Running out of beginners luck?

We sit round the kitchen table at night when we get home and tell each other how it’s been. Then we go into the shrine-room for rejoicing in merits. Completed standing order forms are offered to the shrine and rejoiced in first then the floor is open for all other rejoicings. I’m fed-up because I’ve had no standing orders all week. In fact I know that the first two were just beginner’s luck. I’m never going to get any more at all. It’s just too hard. I can’t think of anything to rejoice in. Then I imagine coming home on my own feeling like this. Immediately I feel incredibly grateful for the warmth and support of the team around me. I step forward and rejoice in that.

Then I rejoice in the first man to open the door to me tonight. He stood upright and dignified although he was very elderly. One whole side of his face and surrounding his eye was livid purple. He asked me to test his door-bell letting it slip that he had very few visitors. He knew a lot about India because he’d lived there in the 1930’s. He said people here wouldn’t complain as much if they saw the conditions there. He told me several long stories involving India until I said I really must be getting on. He turned away abruptly when I said that and I felt bad and chatted a little more. This time he said he better let me go. But first he went into the house and brought me out a new five-pound note. I felt sad leaving him to a night on his own; to nights on his own.

That night I dream that I take Holy Communion. It’s given to me by Father O’Reilly, from mum’s parish who I can’t bear, but that doesn’t matter. I feel grace enter me and fill me and wonder that I haven’t realized its power before when it’s been there all the time for the taking. Even the word seems wonderful and I keep repeating it. Communion. Communion.