{"id":683,"date":"2013-10-07T20:09:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T18:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/?p=683"},"modified":"2013-10-08T16:29:52","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T14:29:52","slug":"lourdes-a-sign-not-a-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/lourdes-a-sign-not-a-miracle\/","title":{"rendered":"Lourdes, a sign pointing to a miracle."},"content":{"rendered":"

A sign – not a miracle in Lourdes<\/a>.<\/strong><\/h1>\n

There is a difference between signs and miracles although one can be the other. \u00a0I recount here what happened to me twelve years ago when my life was terribly confused. \u00a0I had no job, no place to live and my marriage of 25 years was breaking up.<\/p>\n

At the end of the summer I had driven to Spain to see if I could find a cheap place to live. \u00a0I wasn’t looking with any focus, nor was I happy to be on my own. \u00a0I looked around some places I had known in my student days and found everything too costly, so I headed back up north. \u00a0At Bayonne, I stopped by the beach because I love the big waves there and fancied a swim but, even before I had got out of the car, I thought, “Why not go to Lourdes?” \u00a0I had not been in Lourdes for decades and I was surprised by the idea. \u00a0I drove there directly, arriving at nightfall.<\/p>\n

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As a child our family had visited Lourdes on several occasions and I recall saying the rosary in the car. \u00a0My parents regarded the summer holiday as half-pilgrimage half-holiday and my memories of Lourdes were happy ones of processions, holy shops, crowds and lots of walking.<\/p>\n

The evening I arrived I walked down to the Basilica and headed for the grotto. \u00a0Just before I reached the arches which separate the grotto area from the esplanade, I was filled with a crippling sadness. It was difficult to breath and I was crying. \u00a0I managed to go to the taps which deliver water fom the spring and drink a little. \u00a0I was beginning to remember an afternoon when I was standing beside my mother at the very spot where my sadness had overcome me. \u00a0It was 1957 and I was 8 years old. \u00a0She was crying.<\/p>\n

I remember holding her hand and looking up and asking, “Why are you crying?” \u00a0“It’s seeing all these little children, “she said, “Just like the wee baby.” \u00a0The “wee baby” was a brother who had been born the previous year and who had died in her arms just four days old. I had only been allowed to look at him once because, “something was wrong with him.”<\/p>\n

\"Lourdes,<\/a>

Lourdes, blessing of the sick.<\/p><\/div>\n

This terrible sadness in me which was surging up from the depths of my being came from the little boy I was in 1957 who had captured all \u00a0the distress of a mother who has lost her son. \u00a0The incident happened on a hot afternoon during the blessing of the sick. \u00a0We were standing under the plane trees just behind all the sick children in their three-wheeled chairs who were lined up for the blessing. \u00a0Most of them were Downs’s syndrome. \u00a0This sadness must have been locked away in my subconscious for all those years.<\/p>\n

I walked into the town and bought a postcard with a picture of St. Christopher from one of the brightly lit shops and wrote on it, “Mum, I have returned to the very spot in Lourdes where I saw you crying because of the wee baby. \u00a0I have been carrying in me your sadness all these years: it is yours. I return it to you.” \u00a0At the time my mum had Altheimer’s in an advanced stage so there was not much point in sending it to her so I left it beside the statue of Mary where people often leave prayer requests and which is only a few steps from the spot where we had been standing so many years before.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The statue of Mary in Lourdes, in front of the Basilica.<\/p><\/div>\n

At once the sadness left me and has not ever returned. \u00a0This, though, was only the beginning of a very important lesson about Love which I am still learning.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I would not have been aware of the importance of this moment for me had it not been for an extraordinary meeting I had the following day. \u00a0Before leaving Lourdes, I wanted to go back to that spot under the trees again. \u00a0There is now a bench there and I sat down, peacefully on this bench. \u00a0A young woman came along with a child in a push chair and sat down alongside me. “God, it’s hot,” she said. \u00a0Her accent was broad Glaswegian. \u00a0The child wasn’t hers, she explained and as the little boy wriggled to escape from his push chair I realised he was down’s syndrome. “Aw, Michael, will ye sit doon!”. \u00a0Michael had been my little brother’s name. \u00a0Like me, he was born in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

\"Lourdes,<\/a>

Lourdes, candle lit procession.<\/p><\/div>\n

As I walked out of the sanctuary a little later I reflected on how strange it was that there were so many coincidences in this meeting: \u00a0the same spot exactly; a little boy from Glasgow; a down’s syndrome child with the same name as my brother; and where, the night before, I had been struck so forcefully with a sadness relating to his early death.<\/p>\n

When I next saw my mother, in her nursing home in Stirling, I told her this story. \u00a0She was, as always, very confused, circling her room anxiously saying, “We have to stop them before they do it.” But on this occasion she listened and then said, very fondly, “Ah yes, the wee baby. Michael.” Maybe this was all she heard but it evoked in her a memory not of sadness but of love. My own sadness needed to be transformed into love but at that point I could see nothing of this.<\/p>\n

The event in Lourdes in2002, started a process of growth in me which has given my life a new direction.<\/p>\n

Throughout my adult life I have always had an uncomfortable reaction when a woman close to me has been sad or upset. \u00a0Being sad is quite normal. \u00a0I don’t react badly when I meet a man who is in distress. \u00a0But if it is a woman, I think I have always been frighted by her sadness. \u00a0 Looking back, I can see that my response has led to many complications in my relationships with women at home or at work since I will do anything to escape or change such a situation. \u00a0This is a type of co-dependency<\/a> on my mother. My main escape was alcohol and after I stopped drinking it was to withdraw, to flee. \u00a0After this experience in Lourdes, I have slowly, over the past ten years, come to see that sadness in another person is just that: they are sad. \u00a0How simple! \u00a0With patient help from others I have been learning to meet that sadness with compassion, not fear. I can be ok even if the other person is not. \u00a0Arriving at this point has taken many years. In effect I had been very limited use as a companion for women: as soon as they showed a negative emotion I was filled with my own suffering. \u00a0Together we asphyxiated with pain. \u00a0My blog on the Caminos to Santiago<\/a>\u00a0is about the spiritual processes in living a life being transformed by Grace.\u00a0(“Grace” is a word I have not used before, but it is the word I need here.)\u00a0\u00a0The great miracle, which I will write about in a future blog, was my encounter with Compassion.<\/p>\n

Lourdes in 2002 was a special moment, a sign which I recognised. \u00a0A sign is a pointer and an encouragement to choose a path. \u00a0It can lead to miracles<\/a>, for me the miracle of Compassion ………which always leads to Love.<\/p>\n

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I will post on Compassion at a later date. \u00a0Please subscribe if you want to be informed of future posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sign – not a miracle in Lourdes. There is a difference between signs and miracles although one can be the other. \u00a0I recount here what happened to me twelve years ago when my life was terribly confused. \u00a0I had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[40,50,52,51,15],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pilgrimage-and-prayer","category-the-raft-of-corks","tag-holy-spirit","tag-lourdes","tag-miracles","tag-signs","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-raft-of-corks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}