Tag: Mr G

Soul-warming

Winter Scene, Epping Forest. Photo by my friend, Shanne Woodhouse.

SOUL-WARMING

This headline, in the Guardian newspaper last week, caught my eye.
It appeared on a day which was markedly cold and at a time of year when the weather in the UK included floods, ice, snow, bitter winds and all those elements which would encourage humans to join the animal kingdom in hibernation. (if only!)

It was also a time when yet more headlines drew our attention to a time when the darkness of humanity seems to be at its deepest. The Middle East is a tinder box of conflict; Ukrainian people are struggling against an evil foe, and bitterness in politics all over the Globe add to our woes. Even the Planet is angry with us. Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanic eruptions, famine would, in earlier Biblical times have been attributed to an angry God (or earlier, gods).

So, the headline, ‘Soul-Warming’, grabbed my attention.
The sub text gave a clue. ‘the mystery man who chops wood to keep his neighbours from freezing.’

The article told a story by an American journalist, David Wallis, about a Woodsman in upstate New York who, in the midst of a harsh winter, went about quietly easing the suffering of others.
The man had once been involved as a director, writer and producer of films and TV programmes but has now given that up to help his struggling neighbours, especially the elderly trying to cope with freezing weather conditions.
He believes firmly that heat in winter is a human right but in a part of America where many are wealthy there are equally those who are poor and really suffering.

So, the woodsman has been quietly doing something about this over the past few years.
His mother was suffering from Cancer and later Covid, so he moved to look after her. He stocked a stand outside her home with bundles of wood which people could buy to fuel their fires. The proceeds were donated to local charities. Over time, the Woodsman noticed that bundles of wood vanished. He was sad that people were stealing. After a conversation with a friend, he thought of putting up a sign outside inviting people who needed wood but couldn’t afford it, to let him know and he would deliver some.

This led to a free firewood programme.
Alongside two local Librarians, who knew about people living in reduced circumstances, he joined forces with them in supplying wood to people in need. He drew upon financial support from those in his former career as things developed. For him, it all really began to take off when one of the librarians called for his help. There had been a power cut and an old couple had burned their last stick of wood, could he help? Within hours, the Woodsman came to the rescue and went to their home. When he arrived, he found them huddled under a blanket with the fire long gone out. They were freezing cold. He brought wood and lit a fire for them. He continued to keep them supplied until power was restored. The journalist, David Wallis, called it a Soul-Warming action.

After that beginning, things just grew. The number of those he helped each winter were, he thought, a sign of increasing economic struggle. He not only supplies wood for them but also acts as one who listens and cares. He says that what he is doing is a ‘cheap form of therapy’ ~ for himself.
“I’m sort of a quiet guy. Giving away wood does draw me out, pushes me out. When you interact with people, and I listen a lot, you do learn their stories. And I’m moved by every one of them.”

He meets real, genuine people, who are not only suffering from poverty but also need people to touch their lives and souls. Some are ill and need compassion and care. Often, they just need someone to talk to. Life hits them hard, trips them up, and they need someone who treats them not as a case to be helped but as a human being who needs a friend. In his own quiet pragmatic and determined way he is being just such a friend.

We often think of a Soul Friend, as a kind of Spiritual Director, and of Saints who show us holiness. Yet the Woodsman is being a Soul Friend to the people he helps. There is both a physical and spiritual friendship and it is often hard to see where one ends and the other begins.
St Aelred of Rievaulx speaking of Martha & Mary drew on the distinction between Mary who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to him and Martha who rushed around preparing a meal for him. Aelred made the point that both needed each other. Who would listen to Jesus if Mary didn’t sit with him and how would he be fed if Martha didn’t do it.
It seems to me that that the Woodsman in this story did both.

As he said, anyone can do something – right?

In times such as now, I need stories like this because they warm my soul too.

[Mr G] 16th January 2024

Love Poem

The Daily Reflections on Scripture Readings by the Church of England over the past 2 days have been based on
the Book of Genesis, Chapter One. This inspired me to think of it as a Love Poem from God.

Father God,

Your poem spoke creation into being
telling us of our origins,
our companions,
the light and darkness of our existence,
the moments of our being;
your gift, which is the earth.

You appoint us custodians
of all that you have made
and go on making,
stamping your image on us and
all that we receive;
showing us how good it is.

Help us to hear your poem
and fulfill its meaning
of who and where and what we are,
of all that you have given us to cherish
~ a poem spoken out of pure love.

[GC . 8^th January 2024]

Weight of our Sins ~ Josefina de Vasconcellos

The Weight of our Sins.

In the Bishop’s Palace Gardens next to Wells Cathedral, there is an amazing and disturbing statue by Josefina de Vasconcellos. It is called, The weight of our Sins. It was carved in 1999.
It centres on a Cross which eight children are holding up. They are bearing its weight and each is symbolic of a crime against children today. There is young person suffering from AIDS; a teenage boy who is a drug addict; a child blinded by a land-mine; another child represents the homeless; a baby who is victim of genocide; a girl is dying after experiencing serial sexual abuse. Poverty, deprivation and pain are also part of the message.
Josefina had a deep compassion for disadvantaged and damaged children.
She was also inspired by her belief that loving God led people to love one another and therefore help build a peaceful world. Josefina’s concern was for so many in our world who suffer because of cruelty and inhumanity. She had a particular sadness and love for the most vulnerable in our society. Unable to have children, she had a special concern for them. Though she died in 2005 the meaning of the statue couldn’t be more pertinent than today.

Children are suffering appalling life conditions and not just in placers like Gaza, the Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.
The tragedy of those forced from their homeland to live as refugees seeking the basic human need of shelter, food, water and warmth is something Josefina’s statue holds before us. Without doubt, one of the children clinging to the Cross would be representative of the boat people in the Mediterranean and the English Channel.
Another would possibly represent the children living in poverty and hunger in our own country. Having been brought up in the post war deprivation era it is hard to think that for many the conditions of that time are also still with us in the 21^st century. Food Banks, substandard accommodation, debt and a sense that they don’t matter, is a scandal in a time when the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’ feels closer to Victorian England.
I think Josefina would have wept to see what is happening today.

Her concern for the well-being of children was expressed through her art, but together with her husband, Delmar, she took it further.
Her faith in God and her devotion to the beauty of art and music, together with Delmar’s involvement as a Lay Reader in the Church of England’s ministry, led them to put their faith into action. They adopted two boys made orphaned by the Blitz on London; they opened their home to borstal boys whom she tried to encourage to express themselves through art and nature; they bought an old trawler and, after renovation and adaptation, moored it off the Cumbrian coast to provide an holiday experience for children coping with physical disability. She also created space, complete with appropriate sculptures for people whose children were stillborn.After her death, an Arts Trust was set up in her name which included the education and care of young people.

She named her Sculpture, The Weight of our Sins. It is a charge she laid against all who harm and destroy children and childhood, but it is also a plea for a more “ethical reflection on the issues of the modern world, the meaning of childhood and what part we need to have in producing change and as a source of inspiration for word, art and music”
The message is clear in the sculpture in Wells. We cannot ignore our responsibility to change things for the world’s young ones, suffering because of what the so-called adult world is doing to them. It is human sin which is crushing the vulnerable and innocent victims because of what we are doing.
It isn’t enough to say it’s too vast a problem for us to have any effect or change.
Of course it requires international and national solutions but we can all play our part. We can pray and believe that prayer changes things, not least our own perceptions. We can help to relieve poverty. I have friends involved in running Food Banks. All of these Banks need donation of food; The lady who sells me Big Issue magazine has a baby. Just buying the magazine, perhaps even giving more, helps her.
Supporting charities such as the Big Issue Foundation, Abraham’s Children in Crisis, Embrace the Middle East and a host of others is a good place to start. Small things bring big results. As Josefina said, loving God and caring for each other , can bring peace and love.

We can, if we accept our part in all this, move from being part of the burden which weighs down children to become those who help to raise them up with the weight of our love.

God of love,
We pray for peace in our world, and an end to war.
Instead of hatred, let there be love.
Shelter your children and protect us.
Guide us and keep us from harm,
so we can build a world of love and live our lives in peace.

[This prayer was written by a group of children]

Walking in December

Vicarage Lane in snow. Photo by Gill Henwood

Walking in December
(Sir William Addison)

The wind is wine to those who walk
on bright December days the heath;
Above, the cold, capacious sky,
the rimy grass beneath.

With each a merry heart the guide,
The sun for compass: they who know
the wanton ways and whims of earth,
and laugh to find them so.

No English hills, in English lanes,
A man may walk with ease and find
at every turn the mode and mark
of earth’s best humankind:

May rest in quiet inns at night,
in sleep enfolding bone and brain,
and with the dawn may rise and take
the long, free roads again.

(Sir William Addison)

This poem comes from a small collection, ‘Winter Forest’ by Sir William Addison.
The poems are inspired by Sir William’s long association with Epping Forest where he was one of the four Verderers. The verderers of Epping Forest have represented the views of everyday people for over 800 years acting as a key go-between with the City of London.

Sir William was born in the Ribble Valley in Lancashire and he was educated at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School. His family had connections in the past in Grasmere and Bowness.

When he married Phoebe Dean in 1929, the couple moved south and eventually lived in Buckhurst Hill on the edge of Epping Forest, Essex.He bought a bookshop in the neighbouring town of Loughton, and began his lifelong association with Epping Forest which included a love of the history of the area. The result was a number of books on the Forest area and Essex, Suffolk and of people like Dick Turpin, highwayman of the Forest.
He worshipped at the Parish Church in Epping.

The collection of poems Winter Forest was edited by Richard Morris, Verderer of Epping Forest and published by the Corporation of London in 2002, by kind permission of legatees of Sir William’s estate, including the incumbent of St. John’s church in Epping. My personal involvement in this small way has led me to make the poems in this collection more widely known. Walking in December seems a good place to start.
I am grateful that I am able to illustrate this with a ‘December’ photograph by my friend Gill Henwood, and appropriately the scene is from Cumbria, where Sir William’s family had their roots.

[Mr G]