Response

I wrote a letter to a senior clergyman at the beginning of November last year, in which I shared some very personal thoughts about my own situation and also asked a couple of very pertinent questions. So far I have not had the favour of even an acknowledgement, let alone a reply, from someone I should have thought would be bound to feel some pastoral responsibility for me.

So this something of a painful place from which to write; as I visit those feelings, however, I am also aware of the times when I myself have not responded as I could or should have done to the pastoral calls others have made on me. The reason why was not that I couldn't be bothered or that I lacked interest in the wellbeing of the person asking for my help - more to do with feeling overloaded, or mismanaging priorities, or simply overlooking or misunderstanding what was being asked of me.

So, being able to see the situation from both sides, I do understand how it is that things don't get done that perhaps should get done. I can see that for the hard-pressed recipient of lots of requests for help, advice, direction and pastoral support, each individual delay or failure to respond to a first request is (a) explicable and even allowable, and (b) doesn't necessarily feel all that important in the cosmic scheme of things. I've been on that side of the equation and I know about the pressure of demands on one's time and effort, and how many different people want a part of one (though I also know just how bad I've ended up feeling when I've realised - sometimes too late - that I've not responded as I should have to someone's need or distress!).

For the supplicant, their need for help and support may be of such importance that they feel hardly able to survive without it; and they'll have little awareness of, or concern about, the fact that their letter is only one of a thousand requests and pressures and responsibilities. My letter when I wrote it was the single most important thing going on in my life: it took a week to write, and a degree of courage to send. It's hard to accept, but I have to, that it simply has to take its place, and it may not be a very high place, in the pile of stuff on the desk, the priorities in the diary, of the person to whom I wrote.

Having said that, to begin with an acknowledgement of receipt would at least have been mildly encouraging - something that just requires an element of thoughtful organisation. Gosh, though - maybe the fact that I didn't get one means my letter didn't even reach its destination in the first place! And after all that effort, too . . . still, it's given me something to reflect on this morning!