We don't travel much but last year we went to Canada for our Wedding Anniversary and Gail's 50th birthday. I have a few pieces that I wrote over there but the one below celebrates our stay at Salmon Arm and reflects on Shuswap Lake in British Columbia - a different world to the other side of the Rockies from which we had travelled and were returning to so soon.
Shuswap: © Graham Oakes: 2007
Light lingers lazily on Shuswap Lake.
Sunset settles silently and
shadows scamper swiftly away
as the evening lets go of the day ....
What brings us here?
Drawn, not by our own desires,
though they were many,
but by a deeper, higher call.
Deeper than this glacial lake but
warmer to our hearts.
Higher than the mountain peaks
but closer to our souls.
Your presence is everywhere.
In time and in space;
in the minute and the magnificent;
there is no insignificance to you.
You go before us and have counted our steps.
You soar above us watching our way.
You walk beside us and speak peace.
You open our eyes to your truth.
When we think that we are alone
you remind us that your body is real;
tangible, living and breathing.
Each part made for the other,
all made one throughout the earth,
to which we, by grace, belong.
What stupendous grace!
And, just as you have
provided for our journey
you welcome us home
with overwhelming joy.
ORADUR
A few years ago we went with some friends to France and stayed a reasonable car's journey from the Martyr Village of Oradour sur Glane which we visited. It was a powerful reminder of the retributive horrors of the 2nd World War and I had to record my impression and experience of waking around a real ghost town.“ALL THAT REMAINS”
Dedicated to all those who perished
at Oradour-sur-glane
June 10th 1944.
Dedicated to all those who perished
at Oradour-sur-glane
June 10th 1944.
© Graham Oakes 2004
The rubble pokes up from this sacred ground like a half-finished, fully-forgotten building site. The bricks bare and thirsty, the girders rusted in the bright sunshine. Naked girders echoing the rusty remains of sewing machines and bedsprings, ovens and automobiles which lie within these broken shells which once were homes and workplaces.
The absence of familiar adornments of a living village the open doors and shutters; the simple but homely furniture; the twitching curtains, makes our continued approach uncomfortable.
And through the vacant windows we gaze at emptiness – the distressing emptiness of a broken heart.
The vacuum is not complete. Into this silent village intrude the irreverent noise of people. Hundreds of people. Walking, talking people. But there are no real people in this village – only transients. Tourists, sightseers, passers-by, foreigners. Their only reason to be here is to see for themselves, to be able to say that they have been here. Taking and posing for photographs they record the streets, the barns, the garages, the church. The clicking of cameras a faint echo of the stutter of distant machine guns …
And I was one of them. I walked along the streets and saw the burnt out cars – strangely inverse images (like photographic negatives) of what once was ... I walked the streets that naively welcomed the SS troops. I passed by the barns and garages that held frightened men captive for the slaughter. I stopped at the plaques that asked for prayerful recollection.
I entered the church … and then, only then did I hear the screams as I stopped trying to see the past - and permitted my mind to hear it.
If ever history was palpable it is here. Here, beneath the blue summer sky standing on the old, scarred flagstones of the church at Oradour-sur-glâne.
What happened here should never have happened.
But it did.
And here, beneath my feet, all around me in this confined and holy space the souls of hundreds of women and their children cried out for help, for mercy, for deliverance.
But these walls were unable to save them and their cries fell on hearts too hard to care.
What right did I have to be here, except to be touched by the cries, and to make my own peace with them and all who cry out for mercy, help and deliverance?
Come to this village, but not for the ruins.
Come to this village, but not for the dead.
Come to this village for yourself –
and leave
more determined to build than to destroy,
more committed to heal than to hurt.
Reassess your life and your possessions
and be ready to leave them all.
What will you leave that will last?
What story will be told of you?
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