Tag: poetry

A cheer for Chaplains!

Just last week I was at Newman University, Birmingham, to take part in some research. The focus is on how better to prepare the school chaplains of the future – their training, support, encouragement and well-being. I was asked to talk about my experience of chaplains over the years and this took me back to my own experience at boarding school in Scotland.

‘Muscular Christianity’

We had two school chaplains, one for the Anglican community and the other for the Church of Scotland, and both were very effective and approachable.  As I remember, they were a full part of boarding school life – including sport, outdoor activities, the classroom and the boarding houses. (‘Muscular Christianity’, I suppose, but in its most positive of forms.) I was just starting out as a Christian and they nurtured my faith and allowed me to ask questions, to challenge and to explore spirituality in a productive way. Through their pastoral care, I got involved with holiday camps run by Scripture Union and helped organise a Christian Union in school. They were innovative in chapel, too: I well remember us singing our way through the just published ‘Jesus Christ Superstar‘ with great gusto and without embarrassment (and this was an all-boys’ school, too).

Asking questions

I further recalled how important school chaplains had been to me as a young, married, teacher. Also in a boys’ boarding school, I was encouraged to help with assemblies and chapels – thus having to order my thoughts and hone my delivery in those precious seven-minute slots. I was also enabled to lead a town-wide schools’ group – embracing the maintained and independent sectors – and there was helped to articulate my own faith and to consider the time-honoured questions about suffering, poverty, war, creation and disease.

And so it has been in recent days as I have ‘listened in’ to school chaplains through the closed WhatsApp group I help to organise: here again are men and women eager to help and share, to be open and honest where they are at present and to rejoice, despite the current crisis, in all their school communities are still able to do. Chapels and assemblies have become voluntary during the present virus-fearful times and yet droves of students have wanted to come to share, to pray and to support each other.

Here is a poem being shared by chaplains just now. Read it and be encouraged!

Lockdown, by Richard Hendrick

Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able to touch across the empty square,
Sing.

Lost for words?

Lost for words?

Earlier this week it was ‘International Stammering Awareness Day’ and suddenly I was back in my elocution lessons. A feature on the BBC news focused on a school teacher called Abed Ahmed – or rather MISTER Abed Ahmed as he can’t say his first name without a prefix – and again I was reminded of my own occasional struggles to pronounce certain words and sounds. Mr Ahmed was helping the pupils in his school with this speech disability and once more my elocution teacher was there in front of me.

Heartwarming help

This piece of news reminded me of a similar heart-warming article in the Press in January this year about author Chris Young, who was trying to get in touch with his English teacher, a Miss Ward, from the late 1970s. Mr Young, who commended his teacher for supporting him after his mother died and his alcoholic father could not cope, tweeted: ‘I’d dropped into the bottom quarter for English at school. My #English Teacher Miss Ward pulled me out of that ditch’. At the age of 13 years, Miss Ward ‘treated me like a rock star, loved what I wrote and got me to talk in front of the class’. He is now about to launch his first book!

I imagine (and I hope) that we all have memories of someone who has stood by us, encouraged us and ‘been there for us’ when the going got tough. Whilst my early life was very different from that of the gentleman above, I can also remember a teacher who impacted me positively and immeasurably – and who also gave me confidence to speak in front of others. Her name was Miss Margaret Maclaurin and she was my elocution teacher at Prep School in Scotland in the 1960s.

Stuttering and stammering

My parents lived and worked in West Africa and were in a remote area of Ghana when the time came for me to go to school aged five. There was nowhere suitable for me locally and so I came to board, aged five, at Drumley House Prep School near Ayr, Scotland. Whilst I have only fond memories of my eight years at Drumley, at some point in my early years there I developed a stammer. This was probably a result of the separation from my parents (perceived wisdom then was for me to be a whole school year away from my parents to enable me to settle as a boarder). Miss Maclaurin came to my rescue! She saw me once a week for elocution lessons and during this time not only did I learn a few ‘tricks’ (such as how to avoid using words beginning with ‘p’ when feeling tired and stressed and also, like Mr Ahmed, about prefixing troublesome sounds with easier words), I also learnt about speaking in public. Where this was once the most disarming place for me as a stutterer, it came to be a challenge which I relished. Miss M taught me to learn poetry off by heart so that when I declaimed I could concentrate on expression, modulation and emphasis and not have to worry about the words themselves.

As a Head I had to speak in public almost daily and owe a huge debt of gratitude towards Miss Maclaurin. It was a delight to visit her in her home when recently married and to introduce her to my wife. So engrossed were we in conversation that we quite forgot that my wife had gone off to the bathroom (and somehow locked herself in) – but that’s another story!

So, a challenge for us all: think of someone who has had a positive impact on our lives in years gone by and why not surprise them with a letter, a card, a call or even a visit – just to show appreciation? It might prove to be a ‘drop of grace’ in their life at this very moment. You’ll never know if you don’t try it – and who knows, someone may do it for you, too!  Don’t be ‘lost for words’, no matter what this might mean in your life.