In memorium

I’m not really sure what to do with this space… 

Should I leave it up as a living testament to my humble blogging beginnings?

Or, should I just bite the bullet and take it down?

I’m now blogging much more regularly over at www.jonnymccormick.wordpress.com

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Sophia

This is a story I wrote in my Third Year at Mattersey Hall

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Sophia stops.  How did she get here?  Her eyes are sorely adjusting to the limited light around her.  She strains.  In the distance, the far off distance she notices a light.  Small, dim and flickering.  A light that seems so fragile that an ambivalent puff could extinguish it.  However that light brings with it hope.

Sophia is beginning a long, lonely and confusing journey towards the end of her tunnel.  Trying to get to her light.  Inspired by the hope and frightened by her surroundings she makes a dash for the light.  She wants it to be over.  She sprints.  After about 15 seconds or so she has a crystalising moment.  Her tunnel is getting longer.  The light becoming more foreign.

Sophia is scared.  Confused.  She tries to regain her normal sense of decorum and composure, but it’s a futile effort.  Slowly she begins to absorb the world in which she finds herself.

 

She looks around, winces and looks away.  Sophia has never encountered this before.  She is surrounded by need.  Rejection, empathy and self are now the masters of the world that Sophia finds herself in.  She slowly comes to the realisation that it has always been like this…but she has never been confronted with the reality in such a cold and stark way.

Sophia, looking weary, bruised and vacuous begins her trek towards the light.

She passes through war.  She notices the horror experienced by soldiers who fight for reasons unknown to them.  She sees beyond their machoism and notices the fear in their hearts.  She stops.  Do they know she is here?  She tries to interact, but they pass through her like she’s a mirage.  She looks deep into the eyes of one soldier – she sees his soul.  in the black pools of his pupils she seems a young woman – his wife carrying his son – a son he has yet to meet.  Yet to hold.  Yet to love.  Sophia picks herself up, dusts herself down and walks on.

Towards the light she continues.

Sophia is next confronted with a woman, a familiar face but she cannot seem to connect the pieces of the puzzle.  Where on earth does she know this woman from?  She hears the sound of shoes crushing peebles as they interact with the cracked concrete.  Four men walk towards this woman’s house.  One stops in front of her.  Makes himself rigid, raises his hand in salute, lowers it and steps back.  The woman is handed a parcel that Sophia moves to see.  The woman crumples with a crisply folded flag lying at her side.  Sophia connects the dots.  Her young son rushes to the side of his mother sensing her discomfort but not fully understanding it.  This woman was the wife of the young soldier Sophia had just met.  Sophia watched, broken and unable to do anything as the people she watched were unaware of her presence.  This young child would grow up never knowing of the father he could have had.  A family lies broken.  War torn.  Is this really the world in which Sophia finds herself.  Sophia picks herself up, dusts herself down and continues.

Sophia’s journey must continue.  Sophia moves on utterly broken.  Feeling more dejected than ever.  She needs to get to the light.  The only source of hope she knows.  She looks, the light is burning brighter.  She walks on.

Sophia finds herself trekking the slums.  This is a world she cannot begin to imagine.  She smells urine and feces all around her.  She hears the screams of women and children that pierce her soul.  She sees a boy that seems to be looking at her.  Could he see her?  He turns and runs, Sophia dashes after him.  She is led to a family that is squeezed into a shack.  In the corner the family gather around an elderly woman.  She is passing on.  Sophia watches the family grieve and moan.  The cries are desperate and heart wrenching.  Where is she?  Why is she experiencing this.  Sophia doesn’t understand but it’s changing her.  She is moved by the family’s brokenness.  She is compelled by their story.  Once again Sophia picks herself up, dusts herself down and moves on.

She notices again, the light burning brighter, more intense, more hopeful and more inviting.  She continues.  The light is in sight. She walks towards it. Carefully.  The light she had been journeying towards, the light that had invited and compelled her was now a reality.  She breaks through the barrier and is transported.

Sophia finds herself in more familiar surroundings.  Her bedroom.  She is remains moved by the journey she has just been on.  She knows this to be the reality of the world.  Not her suburban utopia she had once relied on.  The light becomes clear.  She blinks in disbelief but it’s true.  Sophia is confronted with the harsh but beautiful reality of a mirror.

 

Matthew 5.14 ‘You are the light of the world.’

 

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