Solidarity

Sometimes the church office computer allows me to send emails; sometimes it refuses. Yesterday morning it was being recalcitrant, so in the spare half hour before the communion service at the sheltered housing block nearby I phoned a couple of people to sort out Easter home communions. My second call, to Thora, revealed that she was sat anxiously at home unable to do anything. The man from the chemist's had called by with her medicines, and, as she couldn't remember the number of her keysafe, made her laborious way to the door and passed him the key through the letterbox. Once all the excitement had passed, Thora found that she'd dropped her litter-picker, which she uses to pick things up, on the floor and couldn't reach it (if she could, she wouldn't need it in the first place). One response might have been, "Well, you wait for the carer to arrive in a couple of hours, that'll teach you", but that wouldn't have been very pastoral. I know the number to Thora's keysafe, and reckoned I could get round to her house and back in just enough time to make it to Burring House for the service. I did, picked up her litter-picker, and arranged a time to bring her communion.

It didn't seem like the core of a clergyperson's work, and it isn't. But thinking about my time with Bill in the hospital the other day I reflected on the way back from Thora's that not just death but old age, certainly, is also very often a battle, and whatever we can do to assist people in that situation is effectively standing alongside them in the heat of the battle. It may not feel very much, but, cosmically, perhaps it's more than we imagine.