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Lyric of an Obese Dachshund Bitch

 

They are equally pretty, My toes or my tittie,


To ramble or gallop upon; Whatever will happen When I must re-cap’em

 

The days that my nipples wear out And are gone?

 

This is my favourite: It’s OK to be tight on The seafront at Brighton But I say, by Jove Watch out if it’s Hove.

 

It may not be great poetry, but I thought it had charm. Or perhaps it was the charm of Sister Monica Joan tha coloured my assessment.

 

I found a revealing poem about her father, which told a lot about her early life:

 

Fretful, unloving, mannerless Papa,


What a crustaceous old boy you are

 

-

 

How you do go it!

Blowing your bugle, like a ham stage-star,

 

How you do blow it!

And where does it get you, Papa? Or is it wasted breath?

 

“Leave everything to me” Vainly the old man saith.

 

With an arrogant, domineering father her struggle to assert herself and to leave home must have been monumental. A weaker character would have been crushed.

 

For a lovesick young girl, her love poems spoke to my heart, and brought tears to my eyes. As:


To an Unknown God

 

I sang to you

 

In the day of my bliss And you were near

 

I thought of you In my lover’s kiss And felt you there I turned to you

 

When our love was too brief And found your strength.

 

I needed you

In the years of my grief And knew you, at length.

 

“Our love was too brief.” Oh, I knew all about that. Does one have to suffer so dreadfully in order to know the unknown God? Who, when, what was the story of Sister Monica Joan’s lost


love? I longed to know, but dared not ask. Did he die, or did her parents object? Why was he unobtainable? Was he already married, or did he just cease to care, and leave her? I longed to know, but could not ask. Any intrusive questions would deserve, and receive, a caustic comment from that barbed tongue.

 

Her religious poetry was surprisingly slender, and as I was eager to know more about her religion, I asked her about this aspect of her poetry. She replied with these lines from Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn:

 

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” - that

is all

 

Ye know on earth, and all ye need


to know.

 

“Do not ask me to immortalise the great Mystery of Life. I am just a humble worker. For beauty, look to the Psalms, to Isaiah, to St John of the Cross. How could my poor pen scan such verse? For truth, look to the Gospels - four short accounts of God made Man. There is nothing more to say.”

 

She looked unusually tired that day and, as she lay back on the pillows, the wintry light from the window accentuating her pale, aristocratic features, my heart filled with tenderness. I had come to a convent by mistake, an irreligious girl. I would not have described myself as a committed atheist for whom all spirituality was nonsense,


but as an agnostic in whom large areas of doubt and uncertainty resided. I had never met nuns before, and regarded them at first as a bit of a joke; later, with astonishment bordering on incredulity. Finally this was replaced by respect, and then deep love.



What had impelled Sister Monica Joan to abandon a privileged life for one of hardship, working in the slums of London’s Docklands? “Was it love of people?” I asked her.

 

“Of course not,” she snapped sharply. “How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don’t even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working,


in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people.”

 

I asked her how she had heard her calling, and come to be professed. She quoted lines from The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson.

 

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

 

I fled Him down the arches of the years;

 

I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways

 

Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

 

I hid from Him.

I asked her what was meant by “I


fled Him”, and she became cross. “Questions, questions - you wear

 

me out with your questions, child. Find out for yourself - we all have to in the end. No one can give you faith. It is a gift from God alone. Seek and ye shall find. Read the Gospels. There is no other way. Do not pester me with your everlasting questions. Go with God, child; just go with God.”

 

She was obviously tired. I kissed her and slipped away.

 

Her constant phrase, “Go with God”, had puzzled me a good deal. Suddenly it became clear. It was a revelation - acceptance. It filled me with joy. Accept life, the world, Spirit, God, call it what you will, and all else will


follow. I had been groping for years to understand, or at least to come to terms with the meaning of life. These three small words, “Go with God”, were for me the beginning of faith.

 

That evening, I started to read the Gospels.


APPENDIX



Date: 2016-04-22; view: 919


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