Here's a fabulous little reflection from Vince Exley who's hit the wagon at the moment and consequently found God in a hug. Seriously, our mate is in hospital in Brisbane at the moment recovering from a potentially fatal infection he picked up and he sent us this delightful little reflection that I am sure will warm many hearts as much as Vince's regular afternoon Scotch on the Rocks, normally warms his little heart. Enjoy your day and give someone you meet today a really good hug! And Vince, if you want any visitors you'd better get a message to our forum quickly letting us know which hospital you're in!

GOD NEEDS US!

Some six weeks ago I contracted an humungous germ in my right ear. It gradually grew worse and ended up with excruciating pain and damaging the nerves on the right hand side of my face. The present specialist tells me it was potentially fatal. The nerve endings in the triangles between the eye, ear and mouth are close to the surface and lead directly to the brain. (A mate believes the germs would have been disappointed to get there and find the area vacant!)

Airlie Beach is a great place to live but real medical help is just about negligible. I eventually got a referral to an ear specialist and flew to Brisbane. As of today they are still waiting for cultures from biopsies to grow but they have me on a permanent drip.

They think I will recover some use of the right-hand side of my face. For example, they will no longer need to 'super glue' the eyelid shut to avoid damage to the eye from it being permanently open, and they hope that when I put my Scotch into the left-hand side of my mouth at some time in the future it won't dribble out the right-hand side.

Otherwise I am here being fed by a bevy of beautiful nurses and would welcome any visitors (Room 317 - Ward 3F).

The real reason for writing is to provide some of the thoughts these experiences have given me.

Being grateful…

The Brisbane specialists waiting room also served Cochlea Implant Specialists and, while I waited, there were three families with three or four, 3 to 6 year olds each. Obviously one in each family waiting for some sort of treatment. It breaks your heart to see kids start out life behind the eight ball. But then I realised how privileged even these kids were compared to many in the world — our own indigenous population — kids in Africa, China, India, Iraq, many many parts of the world suffer far worse than them and have no hope of help. Where would many of our indigenous people be without the work of St. Fred Hollows ?

This reminded me of a movie I watched on TV a few months ago. It was one of George Burns 'God' movies. God was trying to get some kids to help him.

The kids in the movie could see and talk to God but the adults couldn't. I'll come back to this in the second part of my take.

The main kid actor asked God: "Why do bad things happen in the world?"

God said: "That's a tough question but I will try to answer. Look at that box you are playing with — it has an inside and an outside, it has a top and a bottom, it has a back and … (the kid) … FRONT! Yes and where there is good there is the opposite BAD. If someone can create a world that is all good I would love to hear from them."

(This from a God who, according to Fr. George Coyne the recently retired head of the Vatican Observatory, had created the stars — 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them!)

To the Kid he said: "This is why we need people. They have to provide the love and the good to overcome the bad things in the world."

We can't all be like St. Fred Hollows but we can all do our best within our capacity, within our local area of influence.

Mysticism…

The second part of my take has to do with the MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE subject we were discussing a few weeks back.

The waiting room children playing in the play pen provided brought this back to me. One would pick up a doll, clean it down and then sit and have a deep conversation with it. The kids in the movie saw and talked to God and I bet the waiting room kids did too!

It has all to do with imagination. Tolkein (Lord of the Rings) when discussing his Christian faith with Chesterton (before Chesterton's conversion) said that Chesterton's problem was a lack of imagination.

	And while o the subject of hugs Fairfax newspapers carried a story about Sydney lad Juan Mann who has embraced his way to international recognition, with his Free Hugs campaign picking up the Most Inspirational prize at the YouTube video-sharing awards. Mann's Free Hugs video, in which he sets out to brighten strangers' lives in Sydney by offering to hug them, gained widespread international publicity last year with its push to promote peace and love around the world. The video, filmed in Sydney's Pitt Street Mall, features music by Australian band The Sick Puppies. You can check it out in the window at the end of this story. You can read the story in The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper at: www.smh.com.au

I believe our own childlike imaginations have been driven out of us over the last 100 to 200 years by so called scientific advancement and replaced with an absolute need for rationality.

Now I want to relate, from a totally non-academic perspective, what I believe was a mystical experience I had a few months ago. (I have not had a Scotch for over a week. In fact I put one down as special request on the hospital daily meal order, but they only gave me ginger beer).

Last Christmas, as usual for over 30 years I went to spend a few weeks with a mate, his wife, their three sons, wives and eight grand children — my surrogate family. I ended the stay with a Chinese banquet for all of them and one 15 year old grandson brought a girl friend.

After the meal we were all saying our good byes when the 15 year old — all 6 ft 1 inch of him, put his arm around me and gave me a big hug. I can't explain the more than expected feeling it gave me — a sort of electric shock. It was like Brian Coyne's 'Great Big Hairy Arm From Heaven' came down and hugged me. (The boy probably did it because his teenage juices were working in overflow because his girl friend was there.)

A few weeks later – now back home – I received a letter from the girl friend thanking me for the meal and the opportunity to meet the family,

This got me thinking about the hugging event and pondering on what had happened that night and by throwing all rationality aside I am convinced that God did hug me saying 'I love you Vince.'

I think we all receive 'mystical experiences' like this but we need to be free of excessive rationality and suppressed imagination to realise it.

Vince

IMAGE SOURCES: The animation used in the headline is adapted from an animation created by wondercliparts: http://www.wondercliparts.com/hugs/graphics/hugs_graphics_02.gif.

Vince Exley

[Index of Commentaries and Reflections by Vince Exley]