Birthday...

Monday 15th June, 2020

It is four days before my birthday. Very kindly people are remembering and sending me cards and gifts and best wishes and love. All wondrous and I am touched and grateful. Yet I am a little curmudgeonly and am not one for celebrating the day. I feel  little like Job in the Old Testament. In a disastrous situation with destruction all around him he called down curses on the day of his birth. That is a tad extreme but I have a nagging doubt as to how well I have used my life, how well I have given rather than taken, how well I have lived. I am grateful for the remarkable gifts and blessings I have been given and received yet fearful of my lack of appreciation in action. I do not want to tick off the years as they pass nor constantly look back and regret but rather resolve daily to forge a better life. I will try to resolve and live more graciously and abundantly. I am to be 70 and have many lessons still to learn.

My mood was not brightened when I received by email a copy of the local Cathedral's newsletter. In it the Canon of the Cathedral was telling of how things will be when the Scottish Government allows churches to re open for private prayers and worship, not public services. All sorts of notices about hand gel, distancing and other regulations. Then the remark that volunteers were needed. BUT no one over 70 will be accepted. Whether this age limit is a church or a government precaution or diktat I do not know. What I do know is that it truly irritated me.

In the News the protests and demonstrations over racism are much mentioned. In London it seems that fights and clashes occurred between demonstrators, the police and the counter demonstrators, described as of the 'far right'. There is, in fact, an iconic photograph on News channels and websites and on some of the newspaper front pages of a 'Black lives matter' demonstrator fire lifting a 'counter demonstrator' to safety. It seems the latter was in grave danger of severe wounds and beatings. The lifter cum rescuer merely remarked: ' he was a human being on the floor' who needed help.

The protests have my support although I would wish for social distancing, peaceful interaction and a toleration of all. We are all humans and deserve respect. It was exactly that same feeling that hit me over the Canon's remark. Ageism is what I discern not just in the Canon's words but in much of the Covid 19 rhetoric over the last 4 months. We are told that it is for our own safety, our own protection. Of course I appreciate that but I think there is a more important principle involved. It is for the individual to decide and for him/her alone to exercise freedom. If I have the virus, if I am a genuine medical case demanding isolation I accept willingly. I do not accept that because I am 70 I am barred. If the Church was only for the fit, the under 70s and not for the sinner but the righteous only again I would accept. But it is based on the teachings and life example of a man who came ' to call sinners', who touched the lepers, the untouchables, and who allowed prostitutes to pour nard over his feet.

They bind heavy burdens and do not lift a finger themselves.

Oh dear is this a rant? Have I already failed to live more graciously? Or should I protest against ageism? Is it an injustice? Or am I just a doddery, peppery 70 year old with a grouse?

#birthdays #protests #job