Page 107 - Eggs and Ashes pages

106 Eggs and Ashes

A bit of hope – Lent 2004

Dreadful, dreadful injustice is being carried out in our world and I along with most
people feel hopeless. Linsey, from my slimming club, thought my STOP BUSH badge
was something to do with leg waxing. My County-Durham mother-in-law was so
offended by the badge that I was asked to remove it before visiting elderly relatives.
George Bush (‘Junior’ to his friends) was a good man, it seems, because he ate
fish and chips at the ‘Dun Cow’, and said grace before he ate. He is a very religious
man, unlike Osama Bin Laden.
The injustice of life surrounds us, from religious intolerance to natural disasters
to smocks. (Although I have had to concede, after a lot of telephone canvassing, that
cerise smocks have a certain something!)
Brian, a new client, swanned into the soup kitchen with a cigarette (Satan’s chim-
ney) and brimmed up with bravado. As usual, we started the main course with a prayer.
In the second’s silence before I began, Brian screamed: ‘You are offering people
false hope, this is a pack of lies.’
During my year as soup kitchen co-ordinator nobody had dared to shout out
before. There was silence. If the teaspoons hadn’t all been stolen you could have
heard them drop.
‘What on earth can God do for us? It is only rich people who go to church. Give
us all a million pounds and I will believe in God,’ Brian demanded.
I gazed around my gathered flock. Everyone was open-mouthed and staring,
apart from Dock, who was asleep on a wheaten roll.
I said in a Miss Jean Brodie voice: ‘Do you believe wealth would make you happy?’
And Brian answered very suitably: ‘It’s only you rich bastards who believe in
God. Did God give you all your money?’
I went into a long discourse about Jesus, born in a barn, refugee parents, a trav-
eller dependent on the hospitality of others.
Brian banged his plastic fork on the table: ‘He had a nice life!’
I continued: ‘He died a horrible death, fighting for breath, abandoned by friends,
destitute, killed as a criminal.’
Brian’s face changed. He looked not moved, only powerless.
Brian shouted: ‘F*** off.’
Bella said: ‘Will I kick him in?’
‘No Bella, leave him,’ I said, bringing justice to a hopeless man.
Brian, knowing dear Bella’s reputation, looked relieved.