They were gentlemen, they were hard-working men, they were not perfect but they were genuine, they were best friends. They were godly men; they did not talk about God, they just did God. They were just ordinary, but God made them extraordinary.
Emma Spence, an artist, living on a working family farm at Drumlough, between Ballynahinch (54 degrees North, 5 degrees West) and Hillsborough (54 degrees North, 6 degrees West), tries to save her father, Noel (58) and her brothers Graham (30) and Nevin (22), when they succumb to deadly hydrogen sulphide fumes. The men are lost in a slurry pit, attempting to save a family pet and then each other.
The farm tragedy, the sporting prowess of the youngest son, Nevin – a star on the provincial and a sterling prospect for the national rugby team – the manly poise of the dead men, the courage and sensibility of Emma Spence, the sister who almost dies in the tragedy, lifts the horror out of the grim ordinariness of farm-accident deaths and onto the high planes of the universally tragic.
The Spence family loss is of the order of a Greek tragedy, as seen in playwright Howard Benton's affirmation of Terry Eagleton's definition of Tragedy.
'Culture and death are not rivals at all. There is a tragic self-mutilation at the very root of civilisation.' This is what a modern tragedy would own up to: the strange sweetness of an aesthetic spectacle with suffering at its core.
Yet Eagleton notes that his Irishness complicates his view of Tragedy.
I remark that the Irish were put on this earth for other people to feel romantic about. But living in a small contentious island also has its drawbacks, not least if you’re a semi-outsider, like myself; you have to be careful sometimes. I don’t know. I suppose I always knew Ireland too well to feel romantic about it.
The Spence family are people who would pull you out of a ditch.
Unromantically. Wonderfully. Humanly.
Speaking of her dead father and her dead brothers in turn, in simple, ardent words, Emma Spence, faces the tragedy with a dramatic litany that brings each individual into sharp focus and also links them as humans in a manner that links them to us all.
He’s the one who greeted you with a thump in the arm.
He’s also the one who had about 15 apps on his phone to check the weather forecast.
To me he is the one mum had the organic blueberries and prize-winning steak ready for when he called.
The Spence family find solace in their God. They are members of a small community of Baptists in the north-east of Ireland. Indigenous and incomers. Semi-outsiders.
They are joined in their grief by people all across Ireland. By farmers and sports-people in many different codes. By citizens and politicians of varying views. By people of differing religions and none.
The Spence God, who is achieved by scripture-based living and immersion in baptismal waters, is a God among many Gods. And no God.
And Emma Spence. Who is God. To her, the robe and crown. And her bothers. Her father. Her mother, her sister and her sister-in-law, her niece and her nephew.
Immanent and transcendent.
We resonate with their Baptist call: Oh, brothers and father, where art thou?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qw6Hon013E
http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/an-interview-with-terry-eagleton/
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