Nicene #4 Glasgow

Content note: This poem contains references to suicide, addiction and allegations of sexual offending.

Glasgow: Whose Am I?

Nicene #4

——

Michael is forty-three.

He lives on the twelfth floor

of a block overlooking the M8.

Day and night, the traffic keeps moving:

lorries, headlights,

blue lights flashing somewhere.

The city rarely sleeps,

and rain freckles the windows.

Sometimes he stands at the kitchen sink

long after the kettle has boiled,

looking out across Glasgow.

Tower blocks. Church spires.

The glow of the city centre

hanging low beneath the clouds.

Hundreds of lit windows.

Hundreds of people

trying to hold their lives together.

On Tuesday nights

he takes the lift downstairs

and walks through the rain

to a recovery group

meeting in the basement

of an old church.

Plastic chairs.

Instant coffee.

Damp coats steaming

beside the radiator.

Davie makes the tea—three sugars.

No matter how many people come,

he remembers

how everybody takes it.

Michael has been sober

eighteen months.

One day at a time.

The phrase sounds ordinary

until you have needed it

to survive.

The group shares something

with other recovery groups:

honesty, confession,

learning how to stay present

when every instinct

tells you to run.

But there is one difference.

When they speak

about a Higher Power,

they mean Jesus.

Not positive thinking.

Not fate.

Not the universe.

Jesus.

At the beginning of each meeting,

someone reads a few verses

from one of the Gospels.

Then they print the passage

on a slip of paper

for people to take home.

Enough for the bus ride.

Enough for three in the morning.

Enough to carry

through another week.

One week it is Zacchaeus.

Another, the prodigal son.

Another, the woman everyone else

had written off.

After a while

Michael notices something.

Jesus never seems shocked

by broken people.

The shock

is how often

he sits down beside them.

A few months ago,

one of the men

from his block of flats

died by suicide.

He had been caught

by one of the online groups.

The video spread quickly.

Men with cameras

outside the flats.

Neighbours passing links

from phone to phone.

People watched

from behind screens.

Commented.

Shared.

Judged.

By evening,

everyone in the block

knew the accusations.

By morning,

everyone had decided

who he was.

Michael had spoken to him

outside the lifts.

The man looked exhausted—

half frightened,

half ashamed,

as though he had forgotten

how to meet another person’s eyes.

At one point

he started talking

about his mum.

A care home

on the other side of the city.

How she still believed in him.

How she still introduced him

as her son

before mentioning

any of the mistakes.

How she still spoke his name

with something like love.

“This’ll kill her,”

he said quietly.

The next day

he was dead.

Some of the lads

on the estate said

he got what was coming.

A few glasses were raised

at the working men’s.

By Friday,

somebody else

was the story.

But Michael could not forget

the way he had spoken

about his mother.

The way, for a moment,

beneath all the accusations,

he had sounded

like a lost child.

The following Sunday

Michael went to church.

Not because he has

all the answers.

Because something keeps

drawing him back.

The Gospel reading

is Jesus’ baptism.

The Jordan.

The crowds.

Water running from his hair.

The heavens opening.

A voice speaking:

“This is my Son,

whom I love;

with him

I am well pleased.”

The words stay with him:

into the lift,

along the landing,

into the silence

of the flat.

Because the voice comes

before the miracles,

before the crowds,

before the sermons,

before the cross,

before Jesus has done

anything at all.

Beloved first.

Everything else afterwards.

And Michael finds himself

thinking about the man

from the flats.

About his mother.

About the way she still said,

my son,

as though love

could see something

nobody else could.

The next week

they say the Creed.

God from God.

Light from Light.

True God from true God.

Michael doesn’t understand

all of it.

Most weeks

he is not even sure

he understands himself.

But he looks around the room:

the pensioner,

the refugee,

the woman from recovery,

the lad fresh out of prison,

the young mum trying

to keep two children quiet.

People carrying grief.

People carrying hope.

And he finds himself wondering

whether God is really

anything like Jesus.

Whether the one

who ate with tax collectors,

touched lepers,

welcomed failures,

and refused to give up

on wounded people

might actually be showing us

what God is like.

For years,

Michael imagined God

with folded arms:

disappointed,

keeping score,

watching from a distance.

Then comes Zacchaeus.

Then the woman

dragged before the crowd.

Then the thief

dying beside him.

Story after story,

the picture begins to crack.

Outside,

the city carries on.

Rain.

Sirens.

The motorway humming.

A man settling down

in a shop doorway.

The subway rattling

beneath the streets.

The Finnieston Crane

standing dark

against the evening sky.

Walking home,

Michael crosses a bridge.

The Clyde catches

the reflections of the lights.

The water breaks them apart

and gathers them again.

The city looks

almost beautiful.

Not healed.

Not fixed.

Not finished.

Just held.

And somewhere beneath

all the other voices—

the verdicts,

the headlines,

the accusations,

the shame—

another voice remains.

Steady as rain.

Speaking in church basements.

Speaking beside radiators

and paper cups of tea.

Speaking in tower blocks

above the motorway.

Speaking to people

who no longer know

who they are.

God from God.

Light from Light.

Back in the flat,

traffic moves along the M8.

Rain taps the glass.

Across the city,

lights burn

in a thousand windows.

Michael stands at the sink.

And for the first time

in years,

when he hears the word

Father,

he is not afraid.

Rev’d Jon Swales

Nicene Creed Series #4