Pastoral Visiting

Bill hasn't really recovered from the respiratory complaint that knocked him out a couple of weeks ago. I called round to see him at his daughter's house and found him in a right state, mentally rather than physically, saying that he couldn't concentrate, had been having suicidal thoughts, that his mind had gone. 'I've got this tune that goes round and round in my head, I don't know what it is. There's just nothing, nothing.' We had a bit of a pray. The doctors think this may be a result of the steroids he's been given, but when I spoke to another member of the church they remembered a time when Bill had been found in the church porch, unable to remember where he was. 'I've often thought that if Bill couldn't do his duties in the church, it'd be the end of him.'

That opinion came from Stephanie, who I went to see next and who's been having health difficulties of her own. She and husband Don have been a formidable pair over the years and are now finding things very tough indeed, struggling to maintain routines and not able to get out as in the past. 'Sometimes I've wondered where God is,' Stephanie told me. Pain and boredom wear down faith so easily. As with Bill, we had a bit of a pray.

Finally I called in on Nicole and Ali and their daughter who have been at the church quite a bit lately. They moved to Swanvale Halt from London a few years ago and deliberately came and sought us out but to their consternation found their daughter couldn't cope with music and singing and so disappeared again! Now she seems fine with what happens in church and so they've popped up again. I had no idea that they were those unusual things, adult converts: they also converted within an Anglo-Catholic setting and do not seem to be obvious nutcases, and all this amounts to a sufficiently rare combination to make it remarkable. The dogs looked askance at me and the chickens crowded at the patio door to see what was going on. I didn't feel it necessary to have a bit of a pray in this context, but perhaps I should have done.