1 Sri Lanka (The Hills)
May 23, 2022

13 A Tragedy

When I first came to this place there was no lock on the inside of the door, and for a while I worried that, being a foreigner in an isolated and open kutir might be an invitation to trouble. After a while a lock was fixed – but I must confess that the first time that anyone knocked on the door in the middle of the night, I just got straight up from bed and opened it! Before me stood a small middle-aged man, ruffled but neatly dressed, whose English was poor, and whose speech was slurred. I invited him in and he sat on the bed as I, half dressed, sat at my desk, we communicated as well as we could. It turned out that he was father to a couple of children who are regular visitors here: the elder, a girl of eleven, very pretty and inquisitive: her brother reminded me of the younger brother in Whistle Down the Wind. The family are Christian converts belonging to the Lighthouse church, which is a Pentecostal grouping. The father, as he miserably told me, worked away in Colombo, and only saw his wife and children occasionally. When he did come home I gathered things were not all they could be, and he had taken to drink to relieve the pain of a life of sorrow. We talked for about an hour, then he, apologising, left.

I saw him a couple of times after that, the first time on the road as he was returning from Colombo: he seemed unsure whether to speak, maybe worried he had made a bad impression: however, I caught his eye, greeted him, and he acknowledged it. The family were living in a cajun shack not far away, and used the local well, and after washing, the children would come to the rock garden to take the grace at the feet of Our Lady.

Last week the father returned from Colombo once more, and after another night getting drunk and arguing with his wife, he took the childrens’ schoolbooks and pouring alcohol on them, used them to start the fire that burned down his home. A form of suicide really, a way of destroying a life that had become unbearable.

Neighbours blamed the drink, but surely the real trouble was that he was unloved and unlovable – who can love the unlovable? Who is willing to bear up with stupidity and ugliness? But that is what we must learn to do, starting with ourselves. Only when we’ve seen our own darkness can there be true compassion for the darkness of others. As he sat on my bed that night he reminded me of nothing so much as myself, before the healing touch of the Lord was upon me. Such pain, sorrow, and dullness is a part of us all, but if we know nothing else – well there is the tragedy.

the rain is heard approaching
the wind announces it’s here
a leaf falls from the tree
like a golden butterfly coming to earth

the sound of a coucal hooting
the cry of a squirrel from above
the splash of water at the well
all these sounds are familiar

but something is present among us
not quite seen or heard or felt
that escapes all attempts to confine it
we give it a name and it’s gone

but this something is what is important
for without it no thing can be
its power and beauty surround us
when we open our eyes to see

14 Confusion and Peace