tragedy

I awoke this morning realising that I needed to post something on this blog. What follows is not what I expected to be writing about... Today I have been reminded of two tragedies - sadly one of them because of yet another event which seems to make no sense.
A post on Facebook asking people to remember the Lockerbie tragedy 26 years ago brought back a whole series of memories of the trauma support courses I organised as an airport chaplain. My co-organiser was an airport firefighter who back in 1988 was an RAF firefighter based near Carlisle. He was one of the first on the scene that fateful night in Lockerbie and offered participants in the course a vivid and graphic first hand account of that night - not least his description of the search of a row of houses in which he knew the sister of a colleague lived. She had not been at home that evening so there was one happy ending, but his first hand experience at the centre of such a tragedy brought a reality to many lessons of that course.
Then I heard about the tragedy of a bin wagon ploughing into pedestrians in Glasgow city centre. As I write this the details are still sketchy but as I read about what is known I am drawn to thoughts for the driver of the wagon. In 1998 two people died and several others injured when a bus ran out of control in Sunderland bus station. At the time I was chaplain to the bus company and the first I heard of the incident was a phone call from the control room. The next morning in the depot, while waiting for driver to finish interviews with police and his union reps I talked to his colleagues. They were in shock, the most telling comment; 'we can't believe it was G. we always dread getting stuck behind him because he is so steady, we know we will be running late'. Over the next couple of couple of years I got to know that driver very well and when the case came to trial he lived with us (for fear of retribution if he went home) and I accompanied him to court each day of very complex and sad case. No-one, including the trial Judge, ever got to the bottom of what happened. G. never drove on public roads again, though to their credit the much maligned company gave him a job moving buses on the night shift in the depot. Something happened, whether mechanical or human error we will never know, but my driver friend was a victim that day too.
On a very personal, sabbatical(!) level - I am trying to make sense of the news today, and also thinking about how these memories of trying to support folk in the middle of the shitiness of life (and I don't think I was always very good at it) contrast with my current role as a religious bureaucrat. (just saying!!)
What I am increasingly clear about - the message of Advent, God coming to dwell with us, is not a sickly sweet story, but a reminder that God suffers with us when life goes wrong (and celebrates with us when it goes better).

crossing the piazza

Writing a week ago I was exploring the idea of Advent in the midst of the simple and ordinary. Yesterday, I saw this work by Alberto Giacametti in

the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Titled 'Piazza', it is a small scale work. The curator’s interpretation suggests that Giacametti's characteristic elongated figures are positioned so that their perceived pathways across the piazza would not cross. This should not ‘be taken to indicate urban alienation, but simply the nature of a public place of intersecting passage’. I wondered though if those intersections could have any lasting effect?

Reflecting on the last week or so I have ‘intersected’ or crossed paths with all sorts of people and experiences. A week of art school was always meant to be the highlight, and it lived up to expectation. I was gently challenged and encouraged by Enrico, a sculptor by training who is passionate about correct perspective and sensitive tone  drawing. Daily exercises drawing carefully placed and lit wooden blocks and fruit demanded extreme concentration, as did the careful observation and representation of various sculptures and portraits. (My earlier observation about seeing too many sculptures in the galleries rather came home to roost!). The time was far too short but I take memories (and a tiny bit of skill!) from this encounter which has become part of me. Once he was happy that he had imparted some basic principles, Enrico was happier for a little more freedom in drawing from live models. (Lots of parallels to be drawn with other aspects of life….)

Significant too, were the encounters with other students, all of whom were there for more substantial periods, gap year students in the main, but making up a community which was both transient and stable. Transient in that it constantly welcomed and bid farewell to its members, the most regular topic of conversation was around, ‘when are you leaving?’ But, oddly stable too, reflected in common purpose and a sense of continuity however often the faces changed.

I was struck by how quickly bonds can form – something which was even more starkly evident in the cookery classes I took on a couple of evenings. Here over 3 hours learning some basic skills and then eating together it was striking how lives from Ukraine, Norway and South Africa intersected, learned about one another and then continued our very different journeys. All of these were easy, ordinary encounters taking place in unusual settings. I felt I was among strangers who however briefly became good friends.

Back to Giacametti – whilst the potential encounters represented by the cast figures would be fleeting, they would not be devoid of response. Any encounter, however fleeting changes something. We give something and take something as we intersect, in meeting, sharing and parting. The figures may be on different paths but their presence together means they will in some way have an influence on one another’s course.