Reconnecting

Saturday, 30 May, 2015

Supper was all on the stove, in a skillet and two saucepans, when I noticed the burners weren't getting hot.  There were no red lights indicating burners were on.  I tested the stove and it didn't work, either.  

So we ate a cold supper and this afternoon, I called up Shirley Anne, the electrician who had looked over our water heater last year.  She came into the kitchen and scowled.  "You told me there was no electric switch near the stove, and what do I see but an electric switch?"

"It's red," I said, "to indicate it's an emergency switch.  If we were subscribed to the home security service, you'd flip it and the police would come."

She flipped it and the burners came on.

But, but - there's one just like it in the bedroom, and THAT one is for security, definitely, so...?

She laughed and laughed.

"I want to pay you for coming out, anyway," I said apologetically.  She had come all the way from Birkdale.

"Just a cup of coffee, then," she said.

So I gave her some and we sat down to chat and I had a chance to get to know my favorite transgendered electrician.  (She doesn't know I know this.)  We traded some funny stories.  She seems to have more ignorant customers than just me, which is comforting.

Sunday, 31 May, 2015

Church in Leyland today.  (If you are an automobile fan, yes, Leyland is where the car by the same name used to be made.)  Met some several  people I'm very glad to know.

JONATHAN, age 3, was probably born here but his family is from India.  He's quite dark-skinned but with straight hair - and the brightest, sparkliest eyes you ever saw.  He crept up to me during the Kneeling Prayers for Pentecost and touched my hand.  I looked up and smiled back at him and now we are fast friends.  

SAMIR is a middle-aged man who just arrived here a few months ago, having fled his home in Syria.  "Well, thank God you're here now," I said, "and safe."

"But my brother is still there," he said.  

He loloks almost stereotypically Arab, but his eyes are green, and there was a great deal of pain in them as he told of the hardships involved in fleeing Syria, and even more so as he wondered aloud why Western Christians have not come to the aid of their brethren in the  Middle East.  "King Richard, of the Lion heart, came to rescue us," he said, "But where is any help today?  Why is there no help now?"  Well, there's a different slant on the Crusades, huh?

"Not going to happen," I said, "The powers that be in the West are not your brothers."

"Not even Christians!"  he replied.  "I discovered this when I came here to England."

I need to get to know Samir better.

FREGGI is maybe as old as 40 and has recently fled Eritrea.  He's a black African and I didn't get a chance to talk with him very much.  Must make up for that next Sunday.

KENNETH, 70, is Cornish and was just chrismated this past December.  We traded stories of our journeys.  "Kenneth," he told me, is the name of a Cornish saint.  An Orthodox saint, predating the time when Catholicism asserted authority over Cornwall.

In the evening we had a pub supper at the Hayfield Inn with John and Ella Coventry.  So good to be with with these lovely souls.  We seldom spend time with them without one or more of us becoming teary-eyed from speaking from our hearts.m