Conversation ..

She didn’t see him until she had landed on the twig, angling her wings to catch the warmth of the soft spring sun. His green, segmented body was well-camouflaged against the leaf stem, but she saw his familiar, hunching movement. After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that she herself had been exactly the same ..

He looked at her, then quickly looked away. She recognised the signs, she had once felt exactly the same shy awkwardness. It seemed wrong, on such a beautiful day, that he should be left feeling such awkwardness and doubt, when there was a wonderful secret she could share with him. She paused, wondering what she should say, then his furtive, sidelong glance decided her.

“Hello,” she said gently, “isn’t it a beautiful morning?”

“Yes,” he answered, then, with a sudden rush of words, “it must be wonderful to fly in the sunlight on such a day!”

It was her cue, and she took it. “It is wonderful. There’s such freedom being able to fly. I can remember how it felt when I was like you, and had to crawl everywhere. I used to dream of being able to fly, and it all seemed such a ridiculous, impractical thing to dream of.”

“Well,” he replied, “it is. Some are born with wings, and some without. We all have our place in this world. We live, we eat, we enjoy light and warmth while it is given to us, and make the most of every juicy leaf, then the day is over and the darkness descends. One by one our friends disappear, becoming dry and lifeless lumps. This is who we are, this is all we have.”

“Oh no, it isn’t really like that at all. It only looks like that. We go into that darkness like a great sleep, a sleep that feels like death – but it is not. We come out the other end as a new creature; it’s like getting born all over again”

“That old fairytale? We tell that to the new hatchlings, the one-day-you-can-be-whatever-you-like story, but then we outgrow it. I guess that some people like to dream that there is something more than this, but they’re only fooling themselves. There is nothing more than this, and wishful thinking only spoils the pleasures of now. Take what you can, enjoy this life you have, and don’t muddle the moment with vague philosophies. That’s as silly as trying to tell a chicken that it’s going to grow up to become an eagle!”

“But what if it is?” She saw him roll his eyes and realised she had not expressed herself well. “I mean, what if it turns out that it really isn’t a chicken after all, but a baby eagle?”

“Baby eagles still have wings, “ he replied, obviously growing tired of the conversation, which was interrupting his continuous lunch. “You might note that I do not have any wings – see, none!! – and I am self-evidently not a baby butterfly. I don’t know what game you’re playing, or why, but please leave me alone. I don’t have a future destiny, and I’m very hungry.”

The butterfly flew sadly away, wondering why it had to be so difficult. Was there no way to convince a caterpillar that there was a greater reality than what it could see immediately before it?

The Holy Thing

The King was tired. The King was bored. The King felt miserable all the time. Sweet tasted like sour to him, and fresh bread tasted like old straw. His beautiful gardens seemed dingy, the birds kept maddeningly singing the same old songs, and he couldn’t see the point of signing all those pieces of paper every day. He had trouble sleeping at night, because there was nothing worth dreaming about; and he had trouble getting up in the morning because there was nothing really worth getting up for. The Physician said he should eat more carrots and green vegetables; the Major-General said he should go riding with the guards every day. The Prime Minister just looked shocked – he couldn’t imagine a world where one wasn’t eager to sign papers all day long, especially with such a beautiful, flourishing royal signature. In the end, the King called the Archbishop, who looked very thoughtful and said he would pray about it.

The next day the Archbishop came back, looking even more thoughtful than before, and said that he believed that the King should go and speak to the hermit in the forest, because he would know what the King needed. The King privately thought that this wouldn’t help very much, but he had nothing else to do except sign all the Prime Minister’s pieces of paper (where did that man get them all from?), so, after moaning about it a bit, he said that he would come if the Archbishop would show him the way. The Archbishop wasn’t quite sure he knew the way either, but when his servants asked around, one of the scullery boys, called Tom, knew where the Hermit lived, so, with Tom leading the way they set off into the forest, and, much sooner than either the King or the Archbishop expected, they found the hermit’s cave.

To the King’s surprise, the hermit (who looked exactly like he had imagined a hermit would look) seemed to expect him, and, after formal greetings were exchanged, looked him directly in the eye, and told him that, in order to be cured of his soul’s malaise, he would have to spend his time looking at something that was truly holy. And, having said that, he turned around and walked off into the forest.

The King looked at the Archbishop in utter perplexity. “I know no more than you do, Sire,” the Archbishop said quickly, “but I know that he will not tell you any more than what he has said.”

“Not even if I send my soldiers after him to bring him back?”

“I think you know, Sire, that that would be worse than useless.”

The King bowed his head, acknowledging the truth of this, and they returned home. The next morning (after another sleepless night) the King summoned his court and told them that whoever could find the holy thing that would cure the King’s despondency by next three months time would be rewarded with ten thousand golden coins. This was to be proclaimed throughout the kingdom.

“I thought that a year and a day was the normal time for such quests,” somebody grumbled.

“I can’t bear to wait that long,” replied the King.

For the next three months, people all over the kingdom were busy looking for something holy. Some went seeking the relics of saints, others found expensive bibles or other writings, and some even took the crosses and chalices from churches. And, while all this was going on, Tom the scullery boy, looked around and noticed people. There were elderly people, twisted with arthritis, who couldn’t stop working or they would have nothing to eat. There were little children, who should have been in school, begging on the streets. There were widows and orphans, the sick and the lame and the cold and the exhausted, and Tom began to think how much he could help them if he only had the ten thousand gold pieces that the King had promised. But how could a poor scullery boy find the most holy thing?

So Tom started thinking very hard. He listened to sermons, he tried to remember what he’d heard from the Bible, and finally, he thought to do what no one else in the kingdom had done, and go and ask the Hermit for advice. A great idea began to form in his mind, and he wondered if he’d really be brave enough to do it.

At last the day came. It was a great holiday, and people from all over the kingdom had come to the palace, many of them just to watch what would happen, because this was the most exciting thing that had happened in the kingdom for years. And Tom stood there in the crowd, still hoping he could find courage when the time came.

The trumpets blew, the heralds made their announcements, and, one by one, the people came forward with their offerings of holy things: lords and priests and knights and rich merchants, all in splendid clothes, and with their offerings richly presented. One by one they presented what they had brought to the King, and he would look hard at it, then sadly shake his head. As the day went on he slumped in his throne, and he was obviously finding it hard to keep paying attention. Then the long line came to an end, and the herald asked if there was anyone else who had something to show the King. Tom paused, trying to psych himself up, but then he looked at the King’s face and the King looked so desolate that he felt sorry for him, and, swept by a wave of compassion, he stepped forward boldly.“Yes, I do,” he said.

The people looked surprised, for Tom didn’t have any special clothes; he was just an ordinary, grubby servant boy. But they waited politely, for this was a day when they had come prepared for surprises. “What do you have to show the King?” asked the weary herald.

“Myself,” said Tom, loudly and clearly, and this time you could hear the gasps of amazement, and some people started to laugh. How ridiculous! The herald looked down his long, superior nose, and prepared himself to say something withering about wasting everyone’s time. But he never got the chance, for the King was leaning forward in his seat, fascinated, and it was he who responded, leaving the herald to stand there in slightly huffy silence.

“What can you mean?” asked the King.

“Sire,” said Tom, with a slightly wobbly bow, “until you get to Heaven and see God Himself, and all the angels in their glory, I am the most holy thing you will ever see, because I am a human being. And every human being in this place today is holy too!” There were confused murmurs in the crowd at this, but some of the older priests were starting to nod their heads. They knew what he meant.

“Go on,” said the King, frowning. It was the frown of someone trying to remember something he had heard a long, long time ago.

Tom wasn’t used to long speeches, but he couldn’t stop now, so he did his best to remember the things that the Hermit had told him. “Firstly,” he began, counting the points on his fingers to help him remember, “I am holy because God made me. Second, I am holy because god said to Noah that every human life is precious.. Third, I am holy because the Saviour died for me and bought me back for God. Fourth, I am holy because god sends His spirit to live inside everyone who believes, so I am now a temple. And fifth, because one day, when there is no more dying or crying, I will be perfect and wonderful.”

“And sixth,” added the King, very gently, because you have shown courage and wisdom and faith, and they are holy things too, which come from God.”

And the King stood up from his throne, with an energy he had not shown in years, and there was a light in his eyes and a smile upon his face. And he came down from his throne, and embraced Tom, and led him up to sit with him, where they talked together quietly for several minutes. Then the King turned to the Archbishop and asked that a service of thanksgiving be held in the cathedral that very afternoon. And, while all the important people bustled away, the King sat there quietly, gazing around in wonder.

Hands

The nurse plumped her pillow, and stroked her cheek for a moment, before bustling off to the next patient, and she found herself thinking about how precious it was to touch and be touched. She closed her eyes in weakness, but her mind did not shut off. Instead she was picturing those slim, capable hands which, just now, had been intent on making her feel more comfortable. There had always been hands, all her life, touching her, reaching her, communicating love or unlove ..

She supposed, though of course she could not remember, that the very first had been the midwife’s hands, guiding and supporting her tiny body as she came forth into the world. And then, for seven short years, her mother’s hands, gentle and careful, cleaning her, dressing her, feeding her, holding her. Her clearest memory of her mother was when she had tried to practice shaping her letters, but couldn’t quite control the pencil, and her mother, seeing her frustration, had put aside what she was doing, and , sitting down beside her, had put her hand over hers and guided it, until she could feel the rhythm and balance of it for herself.

But then her mother had died and she had been sent to live with a distant aunt. Aunt Prue had too many children of her own, and really didn’t want another one to deal with, especially one who meant nothing to her. Consequently, her hands were always rough and impatient, slapping her, shoving her into place, plaiting her hair too tightly. She had left there as soon as she was 16 and had got herself a nice, respectable office job.

But the hands continued. There were the hands of friends, tugging her along into life and new experiences, and the hands of various stammering boys (long since faded in her mind into an awkward, weak-chinned conglomerate) who took her to equally forgettable movies and groped for her fingers in the dark. And then she remembered the hands of Miss Elizabeth, her neighbour, swollen-jointed and impossibly wrinkled, that still played such exquisite music on her old piano.

And then there were his hands – lover, husband, friend – hands that caressed her, that worked for her, that had reached out to her in comfort at every difficult moment. They were large hands, calloused from work, whose stumpy fingers never looked quite pristine because they spent every spare moment in his beloved garden. These were green-thumbed hands, coaxing flowers and veggies to grow in a yard that had once been a wasteland of shrivelled grass, full of bindies and paspalum. And they were the hands that put that plain gold band on her finger, promising love and fidelity. He had kept that promise.

Her children’s hands had touched her heart almost as deeply, from the day a nursing baby reached up and patted her cheek, to the day when those nervous knuckles first held too tightly to a steering wheel. How many times had they slipped those little hands into hers, for comfort or reassurance, to cross roads or deal with scary situations? Even in her present tiredness, she found herself praying that her own hands had always responded with love. She really couldn’t remember ..

Now there were other hands that touched her increasingly helpless body: nurses, therapists, nurses’ aides, who lifted her carefully while they changed her sheets or placed her in a wheelchair to give her a change of scene. Soon, very soon now, she would be beyond feeling their touch. They would lay out her body, the undertakers would perform their mystery shrouded office, and this flesh, which had been her burden and her being for over eighty years, would not contain her any more.

But there was one more pair of hands that awaited her then, hands that would welcome her home with love beyond her comprehension. And she would know those hands when they reached out for her, know them by the scars they bore on her behalf – the imprint of the nails that had once been driven through them, puncturing the whole futility of human history and letting in the glory.

A New Beginning

She had never known any other life. Her whole world was bounded by the domain of the Spider – a domain of terror, distress and infinite weariness. All her life the Spider had been there, penetrating everything she did, going before her everywhere she went. Its sticky webs wrapped round her, and the more she tried to move, the tighter they bound her, until the only way she could move at all was in a slow-motion, zombie-like shuffle.

She had not noticed it so much when she was a child. Then the webs had been looser, less constraining, and had seemed to be her security rather than a limitation. All children had limitations placed upon them, it was the nature of the world, and she had not realised that the ones placed on her were qualitatively different from the ones placed on others.

But she was an adult woman now, and that made all the difference. There was an energy rising within her that did not want to confine itself to the helpless dependency of childhood. She wanted to be her own self, and not a carbon copy of someone else’s expectations; she wanted to try things and do things that had never been permitted. Yes, if she exerted all of her strength she could probably tear herself at least partly free from these multitudinous strands. But she was afraid to try, for she fully believed that she would rip off her own skin, at least, and possibly her internal organs as well, disembowelling herself in the process. She no longer knew where she ended and the webs began; she was scared that the very thing she longed to rage against was her own inescapable self.

For the sticky entanglement was not the Spider’s only weapon – just the most obvious and superficial. Far more deadly, and infinitely more subtle, was its poison, continuously dripped into her through the initial wounds that had been inflicted when she was too small to remember. It was a poison that kept her weak and helpless, continually dripping toxic ideas into her mind:
‘you are useless’
‘Nobody wants you’
‘it’s all your fault’
‘who do you think that you are?’

This poison caused a great deal of agonizing pain, and induced paralysis and confusion, and effectively prevented any healing taking place. The spider took great pleasure in watching her writhe while it worked on new refinements of the torture, feeding its own sense of grandiosity on her every nuance of helpless anguish.

The torment kept growing. She was reaching the limits of her endurance. In the secret places of her heart she began to cry out for deliverance, without any hope or expectation. She was so close to annihilation – the total closing down of her thinking and feeling.

It was then that He appeared – not the bright shining Knight she vaguely dreamt of, but another helpless victim like herself, who walked deliberately into the web and wrapped the strands around Himself, as if they would not stick to Him of their own power, they way did so readily to her. She felt the tremor in the web as the Spider approached Him, almost shaking with delighted greed. The Spider bit Him, injecting, all at once, a fatal dose of poison. She felt the web tremble again as His body drooped and shriveled. It felt like the darkest, most horrible moment she had ever known.

But suddenly she felt a new tremor in the web. Was this the Spider coming to finish her off? She scarcely dared to look. But then she had to, and could hardly understand what she was seeing. He was no longer a mere husk, but a being overflowing with light and life, and as she watched, He grew to enormous size, and tore the web apart. Then, even as she watched in amazement, the webs that bound her lost their grip and fell from her body. He was looking straight at her, and she began to move her atrophied limbs in response.

It was time to let Him teach her how to walk

The Mystery of Love

Even though she meant to quietly slip into the back row of the church, so that her late arrival would draw no attention, she couldn’t do it. The aisle seats were taken, and no one seemed to be in any hurry to move across and make room for the latecomer. She started excusing herself and clambering through the small space between their knees and the back of the pew in front of them – that was embarrassing enough – but then she knocked over someone’s walking stick that had been left propped there, and down it went with an awful clatter. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, too loudly, and bent to retrieve it. In the process she dropped her hymnbook, which fell on someone’s foot. She assumed the kick on her shins was purely reflexive, but it hurt just the same. By the time she slid into her seat, her face was burning. She sat there, staring at her feet, ostensibly in prayer but really just trying to compose herself. Her stepmother would have something nasty to say about this too, she thought. And there she’d been trying to do the right thing for once ..
By the time she was really aware o
f her surroundings, the choir had risen and started singing “Christians awake!” – a rather eccentric choice, surely, for a Christmas Eve service, with it’s explicit reference to “this happy morn”? But no one else seemed worried.
“ .. rise to adore the mystery of love ..” they sang. The words gave her pause. Surely, by the time you were an adult, the only mystery about love was why you ever fell for it in the first place? She had learned her lesson, and learned it hard. No man was ever going to seduce her again with a lot of empty words about how much he loved her.

Of course, the family had no idea yet that she was pregnant. How could she ever tell them? The mere thought of her father’s pain and her stepmother’s scorn was unbearable. Far better that she should just get rid of it, and they need never know. Far better. The only sensible thing to do.

Then why didn’t she go ahead? If she didn’t do something soon, it would be too late. After all, her child was certainly no “Virgin’s Son” like the choir was blithely carolling about, and in the small-town, church-centred world of her family, that was still a matter for deep shame. So why not? Apart from being single, she was just at the difficult beginning of her career. There was simply no room for a baby in her life.

But then, wouldn’t Mary have said the same thing? Not only was she single, the man she was going to marry was not the father of her child. Mary would have had far more social shame to deal with than she could even imagine. And yet she said yes. It was a mystery.
And Jesus – how could He bear to come down to a world where people would have said such cruel evil, untrue things about His mother? Surely He would rather punish them than die for them? It made no sense. There was something going on here that she couldn’t get her head around. It was a complete mystery.

Just then she realised that the choir were finishing the carol with a repetition of the first verse. There it was again: “the mystery of love”. In spite of herself, she smiled ruefully. There was a mystery of love here: Mary’s love for God, who asked so much of her, and of the baby she was willing to risk so much for. Even bigger was the mystery of God’s love for evil, cruel human beings. How could he?

But if this mysterious love lay at the heart of all things, then there was mercy for herself as well. No, she wasn’t pure like Mary, but now she realised that she was utterly forgiven. And if so much mercy was given to her, shouldn’t she show mercy on her unborn child as well? Shouldn’t this child, made by the hand of God and nestling deep in her body, have the right to live, and breathe and grow into whatever sort of person God had created them to become? If Mary had been able to find courage for love’s sake, then surely she could do the same, could find it from the same source?

It was enough. Even if there was no room for her with her own family, in this great story of salvation there would be room for this little child. And God would show her what to do, and what would be right for the child. For at the heart of the mystery of love was courage and faith.

The organ crashed its chords, she rose with the rest of the congregation and started to sing: “Love came down at Christmas ..”

Discovery

Grotesque. It was the word that defined his whole life – his whole self. From the day of his birth he had been made to feel that he was an anomaly and an outcast. The cold, polite puzzlement of his mother was almost as rejecting as the sneers of his siblings. ‘Ugly’ was one of the first words they learned to say, and it still echoed in his head. He had become so used to being called ugly that it was only now, looking back, that he realised that his mother had never even given him a name. The others had all been given normal sorts of duck names -- Jackie, Bubbles, Pondie, Wiggler, Billbop – but he didn’t have a name at all. Just “Ugly”, and later on, when their vocabularies got a bit fancier, they started calling him things like Trollface and Featherfright. Did the fact that his mother never bothered giving him a name,( and never tried to stop the others from being mean to him) prove that she had never loved or wanted him at all? He knew she was terribly ashamed to have produced such an ungainly child, one that even the pigs could laugh at.

Why was he so different? He hadn’t set out to be ugly, he certainly hadn’t designed his own face or body! Maybe he was just the punch line of some obscure joke the universe was playing? For the thousandth time he told himself to make an effort to think positive, but he was running out of ideas to find anything to be positive about. Being nobody wasn’t so bad, there were plenty of nobodies around all merrily going about their business: the fish in the lake, the worms underground, the ladybug on a grass stalk who wished him a cheery good morning before she saw who (what?) he was when his shadow fell across her. Most of them were nobody important, some species didn’t even have names, but none of that stopped them from living with a twinkle. But he couldn’t. There was a secret here that he didn’t understand, something important that was hidden from him.

To call himself the reject of the universe seemed absurd – he wasn’t important enough to be the anything of the universe. In the old barnyard they probably didn’t even remember him. Spring was coming, the wind was growing sweeter every day, and somewhere, back in the old barnyard where he used to live, his mother would be checking her eggs to see if they were ready to hatch into a new family of ducklings. He hoped they would all be small and neat and yellow, and waddle the right way and that his mother would love them. It would be beyond bearing that there should be another one as sad as him in the world.

Winter had been hard, and lonely beyond bearing but it was over now, and he couldn’t be quite so desolate when the sunshine caressed his feathers like a whisper of kindness. The ice had almost gone, it would be good to get back in the water. But when he approached the lake there were two swans gliding across it. He looked for some rushes to hide behind, no one so beautiful should have to be offended by the sight of himself. But there were no big beds of rushes to hide in, and the swans had seen him. They were moving towards him, and he was too scared to raise his eyes to see the expression on their faces. Ah well! Maybe this was the best answer he could hope for, that these glorious white birds would kill him, and the whole sorry story would be over. He bowed his head and waited....

“Hello,” said one of the swans, “won’t you join us? You are so lovely!”

He looked around, who could they possibly be talking to? But no one else was there. As his head turned, he caught sight of his reflection. It couldn’t be!!!

He stared and stared, trying to take in this discovery. No wonder he’d been such a hopeless duck – he’d been born to be a swan! This was the secret that had puzzled and eluded him – the truth about himself. He did not have to sidle through the world in shame any longer. He had come into his birthright. Raising his head towards the dancing sky, he slid into the water and went to meet his new friends.

The Sparrow

In the end, she found the courage she needed from a sparrow. Later, when she first tried to tell the story, the question inevitably came up: “Why a sparrow? Why not ... oh .. an eagle, for instance?” The question had confused her for a while, trying to find an intelligent response, but then she realised that the answer was actually simple, and lay inside herself. It was all a question of identification. Eagles were already strong, already magnificent, they didn’t need courage, at least not the kind that she needed, because they already had power and glory. She found no power and glory inside herself, only weakness, and fear and fragility. The eagles would always soar without her
But sparrows? Ah, they were different. They were small and timid and drab, the natural prey of bigger, fiercer creatures. She could feel a real affinity with sparrows.

She had lived all her life in bondage to grief and shame. All her life, wherever she was put, the same messages were repeated, messages of personal failure, of never being good enough. She had watched the bright ones and the beautiful ones walk off with all the prizes, while she cowered, forgotten in a corner – a drab little sparrow. There were times when she had almost felt the need to apologise for taking up air to breathe. And, like a sparrow at a cafe, she would make little darting forays around the periphery of life, picking up the tiny crumbs of kindness that happened to fall in her direction.

Once she had heard some preacher say that that a person was worth many sparrows. It was a nice idea, but she didn’t really believe it, at least not to apply to herself. She knew that she was worth almost nothing – because she had been told so all her life. It didn’t matter that she had a big, secret, wonderful dream, she knew that it would never happen to her, because how could she take the necessary first steps? Sometimes she would half-heartedly pray, but with no expectation that would ever be an answer.
But one day she saw the sparrow, and discovered hope. She had come into a cafe to get out of the weather, and was sitting in the darkest corner nursing her drink when the sparrow came. It was not just hopping and fluttering around the outdoor chairs and tables to cautiously seek the crumbs; it came right through the door, into the room, and perched on the counter. The red-faced man behind the counter saw it, reached down underneath, and brought out a small piece of bread, which he proceeded to crumble into a small neat pile on the countertop. And, whilst she scarcely dared to blink her wondering eyes, the sparrow hopped right up there, next to the man, and ate its little feast. Then, when it had finished, it flew once around the cafe then back past the door into the wild and windy world.

Afterwards, she was never quite sure at what point she had said to herself “if he can do it, so can I!” but by the time the sparrow had left, the decision was made. With unusual briskness she rose, paid her bill, and strode out into the spattering rain, with the first steps already formulating in her mind. As she raised her eyes, her attention was caught by a church billboard she was walking past: “I have set before you an open door which no man can shut ..”

It was enough, it was her answer and her miracle. Maybe, at least to God, she could be worth even more than that sparrow? She swirled the idea around in her mind, tasting its sweetness ..

No Roses

Last time she was here there had been roses – bushes and bushes of them! Late summer it had been then, and heat hung heavy in the sticky air, but not as heavy as the perfume of the flowers. She had smelled them before she had seen them, and literally followed her nose to the source. He had come behind her, laughing at her enthusiasm, and they had stood there, almost drunk with sweetness, and while the bees buzzed hypnotically, he had asked her to marry him. He had turned and picked a blood red rose and placed it in her hand. In the excitement of the moment she didn’t notice that the thorn had caught on her finger, beading blood that almost matched the flower.

But now she remembered, and winced. There were no roses here, and the bitter sky promised sleet to come. Their sunshine had lasted such a short time before war had over-clouded it. He had done the decent thing, the expected thing, and signed up, because he was the kind of man who would always try to do what he believed to be decent and expected. Her tears were useless against the massive, ponderous weight of his good intentions. And as she waved him goodbye – so short a time a wife! -- she had felt the first cold clutch of fear.

And, for once, fear had been a truth-teller, though not in the way she expected. He had not died, mangled and shredded in an explosion of shrapnel, or cruelly corroded within by the fumes of evil gas, but there were shameful moments when she thought that might have been easier to bear. No, he had come back to her, but no longer as himself. The strong, clean-limbed body that had delighted her was now twisted and fumbling, and dependent on a wheelchair to travel more than a few yards. That was bad enough, but not the worst. The worst was that he was no longer the same person. Gone was the huge, laughing patience that had enfolded her in its glad confidence and, instead, there was this tetchy man with frightened eyes who seemed to be always seeking an escape route from reality. “Shell-shock” the doctors called it, but seemed to have no idea whether or not he would get any better.
She sighed deeply and shut her eyes, trying to ignore the tears that squeezed out when she did. Why had she even come here today? Even if the weather held a little longer, she would be soaked and bitterly cold by the time she made it back home. Once, she had stood here when the wild, warm breeze smelled of roses, today it smelled only of the salt wrack of a rising sea, and a beach of dying seaweed. Dying? Yes, that was the real word, the apposite word. She had held out her arms, in trust, to receive roses, and instead they had been filled with filthy slime, and now her life would never be clean again. She had wanted so much, dreamed so big, and now here she was, shackled to a broken man .. Was everything fair and lovely in this world so fragile? Would she never have any hope again?

She dashed her angry tears away with an unseeing hand, and, as she did so, her sleeve snagged and caught on something. She looked down, and saw it was a thorn, a very familiar kind of thorn. What had she been thinking? Had she imagined some murderous emanation of this foul wart had rampaged through the countryside, uprooting all the rose bushes? She blushed at her folly. Just because it was winter didn’t mean that the roses had vanished from the earth. Pruned back for the season they simply waited their time. One day summer would return, and the very air would sing of them once more. Now was the season of waiting, the season of pruning, the season for faith to fasten itself to the certainty of glories yet to come.

She looked closer. There, barely hanging on, was a rosebud – dried, frost-bitten, but definitely a rosebud. Even as she reached towards it, it fell, straight into her outstretched hand. Last time it had been her husband-to-be who put the flower in her hand. This time, she believed, it was God.

Nothing in my hands ..

I have tried, Oh heaven, how I have tried. I planned my journey so carefully, investing in everything I could possibly need. There were the expensive walking boots, so I would not be tempted to give up by sore feet, and could brave the stony paths with brisk enthusiasm. I went to the best outdoor outfitters, and spent more than I should on good hiking clothes. I was told that layers were the way to go, so I could just add and subtract to adjust to every temperature variation. And the innermost layers were the most expensive, because moisture must be wicked away from the skin. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, or what dreadful thing would happen if I wore the wrong underwear, but a smart man knows when to take advice from experts, so I did just as they said. Socks, too, it was important to have good quality socks, and be able to change them when your feet got wet. Then there was the cloak, fully waterproofed and lined with thick wool, to keep me safe from the weather, and wrap around me at night if I ever needed to sleep outdoors. Not that I planned on doing that very often, there were hostels along the way (or so rumour had it), and, even if they were overpriced, I would have money. I was also advised to get a particular shade of grey, that would provide good camouflage if I ever found myself in a dangerous situation. And, since we’re talking about keeping safe, I chose my staff with particular care. A pilgrim is not allowed to carry a sword, there are strict rules about that, but if my staff should contain an insert of sharpened, toughened wood, well it’s not really a sword, is it?

Then there was the hat. One needs a wide brim to keep the sun off one’s face and the rain from one’s nose, and the fit must be just right – too loose and it will blow off with the first gust of wind, too tight and you will have a headache before the first day is over. Truly a matter of fine discrimination! Eventually I found one that was just right: high-crowned, with a bright gold buckle on the band, and a bright red feather sticking up. After all, I was journeying to the presence of a king, it would be important to make a good impression when I arrived. Buying a sturdy pack with a light, strong frame and well-padded shoulders was relatively easy,; working out what to carry in it took a lot more effort. There were the obvious things: containers for food and water, a microfiber towel, hand sanitiser, insect repellent (would there be insects? Best play it safe), a swiss army knife, a torch, water purification tablets, lots of money. Then I thought of others – a torch with spare batteries, a camera, to capture those special moments, a box of matches, a mirror to check I looked the part.. And so the list went on.

But there was one thing I really wanted that I couldn’t find anywhere – a map. I searched high, I searched low, even went into second-hand shops, but it was useless. Everywhere they told me the same story – that no map of that journey existed. Some tried to offer me a heavy black book instead, suggesting that this would be my sure guide, But the book was nothing but stories, poetry and songs, and it weighed me down, so I refused it. ..

And now – look at me! The boots were the first to go – sucked off my feet in the mud of a bog. It’s amazing how far a person can walk with rags tied round their feet. My hat blew away in a storm, I bartered my cloak for food, and all the contents of my pack were lost or stolen along the way. It’s probably just as well I lost the mirror, I think if I could see what I look like now, I would lose my last wavering thread of courage. My clothes are nothing but filthy rags, and the patent underwear got used along the way for wrapping my feet. My special staff was snatched from my hands the first time I tried to defend myself – and then they beat me with it before running off into the night. I have no idea how I made it this far, especially as I never had a clue where I was going.

I have nothing left. How can I come into the King’s presence like this? I am filthy, sick and useless. Once I thought the King would be honoured when I brought Him the gift of my service, now I know better. I have nothing in my hands at all, unless you count the scars and the dirt of the journey. And yet .. and yet ... I have nowhere else to go. If He will not receive me I will be a beggar at his door all the days of my life.