Miracles can happen

St Columba, Tuesday 9th June, 2020

Pondering on the continuing protests and demonstrations over the murder of George Floyd and the bigger question of racism a friend quoted Gandhi to me : ' I have learned to use my anger for good...without it we would not be motivated to rise to a challenge. It is an energy that compels us to define what is just and unjust '.

This morning I was mulling over with a friend the idea of resistance, public protestations and movements and actions for causes. I am reading the true story 'The tattooist of Auschwitz'. Several characters feature large and some survived. The question of whether the tattooist was a collaborator came to his and my mind. Should he have refused to do the work? Then the story of the beautiful Jewess he knew who became the mistress of the Camp Commandant. She managed to save a few lives but after the war was captured and tried as a collaborator by the Russians. She was sent to Siberia where she survived another twelve years of hell. The Kapos, the informers not only in the Camp but across many occupied Countries and Germany itself. What of them? Why did not the German people rise up? So many imponderable moral questions. To fight or not, to risk families and lives through retribution. Many resistance fighters and many networks and undergrounds of resistance did spring up as did individuals hiding and helping people to escape. We need, as Gandhi notes, motivation to rise up, to move out of our comfort zones, to risk lives for a greater cause.

In a letter from an American pastor a friend of his is quoted as finally taking to the streets. 'This is the first time that I have publicly protested: I should have done so 50 years ago'. Never too late.

An email arrived telling me the story of white pheasant eggs hatching. A friend bought six as a birthday present for her daughter. She likes to hatch and breed suchlike and set them in to the wild. Only four hatched and all were deformed in some way. She thinks the birds are too inbred. After three days the one named Hope died. She buried it and then went on her own with her husband's Guide dog for a walk in the back lanes of her home in Norfolk. As she walked she wondered on Hope. To cut her fascinating story short it seems as if she had the most extraordinary experience of the love of the Creator for his creation and his creatures. All around she became aware of and saw the evidence of that love and care. She 'understood' the death of Hope and had a glimpse of the scheme of things way beyond our knowledge. Personally I have no doubt as to  the integrity and reality of her experience.

I mused on St Columba. Legend tells us he left Ireland as a penance for his part in the carnage of a particular battle. He became celebrated for his love of all living things, a Francis of Assissi type figure. He ended in Iona driven by God and there brought Christianity and culture to Scotland and elsewhere. I do not doubt him either.

Anger can drive one to remarkable feats. It needs simply to be used constructively. Then miracles will happen.