A singular blessing

A ‘wheelchair blessing’ was not to be found in Common Worship or other service books that Allan had to hand, but that’s what he’d been asked to do. As ever, things were not quite as they seemed. Our friends Mary and Isaac had asked us to come to their house to bless Tom’s new wheelchair. Tom is a young man of 17 years and delightful temperament, but who has been severely disabled from birth. His old wheelchair was ancient and showing its years. The government, courtesy of the Wheelchair Foundation, had provided a new one, quite miraculously it seemed, and for no money. But Tom had refused to sit in the new chair until it had been duly prayed over, and Allan was requested to provide the service.

If it had been me, I’d have just gone with a prayer half formed in my head. Being Allan, he did a little preparation and produced a short service in a mixture of Lugbara and English, so that the whole family could join in. Then it became clear that half the village had actually been invited, our church pastor was also going to be there, there would be food afterwards ..................... clearly we needed to write off the whole afternoon.

But it was delightful. Tom sat in the old chair as we arrived, lapping up all the attention and beaming whenever he caught anyone’s eye. Canvas awnings, tables covered with lacy linen and hideous artificial flowers, floor mats and plastic chairs were all set out in good Ugandan style and about 20 adults came along as well as numerous kids. The service proceeded with some order, thanks to Allan’s preparations, but there was a good deal of improvisation and unexpected speeches too, not to mention the gusty wind that blew up and threatened to sweep all the decorations away. In a moving moment, we all gathered round the new wheelchair and laid hands on it and on Tom – black hands joined with white ones in a symbolic act. We prayed for Tom, who shows such joy and delight in his life, which is necessarily devoid of so many resources that most of us, disabled or not, take for granted.

Then he was lifted into the new chair, and family photos were taken to record the moment. Afterwards we all proceeded to the house for enya, beans, rice, chicken, meat, and fellowship. Our Lugbara teacher threw in a provocative question (in English, luckily) about whether newly converted polygamous men could be baptized in church before renouncing the spare spouses....................................... a good time was had by all.

Outdated, Failing and Redundant (No! Not us!)

At the end of October 2007 we were eulogising about the wonders of our new yellow box. It was a great little piece of technology to get us on to the internet and put us in touch with all you folk. Our lives were transformed – the world was at our fingertips. If we’d had the time, we would have written an ode to the wonderful little yellow box and shared it with you all. At least you were spared that!

In recent weeks, however, we’ve been cursing the terrible plastic yellow thing – a waste of space. It would, tantalisingly, get you on to the internet and just as you were about to do something useful online it would disconnect itself. It felt deliberate, as though The Thing was trying to annoy us. It's interesting to discover just how easy it is to become paranoid.

There we would be, having just started to listen to the omnibus edition of ‘The Archers’ from the BBC, and the nasty yellow object would go offline and refuse to connect again. Or we would just have been ready to send an email (deathless prose that had taken an hour to write) and, again, the nasty yellow box would die.

So the much-lauded technology of yesterday has been declared redundant, and is now superseded by its’ younger brother – the Black Slug.

All this is to say we’re now back on line, and our contributions to the Blog Universe will recommence.

P.S. If we get round to writing ‘An Ode to the Black Slug’ you’ll be the first to know.