Birthday of a Victorian Lady

Today, 20^th January, is the 180^th birthday of Frances Taylor, the Foundress of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God.  She was born in 1832, a special year in many ways in the history of this country.  It was then that people began to realise that the slave trade mightn’t be a good thing, that reforms were needed in the law, the army, the way people were treated.  It is often called the year of change.  Of course as you know, change takes place slowly, and it took many years before any of these proposals which came before the Parliament of the time, were looked at, still less changed.  Yet it was interesting that matters of justice and the way we treat one another were brought to the public arena at that time. I say this because Frances Taylor seemed to be imbued with a passion for justice and a conviction that the way we treat one another has far-reaching consequences, not only for ourselves, but for the world. 

She was born in a vicarage in a small village in Lincolnshire called Stoke Rochford.  Her father, Henry Taylor, was the Rector of three parishes in the district, and was known as a very prayerful and upright man, while his wife, Maria, was a woman who seemed to radiate love and compassion, especially for those who were sick, lonely or old.  Frances was the youngest of ten children, and spent an ideal childhood having no school to go to, as it wasn’t then compulsory to attend one of those rather forbidding institutions which were all that was available at the time.  She was taught at home by her parents and by her older sisters, but she herself said in later years “I wasn’t over-burdened with lessons!”   She had plenty of freedom to roam about the lanes surrounding her home, and a chance to poke into those interesting hedgerows and woodlands as well as to try her hand at fishing in the local stream.  As well as that, she made up stories of adventure which she told to the village children, weaving a piece of string in and out of her fingers as she unwound the plot for them.  No wonder she became a writer in later years!

She went with her mother to visit all the parishioners who were sick, lonely or unable to get about, and she told them stories too, making them laugh as she took out of her basket the goodies provided by her mother, freshly-baked bread from the big kitchen in the Rectory, fruit and vegetable from their own gardens and things like that.  It was a lesson that Frances learned early on – that life isn’t always rosy, and that many people are poor and lonely.  She remembered this when many years later she founded her own Congregation of Sisters. She was to say when in old age herself, “I never forgot the lessons my mother taught me in childhood”.  That’s nice isn’t it?  I suppose most of us can say that now that we have learned some wisdom!

When she was ten, her father died, and of course the family had to move away as the house went with the job as they say. So they went to relatives in London, feeling very lonely and heart-broken after their Father’s death.   But the years in London were good.  You’ll know what Victorian London was like if you have read any of Charles Dicken’s books, and of course you have read them all!  It was noisy, dirty, exciting, dangerous and like no other place on earth!  But Frances noticed the poor, and the contrasts between the haves and have-nots.   In a way, she was already forging her future.

When she was 22 she went to the Crimea and worked in Scutari Hospital under Florence Nightingale.  This was to be a life-changing experience for her.  “No one” she was to say later, "could have prepared me for the horror of war !”  The Crimean War has gone down in history as the most mis-managed, the most tragic, the most inhumane of recent times,  yet it brought Frances many blessings.  Looking at the sufferings of these young men, many of them not much more than teenagers, brought out in her the most profound compassion.  The faith of the Irish soldiers, in particular, and their courage in dying a pain-filled and unjust death was to be the spur which made her look calmly and dispassionately at her own faith.  They were never to know it, but their example was to change her life.  She  became a Catholic in the Easter of 1855, having been instructed by Fr. Woollet who was staying in Koulali where she was working, while he was waiting to be called to the Front.  To leave the Church of England, and to ‘go over to Rome’ as they put it then, was a risky thing to do.  There was a lot of prejudice around, and she was to find out how lonely life could be for a newly converted Catholic when she returned to London later that year.

 But she was fortunate in getting to know Fr.Manning. Many years later, as Cardinal Manning of Westminster, he was to become one of her chief supporters in her work as the Foundress of a new Congregation. He was then parish priest of St. Mary’s Bayswater, where  she went to Mass.  He too was a convert from Anglicanism, and he understood how Frances felt.  There were people who really thought that if you converted to Catholicism you were damned, as you were unfaithful to the religion in which you were born.  That was very hard to take as she loved the Anglican Church in which she had been brought up, but she knew God had called her into the Catholic Church for reasons of his own.  But it was a lonely place to be.

Fr. Manning showed Frances the other side of the great, glittering, successful city of London –  he took her to the places where the poor lived or rather, existed.  Dirty, fetid, unhealthy rooms  where rats scurried about, and children died of terrible diseases.  He showed her the workhouses of Marylebone and St. Pancras, where she visited twice a week, giving those poor fragmented people hope because she bothered to listen to them and to speak for them, instead of merely giving them a little help, then departing to shrug off their problems in the enjoyment of her own busy life.

Soon she realised that she couldn’t do all this alone, so she gathered around her like-minded women and that was the beginning of our story.  We started in a small room in Tower Hill in 1869 with four women including herself.  We became a recognised Religious Congregation when Frances made her vows for life in February 1872. She called us Servants, people who listen, people who are willing to go about the miserable, mean streets and alleyways of our big cities, and bring to the poor  whatever comfort they could.  One of our first missions was in Soho. The Sisters worked in the red-light district with the prostitutes, and eventually Frances, who was now called Mother Magdalen, invited those who wished to train for employment which would provide an income without having recourse to prostitution. She provided buildings which were attractive, with rooms full of light and colour and warmth.  Here she taught these poor women new skills:  boot making, lace-making, laundry work, and printing. In fact,  anything that she could think of that would be useful and help to put food on the table.

She  wanted us to be a voice for those who could not speak for themselves, so that they would get justice, she hoped that we would, like her, reverence each human person, give them the dignity they deserved as children of God, and, like Therese of Lisieux, try to be the ones who put love into the world we live in.

 Are you glad a person like that was born?  As we say ‘Happy birthday’ today, we pray for all those who never have a birthday to remember, who never experience love.  Have a good day, and pray to Mother Magdalen won’t you?  She will help you, especially on her birthday.  Who wouldn’t do that, if asked?  

Bless you. And thank you for taking the time to read this! See our websites and Facebook links on the right panel for more information.

Happy birthday, too, for all those whose birthday it is today.  May you have a happy, fulfilled, useful life as she did, and may she be your special friend from now on.

A Fish Out Of Water

This is not a lesson on the vagaries of the English language. That would take more than a blog.  It is, however, a look at what we mean when we use well-known expressions.  They tell us something about ourselves!! 

Let's take this one.  “A fish out of water.”  Have you ever seen a stranded fish?  It struggles, flips its tail about, looks desperately for help, which, sadly, is usually not forthcoming.  This is because of course a fish out of its element will soon die.  It cannot breathe, ingest or move about. It is imprisoned, afraid and eventually just one of a crowd in the net;  unnoticed, non-functioning, paralysed;  just another fish preparing to have its life and vitality choked out of it in order to be displayed on a marble slab for the greedy, the curious and the indifferent. 

In English-speaking countries, we use these expressions which we call idioms, to say something about the way we feel.  It is usually a picturesque way of describing our situation.  We find ourselves, for instance in a country which is unfamiliar to us;  the people speak a language we do not understand, the food is different, the customs are strange, the weather is either too hot, too wet, or too cold, depending on what we are used to.  We feel different, alien, out of our element.  That is a bit exaggerated of course - we may love new experiences, we may be able to slough off our old skins as easily as we divest ourselves of extra clothing in the warmer weather, but nonetheless, we have all experienced at times the feeling of being out of our depth, not at home with ourselves, as the saying is.  It isn't the most comfortable place to be.  I remember, some years ago now, being with a group of people who were what we then called the computer literate. They used a language that was, to say the least, unintelligible, at least to people like me, who found it difficult to manage the keyboard let alone the intricacies of the mighty chip! They talked endlessly of cyberspace and bytes and blogs until I began to think that I was born much too early on to master it. I felt like a fish out of water!!!

 That was a while ago, but I have always thought how awful it is to feel like a has-been, an anachronism, the ghost of Christmas past when in a situation like that. I felt some sympathy for the lovely, gleaming, darting fish that was caught, and held in an element completely foreign to it.  Part of life, of course, and necessary for the food chain to function efficiently, but, all the same a pity, at least for the fish! A fish out of water – what is that element like for the fish?  Flowing, life-giving, supporting, creative, thirst-slaking, cool, clean, regenerating, healing, safe.  Well at times...

Water and fish come into the Gospels a lot, don't they? Jesus knew the Sea of Galilee well as his first disciples were most of them fishermen.  Their old, much - mended nets were always around, drying in the morning sun after a hard night's fishing.  Their boats, equally old and in need of constant patching up, were used by him to preach his first homilies, to gather the people around the lapping water as they sat on the sandy beach around him.  He walked on that water one dark night towards the incoming fishing fleet, to the consternation of Peter and co.  That is, until the young teenager John shouted out: "It is the Lord!" Then there was fun! Peter sinking and being rescued by Jesus when he tried to imitate his Master, the lovely smell of cooking fish on the brazier by the shore which Jesus was using, the talk and laughter and fun, the falling asleep on the sand after a wonderful breakfast in the open air.  Then there was what we call the miraculous draught of fish! Hundreds of them which they had only caught by taking Jesus' advice and putting down their nets on the 'wrong' side of the boat.... 

And what about the time Jesus fell fast asleep in the boat in the middle of a storm?  What a lot of bustling about then!  "We're drowning and he's fast asleep!" they yelled to each other over the noise of the thunder and howling wind.  "Wake him up, Peter!" But of course he didn't.  He knew he would get a telling-off which he did anyway.  "Where is your faith?" Jesus asked him sternly. "Didn't you know you'd be safe?" Of course he didn't - these men knew the treachery of those waters. But Jesus wanted something more from them, just as he does from us today.  "Where is your faith?"  "Don't you know I am always with you, especially when you feel just like one of those gasping fish in the net?"  And he reaches out to us as he did to those long-ago fishermen to reassure us that no matter how bad our situation seems to be, we are never alone.  Never!

He offers us too the living water of the Spirit to allay our thirst. "Come to me, all you who are thirsty and drink!" he urges us.  Just as he assured the Samaritan woman at the well that the water he would give her would be life-giving and eternal, so that she would not thirst again, he tells us gently to come close to him, to ask for the living waters of the Spirit to refresh us, particularly when we are tired, dispirited, lonely or feeling like that lovely silver fish pulled out of its natural element and looking about desperately for a rescuer.  He is our rescuer, our friend.  And he too knows what it is like to be a fish out of water.  After all, he left the glories of Heaven to come to our cold, dark, inhospitable, alien world. Just for love.  To rescue other fishes darting about in dangerous waters or having their life half-choked out of them because they couldn't find a way to change things.  He can!  And he does! 

Have a good mid-January!  And when you think you are out of the water, jump in again! Even if, like me, you can't swim.  Take care.



Royalty Free Photos from Fotosearch

Feast of the Epiphany - Follow your star!

Before the feast of the Epiphany, or to use an English word “showing” I try to read T.S. Eliot’s poem  “The Journey of the Magi” because it teaches me a very valuable lesson which I keep forgetting.  It teaches me that to follow one’s star until the very end, means that one has to accept disappointment, pain, tedium, regret, cold, the loss of all that we want most at times.  And only those who persevere and keep the dream alive in their hearts find that star.

We put the three kings in the Crib, and we sigh sentimentally.  “Don’t they look sweet!” we sigh.  “Oh look at that young one, he’s so handsome! I love it when he comes into the Crib.  I wonder what Jesus made of all those exotic clothes and presents, and those crowns!“  And so we go on....  But we forget the journey don’t we, the long, cold nights, the weary pain-filled days, the disillusions on the way, the homesickness...  Theologians tell us that it must have taken the best part of two years to travel in those days from the East to Bethlehem. Easy Jet was a long way into the future, and 24-hour journeys were unknown!  It must have been a nightmare from start to finish.   

 T. S. Eliot, with his American freshness of outlook, tells us about it. He imagines one of the kings in old age sitting down in his Eastern palace one night when the stars are out, and as he gazes into the heavens, he remembers what it was like.  He recalls the journey that changed his life and the lives of all those around him.  He remembers the agony and the ecstasy of it.  The poem begins:

                       “A cold coming we had of it,

                        Just the worst time of the year for a journey, and what a long journey.
                        The way was deep, and the weather sharp
                        The very dead of Winter.
                        And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
                        lying down in the melting snow.

                        There were times when we regretted
                        the Summer palaces the stopes, the terraces,
                        and the silken girls bringing sherbet.
                        Then the camel-men, cursing and grumbling,
                        And running away, wanting their liquor and their women..."

Reading this we say to ourselves: “What has changed in all those years since this happened?” Not a lot, if we go on further in the poem:

                        "...and the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
                        and the cities, hostile, and the towns unfriendly
                        and the villages dirty, and charging high prices
                        A hard time we had of it.
                        At the end, we preferred to travel all night
                        sleeping in snatches
                        with the voices singing in our ears, saying
                        that this was all folly..."

Temptation!  They were at their weakest, and they began to regret the venture.  Familiar territory for us?  We have all experienced that!   We, like the kings, set off on our journey, following our dreams, with high hopes, but the reality is very different.  We begin to think that the price we have to pay is just too high.  That was the time the kings had to grit their teeth and just go on, blindly following their star.  And we know the end of the story.  The star stopped over a stable (what did these eastern potentates make of that, I wonder!)  and they found the baby with Mary, his mother (and presumably St. Joseph as well).

T.S. Eliot ends the poem with a challenging and provoking question: “ Was this a birth” he said “or a death?”

What do you think he meant by that?  Think about it.

It was certainly a birth, but it was also the death of the old way of thinking and acting, the death of the old interpretation of the law:  the death of so many things....  Think of what that means in your own life.

So I’ll end where I began.  Epiphany means the showing of the Christ Child to others beside his own people.  It is all about going out, bringing the Gospel message to the ends of the earth.  Following the star.

What is your star?  What dreams do you have for your life?  Are you prepared to follow your own particular star with the same determination and courage that the three kings showed?  If not, then you won’t reach your star, and that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? 

So we pray:

Lord, at this time when we celebrate the journey of the three Wise Men, we pray for their perseverance, their courage, their determination to go on, making the dream possible, in spite of so many things that militate against it.  Help us each day to put our hands in yours and to start afresh on our journey, so that, one day, we will, with all those who started along the long, winding road with us, glimpse the star shining over another stable, and come in to see you, with Mary your Mother.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

A very happy Epiphany!  I suppose you will be keeping it on Sunday, but today, on the 6^th January I wish all our readers the joy of journeying and one day reaching the end, together!  God bless.