Understanding everything except the Language: Going To Mass

When I arrived fifteen minutes before La Misa began, a couple of dozen worshippers were already seated outside the church on the plaza. Things were not looking good for a ringside seat. 

This story begins last Sunday: I incomprehensibly turned up nine hours late for Mass. Duh! I know enough Spanish to read “Sabado 2100,” and know the service I was aiming for was the previous day, and I’m Catholic enough to realise a Vigil Mass is on a Saturday. But it was a beautiful walk and I put it down to experience and the sun. 

Fast forward six days. Kate is taking Darren and Frank on a boat trip in the morning, so I’m headed for theVigil Mass, at the appointed hour, quite excited  at this adventure. 

A few years back I attended Mass with my friend Ursula, in Klosters, of all places, reknowned in season for the skiing, and notable because every car is a Ferrari. No need, I assured her, to translate for me, I know what’s going on. I understood two words, “Gott” and “Kuchen”, which was offered with coffee after Mass, and lived up to expectations, as did God. 

It’s the same the world over you see, you know you’re being welcomed, making your confession, saying the Gloria listening to the Bible, and so on, until being sent out in peace to serve the Lord.,

There’s actually something rather spiritual in understanding everything but the words: my attention remained with Christ, in the priest and people in the Bible readings and the pinnacle of the experience, in the bread and wine. I looked forward to repeating the joy of it. 

And joy it was. I entered the church and was offered a foldaway seat between a monumentally gorgeous statue of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, and the electronic candle- thingy the name of which I know neither in English or Spanish. I was grateful for the seat. The singing was amazing, and spontaneous. No hymn sheets or overhead projections, everyone burst into song at the appropriate time, and once I grasped the tunes, I sang along in tongues, a feat I first performed in a pub in Dublin, but that is of course,  quite a different story. 

The church was rammed, and hot. Many women had the foresight to bring fans. Caught up in the moment, I waved my hat in front of my face until I realised it wasn’t achieving anything. 

I wished I’d brought my phone with the missal on it, because I found it rather difficult to remember the words of the prayers, when everyone around you is using different ones. 

My words yesterday were “Señor” Señora and “confiar”which I took to mean confess. 

Good enough to get me through. 

En el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo amén

Twitter Feed: The Cancelling of Jeremy Corbyn

I don't mind being called a Corbynista. Only recently becoming politically active, it did come as a bit of a surprise that playground tactics were part of the mix, but I've been called worse. 

 I became politically active because of Jeremy Corbyn. Before, I was merely a retired headteacher with a conscience, a state of beng which I now understand to be "woke", and I have no problem with THAT either.

I respect Corbyn enormously, and see him out and about tirelessly campaigning for peace and justice, and ask myself why every elected politician doesn't feel compelled to do the same, when 1/3 of the children in the U.K. are growing up in poverty: maybe because they're not woke?

I not going to hanker after a comeback for him though. Who'd want to drag anyone back to the abuse, antagonism, and vilification he had to put up with, simply by personifying what the Labour Party claimed to be. 

I'm getting to the point, bear with me.

Setting aside the trauma many obviously suffered at the prospect of Britain being hauled into the 21st Century as a modern social democracy - and we're all now feeling your pain - am I the only one who sees the bigger picture?

The entire establishment conspired against the one

politician in my lifetime who offered the prospect of a decent standard of living for all. I watched with detached amazement as a general, an Archbishop, the US Secretary of State, and HIS OWN PARTY united to bring him down.

Doesn't anyone else get how fucked-up this was?

Still is.

Jeremy Corbyn has become the bogey-man of the establishment. The gentle jam-maker from Islington has to be continually presented as a threat of unimaginable proportions to... what, exactly?

A political class content with 1/3 of British children growing up in poverty, and an economy looted on behalf of the obscenely rich by the obscenely rich.

So, go ahead, call me a "Corbynista," and I'll come right back at you with, "Sucker", and we'll see who blinks first. 

Bugsy and Malone: A Near-Death Experience

This is a piece of “Life-Writing” from eight years ago. Abigail recently celebrated her twelfth birthday, and is into maths, not bugs,  these days …

The curious case of the dead caterpillars.

 

I have been picking the larvae of the, as yet unidentified, butterthing off my buddliah and putting them in a bowl to watch 'em go through their life-cycle. More for the benefit of the grandchildren you understand. Though the inner child here IS sighing over the demise of the Nature Table, which must have seen off more frogs and toads than global warming and fungal infections combined, and I exaggerate only slightly. 

Remembering Miss Cornish's instructions to give fresh leaves every day, I have been replenishing the food supply accordingly. I had the bright, but as it turns out, disasterous, idea of putting bunches of foodstuffs in water, thereby drowning two of the inmates of my little prison. 

They were pale, inert and unresponsive. Very much all three. I was not so much troubled for them, as they had lived blameless lives and were certain to go straight to heaven, but I was a bit concerned for Abigail who was becoming attached. And it didn't make me look good. Though of course, in life we are in the midst of death , for preference, I'd rather teach Abi this lesson with a couple of caterpillars than with, say, myself.  

I laid them out on the grass leaving nature to take its brutal course via the ant population, when I was struck with a thought. I'm thinking warm blooded and mammalian here. These are cold blooded and etc. What if Bugsy and Mallone were not passed, but just comatose? So I started to massage them, very gently, looking furtively around to check no-one was watching. Nada. 

Having started the incredibly stupid 'save the 'pillars ' campaign, I decided to put them in intensive care and check regularly for vital signs. 

75 minutes passes, and given slight encouragement with the end of my finger, Bugsy twitched. Aware that this could be some larval death throw, I refused to get too excited. I just watched. I actually took them to bed with me and subjected them both to pretty much non-stop scrutiny. At 11am the following morning, Bugsy raises his head. Within an hour, colour fully restored, looking in fine fettle, he wandered off out of sight. An hour later, Mallone followed. 

I am thinking that invertebrates are far more interesting than I ever thought they were. I like to think the mullein moths in my garden owe their existence  to me.

The Earth Beneath My Feet

I remember when writing a blog post was a relatively simple affair. Inspiration came easily. There were stories from my past, funny anecdotes about my family, reminiscences from my school days, college years, teaching career, spiritual progression, and so on and so on. The list of possibilities seemed endless. There were even poems sometimes,some of which, I considered to be, “quite good.”

So what's the problem? Today I planned to write. Shouldn't be too difficult,  I thought. Yesterday  Ray got scammed out of a considerable amount of money, and I scraped the car against the wall in Gloucester Road (An event which I have yet to speak of to Ray, thinking, not without justification, that yesterday would not have been the best day to casually drop it into the conversation.)

But I don't want to write about scams and scrapes, I'd rather write about something uplifting, positive, cheerful, and if possible, noteworthy on a grander scale.

So I went for a walk in my garden. I took my shoes off and stepped, gingerly on the  the daisy carpet, enjoying the sensation of having the earth beneath my feet. 

I wish I could convey the wonder of the next few moments. I guess they ARE only ever moments, when suddenly everything makes sense. If you were to ask me to describe it, I would make you laugh, I think.

I felt like Eve, before Adam turned up.