Life at 90 is full of interest but the interests are now mostly sedentary. I sit in my study, in our living room, in Mary’s garden and read for hours and my mind is invited to a feast which never ends.
I understand that an even more extensive menu is available on the internet at the touch of a mouse and I confess that I have been astonished by the fare I sample there from time to time. But it is far too late to change by very much how I have always sought my sustenance and, in any case, why depart from what has whetted my appetite and wonderfully satisfied my palate in a lifetime of intellectual adventure and bookish delights?
There is to read again Father Michael Campbell-Johnson’s compelling story of his life, Just Faith. Older Guyanese may remember this charismatic Jesuit priest from the period 1966 to 1975 when he lived and worked among the poor in Guyana. He helped found GISRA (Guyana Institute for Social Research and Action) and dedicated himself and inspired many others to assist the deprived and the downtrodden. I remember CJ, as he was always called, very well and a few times visited him in the two small rooms where he lived in a slum area of La Penitence and we would talk a long time as his ragged, and rugged, neighbours came in and out asking for favours and the blessings of his encouragement. Later he was to become celebrated as a leader in San Salvador of the Catholic “option for the poor” in South America and as Provincial of the British Province which includes South Africa.
This enthralling book is an astonishing tale of the daily devotion all his life of a man of God and wonderful human being to the task of assisting the poor, the weak, the deprived, the forgotten and the abandoned and the persecuted of the world. And something that struck me about CJ’s life-long engagements all over the world in the battles to alleviate poverty and injustice was not only his continual contributions at the cutting edge of these conflicts but just as tellingly it was simply his presence always among the impoverished and downtrodden that made a tremendous difference – bearing out the Jesuit prescription that as much value can be gained by “being with” as by “doing for” those who desperately need support.
Ah, there are supremely good people in this world, let nobody tell you different. Above all think of Nelson Mandela. In a letter Mandela wrote from his prison on Robben Island in 1975 he said the following: “ Honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, pure generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others are qualities which are within easy reach of every soul – the foundation of one’s spiritual life.” So simply said – so supremely hard to follow.
In an essay on the immortal black singer Billie Holiday, Robert O’Meally quotes the black essayist and novelist James Baldwin writing on the “uses” of the blues and what Baldwin wrote many years ago is still what it is like in America all too tragically often:
“…. what happens to you if, having barely escaped suicide, or death, or madness or yourself, you watch your children growing up and no matter what you do, you are powerless, you are really powerless against the forces of the world that are out to tell your child that he has no right to live.”
I have been thinking, and following the fortunes, of older sportsmen who may be tempted to continue competing beyond their sell-by date and thereby tarnish the proud and shining record established when they were in their prime. I have been inclining to the view that they should get out while the going is reasonably good. But who am I to judge? I once read with delight a wide-ranging interview with the Spanish golfer Miguel Angel Jimenez in which he linked his play with his love and enjoyment of life itself. He was asked if he thought it was wise to continue trying to compete at the highest level when he was in the sixth decade of his life. After all, what were his chances of winning?
“You don’t worry,” he said, “If I didn’t still enjoy competing with these great rivals do you think I would waste my time moving around the world kicking my own ass?”
I love that. Let them all, the old ones, continue and good luck to them.
