Sindy

I visited Sindy in her curtain drawn bedroom in Guguletu this past July. She was very weak from the AIDS virus and at times a little confused. She kept saying she was bored, meaning she was fed up with the regime that taking the anti retro viral drugs can be. It is not just taking a few pills but also about a strict eating schedule. After six years and seemingly weaker by the day you can feel her despair. We were told that the people we visited would not tell their neighbours that white people came to the house but instead that God had visited. Bizarrely as I reached to comfort Sindy in her faint grip she lifted me. It may be why God tells us to go meet him in the least of these. When we reach to serve them we are served instead. God lives in the connection of serving and served.

Sindy let me close the curtains
I know how the bright can hurt
You’re yearning to hear love whispered
And damnation is all that you’ve heard
As I feebly reach to touch your pain
Your faint grasp it heals my heart
God is served and God is serving
And he dwells in that connecting part.

You’re tired and bored of living
But oh so frightened of dying
You haven’t the energy left to laugh
And you’re all out of tears for crying
And I‘m tired that all I say
Is ignored by all that I do
And God knows that I see Jesus, Sindy
Every time that I look at you.

You said that God came to visit
Well Sindy it was only me
Haunted by your pop star posters
That screamed my complicity
Light can shine from a distance
But salt needs to cling to what’s raw
Christmas Day is for all year round
A baby nestling in our filthy straw.

Steve Stockman
Belfast December 2, 2006

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