Today the church keeps the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her birthday! So a friend of mine, Gill Henwood, has sent me a Rose. I thought it churlish to keep it to myself so I’m sharing it.
Gill wrapped her rose in a quotation by St John Henry Newman: Holy Mary, Mystical Rose, you are the most beautiful flower created by God, in venerating you we praise God for his holiness and beauty.
In the hymn, Crown Him with many Crowns the second verse reads:
Crown him the Virgin’s Son, the God incarnate born, whose arm those crimson trophies won which now his brow adorn: fruit of that mystic Rose, as of that Rose the Stem; the Root whence mercy ever flows, the Babe of Bethlehem.
The ‘mystic Rose’ referred to here is Mary but Jesus is the ‘fruit’ of that Rose and its stem and root – from whence all mercy flows.
The link is that Jesus and Mary are both engaged in the salvation of the world . Her‘ Yes’ to the Angel Gabriel, and thus to God the Father, opens the way for the Incarnation as she gives birth to Jesus. The ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ becomes the way God chooses to save us and free us and love us into His Kingdom, by the way of Cross. The Babe of Bethlehem is the instrument of that salvation Jesus is the God Incarnate born, who’s brow is now adorned with the potent symbol of the Crucifixion, the Crown of Thorns. Through this suffering and self-giving on the Cross the love of God, poured into Mary at the birth of Jesus, is poured out from Jesus Himself upon and for us all.
We are reminded that the Manger and the Cross are linked together in Jesus, or as T S Eliot puts it in The Four Quartets (Little Gidding) –The Rose and the Crown are one – Incarnation and Crucifixion totally intertwined in God’s plan for us and for our salvation and for the redeeming and re-creation of the world.
The result as Eliot puts it, echoing Julian of Norwich, ‘All Shall be Well’ All manner of things shall be well. We shall be well and though it is not always obvious, the world and all creation shall be well.
Enjoy the Rose. By quite a process it can be a sign of God’s inexpressible and unconditional Love for you – for all.
Thank you Gill. Thank you God!!!
Gill served as my colleague when she was our curate at Whitechapel and Admarsh-in-Bleasdale in Lancashire . She is a great joy to me.
In this week’s ‘Big Issue’ magazine, the actor David Tennant is interviewed about his new TV drama ‘Des‘ about the serial killer Dennis Nilsen who killed at least 12 young men in London between 1978 and 1983. Many of his victims were homeless and this has led to David Tennant musing about the conditions of society at the time. He says that it is important to understand Nilsen ‘because it’s important to understand the darkest corners of what a human being can be’.
Some of the issues in the background of Nilsen’s actions were poverty and homelessness and joblessness. People fell through the cracks in society and David Tennant puts forward his opinion that the society in which Nilsen carried out his murderous deeds was an uncaring one.
The political background at the time was the view expressed by the then Prime Minister that there was no such thing as society. It was the age of ‘individualism’ which did so much damage to what our life together means. As Tennant puts it: ‘as long as there is no such thing as society, then we don’t have a collective responsibility for each other’. That’s why Nilsen could get away with what he did for such a long time. In Tennant’s view, Nilsen was able to select his victims because he was preying on people that society had ‘to a greater or lesser extent, turned its back on’. Here lies a warning and, whilst what Nilsen did was a while ago, there are echoes of that time in our own society today. Tennant does not believe that the lessons from the past have been learned.
The social and economic theories at the time emphasised a philosophy which concentrated on self and less on others – what could be expressed as ‘Me, Myself and I’. We paid a big price for the emphasis on individuality. It flew in the face of Christianity which is based on community, holy fellowship and kindness to those in need. Measured against the Gospel it will always be found wanting.
David Tennant sees warning signs as we approach what he believes to be a ‘recession, the likes of which we have never known’ which will ‘expose the flaws in our society.’
That Society must find ways of helping people. He says that ‘we’ve got to be very aware that there are dangers and that there are people who are going to be more vulnerable than they should be in the coming months. We all have to take part in being aware of that. And as a society we have to find ways of providing resources for helping people.’
One of the ways we can tackle this is through kindness to each other. Tennant says: ‘We’ve all got to proceed with maximum kindness in the months to come.’
He adds: ‘This lockdown has been a great leveller. Suddenly everyone’s been in the same boat because you can’t escape a virus by being well off. It brings us all together. And hopefully that allows us all to have a better understanding of the equality of the individual, which in turn allows us just to think with a bit more kindness and understanding than we’ve been famous for as a society up to now.’
Kindness to others is rooted in giving everyone respect and worth – and this brings forth care, concern and love. It must be expressed from the heart and be concerned with equality and mutual acceptance. For the Christian it is also about becoming more Christ-like.
Mother Jane of the Sisters of the Love of God once wrote:
“Jesus teaches us to look at each individual person as unique and to consider the particular circumstances of every case in which a decision has to be made. This is not easy, but each of us can try in the limited sphere of our own little lives not to be pressurized into mass thinking. Instead, we need to remember the friendly greetings, the words of encouragement and sympathy, the small acts of kindness which people exchange a thousand times a day, and most of all in times of trouble, and which are a true measure of the spirit of humankind.”
Devotees of ‘The Archers’ may remember that some time ago now the fictional Vicar of Ambridge preached a sermon at the beginning of Lent in which he suggested that people should give up gossiping for Lent – much needed in Ambridge and doubtless elsewhere! Instead they should take up random acts of kindness.
Our society and our world need these more than ever.
St Paul instructs Christians in Colossians 3: 12:
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
The instruction is very clear.
The Big Issue Magazine is published weekly at a cost of £3. Of this £1.50 goes to the vendor who are seeking to practice the Big Issue Foundation’s mantra: ‘A Hand up, not a Hand out’.
Vendors are often homeless but all are seeking to earn a legitimate income and gain valuable social and employability skills. Buying the magazine helps to give people self-respect, hope and the ‘hand up’ they need. It’s even better when you can engage them in conversation and show that you care for them as fellow human beings with the same rights that you have.
Vendors are back selling on the street across the country. They are back at the heart of their communities, back earning a living. But life is not back to normal and some vendors with health needs cannot yet return to work. They are being supported by the Big Issue Foundation. Your support is a vital way of helping them.
If you are not able to buy from a vendor then the magazine is available from W H Smith; McColl, the Co-Op and Sainsbury’s. It is also available on subscription £38.99 for 3 months (go to bigissue.com for more details.)
It can also be downloaded from App Store and Google Play
Mary Seacole | Martin Jennings photo | Piers Northam
In recent months, I have been having treatment at St. Thomas’s Hospital at the southern end of Westminster Bridge. In the garden there is a remarkable statue depicting Mary Seacole . It was unveiled in 2016 and it is claimed to be the first statue of a named black woman in the United Kingdom. I have sat at her feet on a number of occasions and wondered about her story.
The Plaque in the floor in front of her statue gives a little information:
MARY SEACOLE Nurse of the Crimean War 1805 – 1881 “Wherever the need arises on whatever distant shore I ask no higher or greater privilege than to minister to it.”
To find out more, I discovered that there was The Mary Seacole Trust which was set up to promote the values for which she stood. This article owes its inspiration from material by the Trust.
I discovered that Mary was born in Jamaica more than 200 years ago. This was the heyday of the slave trade when many Black people in the Caribbean were forced into slavery. However, though Mary’s mother was black, her father was a white Scottish army officer so Mary was born a ‘free’ person.
Her mother had skills in healing and she passed on her skills to her daughter. Mary was eager to learn and as a child she practiced her ‘skills’ on her doll, her dog and cat and even on herself. She spoke of having a yearning for medical knowledge and practice. Her doll supplied a ready patient and, in her autobiography, Mary wrote: “Whatever disease was most prevalent in Kingston, be sure my poor doll soon contracted it.”
By the age of 12 she was helping her mother to run a ‘boarding house’ where many of the guests were sick or injured soldiers. At the age of 15 Mary travelled to England to stay with relatives for a year. This provided her with an opportunity to learn about Modern European medicine. Later, in 1823, she was to return for 2 years. I was during this time that she first encountered racist comments made against her. After further travels she returned to Jamaica where she nursed her patroness through a long illness.
In 1836 she married Horatio Hamilton Seacole but sadly, they had been married but a short time when he fell ill. Mary nursed him until he died in 1844. Her mother died soon after and Mary was plunged into a double grief. A Cholera epidemic followed by an epidemic of Yellow Fever kept her busy and she was invited to supervise the nursing service at Up-Park in Kingston, the Headquarters of the British Army.
The compassion she felt for injured soldiers awakened a strong maternal instinct in her and it led her to the War in Crimea – part of what is now the Ukraine. The conflict was between Britain and her allies against the Russian Empire. It lasted from October 1853 until February 1856.
Mary heard that medical facilities were poor so she approached the British War Office to volunteer her nursing services. She was refused and later she thought this might have been because she was black and a result of racism. She was not deterred! She funded her own trip to the Crimea. There she established the ‘British Hotel’ with a relative of her husband, Thomas Day, to provide a place of respite for sick and recovering soldiers. It was near to Balaclava, close to the fighting.
Regardless of personal danger she visited the battlefield to nurse the wounded. Such was her deep care and kindness that the soldiers began to call her ‘Mother Seacole’. After the war soldiers wrote letters to the newspapers praising what she had done. Sir William H Russell, war correspondent for ‘The Times’ wrote about her:
“I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.
These words are carved near her memorial at St. Thomas’s
Mary came back to England with very little money but those who admired her came to her aid. Soldiers, Generals and the Royal Family all contributed. A fund-raising event lasting 4 days attracted 80,000 people.
She also wrote her autobiography. Its rather dull title – The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in many lands – did nothing to stop sales and it became an instant best seller.
She died in London in 1881. For a while – almost one hundred years – she was all but forgotten. Then some nurses from the Caribbean visited her grave. The local MP, who had became Lord Clive Scoley, set up fundraising for a statue. In 2004, Mary was voted the Greatest Black Briton and in 2016 her statue, by Martin Jennings was unveiled in the garden at St. Thomas’s Hospital.
She is remembered for her empathy, compassion and kindness. She needs to be remembered for much more. She is an icon for the Black Lives Matter movement but in a very special way. Her life, her self-giving, her tending of the sick, her desire and longing to heal others are important qualities which should inspire all of us.
She was also a bridge-builder. Her life, lived for others was mainly helping white people. For her, White Lives Mattered. So she reminds us that integrity, respect and love grow when we all recognize our mutual dependence on each other. All who needed her were met with acceptance, not judged, not treated as sub-human but with friendship and deep care. Many who were ministered to by her came to see her not for the colour of her skin but rather for the depth of her heart.
Mr G's Ponderings 