Some things are difficult to move. That’s when you’re very glad that Jesus turns up, with his ginger beard and lovely smile. ‘Please could I have your dishwasher’ he asks. ‘I recycle the metal’, he exlains. It seems a good idea, along with 2 broken lawn mowers, a broken metal chair, some unwanted chicken wire, an old barbecue, and finally the washing machine that stopped working a fortnight ago. What a lot of stuff!
\nBob reminded me that for some of the steel works he used to visit as Chaplain in Sheffield it was pre-used metal that was the beginning of the forging process. Even so recyclers like this door to door collector have collected a lot of negative stereotypes, not least the name Rag and Bone<\/i> men. This phrase has been doing the rounds for several hundred years and the forbears of today’s collector mostly lived in extreme poverty. The current incarnation was a strong young man with a medium sized truck. More a dog and bone man, for his cab companion and his mobile. ‘Phone me back in 5 minutes’, he told his caller. Then he heaved the items onto the back of the truck. It’s not a profession I’d be strong enough to join.
\nAfter a further trip to the Oxfam warehouse and then another to the municipal tip we’d had a morning of encountering Christ, George McLoed style, on rubbish heaps.<\/p>\n
I collected in the morning when the day had begun,
\nI collected at noon and at the set of sun,
\nI came up your street, a dog on my seat,
\nAnd collected stuff until the day was done.
\nRecycle stuff, whoever you may be,
\nDon’t throw away what can be reused you see,
\nThe earth is fragile and we’re making it a tip,
\nIt don’t take long to make a recycling trip.
\n
\n(tune is, Lord of the Dance)<\/i><\/p>\n
Scrapheap Christ,
\nHanging there, flies buzzing,
\nMay your presence on the rubbish tips of the world
\nRemind us of our responsibilities
\nTo reuse and recycle
\nAnd so tred gently on the earth.<\/p>\n
JAL 04.02.2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some things are difficult to move. That’s when you’re very glad that Jesus turns up, with his ginger beard and lovely smile. ‘Please could I have your dishwasher’ he asks. ‘I recycle the metal’, he exlains. It seems a good idea, along with 2 broken lawn mowers, a broken metal chair, some unwanted chicken wire, … Continue reading “Christ of the scrapheap”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}