29th January 2010

A Chaplain’s Christmas Diary

 

Defining Moments 

 

Mundane Moments   

 

Many people have defining moments in their lives and I have just spent the last few minutes, coffee cup in hand,  thinking what mine would be. Unfortunately it is not climbing Everest, saving someone from imminent death or running the Marathon. Mine are much more mundane. They are a very odd assortment actually and I rather suspect in a couple of days time I would have come up with a totally different list.

 

Mountain moments

 

Actually one defining moment is about climbing but not Everest. I regularly used to take groups of people on pilgrimages to the Holy Land.  In 1995 I felt I wanted to do something a bit different and arranged a trip to Israel, Jordan and Egypt.  The border crossings were a nightmare and could take hours but the last three days of the tour were spent in Egypt heading towards Mount Sinai in the desert. We seemed to have spent most of the day either at checkpoints, customs, lugging our suitcases across no man’s land between frontier borders, or sitting on a hot dusty coach. We were dying for a drink only to discover on arrival at our hotel in the desert that the area around Sinai was sacred and alcohol was banned. That wasn’t the defining moment – although it felt like it at the time - that came at 2.00 am when we were all woken up by our Arab guide to climb Mount Sinai with the intention of arriving in time for the sun rise. It was freezing as we stumbled up through the dark and kept climbing higher, anoraks and gloves pulled tightly on. Every now and again someone who had hitched a lift on a camel or donkey would pass us in the dark – with the occasional empty seat being offered to us – but at a price. Just as the sun peeped over the mountain range in the east we arrived to see that the world was spread before us. There were mountain tops and desert as far as the eye could see, and there in the quiet of the day break we suddenly realized that there were possibly nearly a thousand other people who, like us, had spent three hours climbing to the top of a mountain sacred to Jew, Muslim and Christian alike. Some were still sleeping, some were eating their picnics and others just sitting, staring and taking the whole scene in. Millions down the ages had made the same climb and now the trick was to get down before the midday sun started beating down upon us as we tore off our anoraks and jumpers.

 

Miracle moment 

 

There is nothing like the arrival of new life to sharpen the senses. Childbirth with all the pain, expectancy and excitement is an incredible experience. Not that I have experienced the female role in these things but for me it was an occasion of miracle and marvel. Admittedly I was pretty hopeless as I had not been to any of the pre-natal classes so I did not have a clue as to what would happen or what I was supposed to do. As a result I kept getting my head bitten off by her on the delivery table – something that women will understand all about. Then suddenly it all starts to happen – the miracle of birth. First the head and before you know it a new baby human being is dumped in your arms – and all the screaming and pain and mess is over. I still managed to get  tears in my eyes on the third occasion and by then you would have thought men would have got used to it all but any father who misses out on the experience is missing the chance of a lifetime. Though admittedly, on the second occasion, I nearly did miss out myself. My wife always opts for a long labour – second only in length to the 100 Years War – or at least that is how it feels at the time. I was bored and felt that a trip to the local nursery was needed. Not that sort! The gardening sort. I got so caught up with buying some new fruit trees and an ornamental flowering cherry tree that I completely forgot about labour wards and new babies. It was a very impatient midwife and a very irritable wife who greeted me as I donned gown and face mask – but I had made it, but with only five minutes to spare. It nearly became one of life’s defining moments but for very different reasons.

 

A Messiah moment

 

At school I was not allowed to be in the choir. At church our old priest seemed to be of the opinion that I would make a better altar server than a choirboy, and somehow at karaoke evenings I am never picked to sing my party piece. Then along came the Georgie Insull Singers and a performance of Messiah in 2007.  I had always wanted to sing Messiah, my grandfather had sung in it every year in Sheffield City Hall, but it had always passed me by. So to stand well out of sight in the back row, squeezed between two huge bass singers, rehearsing for weeks on end, was the fulfilment of a life’s dream. And on the night, as the sound of the first chorus rang around the church and my voice was part of that cacophony of sound, I knew that this was yet another of life’s defining moments. I sang my little heart out, I bellowed out the Alleluya Chorus, I mimed the bits I was hopeless at, and when we came to the final chorus of ‘Amen’ with what seemed like a thousand “Amen’s” coming from every section of the massed choir and the organ thundering out, I managed to get to the end without a spare “Amen” left. That for me was some achievement.

 

As a boy we always had something which my mother called “a knee wash”. A bath was for Saturday night followed by clean pants and pyjamas. Midweek it was a ‘knee wash’ standing in the sink where my mother would scrub us down with a flannel and rough pink Lifebuoy soap which stank foul and was really designed for scrubbing floors.

 

Motherly moment

 

Scroll on 45 years and my mother is lying on a waterproof sheet with a pad and soiled nightie. I ran a bath of water, tested the temperature and carefully lifted her in, holding her steady so that she didn’t slip. I washed her, powdered her, put a clean nightie on her and fastened on her waterproof knickers and pad, and gently put her back into bed and pulled the duvet over her. No sooner had I done that than it was obvious that she had had yet another accident. Impatiently this time, because I was tired, I repeated the operation, perhaps not as gently, and with a feeling of being at the end of my tether. “Parent washing child” had now become “child washing parent” – when had the change occurred? I don’t know … I never saw it. This defining moment must have crept up without me realizing. I was now the strong one and my mother was now the babe in arms.

 

A manly kiss

 

In Majorca it is the most natural thing in the world and my heart rejoices every time I see it. A man greeting his son, father, relative or friend with a hug and a kiss. We Brits are just so buttoned up and though I fully approve of it I am as uptight as the next man. I never remember my father kissing me or hugging me. He had been in the army and in those days real men didn’t do that sort of thing. So not only do I not remember him ever kissing me, I don’t ever remember kissing him either. That is until the last few days of his life and I plucked up courage to give him a big kiss – he was comatose so he wouldn’t have known, but I can take a fairly good guess at what he would have said if he had been conscious …”whatever are you doing you silly bugger” … with a huge grin on his face. I repeatedly tell my own boys that story because I am determined we shall not repeat it. So they hate saying goodbye at the airport because they know what is coming, “Yeah we know Dad!” Please don’t bore us again with “your defining moments!”

 

 Fr Robert Ellis is the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca

St Philip and St James Church

Nunez de Balboa 6,

Son Armadans, Palma 07014

Tel: 971 737279

E mail: anglicanpalma@gmail.com

www.anglican-mallorca.org