By now Percy was approaching and saw who they were talking to. “Cut it out, Courtenay,” he said. “She meant no harm. Hello, Gwyneth,” he said, smiling down at her.
“She’s just the little village idiot—that’s what she is.”
“Leave her alone,” repeated Percy.
“What—is she a friend of yours now?”
“That’s right—she’s a friend of mine.”
“So that’s how it is! That explains everything,” laughed Courtenay. “I’m hardly surprised. And she is a witch. Didn’t you hear her stutter?”
“That doesn’t make anyone a witch.”
“Listen to the city boy!” Courtenay spat back. “Even if she’s not a witch, she’s a half-wit.” He touched his index finger to the side of his head and winked at his sister.
“I tell you there’s nothing wrong with her,” said Percy angrily. “That’s the trouble with cowards like you, Courtenay. You don’t know how to pick on someone your own size.”
“You’re calling me a coward?”
“For making fun of a girl half your size—that’s exactly what you are.”
The words were unwisely spoken. Seconds later Percy found himself on the ground groaning. A little more on his guard after the incident in the barn, this time he managed to sidestep the quick jab from his cousin’s hand. But Courtenay was not merely bigger than Percy, he was twice as cunning. Missing with his fist, he gave a lethal swipe with his foot. Percy’s legs went out from under him, and the next instant Courtenay’s booted foot landed two well-placed kicks into the side of his ribs.
Brother and sister continued on their way laughing at the two fools behind them.
Percy rolled over and tried to sit up in the dirt of the street, while Gwyneth ran inside the cottage. A moment later she stooped beside him, this time with no fistful of flowers but holding a moist cloth. She handed it to him. He took it with a smile of gratitude and wiped at his dust-covered face.
His two cousins were not yet out of sight. Glancing back and witnessing the tender scene, they could not keep themselves from the temptation to add insult to injury. They walked back toward the cottage.
“Percy, Percy, baby Percy!” chanted Courtenay. “Witch girl taking care of baby boy from the city!”
Florilyn was laughing so hard by now that she could scarcely contain herself. This was sweeter revenge than she had hoped for!
Suddenly a great shooing and scurrying interrupted the laughter and taunts. A woman by appearances ancient beyond years ran from the cottage with a torrent of shouts. In truth she was but eighty-one, old enough to be wise yet still robust enough to hold her own against the viscount’s troublesome brood. She held a great broom in her hand and came flying into the street like an old Celtic warrior from whose stock she had come. Heedless of their father’s status in the region, she whacked and swatted at the two young Westbrookes, whose character she knew well enough. “Get away from here, you two troublemakers!” she cried, landing a powerful blow with the blunt handle of her weapon on Courtenay’s head.
“Ouch … hey, you old witch!” he shouted, jumping back. “Stop it! I’ll send my father down here after you.”
“I’ll give him the same,” shot back the woman, “if he tries to harm a hair on another body’s head!”
Wham! came another strike from the broom.
“Get on home! You two are no better than a couple of street urchins! Whatever happened to gentlemen and ladies?”
“Come on, Florilyn,” said Courtenay. Now that he had recovered himself, he found himself a little cowed by the rumors he had heard of the old woman. “Let’s leave Percy to the two witches.”
They ran off down the street, laughing again, though not quite so gaily. They were superstitious enough to be nervous about having a run-in on God’s day with one of the devil’s presumed workers of iniquity.
Gwyneth took Percy by the hand and tried to pull him to his feet.
“Goodness, goodness!” said the old woman, out of breath from the battle. “Come inside, the two of you. What you need, young man, is some strong hot tea.”
“Grannie, this is my friend, Mr. Drummond,” said Gwyneth as they entered the darkened cottage. “He’s from Glasgow.”
“Is he now! Well then, welcome to Grannie’s house, Mr. Drummond,” she said as Percy followed them inside. “You must have these violets I picked just this morning,” she added. She set down the weapon-broom and took a tiny clump of purple from a water dish on the table. “No stranger comes to my house without flowers to make a friend of him.”
Percy and Gwyneth glanced toward one another and smiled.
“Thank you,” said Percy. He took the tiny bouquet and lifted them to his nose as he sat down on the straight wood chair the woman pulled toward him. “Are you Gwyneth’s grandmother?”
“No, young man, I am Gwyneth’s great-great-aunt. Her father is the grandson of my husband’s brother. They’re all gone now to their home with the Lord, all except the lad, Gwyneth’s daddy.”
The old woman set about the tea making. At her side, Gwyneth assisted with the familiar routine.
“I hear rumors,” said Grannie as she worked, never embarrassed to speak her mind before either lord or peasant and especially before friend, “that in Glasgow you’re not much better than your two cousins.” As she spoke she glanced over her shoulder to where her guest sat holding the wet cloth to his face.
Percy was so shocked by the unexpected words that he did not answer at first. His only reply came in the form of the reddening of his cheeks.
“Sometimes the Lord must turn the tables on us,” she went on, “so that we see ourselves as we really are.” She glanced toward Percy again. This time she gazed deeply into his eyes. “No,” she added with a knowing nod, “you are not one of them. The difference is not hard to see. You’ve just been a mite confused about some things. But there’s the look in your eye of one who knows right from wrong. You are of the truth, I’m thinking.”
Grannie sat down and said nothing more. Gradually she seemed to drift away to some distant time in the past.
Gwyneth quietly finished the tea preparations. She handed a cup to Percy then laid the tray on a small table beside Grannie’s chair.
Percy remained thoughtful over Grannie’s words. He did know right from wrong. The woman was right. He had been no better than his cousins. He deserved more than just a kick in the ribs. He deserved to be in the gaol right now. He would be, too, if his father wasn’t a respected vicar.
Gwyneth had inherited Grannie’s straightforward tongue as well as the Celtic clarity of her vision. “What’s bothering you, Grannie?” she asked after a few more minutes. “Why are you so quiet?”
“Did you not hear about poor old Sean Drindod, dear?”
Gwyneth nodded. “Papa told me.”
“He and I were two of the few left from the old century, you know,” said Grannie. “When someone you’ve known all your life goes on to their next home, it makes a body thoughtful.”
Percy detected from her tone and the faraway expression that had come over her countenance that there was more behind the old woman’s mood than her brief explanation revealed.
31
A God to Call Father
By the time Sunday came to Glasgow, the vicar doubted he would survive the morning without tears.
“My friends,” his message had begun, “I would like to speak to you this morning about reconciliation. It is what the Bible calls unity.”
He paused to allow the word to sink in. He was also trying to settle his own thoughts.
“I believe,” Drummond went on, “that unity is what God cares about more than anything in the world. Jews the world over remind themselves daily that God is one.
“It is a mighty truth—God is one. God’s nature is singleness, oneness … unity. For things to be one as God intends … for relationships within God’s creation to reflect their Creator, all discord, all separation, all disharmony … these must be brought to
gether, made one. Everything in life, everything in the world, must be made one, because God is one.
“Reconciliation is the goal and purpose of God’s heart. He would have His created beings reconciled with His Father-heart. That is the ultimate oneness, the ultimate unity. Until this reconciliation is perfected between God and His created universe, all within that creation is at strife.”
Drummond paused and drew in a deep breath. His eyes closed briefly then opened, and he continued. “But this unity is not a reconciliation that can take place in some grand and sweeping way between mankind and God. It is a reconciliation that takes place individually—one man, one woman at a time. It takes place in my heart, not mankind’s heart. And it takes place in your heart, not the whole world’s heart.
“If God is anything,” he went on, “He is our Father. We have in this parable before us no mere story of a broken family. Our Lord here offers us a picture of the entire scope of the human drama. In a mere twenty verses, we are given a microcosm of the grand epic of the biblical saga. A loving father gives his children all they could ask for. Instead of being content with this provision, one decides to seek his fortune outside the loving abundance of this home. He squanders the inheritance that is his, at length returns to his father, repents of his foolishness, and is happily restored.
“This morning, however, it is not the son’s sin that I want us to focus on, but rather the father of this wonderful parable. For if we can truly see into the heart of this man whom Jesus described, we discover a picture of God found nowhere else in the Bible.
“Look, my friends—see the parable with new eyes. How does God respond when we return to Him?
“The Lord’s words tell us God’s response upon the return of a single wayward prodigal to his father’s home. They are more beautiful even than the son’s humble repentance. They are among the most important words in the Bible, for they tell us what God is like. ‘But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.’
“See the father of the parable! He is waiting with a great smile on his face, a smile of welcome, arms outstretched. He is not waiting to judge or punish his wayward son; he is waiting to embrace him and kiss him and love him and be all the home a father can be to him.
“The image makes my heart swell. God is waiting for us! He sees us coming even while we are yet far off! He runs to us. Can you grasp it—God running to us to throw His arms around us and kiss us in welcome!
“How different is this from the austere image of God presented by the old theologians. Does this sound to you like the God of the hellfire evangelists who rant about sinners in the hands of an angry God, about sinners being dangled over the flames of hell?
“Of course not. The Father of Jesus Christ does not demand that we repent in sackcloth and ashes before He will deign to look down upon us from His almighty throne, wielding thunderbolts of retribution if we do not. He is a loving Father, a patient Father, a good Father, a forgiving Father.
“Of course there are consequences if we refuse this reconciliation. But they are consequences we bring upon ourselves, consequences He observes with tears in His eyes. They are not the consequences of vengeance, retribution, and wrath. They are consequences of our own reluctance and stubbornness.
“In Luke 15 we are presented the Gospel in its fullness: Our Father is a good and loving and forgiving Father. He is the perfection of that broken and incomplete fatherhood that we all experience in our earthly families. Our earthly fathers are incomplete and broken. They have hurt us. We who are fathers have done a poor job of it and have been broken and incomplete examples of what God intended. We, too, have hurt our sons and daughters.
“But earthly fatherhood, in its imperfection, is intended as a reflection of what lies beyond. It is meant to lead us to our true Father. It is thus the human doorway to God Himself. In spite of its flawed nature, it is the most important relationship in the world for us to get right. We must make our hearts right with our fathers and mothers that we can be right with God.
“God is the perfection of the broken earthly image. He is everything we hoped our fathers would be, all we wanted them to be. He is the perfection of all that lies in your father’s heart and mine to be to our children that which we were incapable of being. He is a God whom to call Father. Not Monarch, not Terror, not Judge—though He can surely be those to those who continue to refuse Him—no, nor Tyrant nor Despot … not even Holy, though He is that, not even Omnipotent, though He is that … but He whom Jesus taught us to call ‘Abba, Father!’
“He is our Father. And He waits for our return. In the embrace of His love is our home. There only is it possible for us to find the home in which we were created to live.
“That is where unity originates—in my heart and yours. The words of the prodigal are the universal words of the reconciliation of the universe. They are the words by which we acknowledge our disconnection from our Life-Source. They are the words by which we return to oneness with God, who is nothing more nor less … than our Father.”
Drummond paused again and drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes briefly.
“It takes humility, great humility to seek reconciliation,” he went on after a moment. “Yet humility is the doorway into reconciliation. The prodigal son, whose story Jesus told, looked around and realized he was eating with pigs. He had had such dreams! He had been so eager to claim his inheritance and to live life, as we of this modern age say, on his own. But where had it brought him in the end? What did he have?
“Only loneliness. He was eating with pigs!
“When he realized it and admitted it … then was born in him the humility that leads to reconciliation. That humility, that swallowing of pride, that recognition of what he had sunk to, led him home to his father. It is humility that leads us home.
“It is that same humility that leads us to reconciliation in our lives. Humility, my friends. The humility to say to one we have wronged, to one who has wronged us, to one with whom misunderstandings have separated us for whatever reason … to say, ‘I no longer want to be disconnected. I do not want to be apart from this one whom I once loved.’ In humility I am ready to say, ‘I will arise and go to my brother … my sister … my mother … my daughter … my father … my son.’ I will say, ‘With all my heart I desire again to be in relationship with you. I am sorry to have failed in loving you, but I will try to love you again.’
“The humility to acknowledge, ‘I do not want to be separated one day more. I will arise and go.’
“Humility, my friends. Humility to recognize that life is not what we had hoped. Humility to recognize that life is full of mistakes, that we have made our own share of them. Humility to apologize. Humility to arise and go to the one we have hurt. Humility to go to one who has hurt us.
“Humility is the doorway, my friends. It is the door to all healings, the door that leads to our brethren, the door that leads to our sons and daughters and mothers and fathers and our friends … the door that leads to the heart of God.”
Drummond stopped. He glanced around for a moment and exhaled deeply. It was obvious he was spent. The church was silent.
32
Cryptic Words
In the humble cottage of Llanfryniog, Codnor Barrie’s great-aunt continued to stare into the fire. She had not yet poured out a drop of tea from the pot.
At length the old woman began to talk. Her speech was soft and faraway. “He wanted to take it from me,” she said in scarcely more than a whisper, “thought he had a right to it … but I wouldn’t give it to him … wouldn’t tell him where I’d kept it this many a year.”
The words were cryptic and strange. Percy asked no questions. Even after three weeks, he was still a stranger to this place. Nor could he keep from his brain reminders of his cousin’s claim that the old woman was a witch.
As Grannie rocked gently back and forth, she continued to say odd things in an otherworldly voice. Percy could
not prevent a certain sensation upon neck and arms commonly known as feeling one’s flesh crawl.
Gwyneth busied herself around the cottage. She seemed to pay her aging aunt no heed. She had heard such oddities too many times to consider the words strange.
“Old man said it was all mine if only I could find it … out there, he said, though Sean always thought I knew more than I was telling … resented me having it … never know what fate your steps will lead you to, the old pirate said … now look where Sean’s have led him … dead on the same shores … just like the old sea dog we found.”
The cottage fell silent. By and by Grannie came to herself. She glanced about, saw the tea, reached out her hand and touched the lukewarm pot, then gave a little chuckle. “Have I fallen asleep in my chair?” she said.
“You were talking about the old man again, Grannie.”
“Ah,” she nodded. “It’s no wonder, after what happened to poor Sean. My mind’s been turned toward that day ever since I heard the evil news. Shall I put on a new pot?” she added, rising again to her feet.
“I have to go home, Grannie,” said Gwyneth. “I have to make tea for Papa.”
“Don’t forget the bread then, child,” said Grannie. She rose and picked up a fine brown loaf from where it stood on the table.
Percy rose also. “Thank you for the tea,” he said.
“The door of my cottage is always open to you.” Grannie smiled. “I hope you will visit me again. Gwyneth, dear,” she added, “here’s the loaf for your papa.”
By now Gwyneth’s shoes were back on her feet, and she had both hands available for it.
Grannie’s two visitors walked outside. Wondering if his cousins were still about, Percy glanced up and down the street. When he turned back, Gwyneth was already making her way homeward out of the village, carrying the large round loaf under her arm. Percy hurried after her.
From Across the Ancient Waters- Wales Page 16