BEHIND THE FRONT

"They constantly try to escape
from the darkness outside and within
by dreaming of systems so perfect 
that no one will need to be good."

The lines are from T.S. Eliot's "Choruses from the Rock" which I have lately been revisiting after many years. His lines seem so full of foreboding it was probably inevitable that I would use them while penning my thoughts recently on the tragic death of a young relative. So, for the moment at least, Eliot has found a place among so many other notes and references in my crowded little writing space. But there's a difference this time around.

Back in the day, when T.S. came more frequently to mind, I was busy telling the world where and how it should get it's act together; improve itself. Now, many years later, I can't helping being haunted by the thought, as Fr Geoffrey Adamson once put it to me, of "what a damn fool I've been".

The night air around my bed is frequently heavy-laden with ghostly memories (or should that be ghastly) of stupid incidents each bearing my name. The temptation to despair is frighteningly real, but I am regularly saved by good people who break from the undergrowth of the years to say they can't even remember the incident and anyway not to worry, they  forgive me. And then too of course, there's always the church! Yes, the Church, the stupid old, sin-laden Church. Don't you just love it! Thank God for the Church.

For my sins, that must have been why, I was at one stage sent to teach R.E. to boys of secondary school age in a Junior Seminary at Upholland. Its front wing was designed to impress and usually did, which is probably why today people are genuinely shocked to learn that the once carefully manicured grounds and self-satisfied looking building are now nothing more than a collection of ruins. 

 Who could possibly imagine such a fate befalling St. Peter's in Rome? And would it matter all that much if it did? Well, would it?

Jesus founded his church on the rock we know as St Peter, Peter who three times denied he even knew him. Peter may well have hero-worshiped Jesus but he like all of us have to learn that following Christ in faith is no mere fan club. Impressive architecture should not beguile us nor the memory of our own stupidity haunt us. We have come to lean not on a system but on Christ himself. I must learn to laugh at myself, trust in the Lord and sleep better.