Quintessence

I’m visiting my granddaughter tomorrow, and that reminded me of this blog which I, in absent minded old age, appear to have forgotten about in its entirety. Oh dear. What to write, what to write. Well, that’s the spirit of the thing isn’t it; the heart of the matter, the tale we are telling is the centre of it all. I would be hard pressed to find the centre of my own story, that one revolving event for which my life was created. I’d probably have to say that my faith is the centre of my existence, to see God and to love God and to serve God. I know it isn’t very P.C, but I did serve as a missionary for a time, mostly in Africa but in South America for a while also.  I did most of my service in the slums of cities that were both poor in money but rich in people, a difficult contrast to say the least. I tried my best to be more a teacher of methods than a Bible thumping converter, my job description being in my mind to teach and show a path instead of forcing down my one, which is only one of many. I wanted to show these people, these children the force of my God’s love. Of course, it’s easy to show people that love exists, but harder to prove that it’s for them as well.

If I was that word, then my wife was the action, the movement that made all I said viable, that love and worship and relationship were all intertwined integrally as the most important things the soul needs. My wife fed them, you see. Over her life, she fostered over forty children, and dozens more stayed with us for a day, two days, as long as we needed. She never closed a door, never kicked someone out, and she managed to rear all three of our own children well on top of that. She was sweet, and kind, and gentle, and forgave all mistakes. She worked and volunteered all she could wherever she could, and prayed for those she could not help directly. She was the grace of God personified in my mind.

Sometimes I wonder where she is now. But thanks to the certainty blind religious faith allows me, and yes, I do know my faith is blind and stumbling, but that does not mean it is without thought, and in any case thanks to it I am able to think of my wife as safe in the hands of the Lord I love and that both of us served throughout our lives. He has her in his arms, and he knows her goodness, just as he knows the light that is in the soul of all living people, the life and greatness one person has. She is in a good place now, a place of that light.