Make an appointment

The Assumption. Saturday 15th August, 2020

I heard a good sermon today streamed from the Dominicans in Oxford. It made the salient point that the very purpose of the Incarnation, of God becoming man, was for the direct contact , face to face of God and His people. This is a theological and religious world for discussion and the non believer would find it as strange as the question as to how many angels can dance on a pin head.

Yet it has a relevance for us all. For how close, how real, how face to face are relationships? For example do you know your Member of Parliament? How real and relevant is the Monarchy to individuals? What of a bank: is there any direct contact with money, investment, with financial policy? What or who gets in the way? In the Gospel reading it was about little children coming to Jesus. The Apostles stopped them. We too find ourselves stopped from contacting or seeing or talking with people in positions of authority and power.

" Make an appointment" said the mechanical voice on the telephone of my local medical practice recently. I had telephoned at the week end and was not offered the chance to leave a message. Then came the call with six options. Pressing finally option two I got a secretarial personage. All sorts of impertinent questions, as I saw them. Then I was told to dial a different number and came across another mechanical voice with options galore. Finally to a nurse 'of status'. More questions and then the decision that I did not need to see a doctor or even see a nurse, a telephone diagnosis was sufficient.

The Medical Centre building was locked and had various rather imperious notices. Press a button and put your mouth to the grill! More voices and again no entry allowed as I was insufficiently ill. I have not been to Fort Knox but feel the centre was a facsimile.

Hurdle upon hurdle has to be jumped, gotten around in so many cases. How I feel for those trying desperately to right an injustice. The law is expensive, slow, convoluted, often obfuscating and certainly protected by many barriers. So the preacher today spoke of the Church getting in the way of 'getting to know God'. Just what my guru has been saying. Yes, I believe one can talk directly with God but not with the Prime Minister, the Queen, the Bank Manager, the Chairman of the Council, the Editor of a newspaper or even a doctor etc.

We can and do justify these barriers and sometimes they are justifiable but we must be careful and sensitive to their being abused.

Walking back from a firmly closed library ( no bell, no notice as to why shut, no indication of whom to contact ) via the local shop to buy a newspaper, wherein I was masked, gelled, distanced and under firm supervision lest I transgress, I met a friend I had not seen for four months. I asked how her daughter was managing as she had had a very serious mental issue last year. I then had a twenty minute diatribe about how impossible it was to get medical help. "All the barriers have been put up since this pandemic era". " How do I get someone to actually see, meet and talk with my daughter? They'd realise how close to the brink she is".

I am the first to admit that I do not know the full story, the facts, the actuality of the thinking of those one cannot get to, as indeed I do not know the mind of God. I do know that one needs faith, hope and love and the latter necessitates battering on doors if necessary. And, yes, one needs patience and perseverance. Some die in the trying and the waiting.