It makes for a fine family gathering at Easter: a small holiday camp in the north-west of England, between Blackpool and Preston, accessible by car from the city where the young ones live and by flight to Liverpool and a local taxi for the grandparents.
The taxi driver is calm, able and an ardent Christian. Our conversation turns to Christianity when I push back against inappropriate remarks he makes on Islam, after comments on changes to his High Street. I suggest the changes might be more economic than religious. His neighbours change shopping habits from the high street to out-of-town malls and superstores. Many similar changes are driven, literally, by cars and the chimera of convenience.
The driver reads about Christianity and Islam, including the Bible, the Koran and commentaries on the books in the Daily Mail and other aligned publications. He avers that God is Good and that humans are created in his image. I don’t raise the gender issue. I regret that. I ask if he means all humans and he answers ‘yes’.
He takes the Genesis story as his starting point.When I ask who created the Serpent he says “God”. From there, we stumble through thickets of The Problem of Evil and the use of Free Will. I suggest putting Free Will in an image of himself might have been a mistake. The driver ends by proposing capital punishment for Axel Rudakubana, the so-called Southport Killer, serving a long prison sentence for murdering three young girls. He says he would hang him. When I ask “would you tie the noose, throw the lever in the trapdoor, plunge home the poison-driver, fire the executioner’s gun?” he replies that he would.
I mention John Walker, one of The Birmingham Six, released after 16 years wrongful imprisonment when he found to be innocent of the IRA pub bombings that killed 21 people in Birmingham in 1974. I say that if his view is taken, then John Walker and many others would be dead. He doesn’t respond.
I put it to him that he could write to Axel Rudakubana and offer him his love, as Jesus advised.
We part on good terms. Our family greets us and we settle into the Easter holiday accommodation.
Nanny, daughter and two grand-daughters go to a swim session the next day. I follow on my hired mobility scooter. I park up and hobble around on crutches, seeking a spot from which to view the family. I don’t manage it and I make my way back to the scooter. I am familiar with these scooters, as I use one at home and hire various models, when travelling.
It becomes clear that I can’t insert the key into the ignition, no matter which way I swivel it. A number of passersby check if I need help. I thank them and they move on. It’s obvious that I really do need assistance, when a man in gym shorts and tee-shirt, carrying a water bottle and a phone, stops. He tries the key. No luck.
I ask if he would phone the scooter hire company. There is a sticker with contact details on the handlebars. I tell him my phone is back at the accommodation. He phones and carries on a back-and-forth conversation with a woman from the scooter company. She asks him to describe the key. When he does, she says it’s not one of theirs. I box the pockets of my jacket and jeans. I find another set of very similar keys. One of them slots easily into the ignition, turns without a hitch, and illuminates the lights on the control panel.
Tears gather in my eyes.
A severe bout of respiratory illness, probably pneumonia, in February leaves me frail and hapless. Even more frail and hapless than from the crippling respiratory and mobility conditions that see me using a mobility scooter, a wheelchair and crutches.
I apologise to the man. I thank him. He invites me to thank Jesus. I laugh lightly, wondering if I am on an Easter Special. It’s Spy Wednesday of Holy Week in the Christian calendar.
- You are my second Christian this week.
He smiles and, just like my first Christian, he asks
- Are you a person of faith?”
I repeat my earlier and regular answer to the question.
- Yes, I am a person of faith, but not of religious faith.
I tell him I believe in him.
He invites me to believe in Jesus, who, he says loves me and who found the key. I suggest that he uncovered the key, not Jesus. There is nothing mysterious about a heavily-medicated seventy one year old man, struggling with pain and disability, experiencing lapses of memory and mental acuity. I say
- I love you, not Jesus.
He says that Jesus brought us together. I demur. I say the same could be said about contingency. Chance brought us together. It’s not a saviour or an open tomb. It does not offer grace, nor chocolate eggs. Good people like him happen along.
We part on good terms.
On Maundy Thursday, two girls and their grandparents enjoy a quiet meal. The girls’ parents have a ‘night off’. The older girl tells of her drama work at a club and at her primary school. She speaks about a recent show; a pastiche of scenes and songs from the musical Annie. Then she takes us through her school show, a live telling of incidents in the life and death of Jesus, as they take place on the days of Easter week.
She starts with the palm-strewn lanes of Jerusalem, with Jesus on a donkey. Step by step, she moves through the week and the narrative known to Christians as The Greatest Story Ever Told. She recounts the tale with relish and detail. She has the Roman Governor washing his hands as the people call for Barabbas, not Jesus, to be released. She asks questions of herself, her grandparents and of the story: who? how come?
She tells about a supper and a betrayal: what does that mean? why? She gets her characters to the garden. She details a kiss on the cheek and offers that French and Spanish people do that, but not so much English and Irish people. People are different.
The little sister acts and plays in her own story, coming and going from the table and her half-empty plate, asserting contradictions: I finish. I hungry.
We get to the three men crucified: why three? She describes Jesus’ mother and other women. She describes the soldiers, one of whom she played in the school play. She gets us to the tomb, the empty tomb, the people amazed.
She is not amazed. She is enthralled and full of questions, as she is with many of the stories she hears. Her Nanny comments that if she remembers the geography and history stories she’ll be told at school, she’ll have no bother.
I am delighted. Stories are important to me. They are the structured imaginings with which I explain the world and my experiences to myself.
The storyteller leaves an empty plate and the table. She joins her sister at a jigsaw, until they bicker and the grandparents distract them with fruit and a biscuit. After all, they are human, in their own image. They suffer pain. They inflict pain. They salve pain. Pain unites them and us. Including the two men I met.
I wish us well, as Easter marks brighter mornings, more heat and a Spring in our gloriously human steps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on3M7YWlewo
Film trailer: The Greatest Story Ever Told
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