SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Sunday 19 May 2013

Faith, hope and love, and a little bit of humour too?




13th May, 2013


I love to listen to the BBC’s Radio Four, especially on a Sunday


Sundays have always been the day that I find most difficult when I am on my own because at home it was always a day of visitors, of family or, in the summer, trips to the seaside.


Usually, when I think it is not going to be so quite so nice to spend the day on my own, I visit a friend and at other times I visit a café to eat cake, to read and to write, just as I used to in Budapest, at Litea. Often I just switch on the radio to listen to Radio Four. I do not just listen all day, I choose programmes from the play-again schedule.


Being a fan of John McCarthy I was attracted by the title of last week’s episode Something Understood, a programme that he introduces – ‘The Greatest of These is Love’




I have always enjoyed the chapter in the Bible, about love and all things soulful, 1 Corinthians 13,  that the programme was built around.

At one stage John McCarthy discusses faith and hope being all very good, but that love is crucial, a generosity of spirit towards other people is crucial to mankind. At this point I thought that this is all about the soul again!

As the programme went on I began to enjoy it even more, as more of favourite music and passages of prose, and even a favourite book, were featured.

Joni Mitchell was featured, with her version of 1 Corinthians 13 in song, and also music by J.S Bach and then the wonderful surprise of the reading of a long passage from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. This drew the discussion towards Frankl’s conviction that love is the ultimate goal to which man can aspire and is the ultimate healer.  

John McCarthy described how when he was in captivity he and Brian Keenan, despite the severity of the situation that they were in, were still able to make each other smile and share laughter. This lead his discussion with Salley Vickers to move towards considering whether it would have been more appropriate had St. Paul also included humour in his letter to the Corinthians.

Love of life

The programme came to an end considering the stream of love that flows through life and I continued thinking about it all for several days.

In fact for over a week now I have been thinking about how so much of this programme relates to my life, to my interests and to my work. I was pleased to discover this evening that I could still Listen Again and, while I listened, I wrote this posting.

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