On Taking Care: Accidents and Angels.

A young man I know had a motorbike accident last Sunday: head on collision with another bike, week in hospital, lots of broken bones, repeated surgery, and a worrying amnesia (although he remembered his parent’s phone number). Can’t remember the accident, can walk around, wants to go back to work right now, in spite of broken right arm, smashed eye socket: gave his girlfriend such a fright she wrote off her car two days later as she backed out into a busy road. The brain has received a shock.

            This story is repeated all the time, as insurance companies know. They levy high rates for young people. knowing older people are safer on the road. Take fewer risks. Take more care. But then, how much care do we take walking on our feet? Should pedestrians need licenses to cross the road? What about the footpath? Lurking skateboards, mad cyclists, leaping dogs? Vehicles as we brashly cross against the lights? In the middle of the road? Uneven pavements, slick wet surfaces? Why should we have to take such care?

            Then there’s the home accident. This week also I went into the backyard to call my dogs in for the night. As I was ascending the ramp, one dog shot up behind me so fast he passed between my knees and brought me down onto my knees. I had my hands on both rails and so fell onto the ramp with less force and the dog himself broke my fall. I crawled around until I found the step and levered myself up on my feet, so I could help the other dog, who was so shocked by all this he couldn’t get himself up the step.

            My guardian angel works overtime, it seems, and I’m not helping, being so careless. I turned my back on this dog, a witless beast. I knew he likes to rush about. Our knowledge about risks in many circumstances doesn’t translate to our behaviour. Where young men think they’re immortal, older people know we’re mortal and still don’t process the information.

            Why should we take care? It’s only us, isn’t it? Or is it the world, and we’re part of it? Do we have a fictional cinematic impression of floating freedom as if the world is a friend? Are we not sinners? No, I mean seriously. Refusal to understand limitations — which may be moral as well as physical — misplaced confidence, especially in our own wisdom, power or authority, refusal to ask for help or guidance. An impression of ourselves as persons too gifted to take care.

            Don’t we stand in need of mercy? And receive it so often. I could have fractured bones, slipped a retina, passed out with only two dogs for company; my friend could have broken his neck. Where’s the sin in this? you ask. Aside from grief caused to others, there’s the damage to one of God’s creatures — oneself — and then the idea we’re too good to be on a level with other creatures, being careful.

            Are accidents our fault? By definition, they befall. No: events are the consequences of earlier events. As those upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were not worse sinners than others: they were only in the wrong place at the wrong time. As to why one is saved from catastrophe while another is not, I find it comforting to reflect on Psalm 131: ‘O Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.’ Oh, good, I’m spared the need to know all about everything! NRSV has ‘too marvellous for me’. However the world works, it’s marvellous and complicated and also often dire.

            However, if we do not amend our ways, both individually and collectively, and employ more gentleness and care, we may become the cause of later events. Then we’ll be called upon to repent, to seek more protection for ourselves, for others, even for the marvellous world we inhabit: such is condition of our forgiveness.