It is New Year’s Day and time to reflect on the past year and ponder the unknowns of the year ahead: an ‘in between day’. It is a pattern which is repeated, constantly through our lives, although we might not recognise it. As a young person, there are usually some fixed points to anticipate: school and college term times, holiday dates, birthdays and anniversaries, but now, in retirement and increasingly less able to live independently, there are fewer fixtures and more uncertainties as I become more reliant on others.
So I find myself looking back to some of the past ‘in between’ times in my life and remembering how the wisdom of my Carmelite brothers and sisters has taught me to live in joyful hope despite sometimes apparently impossible situations.
Two occasions immediately come to mind. The first, as a teenager, when I was searching for a sense of direction. Growing up in rural East Anglia, my devout Protestant grandmothers taught me to say prayers and read the Bible. “Seek ye first…” was my favourite text- and still is! But it was not enough and after spending a long holiday with a German Catholic family in the Swabian Alps as part of a post 2nd World war reconciliation programme I resolved to become a Catholic, too. But how?
Nervously, I found a Catholic church and discovered a copy of St.Therese’s ‘ Little Way’! It was my guide for the next 8 years as I left home, went to college in the North East to train as a teacher and started work.
I found a Catholic church and I spent much of my free time there, questioning and, I now understand, praying. One day the priest enquired who I was and what I was doing there! I owned up to not being a Catholic. No one had told me what I should do and St Therese didn’t have an answer to that question! The priest’s response was: ‘No, you are not a Catholic but you are a Carmelite!’ He quickly arranged for me to be received into the church and to teach in the Parish school.
Many years later, after marriage and with six sons and fifteen years as a headteacher of a community school in the East End of London, my then Parish Priest was concerned for my health and gently advised me to have a break. It was Advent 1985 and I found Aylesford. Fr,Donald Grant was leading a retreat on the Coming of God and, after supper on the Friday evening, I nervously joined the retreat. Over meals in the Pilgrim’s Hall I met other retreatants and heard about the Third Order. And, as the saying goes: the rest is history!
Learning to live in joyful hope is bearing fruit now in my old age but there is still much to learn: every day there are new challenges that are not only to be endured but, with prayer, they may even be welcomed.
Sylvia Lucas T.O.C
