April & May : Polaroids
May our hands lift the hands of others.
A Cello.
Sitting in a hospital chair three days after you were born, I found myself overwhelmed by the purity of your presence in a fractured, reeling world.
Why did we bring you into the world during a global pandemic?
What dangers wait for you when countries are at war?
As you grow, how fast will the deserts dry and the glaciers melt and the sea rise?
That day, I hear a story. On May 27th in 1992, as people queued to buy bread in a market, mortar shells killed twenty-two people in a city called Sarajevo in Eastern Europe. When the city was under siege during the Bosnian War, a man called Vedran Smailović, carried his cello and sat down to play Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor in the rubble, within eyesight of snipers. As he moved his bow, the music he played brought both lament and beauty to people caught in the chaos of war.
The cellist later told a reporter, “I am a pacifist. I am nothing special. Like everyone else, I do what I can.”
Just do what you can.
One BBC foreign correspondent remembers meeting Vedran, “He looked worn out. He was covered in dust…There was a battle going on in the background [But] there was a man demonstrating that music was more important than artillery. Music that has to keep the city alive. It was a message of hope that he was playing,”
Your hand clasps my fingernail.
Your skin sings of hope.
A Bread Roll.
Growing up, we had a widowed neighbour who loved us like family. Despite his wrinkled, arthritic hands and a gradually curving spine, he would regularly bring us a tray of warm bread rolls straight from his oven. My siblings and I would return from school to find a tray of six, eight or twelve buns sitting in our kitchen.
He cared little for showy deeds or grand gestures. The bread was simple and fresh. Your Granny remembers him often greeting her as she was hanging the laundry or ironing her way through a mound of washing. He would smile and say, ‘Oh, the trivial round, the common task,’ reciting a line from an old hymn, New Every Morning Is The Love,
New every morning is the love
our wakening and uprising prove;
through sleep and darkness safely brought,
restored to life and power and thought.
New mercies, each returning day,
hover around us while we pray;
new perils past, new sins forgiven,
new thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.
The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we need to ask,
room to deny ourselves, a road
to bring us daily nearer God.*
I can picture him humming the hymn as he kneaded dough and rolled out buns, one by one, with his knotted knuckles. I still remember the sound of his voice reciting scripture and the worn, long paper lists of people he prayed for every day.
“But consider: the glory of Christianity is its claim that small things really matter and that the small company, the very few, the one man, the one woman, the one child, are of infinite worth to God… you will never be nearer to Christ than in caring for the one man, the one woman, the one child.” (Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today, p. 42)
Small things matter. Like making simple bread rolls. Like changing nappies through sleepless eyes. Like ironing shirts. Like pegging laundry to a line.
Your little hands relax and open.
Your palms face the sky.
How will your hands love others? How will they worship?
A Half-Moon.
Tonight’s half-moon balances in your crescent eyes. In nurturing you, my firstborn, I am both halved and doubled. Halved am I, now separate from you. Double are we, skin born from my skin.
Double are the hands that have helped us since your birth. Double are those who have stitched my skin, dressed my wounds, calmed my fears. Double are those who have fed us and whispered to us, ‘one hour at a time’.
Long ago, an ancient prophet’s hands were held high by his companions, one on one side, one on the other side, so that when he grew weary, when his strength failed, his hands would not drop from his staff. His body was supported by the strength of others. In weakness, his hands were lifted for him.
I cup your head in my open butterfly hands. Your eyelids flicker like wings. Your lips shiver. The sky stretches across the window frame. In the light of the half moon, I am so very finite.
Yet I hear a chorus of helpers, a crowd of witnesses, in your quivering cry.
Other hands lift my own.
Your tiny fingers uncurl.
Was heaven once this helplessly beautiful?
Thanks for your patience, readers, while I adjust to this new season of life. I’ll be aiming to write here more often in the months to come. As always, I love hearing from you. Feel free to leave feedback, comments or reflections.