Yesterday afternoon I visited Stradbroke Court, a local care home.
Minister-Lou was taking a harvest service there. About twenty of us gathered in a large lounge. We sung ‘All things bright and beautiful’, Lou talked about the tomatoes growing in her garden, we thanked God for our world, prayed for ourselves and each other, sung ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ and enjoyed a cup of tea. It was a good afternoon.
I observed residents with a variety of physical and mental needs… a clean, bright environment… dedicated, hard-working care staff. I chatted to a couple of gents about the 1953 floods, attending Corton Parish church, the boat-building industry, Lowestoft Salvation Army, their personal health and families…
I came home to read Malcolm Guite’s ‘Mariner’. It’s a biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, structured around his famous poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.
As a young man he spent much time and energy supporting William Wilberforce in opposing the slave trade. In ‘Essay on the Slave Trade’ (1795) he described society’s ‘imaginary wants’:
‘We receive from the West India Islands Sugars, Rum, Cotton, Logwood, Cocoa, Coffee, Pimento, Ginger, Indigo, Mahogany and Conserves. Not one of these articles are necessary; indeed with the exception of Cotton and Mahogany we cannot truly call them useful: and not one of them is at present attainable by the poor…’
Coleridge links the West Indian slaves with the poor in England, exploited by ‘captains of industry’, as the needs of the poor and power-less are sacrificed for the sake of the rich and power-full…
Yesterday afternoon the power-less residents at Stradbroke Court sung: All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above. Then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all his love.
The Stradbroke Court website starts ‘It’s your life. Live it well.’ It describes ‘a nurturing and safe environment with a high standard of care… where compassion meets comfort.’
Somehow the contrasts and contradictions of rich and poor, powerful and powerless, consumerism and compassion, wants and needs, start to find perspective.
