Last night’s headline news was the Johannesburg fire that killed 74 people. Outside the destroyed apartment block, ‘informal’ housing for 200 homeless people, the Fire Chief said: ‘We must make sure this never happens again…’
We often hear this after a disaster – fire, flood, shooting, road accident, drug trafficking, exploitation of young people… Words are easy; preventative action is harder.
My friend Peter often says ‘fine words and bullsh*t’… My friend Graham recently used the Latin phrase ‘facta non verba’ – actions, not words… actions speak louder than words.
On Remembrance Sunday we say: ‘At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them…’
Church folks say: ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us…’
Facta non verba.
‘Year of Wonders’ tells the story of the Derbyshire village of Eyam. In 1665/66 the Great Plague kills many in the village. One Sunday morning the rector preaches to the remaining villagers: ‘Dear friends, here we are, and here we must stay. Let the boundaries of this village be our whole world. Let none enter and none leave while this Plague lasts.’
Together the villagers make an extraordinary decision. They elect to isolate themselves, in quarantine… remarkably relevant following recent experiences of covid… Records show that 273 villagers died, but the plague did not spread beyond the village.
Facta non verba.
Fifteen years ago, our friend Sarah, leading a church family service, said:
- ‘Your call is to befriend the funny little lady at the end of your street.
- Your call is to feed the hungry and to spend yourself on behalf of the poor and to offer hospitality to strangers who just turn up in town needing a place to crash.
- Your call is to fast and pray so long and hard that you run out of words and tears
- Your call is to love people no one else loves and to forgive them when they treat you like dirt – or worse.’
Facta non verba.
malcolmsmusings.org 
“When Winter Came” is an immigrant story (from Luxembourg), of a sickly boy who became a doctor, landing in Iowa (Midwest USA) in time for the influenza pandemic of 100 years ago. He kept his patients isolated and at home, to keep the disease from spreading. He could have become rich as a Chicago doctor, but instead his call was to become a country doctor, serving a small community.
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Thanks, Joy. It sounds like a great story. I’ve heard one or two stories from that flu pandemic from the UK. The Eyam story is a well-documented story The Great Plague was largely in London, but the infection was brought out to this fairly remote Derbyshire village,.140 miles away, that chose to quarantine itself.
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