GLASTONBURY: Do You Love Me More?
It’s Monday, my day off and knackered
is the only word for what I feel. I’m having an americano on the pier in
sunshine. It must have to do with the intensity with which I live the weekends,
especially in celebrating Mass. A surprising thought entered my mind during the
consecration at the last Mass yesterday, just as a weary knee genuflected -
"this is where I would like to die - here, celebrating Mass!" And in
the state of grace! An honest, unbidden desire! And I thought of how awful that
would be for my family and all who love me. I know the awful shock of sudden
death and yet, if God chose to call me in that way, then I would serve them
best by it. You never know the kind of thoughts that fly through your head at
such sacred moments.
Friday, we had Mass for the feast of
the Sacred Heart up at the school. Always a special experience from the time I
walk in the gate to be mobbed by the children from Reception, many of whom want
to hug me, others want to tell me about their cuts and bruises.
I used photos of my resident pigeons,
projected onto the wall, to speak of God’s constant and protective love – the
way the mother and father pigeons take turns sitting on the eggs to keep them
warm and safe. They laughed when I said, “of course God doesn’t sit on us!” The
children get it. It’s such a simple message, the message of the gospel. And
it’s such a joy to watch the uninhibited bopping of the children to the rhythm
of the hymns. They are so happy in the moment, happy in the message. Trustful
in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And what a delight it was for the Vigil Mass of
Saints Peter and Paul to have the First Holy Communion children back in all
their finery, presenting them to the congregation, hearing them declare with
St. Peter their love for Jesus.
Saturday began and ended with the
sudden deaths of a young mother and a young father, both from different
families, not connected. I feel I have failed both, could not save them from
the terrible sorrow that has descended upon them. Sudden and tragic deaths
leave all sorts of confused feelings in their wake and I have to make a
rational decision to bring my feelings of failure into the Heart of Jesus where
the right balance is to be found. The heart, the spiritual heart in all of us
is where emotion and reason come together in harmony. It’s the right place from
which to live our lives. It’s where I know that God is God and I am not!
The rawness of death doesn’t simply
disappear and in the late evening I escape into Glastonbury on BBC. It awakens
an old love, the obsessive, passionate love of music that was mine in the late
60's and 70's. The joy I behold now on the tv screen. The power of live music
and the shared experience in the simplicity of our youth, gathered around a
record player in the sitting room. We listened to each other's records, talked
through the songs, their meaning, admired sleeves. We borrowed, swopped,
loaned, taking great care not to scratch the vinyl.
The radio cassette recorder on top of
the fridge in the kitchen, the pause and record buttons ever ready for whatever
favourite track Larry Gogan or Pat Kenny might play. I knew everything that was
to be known about the charts, the year, the date, the position a single entered
into the chart, how long it spent at number 1. It became an obsession, the
thing I loved more than anything, a kind of possession.
Then there came a time when I knew
that the obsession was interfering with my spiritual development and it seemed
that Jesus was asking me as he asked Peter, "Do you love me more...?"
More than music! I loved Him but not more than music and realized I needed to.
And still not ready for the "more" I began to pray that I would come
to love Him at least as much as music. It took years for Grace to achieve its
purpose but it was done eventually, as has happened with a number of my
addictions, the insatiable cravings of my being. In this lies my hope - that my
current addictions will find their consummation in Love of Jesus. It seems to
me that when I love Him more, then all my loves find their proper place and
expression. I did not lose music in the process of coming to love Him more.
It's one thing to say this of addictions and desires, it's quite another to say
it of the people I love, yet it seems to be what He asks. It's there in
the Gospels.
Getting over an addiction, emerging
into the most genuine of Loves is part of the process of getting to know who
Jesus really is. To know Him is to love Him, to love Him is to get to know Him
better and, by extension it is to arrive at the best possible way of knowing
and loving those who are given to me in life.
The pigeon’s eggs are symbolic of
breaking out of the shell that encases us – breaking out, breaking through,
breaking into the new life that is offered. And this experience of the pigeons
is utterly new, something I have never ever seen before, hinting at the ever
newness that opens up for us in God.
And there they are, eighteen days
later, these little scrawny baby birds. Ugly looking things at first sight but
when I allow myself to “see” them, they are a wonder. They remind me of unborn
babies. That thought sends me into a spin! I was reading about a woman who
regrets having voted “Yes”in last year’s referendum in Ireland. She and other “yes”
people are distressed by the laws that have been introduced. I am impatient
with such regret, intolerant of it because it is utterly useless and absolutely
too late.
I'm reading a friend’s weekly account
of her experience of being treated for cancer, of living with it. It's a
"live" diary, happening now, every day. Her resilience, courage and
humour inspire. This week she writes about how we might imagine ourselves dying
- something I do from time to time. Mam's death is the ideal. Ten days living
with the knowledge that she had cancer, expecting three months but we seized
the moment and had ten memorable days. She died at home with her children
gathered round her celebrating Mass.
Mam’s sister is now seriously ill in
hospital, our last remaining aunt. After Mass yesterday I went up to London to
visit her. She was sleeping so I sat looking at her, praying silently. Like Mam
she has macular degeneration and, when she woke up, she looked at me saying,
“hello, who is it?” When I leaned over her and spoke, she knew me. “I thought
you were that man with the white beard from the Dubliners, the one who plays
the fiddle.” We laughed. She too is resilient and very patient with her lot.
She’s waiting for one of these scope tests and hasn’t been given any food or
drink for four days. It’s awful but she isn’t complaining when she says how she
longs for a cup of tea and chocolate.
As I’m leaving, I lean over her again
and give her a quiet blessing. She holds my face in her two hands like she
always does when we say goodbye. It’s the tenderest of gestures. She is not
holding on to me, she is giving to me, perhaps giving me away. I
tell her it feels like a blessing when she does that. She said it feels like a
blessing to her when she touches my face.
It was late when I got back home but
the buzz of travel was too strong in me for sleep so I went to Glastonbury
again on BBC playback to watch Kylie. Her music doesn’t do it for me but I’m
very fond of her. It’s an emotional
event because of her experience with cancer but it’s also a very happy one.
Before calling it a day at around 1.00am I looked back at David Bowie at
Glastonbury 2000, a stirring performance of ‘Heroes’. He was once one of the
objects of my obsessive musical love from his first appearance on Top of the
Pops in July 1972.
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