Virgil to my Dante

It has been a rough week. I always knew it wasn’t going to be easy but I was lulled into a false sense of ease when I seemed to get off quite lightly with the side effects from chemotherapy. But then my hair fell out and with it went all sense of well-being. Up until then, the ship of life was sailing with the wind but then I hit rocks. It is not that I place too much value or identity in how I look, but I had always liked my hair. Some people perhaps suit a bald head but I’m not one of them.

It is my birthday coming up. A group of friends and I meet for coffee and cake to celebrate these events. I was asked if I had come up with a venue and promptly burst into tears. There is a mental side to chemotherapy when the brain seems to disconnect. There Are aspects of my life where I like to be in control, Housework isn’t one of them unfortunately. Suddenly everything was too much – the bruised hands, the hair loss, the wig that seemed just a little bit too small for my head. This morning I discovered I had no eyebrows. My friend calls this process trigger stacking, and the stack was building up. There were hugs, helpful advice and lots of prayer support – but then Wednesday came,

I am reading my way through Malcolm Guite’s ‘A Word in the Wilderness’, his selection of poetry throughout Lent. Malcolm and I were reading sections from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ and had arrived at the end section. Here’s what I wrote when Malcolm introduced me to Dante and Virgil years ago.

‘Then, at a place in the shadow with the dew...

my master placed the palms of both his hands,

spread wide, likely and gently on the tender grass.

And I aware of what his purpose was,

offered my tear-stained cheeks to meet his touch.

At which, he made once more entirely clean

the colour that the dark of hell had hidden.

‘Dante and his hero, the poet Virgil,, had travelled together down through the levels of hell. They climbed out and up into the sunshine.

‘As Malcolm writes in his commentary, ‘it is a very touching scene. Dante emerges into the sunlight with a face smeared with the grime of hell and stained with tears. Virgil, his companion on the journey, gathers up the morning dew in his palms, stoops down and washes Dante’s face.’

‘I love the line where Dante offered his "tear stained cheeks to meet his touch". His upturned face invited Virgil to wipe the dust and the dirt and the tears away. Dante’s humility in tipping his face is met with Virgil’s grace in meeting his need.

‘I wonder if we are all involved in that exchange of humility and grace, of upturned faces and hands full of dew that wipe away the dust of life.

‘When I choose not to lift my face to you who holds the dew, I deny myself the opportunity to be refreshed. I suppose there was nothing to stop Dante from collecting his own dew and wiping his own face. There is nothing to say I can’t find my own ways of refreshing.

‘When I choose not to lift my face to you who holds the dew, I deny you the opportunity to bless me and to be blessed yourself in serving me.

‘When I choose not to lift my face to you who holds the dew, we both lose out. Two friends that could have been blessed never were.

‘All because I chose not to lift my face.’

I have always known that I have Virgils in my life, those people that see the stains that life inflicts. They find ways to ‘placed the palms of both hands, spread wide, likely and gently on the tender grass’ gather the dew and wipe away the dirt.

I have always known too that sometimes I am the Virgil in someone else’s life.

There are too many people without a Vrigil. Sometimes it is their own choice to go it alomne. Sometimes the have been badly let down by others and trust is hard to find. But we were never designed to do life alone. I know in church circles they talk about a God shaped hole that only God can fill, but I believe that there is a people cha[ed hole that God cannot fill. We are never complete if that hole remains unfilled. Family and friendships ate part of that hole filling and family doesn’t have to be the birth and blood relationship one. We just need to connect, to be the Virgil top someone else’s’ Dante.