Blood connection

Available for 29 days

Spiritual reflection to start the day with Professor Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity. Script: Good morning. Earlier in the year I was giving blood in a chilly village hall near my home, along with lots of others. My train back from work had been late and it had been a rush to get there. But I had made it, and now I was hooked up, lying on a temporary bed, but things were moving very slowly. The member of staff who was looking after us asked me what I did for a living, and I told her I lectured in the Bible and literature at Edinburgh University. We started to talk about how poetry can move people and she told me she used to work with people with dementia. One person she worked with loved poetry and would recite it at any opportunity. The nurse started to recite a verse in Scots she remembered from that time and as she did so, she laid her warm hand on my cold forearm. To be honest, I don’t know what the poem was, but it was dramatic and recited in a heartfelt way, and the combination of the rhythm and the sound of the words and the touch created a sense of connection that I remember to this day. I had been stressed and chilled and frustrated, just wanting to be finished and get home, and she and the poem she remembered had made me feel like there was nowhere else I needed to be. Once the donation was finally completed, she moved on to the next person but it struck me how perfectly suited she was to that role and how powerful words and touch can be, especially in stressful situations. The biblical prophet Isaiah spoke of the gift from God of the ability to speak a word in season to the weary. The woman at the blood transfusion service certainly had that gift and used it generously and with compassion. Living God, give us the gift of speaking a word in season to those who are weary today, whether in poetry or prose or in the touch of a hand or an arm round the shoulder. Amen.