I was walking through Yeovil to spend Boxing Day afternoon with friends. This poem caught my eye in the window of an empty shop. Yeovil is a small rundown town once the home of glove-making – covered the hands of the Western world, you might say! This is why ‘Glovers Walk’ has nostalgic resonance: the average chest-of-drawers doesn’t hold the leather gloves it once did and gloving is a long-lost industry. Helicopters are still built here but these days Yeovil is a postindustrial town and the centre is a scruffy building site.
In the light of my recent grapplings with loss (see posts 1-25th Dec 2023 on Facebook) I found the first line arresting: ‘you could get stuck for years on the thought of loss’. It came like a gentle warning and nudge to keep moving. I love the idea that there is still lots to cherish (polish!) and wonder what patterns I might salvage from the past. The soil of Yeovil at least where I live is full of rubble and ash – my home is built on the old industrial ashlands, but the poet encourages us to see the soil exposed by the demolition of old buildings as somewhere to plant art. I definitely didn’t expect something as risky and dramatic as a somersault to be the representation of art, but the phrase ‘somersaulting through what we thought we knew’ feels really true about what happened with my Singleness Advent Diary (SAD), something risky I didn’t quite intend that seems to have landed me in a future that I hadn’t expected. And this new place does feel – in spite of the fact the realities of my life haven’t changed – a bit like a sweet shop full of new possibilities.
This morning I felt a sense of God’s pride at my having ‘brought the hidden out’ from behind the mask of apparent strength and sortedness. I came to Yeovil precisely because it was an ordinary place not pretending to be something it isn’t. It can be proud of that. Of being itself, losses and all, awaiting the surprise of a new future, a crackly happiness. So can I.
This is amazing Tina.
God woke me the other night and said:
“You are choosing separation over intimacy and vulnerability because of your fear of loss”
And I realised how much I had learnt separation over the years – like a clever trick that I could perform any time I want.
The thing is with autism – to me it is an intense need for focus. It takes a lot to feel my feelings. If I don’t take a risk in relationship, I feel nothing. I need to risk, and the greatest risk is facing my fear of loss.
Hi Jennie I identify with this… and many others will too. However, I think God longs to take us gradually to all the places of our greatest fears and show us there is nowhere She is not. I think this is why Jesus in some traditions is said to ‘harrow Hell’ on Easter Saturday. He goes to the place of our worst nightmares and brings us out through his love. My experience is that God has taken me to many of the places I have dreaded and made them a place of blessing, even through pain and loss. This is how our faith keeps expanding; Jesus must have known this about God to go to the cross.