HELLO LIFE

(Now contains TWO posts)

From time to time this blog will publish a series of personal notes under the heading, HELLO LIFE. 

These will be addressed to or talk about those everyday items that  become Stand-Out features of ordinary life.

So that readers can recognise the series among the various other items on the blog, all posts will commence with this introduction. 

It is hoped that over time, readers will feel ready to contribute similar posts from their own lives. 

 * The photo is of the Entry or Exit, depending on which way you're facing, of a megalithic tomb some 5000 years old.  

First Post: The Grass Outside My Window
Hello Grass. I've been looking at you for the past half hour but you won't have noticed. I don't suppose you have any idea what a blessing you are, you really are. I for one, would be lost without you. But then, I'm a country boy, born and bred.

It's still only February with the crocuses and snowdrops  struggling to get a look-in, so I hope you won't mind my saying that you're not at your best just yet. Not like that never-to-be-forgotten, July morning. Oh, what a morning that was.

I'd just had an emergency quadruple by-pass heart operation and had spent my first night of convalescence in this very flat where I'm now writing this.

I'd made some coffee, put Beethoven on (I could hear in those days) and then came to these very windows to look at you. I thought you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

Less than two weeks previously I'd thought I was going to die. Now on a very quiet Saturday morning, I'd been given a second chance. I looked at you, you looked at me; green, wet, luscious, Grass. That morning you represented everything I understood by the word Life. 

I just had to record the moment so close was it to being ecstatic. I sat and wrote this.


Saturday morning early, my body rested; my soul at peace. First coffee; a deliciously sharp, “hello”. Beethoven: the late quartets, No 14, a conversation of instruments, intimately midwifing the day to it's quiet birth.
My parents are dead. Long since. Their memory comes and goes yet stays, unseen, a presence in their absence. I am aware of my "SELF". I am here, alone, yet not alone, played upon by a thousand feelings yet undisturbed by any, the product of so much and so many, yet me, myself, here in the stillness of this waking hour.
There is suddenly a fear that I may spoil things, rush into words, feelings imagined as appropriate for this time, yet not really here with me at all. Beware the prayer prescribed for mornings. That was then, this is now. It was never meant that I should cling to what has gone. Their gift to me is that I should be here, alone, self-ed by the new day’s dawn. So my soul, be still, and wait upon this hour. It gives its grace, yours simply to receive.

Love you, Grass

Second Post: My Left Index Finger.

I knew a lady years ago, her name was Lucy. I took her Holy Communion on every fourth Saturday. It was a joy, she was such a prayerful lady, but she suffered from arthritis and this wore her down. Her hands became very knotted and gnarled, the knuckles all red and swollen. I was always gentle and softly spoken with her, feeling it was the least that I could do. But one Saturday, without meaning to, she called my bluff. As usual, I eased her door open and called, "Fr Farrell, Lucy, can I come in". She answered from her bedroom where I found her sitting on the bed, red-faced and crying her eyes out. No, nothing new or tragic had befallen her, it was just the sheer pain in her knuckles and in her poor deformed wrists. Arthritis.

Well now, even as I type, I am keenly aware of a burning sensation in the index finger of my left hand. I can see too that the central knuckle is just slightly swollen.And I know, only too well what's going on, Arthritis. Apparently everyone's got some, all depends on whether or not it flares up.

My finger is not very painful, yet. But all the same I've been thinking of Lucy and thinking too of a Nun I knew, headmistress of a local school and an artist. A painting of hers hangs in my bedroom. Her arthritis was severe. She often winced if people shook her hand too vigorously. They say it hastened her death. Others reply, "it was just as well" while I wonder quietly if I should hope not to live too long.

Yes, I said I tried consciously to be gentle with Lucy, the least I could do, but that Saturday, I felt so useless. Her pain screamed out to me, embarrassed me, I wanted to do something. I stood there like a great fool, while Lucy just cried. What relief I felt when her friend arrived. I could leave now without feeling too guilty, she had somebody with her. Currently I try not to look forward. "Take life as it comes" a friend says. Yeah! sure...