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Tasmanian Anglican

December 2002

 

Kenny's catch

by Charles Kenny

 

 

Maggie Martin's Christmas Tree

Margaret Silf writes that she had never taken any particular notice of the Christmas Tree in the presbytery where it had been for nine years. In a chance conversation with the parish priest she heard about its origins. It was the gift of a certain Maggie Martin to Mark when he had been the priest of a poverty-stricken inner London parish.

Mark had come to the assistance of Maggie, often the worse for drink, on many occasions and at all hours. In the early hours of a particular morning Maggie had a row with her latest lover and threw him out into the street with the Christmas Tree which had been his latest gift to her. Later on she decided that it was a shame to waste the Christmas Tree and took it back, and then presented it to Mark along with its decorations. Before she left the presbytery she added, ' I ought to warn you, Father, they're all nicked, the decorations.'

Little by little Maggie moved from her world to a different world and eventually came to be sustained by a different kind of wine. Before she died of cancer at the age of 50 she sent this poem to Mark...

I came to the faith
a stranger, searching
from sorrow seeking
solace, where it hid;
An outsider, face pressed
against the window
looking in...

And it seemed that
I was bade,
'Enter, and be still.'
And in the celebration
of the blessed bread and wine,
I saw a hand of friendship.
And I heard: 'In this sweet oasis,
take your fill.'

So the Christmas Tree remains in the corner of the room at the presbytery as a reminder of Maggie riddled with sin and yet full of grace before crossing over from this world to God.

And the Word is made flesh, and dwells among us, full of grace and truth. And we behold his glory, twinkling in stolen fairy lights, flickering in broken hearts, until the dawn.

p. 219 Taste and See, Adventuring Into Prayer
by Margaret Silf