Trees, stars and bottles - Michael McGirr

One Sunday morning a few weeks ago, my wife and I found ourselves standing outside the back door of our local church during Mass. We are used to this. Our three small children are yet to appreciate all the many layers and shades of the Catholic liturgy. Indeed, the distinction between play time and mass time is not one with which they have quite come to grips. Nor, for that matter, is the distinction between a hymn book and a colouring book.

So it was that our kids were busy climbing the parish tree when an older woman, bent in posture and carrying several green shopping bags, came along and told us how beautiful the children were. Sometimes parents need reminding of the obvious. As we got chatting, the woman told us that she had just walked two hours to come to Mass; she was over an hour early for the Mass after the one we were half-attending.

When we commented on her dedication, she said that she had recently been let out of the madhouse (her expression) where she wasn’t allowed to get out of her chair sometimes, let alone go for a walk.

‘You must have been up early,’ I said.
‘I don’t sleep. Not with all the tablets they have me on.’
She had a son who’d told her that he no longer believed in God. But he did believe in St Michael, the patron of the church whose tree our kids were now beginning to relieve of its foliage. The son was a tattooist and had an image of St Michael on his triceps or biceps, she couldn’t remember which. She walked two hours to a church called St Michael’s to pray for him. And, lo and behold, God had suddenly brought three more children into her life to pray for. I realised she meant our three, now swinging from the lower branches. She asked their names, repeated them softly and said that God would keep them safe.

It was touching to share the Eucharist outside the church with a woman of disarming simplicity. We all know that the poor and the vulnerable are those best able to preach the Gospel because, after all, they the ones best able to understand it. But the actual experience of this carried us away. It was like hearing a melody playing over the noise of our daily lives. The Eucharist doesn’t end at the back door.

Somebody needs to do a study of the number of water bottles required to raise the average child.

We moved house in the last school holidays and in the process despatched two cartons of empty water bottles to the next phase of their existence. Every time we looked in a cupboard, there were more lurking. We’d need the drought to break before we could fill them all.

Anyway, we’d just about rid ourselves of all these bottles when we decided to celebrate our newfound cupboard space by taking the kids to Scienceworks. There are, it must be said, much worse things to do with toddlers in the holidays. The place is indestructible.

The kids’ show at the planetarium, which is inside Scienceworks, was a bit late starting. By the time the lights dimmed, or, I should say, the imaginary sun had set, the place was full of excited youngsters and anxious parents trying to get them to sit still. The presenter apologised for the delay. He explained that the planetarium had had a special booking that morning. A chap had wanted to propose to his beloved under the stars accompanied by a string quartet. But there was a hitch. The real stars only appear at night and this chap wanted to take his intended out to lunch afterwards. Besides, there aren’t enough stars in the city sky for counting love. We learnt that, in the city, the naked eye can see 30 stars. Up the bush, it can see 3,000.

When they heard this romantic story, the parents in the audience sighed audibly. I guessed they were thinking back to the times when their own love was so pretty. Looking at their noisy children, they all knew they had passed from days of pretty love to days of beautiful love. Beauty, as the poet said, is truth.

It just so happened that this was the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the first human made object to join the stars. There have been thousands since, most of them now junk. To celebrate the milestone, the planetarium was giving out free water bottles. Our kids joined the scramble. We went home with six, enough to fill a drawer and get us thinking about the next move.
Water bottles and the stars both play a part in John’s Gospel. Jesus met Nicodemus under the stars and told him the Spirit is like the wind. It can’t be bottled. In the next chapter he meets a woman at high noon. He tells her that that living water can’t be bottled either.