The Big Question

This is a great team. Richard, Ross and Vic were the trailblazers making contact with Pastor Rolex Poisson and his church following the devastating earthquake in 2010. They simply asked if they could help and under the banner of Mission International visited, offered practical help and over the past seven years established a bond with teams, visiting, sometimes three times in the one year. The whole issue of helping poor communities in the world (Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere) is a vexed one. The tales of situations where aid makes matters worse are countless: teams coming to plaster and paint schools when there are good local artisans who could use the work, water pumps installed to villages that break down and the village women resort to carrying water for miles, the white man’s money buying some feel good merit being parachuted in and airlifted out and the crippling effect of aid like American rice which kills off the nation’s own rice growers who cannot compete with the low cost of the imported grain. These stories alone would make you reluctant to help at all, but that is not an option for the guys on this team. There is a sacrificial commitment that is humbling. They come at some cost to themselves and their families. The clear principle is simply one of enabling and encouraging the local church in its ministry within this benighted community. I think that is the right way. The work that is done will be by Haitians it will be the resource that they identify and they will own it.

Paul and myself who joined previous teams together with Dave make up the remainder of the team. In the long spells when nothing much is happening we sit and share our experiences and wrestle with the big questions laced with raw Irish, Yorkshire and Glasgow humour. These were special times. We were often expressing diverse cultural and political views, sharing differing theological standpoints, arguing about conspiracy theories, nationalism and Margaret Thatcher, yet all with a sense that when it came to what really mattered we were one. In a very short time I felt a wonderful bond was being fostered

A recurring theme of our discussions focused on our shared dismay at the sustained attack on the family in our society back home and the destruction of this singular foundational block of our society. It’s not new of course but we felt that the destruction was progressive and accelerating. There seemed to be an increasing sense that the civilisation known as Western Christianity will follow the other empires that preceded it and simply collapse in a spectacular manner. The possibility that somehow it will morph into a liberal world of justice, peace and equality, adrift from its Greco/Roman/Judeo/ Christian foundational base, seemed to me belonging to a fantasy of wishful thinking. It was against this back cloth of gloom that what we saw in Haiti sparkled with hope. When Richard declared to the 400 plus at the early church service. “You may think that you are poor, but you are rich” the congregation responded with a loud and assured “Amen” you could see it their faces brimming with confidence “Yes we are rich”. Europe may well be descending into a new dark age but there are places in the world where there is hope of a new dawn ripe with opportunities grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Santo Domingo

There is always an anxious moment when you are finally released from the maternal care of the airline transit system, where you are told where to go and what to do, what to fill in and where to sign and while it is quite humiliating being herded around like cattle, zigzagging as if impersonating a snake, there is something comforting in it. So when finally discharged the thrill of being free doesn’t last all that long and is quickly replaced with a new anxiety. It is a strange wild and different world out there. It is outside the garden gate and all the reassuring sounds and smells, the signals the signs, the time and food and language engender an irrational unsettling fear. I was a proud solo traveller suddenly feeling not so proud and just a little foolish. Wondering how I was going to negotiate taxis, trust myself to the dark unlit streets, being driven in a rattling cab with thumping music at great speed through scary traffic, a much longer distance than I expected. The fears of course dissipated when the driver true to his word got me there. A hotel with clean sheets and the possibility of sleep 22 hrs after leaving London. When I paid the driver he called me his friend and gave me a big hug. That was when I knew I had really been ripped off.

Crawford Mackenzie

Between us there was significant distance in age and geography. We were seldom in the same place at the same time. In fact as a family we were only all together on, what could be no more than, three individual occasions. So the times when we were together and able to chat were limited. Often these were times when there was other issues and preoccupations or when Iain was distracted with various concerns he couldn’t share.  But in those special moments, when there was space and we had time to chat and to talk about what really mattered, a precious bond was forged and these times remain as gems in my memory. It was like the girl at school who hardly ever smiled but when she did, you know it was worth waiting around for. One of those was sitting outside in the picnic bench that Iain had rescued from the tip and rebuilt on a small plateau at the front of the house in Port Glasgow. It was a warm afternoon in the early summer, drinking homemade lemonade , looking down on the Clyde far below and across to Dumbarton and the Kilpatrick hills.

I was telling him about the recent death of a young women in our church that had deeply affected me, as it had all of our little congregation in the east end of Glasgow . She had struggled with cancer for some time and we had prayed seriously, earnestly and long, believing that God could and would heal her. She was so young. It didn’t seem right or fair. Her husband was bereft and we shared something of that grief. How could you make sense of this?  Ian responded in words that might at first seem harsh and uncaring but were anything but.

“..ah but you can’t tell God what to do….He is lord….He has his plan and we may never know the reason as long as we live…But it will be  for good…It will be for good”.

And he told me about Herbert Dickson. Herbert Dickson came from Port Glasgow and spent his life as a missionary in Nigeria, to the people who lived in the Que Iboe valley, in what was then known as the Que Iboe fellowship (now Mission Africa). It was founded in the late 19c by Samuel Bill who responded to a request from local chiefs in the delta region for a missionary to work with them. Herbert had spoken at our small bible study group on one occasion and I had read his biography “All the days of my life”. He was highly respected and greatly thought of for his work and commitment to the Que Iboe people for almost all his life. When he was old and quite ill he returned to Scotland confined to hospital and clearly dying. He was tired and weary and longed to escape. He prayed that God would take him and let him die. He had served his lord all his life, now he wanted to die, an absolutely reasonable request, by any standards.  But, to his dismay and frustration, that prayer wasn’t answered and he continued to live and suffer. His frustration turned to anger which almost consumed him until one morning, reading his bible, he was aware of God speaking  “Herbert… you know that 45 years ago you gave your life to me and said that I was the lord…that I was the Lord of your life… and I still am …and the time when you will end this life is not actually your business …it is mine.”  It was a moment of revelation when the blinds were lifted. His frustration and anger dissolved and he accepted whatever it was, it was in the hands of his Lord and it would be for the best.

I was with Iain briefly the night before he died.  He was distant and distressed and I was helpless. When I left my final word was “see you later”. It seemed almost flippant at the time, but I meant it. I still do and I can’t wait till later.

Crawford Mackenzie

For any prospective son-in-law, bringing the parents together for the first time was bound to be fraught with anxiety and apprehension. So much is at stake as a first impression can be pivotal.  In my case it was a matter of establishing confidence. Confidence that this son-in-law to be, who was wanting in most, if not all, of the social graces, with a haphazard slightly incomprehensible and unpredictable character, was going to be ok for their daughter.  So on a beautiful Acharacle morning with the clear cut silhouette of Ben Resipole hanging in the mist over loch Shiel, the banks of daffodils bursting in yellow and the house looking more alike a stately home than the rambling manse which it was, the scene was set.  I had done my best to make sure that everything was ready: the house was clean and tidy and Jeannie was busy organising lunch. But it was the meeting with Iain that clinched it. He welcomed the visitors from Perth, engaged them in conversation, enquired after their journey and although really a visitor himself, acted the perfect host. The test had been passed.  I was so glad to have a big brother who was a gentleman too. It was what my future in-laws needed to know. Maybe with a big brother like Iain, he would be alright after all.

The Watson Street flat was through a close and up a stone stair at the rear. Tuesday night was homework night and, surprising as it may seem, it was the highlight of the week. We were invited up to Iain and Anna’s new home. David was studying Latin, Jeannie on sums and I trying to polish up on spelling, but it was a fun night. There was more chatting and laughter than work being done, with the young ones listening in on Iain and David’s take on moral philosophy. It was here that the idea to write a weekly broadsheet  “The Gislet” was born.  Gislet was a cat left behind in Eigg and the sheet had contributions from all the family. For the first edition, my contribution was an ode to the lentil tin. “The lentil tin is empty, mourn for the lentil tin” but to make sense of it, you would have needed to have known that the lentil tin was where the household cash was kept. Iain had his own column “Gislet thinks” and the first, I recall was “ Gislet thinks… should the joiners work to rule?” It was purely for in house entertainment, but typical of the creative exercise we were slowly absorbing. The climax of the night was Anna’s wonderful suppers full of tasties we had never seen before. It was so much more exciting than saps at home. There was something grown up about it all. It made you want to study and learn, discover and create. It was so good to have a big brother who was not only a full grown man but a husband with a family and a home of his own.

Iain had an attic room above the kitchen with lay-ins and a skylight. You got to it by climbing up a vertical ladder fixed to the wall through an open hatch at the back door. It was somewhere we seldom went and only by invitation. I remember the first time he called me up. Popping my head through the hatch, it was at once a magical place. While the rest of the rambling three storey house, that was the manse, was either chaotic and untidy or stripped bare and sterile, this was a space of calm order for work, reflection and enquiry. Books were carefully arranged on makes shift shelves pictures, photographs and maps, stones and shells from the beach.  On a desk an open book with a leaf as a book mark and a pad of white writing paper with what looked like an essay drafted in miniature writing with even smaller scribbles at the side, notes and small cartoons, explaining the thought process. A fountain pen with an open bottle of Quink black ink lay at the side. There was a neat rug on the floor with bare floor boards and the most striking thing, to my young eyes, in the middle of the floor, on an upturned fish box, acting as a coffee table, lay a pound note. I had seen a pound note before but there was something outrageously  defiant in the way it just lay there, gently rising and falling in the warm breeze through the skylight window, well used and creased but with such poise. It was the stamp of a character on a room. It was something that I never forgot. Somehow, and no doubt unconsciously my big brother had opened a door in my mind to a new world ripe for exploration, and discovery.

Later he took me fishing. We borrowed a dinghy from the shore and set off round the coast on a balmy summer evening. Iain was at the front rowing, I at the back, occasionally bailing out the sea water that seeped through the clinkers. We caught no fish but had a great time. Leaving the jetty and castle island far behind, we explored the Grulin coast from the sea, rowing into tiny inlets and scraping the keel off the rocks as we looked for a good place to land. On the shore we collected buoys and odd bits of flotsam that they sea constantly threw up. We spotted a yacht moored not far from the shore and went to investigate. The man on deck was friendly. He was fishing too but catching and he invited us on board. The little yacht was magical inside. A tiny kitchen and a tinier bathroom, a little lounge with portholes, a low table with a bowl of fresh fruit. All brass and polished wood, fitted together perfectly with no space wasted and a warmth and luxury that entranced us. We were entertained for ages with tea and stories of their escapades around the western isles. The previous year they had moored in the harbour and were trapped on a sand bank. We didn’t notice the time nor the boat gradually rock to and fro and it was only when we were about to leave clutching our gifts, a week old Scotsman, a banana and two mackerel, that we became aware of the serious squall that was building up. Rowing back into the wind was hard.  The storm was growing in strength and at times we seemed to be hardly moving at all. The boat rocked and we were repeatedly soaked when waves crashed against the side. But to a little person it was still fun.  Iain was struggling to get to the bay so we decided to stop over on Castle Island in the hope that the storm would slack. It didn’t, it looked like it was getting worse, so we made one last dash for the harbour. It wasn’t far but the sea was now at its wildest. Finally after a mammoth struggle Iain pulled us round into the calmer waters of the bay where a crowd had gathered to welcome us.   Later we learned that the whole island were alerted and in a state of alarm. Several boats had been out searching for us. They had been scouring the shore for the missing sailors and were beginning to fear the worst. Years later, I understood the very real danger that we were in and how close to tragedy our little expedition was, but the thought didn’t bother me then, nor now. I was with my big brother and I knew it was going to be ok.

On Easter Day ten years ago my brother Iain died, after a short, painful and distressing few months of cancer.  He was my elder by 11 years and he was already an adult, a man and had left home by the time I knew him. He was always my big brother and while I became an adult too, there was always these twelve significant years between us. In the aftermath of his death I tried to put together a series of snapshots to chronicle something of what he was to me. Trying to sum up one person’s life, even with the finest of tributes, is a hopeless task. Inevitably, it is patchy, flawed, and one dimensional. When reading or hearing a tribute, I come away with the feeling “is that it?” “was that all?” These chronicles, which will follow, are not attempts to sum up a life but simply lantern slides capturing a moment in time when the character transcends the simple story revealing the person that was and is my brother.

David said he learned to ride a bike down the slope to the hen house but I learned by freewheeling from the top of the hill behind the manse. There was only one size of bicycle – large. Small bikes and stabilisers were unknown and the trick was to carry a chair up the slope, support the bike with one hand, sit on it and push off. With feet only reaching the high point of the pedals you free-wheeled down, zigzagging through the grass and jumping clear just before the bike keeled over in a heap. Then you picked up the heavy beast, pushed it back up the hill and started all over again. Needless to say, when tired of the runs, the chair was left solitary on the hill and when the call for tea came, I was told to go back for it. Tired and reluctant and most likely complaining, I started for the door but Iain pushed past me. “I’ll get it” he said as he sprinted up the hill in his rolled up shirt, grey flannels and sandshoes. I watched in amazement at his astonishing agility. It seemed like nothing as he galloped down the hill with the chair in his hand. I was struck then by the unbounded joy he showed in this selfless act. My little heart glowed. It was so good to have a big brother