Early days: Tony D’Souza’s Thought for the week
‘How do I account for how I have spent my days?’
It’s finally happened. I am officially a Twirly.
Let me explain. ‘Twirly’ is London Underground slang for pensioners with a free travel pass. The pass can’t be used before 9.30am, so on some mornings there is a group of retired people waiting in the ticket hall, asking staff, ‘Am I too early?’ Too early… Twirly.
Last week, I did have to get into central London early, so I showed my pass to the man in the booth and found myself asking this legendary question. Twirly? He looked at me with a knowing smile and said, ‘No worries guv. Go straight through.’
My generation is famously early for everything, but we’re getting closer to something we don’t want to be too early for: death. Not that we can be. What I mean is, I am now a senior citizen, but how do I account for how I have spent my days? And what have I done to prepare myself for their ending? Mortality dogs my steps from morning to night. I am still fit (thank God) and can do, unassisted, the most important thing a human being can ever do: get out of bed and walk around. For this I am genuinely grateful. There are many people who can’t, and there will surely come a day when I will also be denied this privilege.
But what have I done with my life? I leave the past to God’s mercy, the present to God’s being, and the future to God’s care. As far as the past goes, have I done anything good? More importantly perhaps, have I done anything bad? I have always tried to do good and resist doing bad, but until I encountered God in my late twenties, I didn’t have a clue. Before that encounter, I was lost in the foggy mire of self-seeking and self-gratification. It took me years to understand that no action could be truly good if it is tainted by self-interest. Even now it’s a difficult balance. There is no intrinsic good in either the body or the mind, as the only good there is comes from what exists and shines beyond both. That is why, when the Anglo-Saxons exclaimed ‘My Goodness,’ (or ‘My Goode’) they were referring to something beyond themselves, which they neither owned nor controlled.
For the same reason, Jesus said, ‘When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing’. In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas he also says that the kingdom of God ‘is like a woman carrying a jar full of meal and walking a long way. The jar handle broke and the meal poured out behind her on the road. She was unaware, and did not know her loss. When she came to her house, she put down the jar and found it empty’.
None of this makes any sense until we know the Light within us. It’s the same light we seek in Meeting. This Light is meant to be shared – not by doing anything, or saying anything, but simply by knowing its presence within us. It takes care of everything else.
Have I allowed the Light to shine unclouded and unhindered in me? Have I allowed it to do through me what it requires of me in this life? I hope so. Speaking as a Twirly, I don’t have a lot of time left.
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.