The Lent Course, this year, tempted me to read biographies. Starting with John Day’s biography of George Herbert, I then moved on to Katherine Rundell’s biography of John Donne. These two were near contemporaries, both gifted poets, intellectually outstanding and Anglican clergymen. One difference – John Donne was born a Catholic and George Herbert a Protestant.
This led me to wondering about the baggage we all bring with us. It seems to me that Nicodemus in today’s gospel brings the baggage of wealth. Money and goods, whilst not easy, seem straightforward to dispose of. What the story doesn’t say is how he dealt with the baggage that goes with wealth: the comfortable lifestyle, the freedom from worry; the good education, the confident personality that develops when the path of human development is smooth.
Since Freud, it has become accepted that our past experiences affect us more than was ever realised previously. I don’t believe that we can shed this baggage by an act of will. However, I do think we can learn to recognize aspects of that baggage and turn it to good account. As Nicodemus sold all he had and benefitted the poor, so he might have, in time, used his good education to help those who were impoverished by their illiteracy, or those who were debilitated by anxiety. In turn, he would have learned from the people he helped, exactly what it was like to live a life of poverty and perhaps, been inspired by their sheer determination to survive and make the very best of the little they had.
John Donne turned his Catholic roots into a prestigious role in the Church of England, George Herbert, the trappings of power and status into a much humbler role in the same church. Both wove their life experiences into verses that we can still read and learn from today.
I wonder what baggage you bring and how you might use it to serve God?
Wendy Quill
