights of wartime. It constituted a challenge both to combustion and patience alike. People spent many hours attempting to generate the first at the expense of the second and, even when ignited, nutty slack failed to produce enough heat to warm a bath of water. It did however generate an awful lot of smoke. The water for a bath came from an item called a copper. This was ordinarily used to boil clothes but performed a secondary role as a water heater.

Bathing in wartime had taken place in a zinc bath and was somewhat akin to a severe form of physical punishment. Sitting in a kitchen, unclad, in a zinc bath did untold damage to many young and impressionable minds. The physical impression created on the hindquarters was equally unfortunate and could be compared with an encounter with a rasp file. Thus the restoration of real coal meant a first acquaintance with a real bath whereupon I discovered that I could sing.

The importance of this discovery cannot easily be exaggerated because it opened up for me a whole new world. Not least this was because our school was situated opposite the parish church of St Lawrence. This magnificent edifice, whose earliest parts went back to its Saxon origins, was famous for being so high in its liturgy that the Roman Catholic priest from across the road would occasionally drop by to refresh his memory about "the way things used to be done".

Miss Kylik, the Music Mistress at our Junior School, sent boys who could sing to Captain Sykes who was the organist and choirmaster at St Lawrence's and ran the whole organisation with awesome military efficiency. Choristers attended for rehearsals on Tuesdays and Thursdays and were paid for these attendances as well as for at least two services on a Sunday. However the real perk was weddings. At half-a-crown at time and with sometimes six weddings on a Saturday, this was a hobby worth having!

It will come as no surprise to learn that, when faced with the choice between the income to be gained by a chorister and the outdoor rigours of scouting, I chose the former. The reasons were not exclusively financial however because I actually enjoyed singing and did not much care for tents. The latter seemed to have a nasty habit of leaking and every time I put one up it seemed to me that the heavens responded by opening to disgorge a deluge. Having spent one Saturday morning (part of a “This is Scouting” day) standing in 6 inches of water in a waterlogged field I decided that being a cub constituted quite enough experience of outdoor activities for me. So I settled for knowing how to tie a reef knot and called it a day.

It is interesting to reflect that God played little part if any in my decision to join in his worship on a robed and formal basis. Nobody, least of all me, thought to consult him or indeed appeared to see any reason for doing so. It seemed to be taken for granted that I believed that there was a God and that worshipping him was a good idea. As to the words I was required to say and sing and the ideas and concepts that played their part in worship, I jumped through the hoops they constituted and accepted them as required activity. I understood little but assumed that, like so many other things in my young life, all will become clear in the fullness of time.

I did puzzle over some parts of what I had to say in church and especially the bits about the Holy Ghost. The idea of 'holy' and 'ghost' in juxtaposition struck me as odd. However I was the only person going to church in our family therefore discussing it at home did not seem worthwhile. Indeed discussing religion and church never occurred to me in any context. My peers were interested in living here and now and my elders and betters required hoops to be jumped through not unnecessary questions. Thus I thought I believed in God, certainly said I did and I assumed that, since “holy” came in front of both "ghost" and "Catholic church" there was a relationship which was kept secret until we were confirmed. Having got this far in my thinking I gave up and slept easily.

1948 was the year the Olympic Games came to London and on the feast of the Transfiguration I was taken to Wembley to see one day of what I was told was a great occasion. As I have already explained my family was not deeply religious and so the actual reason for going off on August 6 was because it was my birthday and I had achieved double figures!

We, that is my father, a neighbour named Bill Robson and I, had seats in the open air high up on that side of the stadium most remote from any activity. We sat down, the heavens opened and we got very wet. Outdoor sport had, I reasoned, a lot in common with camping.

Arthur Wint and Fanny Blankers- Koen performed some heroic deeds I was told by our neighbour who had a pair of binoculars. The record books subsequently confirmed the value of binoculars at sporting events. I also strongly recommend a kagool or some other form of waterproof clothing

It was in 1949 that my career as a boy soprano "peaked" as it were. I won the treble section of the Ilford Festival and this carried with it the prize of auditioning to sing on Children's Hour on the BBC's home service. So it came to pass that on a Saturday morning my mother and I attended at broadcasting house where we met “Uncle” David Davies. However when I opened my mouth to sing, out came a resounding bass voice. This is not what Mendelssohn had in mind when he wrote “Oh for the wings of a dove”. On the way home my mother said that she felt that I was responsible for the débâcle because I wanted to grow up too quickly!

It was also in 1949 that I passed what was known in those days as "the Scholarship" and as a result in September that year I went to Hornchurch County High as it then was. As the only boy in my class (1 Alpha) whose voice had broken I purely and simply by chance had to read all the leading male roles in the Shakespeare plays that we studied in our English lessons with Miss Laycock.

My days as a boy soprano were fast coming to a close with all the economic consequences that ensued. It seemed fitting to me to leave the choir when I got confirmed but suddenly a major obstacle cropped up in the form of my father. He adamantly refused to allow my confirmation and was equally determined about the wearing of long trousers under the age of 14 (he later took a similar view about the wearing of jeans at any age).

In an effort to change his mind I invited the curate from the parish church, Father O'Callaghan, to come to our house for tea and a game of bridge. Bridge was a game that I had learnt by watching seemingly endless games which were played in our house during and after the war. Latterly if a player were late arriving for a game, I was allowed to sit in for a practice hand or two. As a result I became reasonably proficient.

Father O'Callaghan turned out to be a less than effective player. He was also quite incapable of changing my father's mind either about confirmation or long trousers. Furthermore, having forgotten a cigarette he had left on an ashtray burning, it landed on the tablecloth and succeeding in scorching the table underneath. As a result of these disasters I decided to abandon confirmation and to concentrate on long trousers. After all, whoever heard of a choir bass in short trousers?

Chapter 3 Golden Virginia and liquorice paper

There is no doubt in my mind that being at a grammar school was a great privilege. Sadly however it also divided our family because one of its number was selected for a different form education from his siblings. Curiously enough my brother Adrian had no desire whatsoever to join me and much preferred eventually being head boy at the secondary school he attended.

I learned very quickly at Hornchurch Grammar as it became in due course, that I had to step up a gear or two and fortunately they were there to be used. I also realised that it was necessary to be adaptable in order to get on with folk.

I encountered people whom I now recognise as embodying the embryonic form of the “British character”. They did what I regarded as being incredible things. One such character managed to hold a cigarette in his enormous hand with the smoke going up his jacket sleeve while carrying on a conversation with the headmaster. The latter could smell the smoke but was completely unable to identify its source. That same fellow pupil was extremely tall for those days (today he would be much nearer average) and his hands were strong enough to enable him to pick up a 7 pound medicine ball single-handed and toss it to a classmate. The classmate in question not unnaturally, thought that it was a football and so headed it. As a result he spent the rest of the physical education (PE) lesson 'resting'. Some people seem prone to accidents for the same lad who headed the medicine ball subsequently discovered a dead body in a ditch while out on a cross-country run and as a result all his hair fell out with shock.

I spent much of my time grammar school avoiding Game's and PE lessons. This required genuine ingenuity since stray lads and lasses (ours was a co-educated school which was unusual in those days) were very soon rounded up and subjected to punishments such as detention after school. The secret was to "melt" and reappear subsequently with out attracting attention. To do this single-handed was boring; to be able to make up a pontoon school however was exciting. There was no shortage of people willing to join forces and obey instructions and so I developed my knowledge of those places which afforded facilities from card school and were unlikely to be discovered. We managed to avoid detection.

Most of my successful hideaways were developed with the assistance of a lad from the form above ours whose father had access (or so he said) to Golden Virginia and Old Holborn tobacco which was “ex-customs and excise”. This he sold to me for half normal retail price. I, in turn, rolled cigarettes which I sold at two old pence each. Filter tips were a halfpenny extra as was licorice paper. Thus with complete innocence of the health implications I kept myself entirely self-supporting financially and probably undermined the health 25% of the junior section of our school.

I admired many of my teachers who seemed to me to teach from a professional standpoint and to live their lives accordingly. Looking back I have even more respect. Interestingly enough most of them have travelled from other parts of the United Kingdom to teach in Hornchurch where our school was located. “Taffy” Roberts, whose first class degree was from Oxford, came from Wales and taught us sixth formers 17th-century history. The fact that I did not know until I left school that he was a Roman Catholic was an amazing tribute to the unbiased nature of his teaching.

Religious education was taught by a Methodist lay preacher who studied to obtain a mathematics degree with first class honours during his spare time. He was one of the many whose education had been disrupted by the onset of the war. “Sid” as he was privately known to us all, for what reason escapes me for his actual name was Wilfred, had an enormous Adam's apple which got larger and more mobile or so it seemed, as his anxiety increased. Such is the cruelty of youth that we did little to encourage the tranquil atmosphere that he so obviously desired but what can one do when a teacher points to his calculations on the blackboard and says “watch the board while I go through it “.

But this was the man who taught us the General Thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer and I have never forgotten it. Indeed, there have been times in my life when nothing else would emerge and I have used that prayer with gratitude. It's curious to think that in those days it was just words and another hoop to test my agility. “I believe” words are cheap. I did believe there was a God, the “eternal” however seemed to require a great deal more faith than I had, so what was wrong with saying “thank you”? They were only words said with the head and not the heart but perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, they were better than nothing and they kept the lines of communication open.

As school-days unfolded so did my ability to understand something of community spirit. It also taught me the value of example and the damage that can be done by a vindictive teacher but above all else the merit of laughing at oneself.

My first encounter with the opposite sex at a deep emotional level came to an end leaving me with a liking for the poetry of John Donne and the desire to keep to my own company. As a result I learnt that we are not designed to live on our own and that we need companionship, the feeling that we are part of the community. A form at school can be such a community, something to which it is good to belong and I was happy to rejoin mine after my period of self-imposed exile.

Chapter 4 Reflections on wartime London

With reasonable frequency my mother took me and my sister Madeline, who is nearly 4 years younger than me, to visit our grandparents in Poplar in the East End of London. This involved a trip on the District line which is the green one on the London Underground map. The train took us from Upminster to Bromley-by-Bow and then there followed a walk down Brunswick Road to number 159. This was a Victorian house like all the others in the street except that, in this case, the front room window announced that it was somewhere where one could have shoes or boots made or repaired. Alfred Cockurn Kidd, my father's father, was a cobbler. The income from his occupation had supported not only his own three children but in earlier times some half-brothers and sisters from his father's second marriage.

The walk down Brunswick Road revealed much evidence of the bombing that destroyed or made unsafe many parts of London's East End. The devastation produced an eerie atmosphere for a small boy and I remember not only this but also the strange aromas which often filled the air on these journeys following the air raids on houses, wharves and factories alike. One of my earliest memories was of the smoke still rising from Sun wharf which, we were told, had been bombed the previous night and the aroma of burnt flour from a warehouse on the site. I would have been four years old at the time.

It took time but as the war progressed I came to make the link between the aeroplanes I saw going over our house in Upminster as being the same ones as delivered their bombs on these sites I walked past in Poplar. Later I recognised the same situation when I watched doodlebugs (V one's & V two's) going over our house.

From my father's parents' house we would walk on to Grosvenor Buildings which were blocks of flats built around a central quadrangle adjoining Manisty Street off the West India Dock Road. My mother's own mother lived in flat number 432 which was reached after a climb up some 72 steps. Grandma Vieira, as she was known, was a widow whose husband John had died in 1932 from the injuries he received in World War I while serving aboard HMS Tiger. By the time I was born one of my grandma's children had already died and two more and a grandchild would also die during her lifetime. One of the them the grandchild Doris was someone I remember with great affection. She died from tuberculosis which in those days could not be cured.

My grandmother's flat had two small bedrooms and from one of these I could look out across the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel and into one of the West India docks. There I watched warships which were moored whilst they were re-provisioned before rejoining the fray. Incidentally both my grandmothers had been part of the crowd watching when Queen Victoria opened the Blackwall Tunnel in the late 1890s. That was before either of them was married to my two grandpas.

Later in life I reflected on the stories I heard from these two ladies about life in “service”. This meant, I discovered, working for a wealthy family on a “live in” basis. Both were immensely proud that they had been considered to have been raised well enough in manners and courtesy to be taken into someone else's home. It was also amazing to think of horse drawn carriages as the means of transport enjoyed by the large houses on either side of the Mile End Road when one sees what it is like today. The carriages were there to take families and servants alike to picnics on the green joining the pond in the centre of East Ham about which Grandma Kidd told me. She also mentioned travelling in the servants' carriage, down what would one day become the A127, a day ahead of the family carriage. This was so that the house at Westcliff-on-Sea could be got ready for the family holiday which would begin the next day.

Compared with Upminster the East End of London had much less traffic. In part this was due to the constant bombing raids and the shortage of motor fuel but also because roads were under constant repair. There were of course in those days many more horse drawn vehicles which were less affected by the circumstances. Nevertheless the atmosphere was somewhat subdued and disturbed only by the occasional bus or brewers dray.

My grandfather's shop was a warm and welcoming place with a radio always on in the background usually broadcasting music from the Third Programme. There was a wonderful aroma of leather which hung in sheets from the ceiling of the workshop and glue which bubbled in a metal pot on a small gas ring. It was a health and safety inspector's paradise.

By way of total contrast by grandfather and grandmothers' visits to our home in Upminster always involved a walk along our nearby country lanes. One such walk took us to a point from which it was possible to look down on the ranks of aircraft lined up ready for take-off at Hornchurch Aerodrome. The site I recall as a small boy has long since become a housing estate but in those days in the 1940s the grass was covered with Spitfires with maintenance engineers scurrying back and forth from the hangers and fuel lorries which adjoined the control tower. It was a picture of constant readiness.

We nearby residents always knew when an air raid siren would soon go off because minutes before, we heard the order to scramble broadcast from the airfield. It was loud enough to reach us as well. We could then see the Spitfires rising into the sky as we hurried to our shelters, although in the case of some of us not so much hurry as crawl!

Two entirely contrasting reflections represent for me precious memories in totally different settings but with a common feature. One is of my grandfather taking me from his shop on a walk to St Leonard's Church where the nearby war memorial stood on which was the name Charles Kidd. That was one of my grandfathers half-brothers who at the age of 17 was killed in the last few days of World War I. I was able to see how sad he felt even this many years later. By contrast I remember being page boy at the wedding of my father's sister Gwendoline when she married her childhood sweetheart Arthur Smith who was a corporal in the Army medical Corps. I was provided with a 'silk suit made from part of a redundant parachute. It itched prodigiously and to put it mildly I was not happy. I can say with absolute authority that suits made from parachutes and frosty days in February are not a happy combination. Nevertheless it was my first real encounter with St Lawrence's Church in Upminster and I noted it's war memorial. I did not know it at the time but in due course I would sing at that same memorial on a number of Remembrance Sundays as part of the St Lawrence Church choir.

My final reflection is upon the subject of food in war time and immediately into my mind this brings black bread. I was told that there is no such thing as bread which is naturally white and that the whiteness comes from added chalk. Since there was a shortage of chalk I was told we now had bread in its natural state which to all intents and purposes was black. What I also learnt was that it might not look good but when one is hungry and black bread is all there is one gets on with it and survives. I also learned there were much worse things, and paramount among these was cod-liver oil. When my sister spilt her dose on the electric hot plate of our cooker we had to give up having toast or put up with the aroma of burning cod-liver oil. My sister was not popular as the result of this and in due course a gas ring and toasting fork were acquired to get round the problem.

“MOTHER, BEHOLD YOUR SON”

John and Mary

INTRODUCTION

For many people the gospel of John is a special part of the Bible.  It is distinct from the other Gospels in a number of ways.  One of these is its inclusion of seven sayings attributed to Jesus in which he uses the words ‘I am….. ‘  This introduction to attributes which he goes on to claim for himself is powerfully reminiscent of the description that God gives to Moses when asked for a name as is recorded in Exodus Chapter 3. v14.

Nothing like those sayings appears in the other Gospels.  The question is: how did John know about these claims?  For me Mary who stored up so much in her heart is the key.  What I offer here is a possible explanation of how it came about.

IN THE BEGINNING

It was a heavy day that clung on to folk like a sullen child, the sort of day that makes every step laboured and costly.  It was also a day full of expectancy where people looked at the skies wondering when the storm would come to relieve the tension they felt.

These were among the woman’s thoughts as she sat at the fireside staring at the empty grate and shivering despite the heat.  She had travelled up to Jerusalem a few days before and was staying in this house as the guest of her son’s closest friend John. 

She mused on the day thirty three years before when she had given birth to Jesus.  Never would she then have thought that his life would end in a few hours time like this, a Jew crucified by Romans at the behest of his own people.  Mary (that was her name) traced the smoke marks on the chimney breast as she gazed at it lost in thought. 

She remembered that remarkable day when, having finished her household chores she was praying in her favourite corner of the living room in her parents’ house.  Her Father was out working in the fields and her mother had gone to the market.  Mary recalled that the sun streamed through the narrow window high up on the side wall of the house which was meant for ventilation rather than light.  In fact sunlight came through there only during the summer months and then only for an hour or so in the middle of the day.

Her mother claimed at first that her daughter must have fallen asleep and had a dream but Mary knew that wasn’t the case.  She remembered how the light streaming through the little window had suddenly become overwhelming, filling the whole room.  She remembered being amazed but not frightened.

It seemed to Mary that from the midst of the light a figure was emerging who gazed at her and seemed to be able to place thoughts in her mind.  It was from the message imparted to her in that way that Mary gathered she was to become a mother.  Knowing enough about the facts of life as she did, she was puzzled.  Her relationship with Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, had not reached anywhere near a stage where motherhood was even remotely possible she thought. 

Straight-away it was as if her mind was read and a message conveyed in reply ‘The Holy Spirit of God will be Father to the child and so he will be a very special one.’

The whole of Mary’s upbringing and consequently her knowledge of Scripture, flooded her mind and left her with but one thought, “If that is God’s will, then so be it.”

It seemed to Mary that she had given her consent in this way for the whole room was suddenly filled with a light so intense, so deep, so rich in golden and blazing white purity that it would blind or burn her, yet it did neither.  She wanted to reach out and touch it yet she could not and knew that even if she tried, she would take hold of nothing.  There was no sound yet she could hear music but not like anything she had ever heard before.  There were no words yet she heard a message of reassurance and comfort.  She was surrounded, enfolded and at peace.

Just as suddenly as she had been immersed in this light so it began to fade, gently disappearing into the walls and through the window leaving Mary in the familiar room at her prayers and hearing her mother Anne’s voice calling her name, “Mary?” with just the hint of an anxious question to its tone.

As she always did, Mary stored in her heart the events of that day.  It was months later when the fact of her pregnancy was evident and beyond denial that she told Anne what had happened.  She also told Joseph who was initially, and understandably she thought, more sceptical than her mother.

Mary pondered the scorn that some of her acquaintances had heaped upon her.  She also marvelled, as she had done many times before, at how helpful and understanding her cousin Elizabeth had been.  Joseph had married her and smiling to herself Mary recalled the happiness of that day and then she shivered as she reminded herself about this one.

At that moment John’s return with Mary Magdalene brought Mary fully into the present. He told her that crowds had been gathering at Golgotha since dawn.  A triple crucifixion was not common and nobody it seemed wanted to miss out on the spectacle.

Usually a crucifixion could be relied upon to provide entertainment, as some people saw it, for a couple of days.  However, with a major festival coming up, the Romans would take steps to see that the victims didn’t linger, so people were making sure they had good vantage points.  Mary Magdalene said some of their group had gone ahead, so with heavy hearts the three set off joining a steady stream of people moving out of the city towards the hillside.

Month’s later when reflecting on it all, Mary’s recollection pondered on only two things.  One was the grey-headed centurion gazing up at Jesus and saying in amazement, “Surely this man is the Son of God.”  Revelation Mary mused comes at extraordinary times. 

Just as important was her son fixing her with his steady gaze and with his last few shreds of strength telling her to look on John as her son just as he should look on her as his mother.  A few moments later and he had died.  “So it is,” Mary reflected.  “He gazed on me as he came into the world and he did so again as he left it.  And it takes a Roman to see what many Jews cannot.”

DO THIS

“And so this fireside is now my home and John is my son and my protector.  Why is that so important I wonder?” Mary mused.  In the week and months that followed that momentous day many amazing things had happened which she continued to ponder and store up in her heart.  Then suddenly it became clear to her what the point of her being with John was.  It came about because of the question he asked which was in itself a simple one.  What he wondered, had gone on between Mary and Jesus when they had all gone to that wedding at Cana?  John, it seemed, had been too far away to hear.

“Ah,” said Mary, and she explained how she had had what she described as one of her ‘moments.’  Those were times which didn’t happen very often but meant that something important was to be done.  On this particular day the wine had nearly run out and their friends were in danger of being very seriously embarrassed.  So she had asked Jesus to do something about it.

It seemed like an odd request to make. After all, what could a carpenter, however good a preacher he might be, do about a shortage of wine?  “But,” Mary said, “I knew he could put things right and not only that but I knew he should, because now was the right time and the right place.  It wasn’t my decision.  I spoke for Another because I was then the only one who could. 

It was the same feeling and the same voice I had heard thirty years before in Nazareth before he was born which I heard now.  And so I told the servants to do whatever Jesus instructed.  He was not pleased with me.  He addressed me as ‘woman’ just like any other Jewish male would.  But then he saw the look that the voice produced in me and then he knew too that this was the time.  Now there was no going back

Of course I didn’t know how it would all work out.  How it would end on the cross in order to begin again for eternity.  I couldn’t know all that, not then anyway.  So we just looked at each other and he knew. 

He told the servants to fill the jars inside the front door with water, six there were on either side, and then he said they were to fill wine flagons from them. 

Between the filling and the drawing he just stared at the jars and then looked up with his eyes closed.  His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear what he said.  You know the rest.  The wine was superb and the feast became known as the best ever for many years. 

And that, John, is why I am here, I think, so that I can tell you all the things only a mother can know after living with her only son for nearly thirty years.”

BECOMING BREAD

So it was that John received from Mary insights into the way in which Jesus had talked to her during their many conversations often at what might be called their lunchtime break.

“At such times, when there were only two of us, he always called me ‘Mother’ and over the years I came to know when something serious was on his mind from his look  and tone of voice.  I would take his bread, some meat and a piece or two of fruit into the workshop and there he would be perhaps with a piece of wood in one hand and a chisel in the other pouring over a scroll.”

“Mother” he would say.  “What would we do without bread?” 

But on this particular day he said it differently, more slowly and it was definitely a serious question.

“Why do you ask?” I replied.

“Because I know that each day you provide more than enough to keep me well fed and happy but who feeds my soul?”

He put down the wood and the chisel, picked up the scroll and read me a passage.  “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”  (Deut 8 v3)

“Mother I work to provide us with money to enable you to buy the food that sustains our bodies – but our souls- they need something else – they need bread from above – from the Lord.  They need this scroll – the Word of the Lord.”

“And he gazed at me so intently and his words became almost a whisper.”

“I must become that Word for them.  I must live it out, be what is written.  Oh I know they can hear it read in the Synagogue, even read it for themselves, but they need to see what those words can achieve when they are lived out.  I need to become bread for their souls by the way I live.  The words need to have their home in me.”

“What did you say?” asked John.

“I told him that his work was making more than enough for us to live on and that if he needed more time to study I was sure we would manage.  And he just smiled.  I also said that the Lord’s word and work carried out under his guidance would never let us down or leave us wanting.”

“And then?” John asked.

“And then” said Mary “he kissed my forehead and said he must finish the yoke he was working on because it was needed by the end of the day.  And so I left to go and think over what he had said.”

“Was there anything special you wanted to mull over?” John wondered.

“Only that he had said, ‘I must become’ – in other words he didn’t think he was there yet.   I also remember thinking that this was something he had been pondering for quite a while but now he knew how to make sense of it.”

“What about since then,” asked John.  “Was there anything else?”

Mary thought for a long while and eventually she said, “Well, after that our Shabbat was somehow different.”

John waited and Mary went on.  “We used to have my sisters and their children come to our Shabbat meal because they were both widows and Jesus as an only child regarded their children as his brothers and sisters.  They in turn treated him like an older brother.

Naturally as the oldest male he presided at the Shabbat but whereas before that conversation he had performed his role as a duty properly carried out, now it was much more than that.  It had become almost alive with meaning.  They all noticed it although nobody said anything. 

My sisters told me later that they all found it very moving.  I thought to myself that he was living it out”

WAY, TRUTH AND LIFE

“One night,” Mary said, “I woke up with a start knowing that something was not quite right.  I put my cloak on and went into our main room.  I could see that Jesus was not in his room and that the street door was open.  Outside the ladder was up against the wall and when I went up a few steps I could see Jesus was there on the roof sitting cross-legged and gazing up at the sky.” 

“I asked him very quietly what on earth he was doing.  He whispered to me that he had been reading the Psalms and especially the one that says ‘Oh Lord my God how majestic is your name in all the earth.……. when I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have established what is man that you are mindful of him, and the Son of man that you care for him?’ ” (Ps 8) 

“I went and sat down beside him there on the roof.  It was cold but the sky was magnificent.  The moon gave us just enough light to be safe but not so much as to obscure the stars which were spread like a canopy of shining jewels.  Anyone seeing us would have thought we were absolutely mad”

“It is possible, John, to feel so close to the majesty of God under such a sky, and that night Jesus and I clearly did.  Then it was almost as if he reached some sort of decision because he asked me if I had ever wondered about life as a kind of journey.”

“ ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘it is the way of it, as though I am set on a path which I can sense but cannot yet quite see.  It is a small path and a narrow one but it runs true.  I mean it is always right with itself because there is only one way which is true and that is also true of our Father’s love for us.’ ”

“I was startled John because it was the first time he had ever used that word ‘Father’ in that way and then after a pause he went on.  ‘I am beginning to see that my life has to be lived out following the way I see before me and it must be a way of love.’ ”

“I don’t know how long we sat there John but dawn was beginning to break when we came down.  Before we did so I took his hand and told him I believed I knew the way of which he spoke.”

“Did he say anything more?” asked John.  “

Mary gazed at her hands and then very slowly she said, “He said, ‘I know it Mother, I know it.’ “Just I know it Mother, I know it.”

THE GATE

“It’s strange but true that carpenters can have one thing more than all the rest that they are really good at.  They can’t tell you why but that’s how it is.  With Joseph it was bowls.  Everybody knew it was a ‘Joseph bowl’ because they really were well made, perfectly shaped and smooth.  With Jesus it was gates.  Whether big or small, his gates were excellent and much sought-after for houses and for barns.”

“One day when I took him his lunch he was gazing at a fairly large gate on which he had hung a scroll.  Although I had gone very quietly he must have sensed me there because he said, ‘That’s what the Father’s word is.  It is the gate to our hearts.  It stands guard over us keeping us safe from the evil thoughts, ideas and influences which constantly seek to invade. The word of God is like the door of the sheepfold which stops the wolf from entering.’  Then he took the scroll down and wound it up, turned to look at me and said, ‘Mother I must become like this scroll.  I must live it and be it so that I become like a gate passed which the wolf cannot get to those who will hear and believe in the word they hear from me.’ “

“And what did you say to that?”  John asked. 

“I think it was something like, Yes Jesus, but not until you’ve had your lunch, and I remember he roared with laughter and kissed my forehead.”

“It was not long after that he went off on a long walk.  He was gone for a while, I remember it was at least two nights and when he came back he was very thoughtful.”

“The next day when I went in with his lunch he was just gazing out of the shop window.  When he heard me he said, ‘Mother, it’s a very hard life out there as a shepherd.  It’s not just about protecting them at night, it’s also about being prepared to go and rescue them when they get stuck or stranded.  Did you know that a shepherd’s voice will be so well known to his flock that he can call his sheep and they will go to him and no one else?  And when they came to him, he will know if they are all there.  They are devoted people and very tough as well.  They regard the loss of even one sheep from the flock as failure and are prepared to risk everything to avoid that happening.’ ”

“I had sat down to listen to him and after a while I asked who he had stayed with.  ‘I went with Elkinah and his brother and I couldn’t have made a better choice.  They have taught me a lot.’  He grinned when he added, ‘I can see now why they think we townsfolk are soft,’ and then far more seriously, ‘A good shepherd will be prepared to lay down his life for the sheep.’ “

“Do you know John that although that was a very hot day I shivered when he said that and I remembered something.”

“Go on” John said.

“I remembered what Simeon said when Joseph and I took Jesus to the Temple to present him on the eighth day.  He told me that one day a sword would pierce my soul.  I remember that and now I know why.”

John waited and eventually Mary continued, “That’s how he came to see himself.  He was the good shepherd and we were the flock.”

The fire crackled in the grate casting long flickering shadows into the room and John marvelled at the quiet grace of his silver-haired companion whose memories he so treasured.

THE VINE

One evening having lit the oil lamps and re-stoked the fire John and Mary settled down after their meal.  It was then that John, having just returned from visiting friends, produced a flagon of wine and poured a cup for each of them.

“Do you recognise it?” John asked and Mary exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, I do! This is from Capernaum!”

“Indeed!” said John.  “Indeed it is.  I got it especially from the vineyards above the town which used to belong to James but now have passed to his grandson Mark.”

“My” said Mary, “that takes me back to a day when Jesus came in, having visited a customer called James to take some specially prepared supports for his vines, and gave me a bunch of grapes sent to me as a gift from James.  He said ‘Mother, I do believe you have an admirer.’  I told him not to be so silly or so cheeky, but secretly I was quite touched because James was a good and kind man.  The grapes were wonderfully tasty and we shared them with our supper.  It was then that Jesus came out with one of his questions.”

“ ‘What do you think,’ he asked, ‘it feels like to be a grafted vine?’ ”

“Almost without thinking I said that I though it would be very odd at first but then better and better,  Jesus looked at me as if he were puzzled but then said something about supposing it would but he hadn’t been thinking that way.  I asked him to explain.”

“I’m glad you did,” said John “what a very strange question.”

“The way Jesus saw it,” Mary continued, “was that the vine grower has many potential grafts to choose from.  However, having chosen and grafted he will still be quite ruthless with those grafted branches which are not fruitful.”

“Even more than that however, Jesus was interested in roots.  He saw the grafting process as requiring a fresh start which placed faith on the root system that a grafted branch would come to rely on having lost its own.  He described the whole thing to me from the choice of the branches to the graft itself and then the pruning and fruit collection.  Clearly he had studied it all very carefully.”

“ ‘Mother’, he said to me, ‘You know that there are many who choose not to be part of the community who worship our God while others say they do but their actions and attitudes tell a different story.  I believe that our Father sees it just like the vine-dressers.  In our spiritual life there is a vine and all those who profess belief are grafted into that vine.  The vine-dresser then watches and sees that some grafts never really take because they do not bear fruit.  They are pruned away and join those who were not selected in the first place.’ ”

“ ‘I am becoming like that vine.  I will teach God’s word and set his example in my life.  Those who have belief in my teaching will be like branches grafted in.  They can then bear fruit and it is fruit that they can carry with them into our Father’s Kingdom.’ ”

“It is a wonderful picture don’t you think John?  It is one straight out of the vineyards of Capernaum.”

THE LIGHT

Mary had been sitting quietly for some time when she said, “More and more often before that wedding at Cana Jesus was away from home for longer periods teaching and travelling.  His message was very straightforward.  Although they had not met since they were boys, he and his cousin John taught things which complemented each other like, as Jesus once put it, ‘a good tight dove-tail joint.’ ” 

Mary had paused in her story that evening and John could sense that her recollections were coming to some sort of conclusion.  He also felt that she was tiring, as though the efforts and experiences of her life were now at long last taking their toll.

“One afternoon when he came home, he sat gazing at all his tools and equipment as if he were seeing them for the very last time.  Then after we had eaten and evening was drawing in he lit an extra oil lamp and put it on the table we had been using.  ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘what do you see?’ ”

“Over the years, John, I had come to know that the apparently strange questions Jesus sometimes asked were never ever simple or straightforward.  Somehow he managed to see beyond the obvious into another world of meaning; so I took my time.”

“I looked at the light of that lamp, then into it and beyond it.  I don’t know how long I sat there considering that light.  I do know that night had come and that the silence was profound.  It was only broken when Jesus spoke again.”

“ ‘The darkness cannot put out the light no matter how deep or all-surrounding a darkness it may be.  There will be dark days Mother, days which will seem to destroy everything by their blackness and the deeds done in them but the light cannot be put out.  Remember this, God himself created light in the darkness at the Beginning and it has survived, just as his words have survived in the Law and the Prophets.  I have to become the Light to show the way in through the dark places.  There is a world beyond light Mother, and you and I have glimpsed it together.’ ”

“And then it was as if that lamp blazed and its light filled the room just as it had all those years before in my parent’s home.  It was a week later that we went to the wedding at Cana.”

THE RESSURECTION

“Did you see Jesus after he was risen?”  John asked the question very quietly and Mary smiled almost as if treasuring the memory so much that she was reluctant to give it up.

“Just once,” she replied.  “Just the once.  Just before you all saw him taken up it was.  He said he had come to tell me that he was going to leave.

“ ‘Mother,’ he said. ‘You know that the cross was not the end and now you see that resurrection is a reality and that life continues and will continue where I am going.  You also know that you will see me again in the Kingdom to which I will go and that I will be there to greet you when it is your time to come and join me.  I have become the Resurrection for those who believe.  I have become Life for them.  Death must be faced but it no longer has any power to hold those who believe and live out their faith.’ ”

“And then he took my hands in his and kissed my forehead and was gone.”

Mary suddenly appeared to John to have become the old lady she was in reality and he realised that through all her story telling she had appeared to him to be much younger than she was.  It was almost as if, he thought to himself, the words, the stories she had told had had the power to produce vitality in the teller.

“Yes John,” Mary said,” The words are very, very powerful just like the One whose story they tell.”

EPILOGUE

Mary the mother of Jesus is a wonderful example of motherhood, of steadfastness in adversity and of obedience before God.  She also shows us how to deal with the unexpected by seeing what it has to teach us.  That little phrase which tells us that Mary stored things up in her heart is very salutary.  Especially that is so in an age which looks for instant reactions and decisions.

Whether the idea of Mary contributing her recollections to aid John in his Gospel writing appeals to us or not nevertheless the time the two spent in conversation must had been very compelling.  Hopefully my comments on it will aid your own meditation.

                                                                                                         A J E Kidd Copyright 2016

Advent Reflection - week 1

This is the first of four reflections for Advent. 

It was with some disbelief that Sue and I spotted our first Christmas tree in a shop at the beginning of October. It was then that it really came home that the Christmas season as I used to know it had almost completely disappeared and the secular commercial season which has adopted the name Christmas as a mere word has taken over from it.

Yes, the word "Christmas" still survives but for the vast majority of folk it is now devoid of any religious significance, that is unless one counts the combination of atheism and materialism as a sort of secular religion. It is against that somewhat bleak and soulless backdrop that those who still call themselves Christians in England, have to ponder how to reconcile their beliefs with those of the world in which they now live.

What that means in practice is "how do I prepare to celebrate this time at which I commemorate the birth of Jesus and simultaneously enjoy time with my family and friends for whom this time of the year may merely represent a break from work plus some time spent enjoying food, drink and presents"?

Now it seems to me that when Thomas Cranmer, the author/Archbishop, composed his Collects for Advent he would have spent time pondering on a very similar sort of problem. Why else would we find him saying that we need grace to put away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light?

In other words our dilemma is nothing new, it is just that we cannot still remain only dimly aware of the problem of secular materialism. That is because it is all pervading or to use an unattractive modernism "in your face". One also wonders how much difficulty Paul would have in recognising in our present day the "rioting and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness, strife and envy" against which he warned the Romans. It was them he was telling to put these works of darkness away! As an antidote all this we have to re-double our efforts to see Advent as a time of preparation. The questions posed are who is preparing and what are they preparing for? For we call ourselves Christians the answers are that firstly the preparation is personal and secondly that it is to be collectively ready to meet again the child born in Bethlehem. But for those who are not of this mind, the answer will be as far removed from those answers as they can get.

Thus the instructions that St Paul gave the Romans are very relevant. Take off the works of darkness and replace them with the armour of light. In his Collect Cranmer added a request for grace in assisting us to do so. Why? Because he knew we would need all the help we can get. By ourselves the pull of family and friends and the desire to be part of the crowd, would be very hard to resist.

I read an article recently about something called emoji. These are pictures used on computers and other communication devices to display emotions, like smiley faces for example. The lady writing the article suggested that since human beings are tribal by nature they needed symbols like this to relate to and what we now needed was an emoji to represent our nation. Why? Because other nations are developing theirs!

This is an example of the herd instinct writ large. It is very difficult to stay out of the crowd but it is what the collect asks us in effect is whether we will stay within the tribe even when it is devoted to a path we do not wish to follow.

It comes down to this doesn't it. We know we are in the tribe but do we have to be of the tribe? This is what putting on the armour of light is all about. It will not make us popular but it will keep us safe. St Paul describes this armour in Ephesians Chapter 6 vv 10 - 18 and he calls it lawful armour of God. I can think of no better way to end this reflection than to suggest that this is what we read.