Peter’s blog for December

 

Flower
All’s in this flower …
Times, seasons, losses, all the fruits of woe,
Beauty’s fragility, and death’s bare gain,
Pluck’d in passing by, five minutes ago.

All’s in this flower, the war of life and death,
God’s character and purpose written down,
The force of love, the proof and power of faith –
All’s here, and all unknown.
Frank Kendon

 The film, Philomena, tells the powerful, moving and true story of Philomena Lee. She is a tough-minded, elderly Irish woman who battles to find out what happened to the baby boy taken away from her in the 1950s for as a teenage unmarried mother, she had been forced to put her child up for adoption.

 But the film is also about Martin Sixsmith, the former BBC correspondent turned New Labour political adviser who, in 2002, was ousted from his job. Unhappily returning to work as a freelance journalist, he chances across the extraordinary story of Philomena. Initially he refuses to get involved, deriding her story as merely of “human interest” but then, backed by a publishing company who see the potential for a book, he is drawn into the facts of her story, by the genuine way she relates it but above all by her wisdom, courage and sense of humour. He gets wholly involved in her story and takes her to America on a mission to track down her lost son.

 A study in contrasts
Martin and Philomena make the oddest of couples and their relationship forms a large part of the power and charm of the film. Their points of view are initially in such sharp contrast; they seem worlds apart

 Martin is the high flyer who has risen in the amoral worlds of politics and the media. He is worldly-wise and pragmatic, with much of what happens in his life dictated by circumstances, by meeting social and political needs. His world initially appears very real and relevant and he presents it it with a sharp articulate mind

 Philomena on the other hand leads what initially appears to be a much less interesting life. She became pregnant as a teenager and was sent to a home for unmarried mothers. There she was separated from her son who was given to an American couple. When we meet her she has spent thirty years in England as a nurse. She has a daughter who is the one that meets Martin at a party and seeks to interest him in the story.

 It is as if Philomena can no longer keep the story under raps but must bring the details of what happened to her out into the open no matter how painful opening up this wound again may be. Even though she is driven by this search for the truth she is also haunted by guilt feelings of having abandoned her son but most of all she is driven by her love for her child, by her desire for his happiness and to be reunited with him no matter how his life has turned out.

 

 Merging in a place of common human concern
The painful circumstances of Philomena’s early life left a terrible wound that was so painful that she was reluctant to intentionally revisit it. It was only when she met Martin and was encouraged to tell her story with all its grim details that she was able to face and accept her feelings of anger and guilt which over the years had given her hell. This was for her what we might call the talking it out therapy that helped to heal her woundedness and move on to appreciate that there was a goodness and a heroism in her life. Her reserves of wisdom, humour and courage gradually emerge with the unfolding of her story that Martin’s sharpness of wit and articulateness can’t match.

There is between this unlikely pair a gradual discovery of common ground where mind and heart make their way down to the basic needs of our common humanity. where our quest for the truth is tempered with our compassion for the limitations and sinfulness we all share. They come together in a place where something noble and even sublime about humanity prevails. There is that wonderful moment close to the end of the film where he defers to her sensibilities about going public with and expresses his willingness to put aside his desire as a journalist to publish her story.

Discovering our underground stream of inner wisdom
As I reflected on Philomena’s story what emerged for me was Philomena’s wisdom. At the beginning of the film she seems naive, unfocussed and inarticulate about what was going on inside of her. We fear for her being in the hands of a person who has lived his life in the ruthless world of journalism and politics and who disdains the world of human interest stories. But he soon realises that in Philomena he is dealing with someone who has been through the wars of life, who has wrestled with difficulties that dwarf his own. What is more, she has come through all of this not only intact but with a courage, a sense of humour and a wisdom that he admires and feels increasingly at home with. Hers is the wisdom learned through reflecting on the music of what happens on the epic journey each person’s life is.

 The music of what happens
One day the Irish mythic warrior Fionn was resting for a while when he and his companions were out hunting. A question arose about what was the most beautiful music in the world. Oisin said it was the cuckoo calling while Oscar said that in his opinion it was the ring of a spear on a shield. Other companions said that the finest sound was the belling of a stag, the baying of hounds heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laughter of a gleeful girl or the whisper of a moved one. When they eventually turned to Fionn and said, “Tell us chief what you think” he answered, “The music of what happens, that is the finest music in the world”

What we find along the way

To See God
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God and in my own face in the glass,
I see letters from God dropped in the street,
and every one is signed by God’s name.
Walt Whitman

Philomena is that person in each of us that Jesus looks on and relates with as he did with the woman he met when he went to Simon’s house for a meal. She had a bad reputation and as a result people were embarrassed when she found her way into Simon’s house and began to wash Jesus’ feet. Rather than pushing her away or disassociating himself from her he accepted her gesture as an act of courtesy that his host had not offered him. Jesus not only accepts her but is anxious to highlight her greatness for she has done what is the essence of the Great Commandment – the one that encapsulates all the others – in that she “has shown great love”. Her capacity to love has come out of her faith in the fact that Jesus would accept and forgive her as well as appreciate her capacity to “show great love”.

Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Lk 7:44-50)

 

The ultimate wisdom
Philomena is for me a study of the wisdom we find in ordinary people who through parenting, for example, are drawn into making the world of love and relationships a priority. In giving themselves to this they find a wisdom born of the love they give and receive in their heroic journey into these relationships. The intimate knowledge or personal wisdom that emerges from this experience is largely unconscious at the beginning; it is a part of what Ira Progoff calls our “underground stream of inner wisdom”. However, age and life’s painful circumstances question us about our being loved and loving and urge us to articulate and thus to understand what people like our parents, families and friends mean to us. In some way like this we realise how loving and loved we have been and thus grope our way towards believing it, no matter how faint and far away our unique wisdom may appear at times.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away. Thoreau

A teaching experience
The issue of this inner wisdom we each possess has been important for me from the early sixties when I became a teacher in a secondary school in Africa. For my classes in what was then called Religious Knowledge I was given a text book that was very far removed from where my pupils were. It was foreign to them in what it taught and in how it taught them about their inner world of the spirit. So the pupils were not involved, as what I was trying to teach had little connection to what and how they thought and felt. Some years later, when I had learned how to teach religion through the medium of their own experience and that of their community, they became interested and involved as the Bible was then able to speak to their personal wisdom which they had gleaned from world they lived in.

A way of proceeding
In order to guide them into the world of their own experience I invited them to use a method that involved their whole person, “heart, soul, mind and strength”. This involved spending most of the class encouraging them to focus on a significant event in their story and then to articulate what it was saying to them and how they felt about re-visiting it. Gradually the way they had grown to understand their experience and what was important about it for them emerged and was articulated. Even though they were young I found that they had already developed a personal synthesis or wisdom in the form of a body of convictions about what was true or meaningful and about what was of value or important for them.

What you learn on the road

Fifty years on and I am still trying to put people in touch with their own stream of inner wisdom. Under “Courses” in the menu above you will find one called, What do YOU want? Its aim is to help people find their inner wisdom or that which involves their whole person in their experience of being loved and loving within the main relationships of life. This is the most valuable knowledge we learn in life for in relation to it all else becomes a lot more real, colourful and credible. It is the wisdom the Bible values beyond all others.

Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me;
I called on God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepters and thrones,
and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her.
Neither did I liken to her any priceless gem,
because all gold is but a little sand in her sight,
and silver will be accounted as clay before her.
I loved her more than health and beauty,
and I chose to have her rather than light,
because her radiance never ceases.
All good things came to me along with her,
and in her hands uncounted wealth.
I rejoiced in them all, because wisdom leads them;
but I did not know that she was their mother.
I learned without guile and I impart without grudging;
I do not hide her wealth,
for it is an unfailing treasure for mortals;
those who get it obtain friendship with God.
(Wisdom 7:7-14)