Epiblog for Easter Sunday

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, both here in “Broadmoor” and at home. The summer has returned with a renewed mini-heatwave, which is great, don’t get me wrong, I just hope it’s not a precursor of the pattern recent summers have followed, of peaking too early then tailing off into a warm, dull drizzle for three months.

Monday brought a return to the world of normality – or what passes for it, these days – as opposed to the relative tranquility of the weekend. The prime manifestation of this was that the garage picked up the camper and took it off for assessment of the brake problem. By the end of the day, we knew exactly what the problem was – the vacuum pump had failed – and it was fixed, and we were £536.10 poorer, collectively. Ouch. The part itself was £291.00. How anyone can justify charging that much for a car part amazes me. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask. Of course, rather than have the brand spanking new Volkswagen approved part, we could have looked on Ebay or Justkampers, but then you have no guarantees.

John the garage man called in to see me to pick up the cheque (I have the cheque book here, in case of such emergencies) found his way to my room, and stayed for almost an hour chatting. He seemed genuinely concerned at my plight, repeating that it was “a shame” several times over. He asked me what I would do if I found I was stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I said that I had two choices, either to try and make the best of it, or to wheel myself over the edge of a very high cliff somewhere, and that, to be honest, I hadn’t decided which. His concern deepened, and he said on leaving that he would pray for me. Which was actually quite touching, if a little startling, a) because I had no idea he had any religious feelings and b) he is the spitting image of Father Jack Hackett, off Father Ted, so I get the impression any prayers would be garbled at best, and liberally sprinkled with invective. Still, if that’s what it takes to get God’s attention.

Earlier, Jo and Ann, my regular physios from HRI, called in to see how I was doing, and together with Lucy and Jane they all watched me walk in the hoist the length of the corridor and back. At the conclusion of this, after a quick huddle, Jo told me that if my walking hadn’t improved by the time I am turfed out of here on May 2nd, that would be taken as a sign that I had reached a plateau stage, and that in turn would mean I would be referred to Community Physio, the implication being that from then on, it would be coping strategies for the wheelchair, rather than expecting any more dramatic improvements. This was a bit of a sobering blow, to be honest, but I consoled myself with the thought that later in the week, Jan was coming back to demonstrate the Norwegian Hoist which had been so successful in other MD cases. I still had that up my sleeve.

Later on, one of the catering bods came round to do the next day’s menu, and we had the discussion once more about how I don’t eat fish. Largely by arrangement. I have promised not to eat them, if they promise not to eat me. “Oh, so you’re a strict vegetarian, then!” she exclaimed, making it sound as if, in between munching plates of lettuce, I tie people to the bed and then cane their knickers to shreds. [Actually, now you mention it…]

Tuesday was the hottest of the hot days so far, and passed in a welter of physio and exercises. Wednesday proved as hot, if not hotter, and by now I was really enjoying seeing the sun and also feeling it, either sitting on the seat outside the front entrance or basking in its magnified effect through the wide double glazed window of my room.

Heather the plumber arrived to fix the shower in my bathroom, and we fell to talking as she worked. I asked her the inevitable question, and she said she never had any particular affinity with plumbing, but she felt that if she learned a trade, it would always be there for her to fall back on, whatever else she did in life, and she was lucky enough to get an apprenticeship, and never looked back. Now she was maxed out with work and doing very well, lucky girl.

Wednesday also marked the day we started work on sit-to-stand in the parallel bars. I had last tried this in the gym at HRI, before I had even been moved to Calderdale, and it had been a dismal failure because at that time, my whole body strength had been so low I couldn’t raise myself a millimetre. So I wasn’t holding out any great hopes. Which is why I surprised myself all the more by managing to get my duff off the seat and hold myself by my arms and elbows for 7 seconds, on a couple of occasions. As I said to Lucy afterwards, it was the road back. It felt like a door, which had hitherto been slammed firmly shut in my face, was now open an inch or two again.

At teatime, Debbie came around and shoved me up the ramps and into the camper, and we went for a drive around. Tig was out, going “walkies” with Grandad, Zak and Freddie, although her participation these days reduces it to “amblies” rather than walkies. So I didn’t see her that day, nor did I see Kitty of course, who is by all accounts, enjoying lying out on the decking in the sun, purring aimlessly.

But I did see trees hung magically with blossom (“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now”) not only cherry, but also lilac, and some magnolia. The sights and sounds of the lush world were overwhelming. Two puffing Jack Russells, pulling their owner along on their leads, tongues lolling as they panted and snuffled on the hot pavement. An enormous, fat, ginger-and-white cat, lying in a driveway, that acknowledged our passing by blinking blearily, and giving a fishy yawn.

Out in the countryside, as we rumbled towards Holme Bridge, there were young lambs and quizzical sheep looking back at me over low stone walls, there were lapwings, there were bluebells, a fine haze, a water-colour wash of glazed azure over the greensward. We stopped in the car park at the top of Holme Moss, across the road from the transmitter mast. I did briefly pause to reflect that, being that close to it, at least we ought to be able to make a call on a mobile for once, and also that if we’d had the foresight to bring cheese and onion pasties we could probably have microwaved them simply by holding them out of the camper window, but other than the massive brooding presence of the radio mast, it was heaving with picnickers, motorcyclists, and people running down the side of Holme Moss and launching themselves into the air on a variety of flimsy parachutes.

We popped the side door and sat there basking, while I brewed a cup of tea. Several little wagtails, their heads white as bone china, came trotting and bobbing along the grass outside. Sadly, we had no crumbs to throw them, but their inquisitiveness was not deterred, I’m sure if we’d stayed long enough, they would have been inside the van, looking.

Maundy Thursday was – surprise surprise – warm and sunny, I could get used to this, I thought, as I cracked open the window of my room and sat inhaling the perfume of the various stocks and shrubs and bushes in the garden down below. There’s one, which I can’t identify, which must be more or less directly below my window, and it smells absolutely gorgeous as the early sun burns off the hazy dew. I must make a point of asking them, before I go, what it is, it would be good to get one for our garden. I knew that as I sat there, one of my very best friends would be undergoing surgery elsewhere in the NHS, and I tried to gather all of the sunshine and the blossom and the scent and the hope of Spring, and ping it mentally in their direction.

I was up and about “betimes” as Pepys would have said, because I knew I had two lots of physio and a hoist demo, and a lot of tedious officialdom to deal with as well. As a result, I only glimpsed the Maundy ceremony from Westminster Abbey in passing but I did hum along to Zadok the Priest, which was on the big widescreen TV in the lounge when I was heading out to do my sit-to-stands. Handel must have inspired me, because I pushed my personal best to 12 seconds.

In the afternoon, Jan arrived, with Gordon the hoist man. We tried the hoist, and I have to say it gave me the best “standing experience” of all of the ones I had tried since the Sabina at Calderdale. So it looks like that is the one I will be getting – plus, the sling is simple enough to be able to put it on yourself, without help, if necessary. Jan gave me the customary presents, in this case a mini Easter Egg and a palm cross from her Church, which I put inside my prayerbook. I was struck by the symbolism of the hoist raising me up into what is almost a crucifixion position – the more so with the Sabina, where your arms are further out – the idea of being raised up on a cross to be saved was never far from my mind.

That evening, I was absolutely drained. Debbie brought all three dogs round in the camper and we all flopped out on and around the seat outside the entrance, looking like a seal colony. Debbie and I shared a bottle of Shepherd Neame Double Stout, and the dogs shared the general adulation and tumjack furfles of everyone passing in and out, accompanied by invariable expressions of “how cute” and similar. Mind you, they could have been referring to me, I suppose. Zak and Freddie are also loving this hot weather, and they all ended up flopped out asleep on the warm flags.

Friday was marked by some more welcome visitors in the form of Phillip and Maisie, the latter bearing an armful of Inspector Morse novels, so I shan’t be short of something to read during my remaining time here. They both looked fit and well, Phillip has been doing wonders with his gardening, it’s such a pity that his skill and knowledge lies under-utilised. Maisie, with her long dress and string of pearls, looked like one of Gandhi’s background companions in those black and white 1930s photos of him meeting various important people. And/or a Mitford girl, delete as appropriate.

So far, in Holy Week, I didn’t feel I had done anything particularly Holy. So I did make a point, that afternoon, of reading "Goodfriday 1613, Riding Westward", by John Donne. Something I try and do every Good Friday, as a devotional exercise.

I first read it when I was seventeen, and, like much of Donne’s religious oeuvre, it still sends shivers through me. I also love the intellectual complexity of the way he plays with the contrasts and paradoxes within the poem. He is being forced to ride Westwards, on a day when he should be looking Eastwards, towards the site of the Crucifixion. If he were to turn round and look, he would see a “Sun” (Son) “by rising set”, in other words, being put to death by being raised on a cross. He has had to turn his back on God, but this may be a good thing because whoever sees God’s face “must die”.

There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.

The whole poem deserves to be taken as one, not chopped up or extracted – its 42 masterful lines are an argument as beautifully executed and self-contained as any of the chunks of equations that underlie modern physics.

One day, I will find time to sit down and do an I. A. Richards-type line-by-line, word-by-word analysis of it, teasing out every meaning of every nuance. But, like Donne, I find myself being hurried along in the opposite direction, and forced to turn my back on what I think of from time to time as God.

By Easter Saturday, my “sit to stand” record had grown to 30 seconds, which may not seem like a lot to you, but I can tell you now, it really hurt. Physio victories are not cavalry charges, they are trench warfare, won inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre, grinding it out day after day, in the words of the REM song, “Pushing an Elephant Up The Stairs”

I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs
I'm tossing up punch lines that were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground

So, amongst all this elephant-shoving, with pianos crashing all around me, I have reached the eve of Easter Day, and I have started work on this Epiblog early, in case the weather is fine enough for a trip out in the camper to Walney tomorrow.

Considering it is Holy Week, the Archers Message Board, colloquially known as “Mustardland” seems to have had an outbreak of atheists with ants in their pants, starting various threads asking why God allows suffering in the world, and talking about “whingeing Christians”. At first I wondered whether this was some sort of deliberate campaign, orchestrated by Richard Dawkins, but in the end I think it is just one of those aberrations you put down to sunspots.

Quite what it is about the Christian faith in particular that seems to give people the formic frillies is lost on me. I have always thought that Christianity, especially Anglicanism, is rather more like a hobby than a religion, on the fundamentalist scale. They certainly wouldn’t dare post the same stuff about Islam, or Sikhism, or Hinduism. Or Judaism, come to that. Many of these posters focus on the bad things that have been done in the name of religion, which of course is a different thing to saying that religion in itself is bad, per se. I think there is an evil inside us which can be channeled via any conduit, should we choose to give it house-room, and religion is such a conduit. Politics is another.

True, there are some Christians whose uncompromising refusal to accept questioning of the fossil record, for instance, coupled with a desire to tell you the good news about Jesus whether you wanted to be saved or not, a tendency to decry gay people, and a tendency for damning you to hell, tends to get them attention. They remind me of the boy scout who saw the old lady across the road even though she didn’t want to go. But, at the end of the day, I suppose any religion has to be able to cope with people making fun of it. It’s a matter of faith, not proof, as I must have said on seventeen different occasions during the last week.

And God knows, I have made fun of the Old Testament often enough, bless it, though usually, I freely admit, from a standpoint of pure ignorance. All of which has set me thinking, this week, at this pivotal point of the Christian year, what it is I really believe.

For a start, I don’t think I am a “Bible believing Christian”. I’ve often said I don’t understand why many bits of the Old Testament are included in the canon at all. I don’t believe in Genesis literally, though I do believe in it, I suppose, as a sort of creation-myth. Darwin, of course, would have us believe it’s all about the dinosaurs, to which my reply would be, OK, Mr Clever-Pants, who created the dinosaurs? Who created the amoeba?

Though I think large parts of the OT are, frankly, gaga, and other bits are a desert survival manual written for and by the Children of Israel, if someone wants to believe in it literally as the word of God, to be honest, that’s no skin off my nose, and I would no more try and convert them off it, than convert them on to it. So I guess that means I don’t believe in evangelising. So what am I doing writing this every week? In answer to that, I can only really truly state that it represents a public working out of thoughts I have been having in private (or at least the “religious” bits of it do) and if anyone else finds it helpful, then good luck. I believe that every one of us has to find their own route to, and their own accommodation with, God.

Which brings me to morality. As a moral relativist, I have a major problem with absolute proclamations. Not so much the Ten Commandments, but some of the more arcane applications of absolute morality which are “backed up by the word of God” when in fact you could probably make the Bible (or indeed almost any religious text) mean what you want it to mean, given its chequered history and the fact that it’s a translation anyway. So that is a major area of conflict for me, and one of the reasons why I have never really attached to any formal denomination.

So, it’s not looking hopeful. I keep coming back to Jesus though. (Sorry, that sounded a bit “hallelujah, pass the snake, brethren!”) What I meant is this: there’s this bloke, allegedly born 2000 years or so ago. Wandered round the country, preaching love thy neighbour, suffered under Pilate and all that stuff, and “died” in relative obscurity aged 33 or thereabouts. 2000 years after his death, millions of people worldwide follow his teachings. There has to be something about this. That’s before you get to the stuff about him rising from the dead.

I’m assuming we’re all familiar with the theology of this (probably far more than I am!) and the central question raised again this week by the ant hill mob is why? Why did it have to be this way, with God sacrificing his only Son? I freely confess I don’t know the answer. God could have created himself a whole phalanx of sons if he had wanted to, or indeed could have scrapped the world and started again, the minute “Adam” screwed up. The answer to why the world is like it is, and all the other questions that flow from that, is known only to the mind of God, and you either believe that, or you don’t, and for you, life is random, meaningless, and pointless, in which case why bother with message boards?

Did Jesus rise from the dead? Who knows? It could be meant to be literal, it could be meant to be a myth (I am familiar with James Frazer and "The Golden Bough", before anybody goes to the trouble of pointing out all the other cognate death and resurrection myths in history). Almost anybody who is everybody who has ever died is said to be going to come back one day, from King Arthur to Elvis Presley.

Jesus, though, allegedly did it. I can’t prove that. I can’t “prove” any of this, which makes it very easy for people to make snide comments about “imaginary friends”. I can tell you about my experience, when I went to Holy Cross Abbey in Ireland in 1998 and saw their “relic”, a supposed piece of the cross of Christ. I can’t prove that this splinter of wood inside its reliquary was a splinter of the true cross, or that it had ever been anywhere near Israel. All I can say is that as I stood there in front of it, that April day, the colours swam, the walls fell away, and my senses were assaulted with the glare of the Mediterranean sun and the blare of the market and the smells of the spices and the donkeys and camels and the push and bustle of the crowd. It was like sticking your fingers into a live socket. After a few seconds, maybe not even that, it faded. But I can still recall it. As Eliot said

“You are here to kneel, where prayer has been valid”

And it is moments like that one, that help me believe. I can believe in an all powerful all encompassing force that can create the cherry blossom and the lambs and the cats and the dogs and the lapwings and the bluebell haze and the lush green fields and the blue sky, I can see the hand of God in all these things. It is harder to see the hand of God in the gutters, in the diseased and the destitute, and the neglected, the hungry and the ill. But if there is always a failsafe in Jesus, and God is always everywhere, even in the darkest deepest pits of despair where there is next to no hope, then there is always the possibility that, maybe not literally, maybe not in any way that seems understandable, or rational, or “just”, these too, shall rise again, and the gardeners and the women will find an empty tomb. Something weird happened that morning. Mysterious white figures, moving between the Cypress trees. Huge rocks, rumbled aside as though made of polystyrene. Weeping, then joy, then weeping of joy. Something weird. Weird enough for people still to be talking about it, 2000 years later.

And as for me, next week, I am going to try and “rise again” in a much more prosaic way, on my parallel bars (wasn’t that a “Blondie “ album?) and on my hydraulic cross of hopefulness. Happy Easter, everyone. Including the atheists. In a society which has recently given us the Secular Bible, here’s a secular hymn of redemption, just for you. Rise again, rise up, spread your arms out, and give us all a big hug. You have nothing to lose but your ants.