‘Help me to live a moment at a time with
you, rejoicing in your presence and provision, surprised again and again by the
abundance of your giving.’ Words from a notebook my mother began when she was
in her ‘60s, recording her reflections on life with God.
I particularly liked her metaphor of
life as a walk through a forest, bright sunshine at the end of the long
bridle-path, a patchwork of light and shadow as you pass beneath leaf-laden
branches.
Mum’s younger sister Jean shared her
memories of mum. As a child, six years younger than Helen, Jean felt
overwhelmed by her sister’s achievements.
My mother was Dux of Airdrie Academy, earned an MA from Glasgow
University and attained a prestigious piano qualification.
But, Jean told me, Helen was initially everything
you could want in a big sister. She describes mum taking her on trips in
shoogly Glasgow trams to Cranston’s tearooms for a bun and a drink; and to a
concert at the St Andrews Halls to hear the celebrated young violinist Yehudi
Menhuin.
From early childhood through attending
church and through the love of the people she met there mum said she was aware
of God, and of the love of God for her. During her time at University she
experienced conversion through the influence of an evangelical group, after
which she had, I suppose, a new sense of God, a new regard for the Bible, a new
understanding of the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection, a new
passion to share her faith.
Helen sought to encourage her younger
sister along a similar route, but though Jean happily accompanied her to gospel
services and genuinely enjoyed the ‘testimonies’ of conversion she heard there,
she did not feel personally at home in that model of Christianity. As Jean
tells it, my mother told her she would ‘go to hell’ if she didn’t give up
dancing. Thereafter, a gulf opened up between the sisters which was never fully
bridged.
After her conversion, mum more-or-less
turned her back on classical music of which she could have made a career, and
very rarely played anything other than hymns.
There were truly good things in her
life - her love for my father, her
supportive friendships – but my overwhelming sense is one of tragedy.
I understand the liberating,
life-changing experience of conversion, but as someone who had been aware of
God since childhood, why did she not come to realise, later if not in her ‘20s
that conversion is often a journey rather than an arrival, a process rather
than a crisis? If only Helen had learned to dialogue with other people – including
Jean, and later myself – about what point they had reached on their journey
rather than leaping to conclusions about beliefs and behaviour.
It is tragic if Helen truly believed
that God is concerned only with the religious part of life in a narrow sense,
rather than seeing God as the Giver of every good thing. How could she, having
tasted as she surely must have tasted of the healing fulfilment of music have
taken her hands off the keyboard? It seems to me that mum did not sing to the
full the song God had given her because of a narrow view of what living for God
involved.
It is tragic that mum and I failed to
relate. Both of us were prone to anxiety and depression. My mother, perhaps
unable to welcome and accept the person she was, was unable to welcome me as I
am, but sought instead to squeeze me into the mould of her expectations until I
had to escape from her.
I wondered as I read her notebook
whether the description of relationship with God expressed the reality of her
life, or simply a possibility, glimpsed and longed for. As I read, I liked this
woman from whom I inherit my love of words, my love of using pictures and
symbols to express Christian experience. And yet, despite efforts on my part, I
never really knew her and we never truly
communicated.
Except once. One day, a month before her
death in 2005, I visited mum at Kingsmills Nursing home. She was suffering
severe dementia, and visits usually passed with little engagement. I sat beside
her on the edge of her bed as she talked incoherently. She rested her head on
my shoulder. I put my arm round her. It was the longest time I’d had physical
contact with her since I was a child.
And then she said, with seemingly
perfect clarity ‘Thankyou,’ and I sensed that the thanks was for far, far more
than simply my presence with her that day and felt, perhaps for the first time
in my life that I loved her.
(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 7th November 2013)
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