Irish Chaplaincy blog: It's behind you!?

I don't know if it's just me but I seem to spend large chunks of my life looking for things, big and small, and oftentimes searching in completely the wrong places.

How much time and energy and frustration there is bound up with this endless quest: for missing objects (that, when finally located, I realise I maybe don't even need!); or for contentment or recognition or success or intimacy or whatever.

How many prayers are said in supplication to St Anthony, who, it has to be said, rarely if ever lets me down.

I suspect it's not just me, and I've noticed the ever-increasing use in the media of the acronym FOMO (fear of missing out).

So many people doing so much searching; and, so often, looking in the wrong place. Sometimes we completely miss what might be right in front of us; or, as in the pantomimes, what's right behind us!

As another Christmas comes and goes I find reassurance in the incongruity of God being revealed where few were expecting it. Many were waiting for a mighty king to come and bring liberation from an occupying force. Who, then, would have been searching for the messiah in Bethlehem, a back-water town on the edge of the Roman empire? And who would have suspected it would have had anything to do with an unmarried couple who were far from home and soon to become refugees? And in a stable? Surely not there! And what of those who did know where to look?

Shepherds, who were often rough hired hands, and who were outcasts in their community because having to be out at all hours meant they were unable to observe all of the rituals of the Jewish faith and who may well have been a bit tipsy due to having a little tot or two to shield them from the cold night. Then three mysterious characters who had followed a star and who turned up with the most unusual, but most fitting gifts.

I'd been invited on January 2nd, on which the feast of the Epiphany was being celebrated, to give a presentation of my book at St Paul's church in Camden following Mass and a shared meal. It was a motley group of people gathered there which included a couple of regulars from the Irish Centre. The church itself is a rather run down and sorry looking 60s style building, albeit with a lovely, prayerful chapel at one end, but the interior had been transformed for the banquet to come. It is situated at the opposite end of Camden Square to the Centre and I began my talk by explaining how I'd discovered it on my very first day at the Irish Chaplaincy. I was feeling totally overwhelmed after the first morning and went out and strolled in the square and saw a poster advertising a half hour of silent prayer in the chapel every Thursday lunchtime and I knew that all would be well. I went to the prayer in that first week and almost every subsequent week for the next three years, until Covid put a stop to it, and it was an anchor in my week.

There was a good crowd there on the 2nd but although it seemed that the presentation went well I sold hardly any books; which is what I thought I'd gone there for. I was bitterly disappointed. Getting rained on when walking back to the station didn't help my mood, nor my arm getting sore from carrying my guitar (and the still almost full box of books)! Then early the following morning I saw an email from Judy who organises the silent prayer at St Pauls, and I will treasure her kind words to me:

"We are such a diverse group of people, but everybody was spellbound. The things you say and the way you say them really do affirm human kindness (and God's kindness to us) and encourage people to notice the life that goes on between them and among them that's too deep for words. I don't know how your sales went, but you made a whole lot of people very happy. I hope your journeys from and back to Canterbury went well and that you didn't get soaked in the afternoon."

As ever, I had been looking in the wrong place, or seeking the wrong thing; or maybe just completely missing what was right in front of me. I had taken part in a true feast, with lots of people having brought a variety of delicious dishes to share. I had been served an assortment of drinks, including a glass of Irish coffee, which I love. I had spoken to a range of colourful characters. At the end of my presentation, after singing 'Be Thou my Vision' I had been asked to sing one of my own songs, and there was a request for "something upbeat"! I did the song I'd once written after a night out in Belfast, 'Fibber McGees'. And Kilkenny-born Enda got up and did some Irish dancing to the delight of the crowd, and was joined by Funmi who is of Sierra Leone heritage (and who had provided the Irish coffee) and it was one of those little 'Kingdom of Heaven' moments.

I doubt that I'll be able to curtail my endless search for things, and I'm sure I'll continue to get disappointed and discouraged when I don't find what I thought I was looking for. But please God I'll learn one day to discern more clearly the things that are truly worth seeking, and maybe occasionally find something I didn't even know I was looking for and in a place where I least expected to find it.

PS If you're not fed up with Christmas songs by now then you might like to listen to one I wrote some years ago: A Stable in Bethlehem