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| Castello de Rocca Sinibalda www.grupofost.it |
Disasters wrench apart the most gentle of memories. Amatrice,
Rieti, L’Aquila, the hidden villages of Belmonte and Roccasinibalda, all places
I have known – the last one especially – with its great castle rising from a
rock, towering over the valley, its village nestled around it, all dwarfed by the Abruzzi
hills. The castle was once my grandmother’s and I spent many a languid summer
there in my teens. Rieti and L’Aquila were our nearest towns, half and hour's drive away. I have
not yet been able to establish whether the castle and its present occupants are
safe.
But these are, on the face of it, trivial anxieties
compared to those suffered by someone like Ahmed who lives in asylum
accommodation in Stockton.[1] He spends what little available money he has on
keeping his phone topped up, so that he can check on his family still in Syria.
He learns daily of their deaths and of the continuing obliteration of a town he
loves. He dreams of returning, and of completing his engineering degree.
I know Ahmed, in that part of human consciousness where a
person knows another person, or place, without ever having met them, or been
there. His situation is as much a part of me, perhaps more so, because of what
may be happening to the village of Roccasinibalda and to its 15th century
castle. The difference lies in Rocca being only a distant memory, brought to
life perhaps by passing associations – like hearing Italian being spoken, or
the smell of pinecones on a hot day. Ahmed’s memory is shared by millions of
refugees in the reality of every present moment, in all its loneliness and
grief.
Amatrice and Aleppo, Ahmed’s town, have something in
common. Suffering, like sickness, is a great leveller. We hear in the news that
some who were pulled from the rubble of their houses in Amatrice, miraculously unhurt, instantly became rescue workers alongside those who pulled them away from
certain death. This happens on a daily basis in Aleppo. It is perhaps happening
at Rocca. As yet we have no news. The village must be inaccessible by road in
present conditions.
Amatrice, Aleppo and Roccasinibalda invite careful
consideration of what we mean when we say that we are praying for someone, or
for a particular place. If prayer is ‘answered’, I do not think that the ‘answer’
always comes in the form of a request granted. If it did, all natural disasters
like earthquakes, as well as unnatural ones, like the barrel bombing of civilians,
would be instantly reversed, as though life were a film which we could wind
back, editing out the bad bits.
I think it is better to think of prayer as pertaining to
a dimension which is beyond our own time frame and yet very much a part of it. Prayer
takes us beyond the present and embraces both past and future, the known and
the as yet unknown, in a single moment of ‘knowing’. In the case of Roccasinibalda
(if it has been affected by the earthquake) and Aleppo, a place which is remembered
identifies us with the place known by another person who we do not know. Ahmed
and I meet in these places, and in this particular dimension, to a certain
degree.
So prayer is a multiform, multilateral process, one in
which all parties, including God, grieve and yearn, but for which there is only
one source of healing and redemptive grace. Some disasters, those which touch
us personally, quicken the heart with an anxiety and longing for there to be at
least some good news, some reassurance that the people or the place we have
known have been spared. Prayer affirms our belonging to God and to the whole
human race, past, present and future. It is more mysterious, far more subtle
and complex than wish fulfilment (waiting for good news) or denial (not
accepting responsibility where we should). It involves entering into God’s
love, being part of the ‘engine against the Almighty’[2] which drives us to God and
is also driven by divine love.
Through prayer, we take responsibility (not
blame) for suffering, as God did in his Son. We become part of that universal
salvific act and hence also part of the new creation which springs from it. Taking
responsibility is not about blame, and still less about retributive punishment.
It is about allowing oneself, and the people and places we care about, to love
and to be loved by God. Both can be painful.
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