Fiona Smith

Call The Midwife is one of my favourite TV series, on Sunday evening I sit and watch it as it beautifully captures the joy and miracle of birth. It also brings into sharp focus, the stark grim truth about poverty in east-end London in 60s, the limitations of medicine, the pain and suffering when babies and mothers do not survive childbirth. As well as where as power healing, simple kindness in faith.

I'm thinking about the song from Caberai, "Money makes the world go around". Of course it's the laws of gravity that do, but we get exactly what the song means.

Since the end of lockdown, people working in public facing jobs, from NHS staff, to shop workers, has experienced hostility, verbal abuse against them. This is even more shocking when we remember, when it was only a year ago we all clapping for them. But today, we’re living in a pressure-cooker. Life is overwhelming, anger, frustration, fear, is all bubbling away. We’re bombarded with different opinions of what we should or shouldn’t be doing. Even with climate change, there are so many competing views about right way to attack it that we left lost despairing.

How are you? It's a simple enough question, but it's not an easy one to answer. In a nano second we must weight up whether the question is really enquiry into our wellbeing, or just being courteous. But even if we conclude that the enquiry is genuine, we may still incline to say, "Oh I'm fine." not quite being able to say how we really are. Because we don't want to burden the other person with long story about how we feel. Or we may feel uncomfortable opening up being vulnerable. Or we might just not have the word to express how we truely feel.

As a child at 70s I grown up watching BluePeter. I still remember the feature he did about amazing work of the RNLI. While I never been on the ferry to the isle of White, I was hugely reassured that if I've ever got into difficulty at sea, the RNLI volunteers will be there to rescue me. Everyday men and women freely give their time to train, to be on 24 hour call, and even risk their own lives to save strangers at peril on the sea, or even loch Ness for that matter. The same is true of Scottish mountain service, who day or night, at all weathers scale mountains to rescue the injured or the lost, even those who're equiped with not much more than Google map to navigate their climb. No question asked about who the person is, who is in danger, or whether they're at fault. All that matters to them is the safety and wellbeing of a fellow human being. The selflessness is truely inspiring.

This summer Isle Martin in loch Broom on west coast is going to have its 1st resident living, on the 400 acre island in over 30 years. The island is owned by community trust, there's no running hot water only a small solar panel that might just power a phone, a laptop, or even some light. So it was utterly astonished when inundated with applicants when it was advertised for volunteers to keep 3 houses on island prepared for guest, clean the public toilet welcome visitors to this birds sanctuary.

Lockdown wonderfully is easing, the successful vaccination program is bring hope, but covid still stalks us, the horrendous suffering in India reignites fears, and life remains hard. When our youngest daughter is just three, she out of blue announced, “You know praying,” as she then called Prayer, “It’s just talking to God.” I was left dumbstruck by her insight. This wee child had an instinct describe the heart of prayer. That is about relationship with god, who we can chat to as easily as we can to a close friend. I also must admit that I was heartened that our chatterbox find someone else to talk to too. But just as it is with good friend, words are not always needed.

It's been a momentous week for me, after 5 long months I got my haircut, it was desperately needed, on Easter Sunday, one of my flock made me laugh by saying, you're rocking the Suzi Quatro look. Secondly I got my first Covid jab, it was organised with military precision. As I registered I realise it was the first time since primary school that I stood in a line of people are all on my own age. We were getting the astrazeneca vaccine, as the queue moved along with surprising speed, we could soon overhear the doctor speak about the risk associated with the jab. Blood clots are extremely low risk, but feeling unwell for the next few days was common. As we all remain stoically in line, it struck me how amazing it was, that all of us are willing to have the vaccine, despite knowing we're likely to feel lousy for next few days, and for tiny minority it could be worse.

A chatty person normally wears his dry west coast humour, but that morning she had no words. After a few moments of silence, I said, "It's all bunkers, isn't it?" She laughed with relief in her voice. When I marks how things are I reply with ridiculous line, "I'm living in the dream." At least it make folks laugh, but it underlines reality we all struggling to find the words to express how we feel. Mental health experts rightly raising awareness of devastating effect pandemic is having on people's mental health. We're all encouraged to talk about how each really feel, cause when we do it helps relief the burdens we're carrying. But what happens when we have no words, or the words we do have we are afraid to say, because they are shocking in their desolation and despair.