Dear Friends
This comes with all our love and prayers. As it is true for all of us, the Community are working out how to live through these disorientating times. To be honest, it can really drain the life out of us! We are praying that you may know the mystery of God’s presence each day. I hope you enjoy Di’s reflection on ‘half empty/half full’.
As a Community we would love to pray for you so please send any prayer requests to: prayer@scargillmovement.org
We are delighted that we can now offer you some forthcoming Scargillian online events. It will be a joy to connect with you.
Our next Scargill Forum will be on Wednesday 9th September (8-9:30pm) on Zoom. We will let you know soon who our guest speakers will be for this. This is bookable through our website (please do not use the hello@ e-mail to book onto this event).
We would love to welcome you to one of our ‘Renew, Refresh, Restore’ Quiet Days on either Thursday 17th or Saturday 26th September (10am to 4:30pm). They will be led by Philip and Phil, and also involve other members of the Community. These are bookable through our website (please do not use the hello@ e-mail to book onto this event).
We are delighted to be able to welcome Day Visitors on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and have released dates into the middle of September. It will be lovely to see you. For details and how to book please go here.
Also, watch out for some ‘Fun on Friday’ dates that we will announce soon.
All these events are free but if anyone would like to donate then please visit our website here which shows how you can do that.
Diane writes:
Since I last wrote I have been swimming in a ‘proper’ pool and not the river and I HAVE HAD MY HAIR CUT! Yes!! Curiously they were both ‘life-giving’ and ‘life draining’. There I was in the hairdresser’s, a solitary customer with my solitary hairdresser in an otherwise empty room. All very friendly and we had a little laugh towards the end when I was asked if I wanted my hair any shorter? The trouble was with my comely, flowery mask across my face I had no idea. So I furtively lowered my mask had a quick peek and said no – next time I may say yes! Likewise, when I went swimming I was allocated my lane, the fast lane, unfortunately no one was booked into the slow lane so here I was again all alone. Now I have always treasured those swims when I have had the pool for a few minutes all to myself, but soon I began to feel very lonely, fit but lonely. Both had given me life but there I was dwelling on the negative. Have I become a ‘half-empty’ person, are we becoming ‘half-empty’ people – I do hope not.
For some reason this caused me to remember a poem I’ve had tacked to my office bulletin board ever since our son Matt sent it to me a couple of years. It still fills me with ‘the gladness of living’ every time I read it. The poem has been translated from the Turkish of Edip Cansever and is called Table.
Table
A man filled with the gladness of living
Put his keys on the table,
Put flowers in a copper bowl there.
He put his eggs and milk on the table.
He put there the light that came in through the window,
Sounds of a bicycle, sound of a spinning wheel.
The softness of bread and weather he put there.
On the table the man put
Things that happened in his mind.
What he wanted to do in life,
He put that there.
Those he loved, those he didn’t love,
The man put them on the table too.
Three times three make nine:
The man put nine on the table.
He was next to the window next to the sky;
He reached out and placed on the table endlessness.
So many days he had wanted to drink a beer!
He put on the table the pouring of that beer.
He placed there his sleep and his wakefulness;
His hunger and his fullness he placed there.
Now that’s what I call a table!
It didn’t complain at all about the load.
It wobbled once or twice, then stood firm.
The man kept piling things on.
Here is a ‘half-full’ or even a ‘brim-full table if ever there was one. Sarah Robyn (August 19 2000) has written very expressively about this poem, capturing, for me, its very heart.
This poem ‘speaks to me across cultures because it is a poem about being human – anywhere, any time. The delight of it hinges on the turn the poem makes, beginning in line 5, where the table – which starts out as an ordinary piece of furniture – begins to metamorphose into a magic table, one whose capacity seems limitless – a veritable groaning board, but one that doesn’t groan.
At first the table is a convenient surface for a man to put things down on, presumably the things he is carrying: his keys, fresh flowers, the groceries he has brought home. But in the enthusiasm of the moment, the man doesn’t stop. Onto the table goes the light from the window; then, some ambient sounds; then, some pleasing textures; then – pell-mell – his imaginings, his hopes, his relationships. And then (“Three times three make nine”) the tally of what he has already put down.
This man is putting all his cards on the table, so to speak. Before we can stop him, he has “reached out” and “placed on the table endlessness,” or his right to reach for the sky, to put anything at all on the table … our man’s next move is homely: he longs for a beer. He places on the table – not the beer itself, but “the pouring of that beer,” the frothy moment of promise.
Next, as if they were equal in weight, the paired opposites of sleep and wakefulness, hunger and fullness: even life’s privations, the poem seems to say, are part of its bounty – for what would fullness be, without hunger?’
We leave the man still happily “piling things on”; the table standing firm, despite a wobble or two. I love this poem because it reminds me that my own “table” is sturdy, too, and will hold as much as I have the heart and the gusto to heap on it. Here is a poem speaking of abundant life within the everyday, of the glass ‘hall-full’ rather than ‘half-empty’ or perhaps that even an honest ‘half-empty’ glass is just as meritorious of going on the table.
Have another read of the poem (read it perhaps a couple of times) then think about what you’d like to put on the table. Perhaps even make a list – you may be pleasantly surprised.
With love and prayers