Three items of pastoral news came my way yesterday. Christine, who I shorthand 'the dog lady', lost her latest and, she has always maintained, final boxer dog. Her life has been organised around him and without him she is bereft. She isn't in a condition to talk about it. I am not a lover of animals but interacting with her over a dozen years has shown me how intense people's relationship with them can be. To others made uncomfortable by grief, Christine's intensity can seem exaggerated and unnecessary. But to love something is ennobling.
Before setting out to take Trevor some groceries, I thought I ought to make a call and selected Sarah from the congregation, who I haven't spoken to for a while. It turns out she had been diagnosed with depression and had a bad reaction to the prescribed medication. She still sounded jumpy and uncomfortable. 'I don't suppose you anticipated the conversation going that way', she suggested, accurately.
I had a message from a mother of three small girls two of whom are former Infants School Church Clubbers. She was treated for cancer a year ago and thought all was well; it isn't, it's inoperable. What can they have told the children.
Regularly I commit myself to greater seriousness and dedication, but it's easy to let this drift. I suppose what I ought to do is faff about less, stop re-reading my own words, set myself realistic daily tasks and not tell myself that I won't do something because I haven't got the energy. Energy can always be dredged up, and it's not doing things that I regret. Time seems to pass with ever greater urgency and my great fear is that I won't have made the best use of it. 'Live lightly and intensely', a colleague said to me, which seems a helpful formula.
No comments:
Post a Comment