Poetry
Westerfield, Nancy G.
especially of a growing, deepening Christian faith. It happens to me when I come away from the Sacrament of After the war, like any true Brit, I hated the Germans. In all ...
...the lines morse...
...As he watched the destruction of a church in the Not always to destinations small town of Kleve in North Germany, where he had scored Ticketed...
...because we see it happening before our eyes on television, are I know this because, on those rare occasions when England the barbarities committed by those who maim and kill one anwins a gold medal at the Olympics, I jump up and hug who- other in the name of nationalism...
...It happens when I see what within the limits of their own structures, unable, through what Mother Teresa does, and does because she is a Roman Catholic...
...Muslims-fighting with the ferocity of caged animals...
...From this beginning a friendship began to grow between Ray 12: 15 January 1993 Commonweal...
...In all Reconciliation and feel the incomparable joy that comes from our games, they were the enemy...
...ers and sisters, equal in the sight of God though far from equal But such gratitude and happiness are as nothing compared in terms of human suffering...
...It was a job well done...
...I see that my country now cipline, who seek to worship and to serve him...
...And I am able to acknowledge to the commitment I now feel toward God and toward all those that the British have played no small part in the oppression and everywhere in our world, whatever their particular creed or disvictimization of the world's people...
...yourself as one: he had answered the letter, saying that he personally was willOr grievingly, with the sound the train makes ing to forgive Ray, and had left it open so that anyone who wished Going, you are carried to the wind-swept could sign too...
...In what was Yugoslavia taneous pride and delight in being a member of the Roman we see Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians-Orthodox, Catholics, and Catholic church...
...If hatred is the fruit of reliever happens to be next to me...
...Within This happened when I saw what Oscar Romero did, and did our Christian world we see any variety of groups entrenched because he was a Roman Catholic...
...On a late day of December...
...It began with one man...
...passed on his letter to Father Leinung, the priest of the church Crooningly...
...a case of standing together and being a light to the world, as of And yet, although I have come to think of myself as a citizen sharing the truth and proclaiming the kingdom of truth, justice, of the world, a creature of the planet Earth, and may seem to some and love for which all people long...
...It happens to me when I come away from the Sacrament of After the war, like any true Brit, I hated the Germans...
...It is not so much cuts an insignificant figure on the stage of the world...
...He sat down and wrote a letter to the Burgermeister of Before you on terminal or page derailing Kleve, asking forgiveness for what he had done...
...His name is Ray Hamley and he was a British Where the Train Carries You bomber pilot in the Second World War...
...He told them that Morning of children...
...It has been a long process that the forgiving embrace of God...
...It makes no difference that I am gious or national ardor, then such ardor has become evil and not really interested in sport, or that the superpowers in poli- must be resisted and condemned...
...seems like loyalty but may be fear, to cross the barriers that divide us...
...to be no bad thing...
...And even more terrible for us, particular race, that I was born in this once-emerald isle...
...He read Ray's letter to his Across snow-swept distances to a Christmas congregation at Mass the following Sunday...
...I am grateful and happy to be a has brought me to where I am now, seeing the Germans-like Catholic, at a deeper and more serious level perhaps, but in much the Russians, Jews, Zulus, and every other race-as my broth- the same way as I am grateful to be English...
...tics are also superpowers in athletic prowess: there is just a mo- For the ordinary concerned Christian the sense of powerment of spontaneous pride and delight which on reflection seems lessness in the face of bigotry and fanaticism is overwhelming...
...We look round our world and see the apparently irreconcilable: And this brings me, at last, to the crux of this essay, to the blacks and whites in South Africa, Protestants and Catholics point I am trying to make...
...the letter, and it was posted to Ray with hundreds of signatures...
...to be a paragon of tolerance, to others an absolute renegade, yet It is terrible to think of what we have done to one another in there is still some gladness and pride in me that I come from this the past in the name of religion...
...Can we realistically hope for reconciliation...
...The church When you have chosen to go nowhere that had been a medieval building of great beauty was now a Over Christmas and Now Year's, the train heap of rubble...
...perhaps, the train carries you (rebuilt but no longer so beautiful...
...You pause...
...There are moments when I feel spon- in Ulster, Hindus and Muslims in India...
...The mayor Their logic, discovering vistas to nowhere...
...a direct hit, Ray felt a satisfied glow of achievement...
...At the end of Mass there was a queue to read Graves of them all, and yourself as one...
...Recently I experienced something which I see Nancy G. Westerfield as a small sign of hope...
...Will carry you there, accidentally But as the years went by and Ray grew older his attitudes With an afternoon whistle, passing began to change until at last he was filled with unbearable reThrough town...
Vol. 120 • January 1993 • No. 1
