I was inspired tonight: even though I didn’t want to be.My day had started badly, with another cut off phone call to my Little Bro in Australia: the bad connection and his not recognising my voice, made me feel very lonely. I was glad for Mum’s company and a very cosy Pier 36 lunch, a welcome escape from the banging music that was still playing in the apartment downstairs.
But back to the inspiration: I’d been waiting for an excuse to go to the Elim Church in Bangor for quite some time: I go through entire periods of what Lily described as ’searching’: I have ‘tried out’ churches with my gorgeous gay friend, I read new books, I ask old questions but rarely do I find the courage or the selflessness to find the hour in my Sunday to go to a church where I would have to sit alone or make idle conversation with a ‘greeter’.
Tonight though I had an excuse and company: the service was one of celebration: the charity Abaana was celebrating a ten year anniversary. I sponsor two African children through the charity: two little boys who write stilted letters thanking me and God for their education. I always feel humble when the letters arrive. The charity was started by one guy, only a year older than me. From an idea it has now grown to a charity that provided almost half a million pounds in aid last year. He told the story of how his idea had become God’s reality. I was astonished that someone who’d been witness to the horrors he has seen could still find God in his world. I use suffering as a stumbling block to faith, this guy and the people he works with, the woman he is married to, use it as a tool to prove God’s presence in the world. While I remain spiritually unconvinced not did I doubt for a second the worth of what this charity achieves; nor the faith of the people within it. I sat in this cinemaesque church, feeling the connection that others had to something spiritual: a girl who I work with, but don’t know that well, led worship in African dress and with an infectious and very real energy.
I was struck by the things I’d moaned and 365ed about this week: a bad back that has subdued and the ‘free’ doctor who treated me with contempt: how does this compare to an African woman whose face collasped because she didn’t have the £15 to pay for Cancer treatment; the school stuff that I bemoan constantly- the children of Uganda pray for an education, they truly honour the privilege that learning brings to their lives, I curse my single status yet it is ENTIRLEY preferable to being a sexualised weapon of war at the age of 15, I was ‘frustrated’ by the lapse in my diet- these children literally starve…the list is endless.
Could I be one of those people who go on ‘a team’ to Africa? Could I emotionally cope with such a physically and psychologically demanding experience without the spiritual background everyone else seems to pack in their rucksack? Or will this pondering, join the yoga I never practise, the year I want to teach ‘away’ in America, the summer I want to interail in Europe, those things I want and dream about but never achieve? Inspiration is a dangerous thing: it brings the impossible to somewhere close to your grasp. That I never actually reach for the possibility leaves me always adding to this of ‘Things I have never done.’
I periodically acknowledge the role perspective plays in my and everyone’s view of the world I’m hoping that tonight’s manages to last me quite a while.
