Thinking Anew:DUBLIN BUS MADE timetable changes on some services in the capital at the beginning of May. One evening just after the changes I was travelling late at night across the city and knew that the times of the second bus I needed to catch had been changed.
Before getting off the first bus I asked the driver if he knew the times of my second bus. No, he did not know, as the second bus was from another depot. He was extremely polite and explained the situation to me. And without a prompt from me he called control at his depot to ask the times of my bus. He was told the times were changed but that his depot would not be aware of the workings of that route. He explained all that to me and – still not happy – he called again and asked his depot to contact the depot of the other bus and find out the times the bus left the city centre. He was given the information and gave it to me. It turned out I only had to wait five minutes at the stop. The next bus was the last bus and I would have had to wait an hour for it.
You might say it was a small incident. It certainly made me sit up and think and for the entire second bus journey I reflected on what a kind man that bus driver was.
It made me recall how my elderly father, often recounted the kindness he had experienced from bus drivers when he was still using the bus in his late 80s and early 90s.
William Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey writes: “And passing even into my purer mind, /With tranquil restoration: – feelings too/ Of unremembered pleasure: such perhaps, /As have no slight or trivial influence /On that best portion of a good man’s life./His little, nameless, unremembered acts /Of kindness and love.”
Small acts of kindness. But any time we experience an act of kindness we are impressed and those acts always give a lift to our sprits.
The kindness of the bus driver was a great reminder how love can pan out and express itself in so many different ways: the contrast of that behaviour to the rudeness, vulgarity and coarseness that we experience far too often in our daily lives.
Tomorrow’s Gospel is all about the idea of love and how God loves us.
Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father loved me, so I have loved
you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” (John 15: 9-10) Once the word love is mentioned something kicks into our way of thinking and we head for superlatives. We have this idea that love has always to be sublime and that it is some exaggerated form of being. Every day we are bombarded by the love episodes of the great and the good. And of course they are always amazing and extraordinary stories.
All forms of art challenge us to travel a journey with them in appreciating and understanding the various nuances and moods that love can entail. Human love in all its different manifestations of relationships has so many corners and complexities to it that to try to say a word about it is surely going to take from it and restrict it.
The power of love between a man and a woman, between a parent and a child, is simply extraordinary.
There are various levels and forms of love. We can abuse it too and can also abuse our use of the word. But love is a living reality in the world about us and Christians believe that all love is a mirror, maybe even a tiny image of the love that God has for us. We say that God is love.
Of course we get confused when it comes to love. Any time we utter God’s word we are entering some sort of reality beyond us and it is something similar with love.
In many ways, just as God is unexplainable, so too is love. But one thing is certain – any time we see it or experience kindness and love we are made aware of its greatness and goodness.
The love of a man for a woman, the love shown in the midst of depravity in places such as Auschwitz, the kindness of the bus driver, are all different and various in their complexities but they all give us a glimpse into God’s love for us. We need to be very aware of those who try to hijack God’s love for their own weird purposes. It causes extraordinary damage.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in Minna von Barnhelm writes that the gift of love is Godly. And St John recounts the words of Jesus, “What I command you is to love one another”.
All forms of kindness, goodness, respect and love do us good. They help make present the wonder of God in our world. And just as God is love, God too is goodness.
MC