Two lassies in a car, lost in the lanes of Limerick, looking for an abbey. Murroe, is it? Hopelessly lost among the lanes they saw a farmer in his field and stopped to ask his help. ‘We’re lost,’ they said. It was that hopeless definition on their situation. The end of the world: How would they ever find themselves again?
The farmer looked at them and straightaway changed their outlook on life. Ah sure, you’re not lost, he said. Sure, you are only looking for somewhere. Not only was this a soothing balm to troubled souls, it was a redefinition of their situation. No longer were they stuck in a negative. They were actively in pursuit of the positive.
The two lassies had never been in those lanes before and hedgerows had hidden their highways from them. But the man in the field knew his land and he spent his life reading the sky and the wind and the weather. He knew that spring follows winter and that new life is sure to return. He was not one to put a negative spin on the turn of the world.
That encounter and the words that were exchanged have stayed with me. So often in life we shout out, ‘we’re lost!’ And we feel that way. Indeed we do. The game is up. Our dreams have died. We can see no way out of our troubles. We do not even know where to begin.
But the place to begin is with the truth and the real truth is not that you are lost, but that you are only looking for somewhere. If the truth is that you are lost then the game is up and your energy is spent. Your hope is gone. You are alone in the lanes of Limerick!
You need to hear another gospel. You need someone to approach and to tell you the real truth. That truth is that you are only looking for somewhere, and with help you will find it.
Heaven is the place we are looking for, the joy of life that we are made for. In recent times I have felt that the game was up for me. Suddenly and unexpectedly widowed, and now getting on in years and not as fit as I used to be. I am lost, I felt, knowing, even as I said it, that this won’t do.
Then I remembered my father and his simple love of every day he lived. After poverty and hardship and war, just being alive was all he needed. I remembered my mother and her great faith in God’s goodness. As her energy waned she adjusted through all the 94 years of her life. Each stage of life prepares us for the next one, she told me. I find this to be true. As some energy dwindles and disappears, we find new reasons and new purposes in old age, mostly to do with giving encouragement to others who still have the road to walk, and the lanes of Limerick to negotiate.
They might even feel, as we did, that they are lost, but that is not true. We are able to tell them that they are not lost at all.
Sure, they are only looking for somewhere.
Brian Fahy
11 August 2017
Erris Poetry 