In 1991 Terry Waite was finally released by his captors after almost five years (1,763 days) imprisonment of which four years were spent in solitary confinement. The story of how Terry Waite became the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, how he successfully negotiated the release of many hostages and how he too became a hostage in the Lebanese civil war is well related in his book ‘Taken on Trust’.
We were privileged to meet Terry Waite in 1992 when he was invited to Blackheath Concert Halls in south London to talk about his experiences in the Middle East. At that time Waite was living in the attractive London village. He has since moved to Suffolk.
(Woodland House, Blackheath. Built in 1776 for Julius Angerstein, the founder of London’s National Gallery. Until 1967 it once housed the convent the Little Sisters of the Assumption. This photograph, taken in 1985, shows the Virgin Mary’s grotto now demolished – her statue had been removed when the house became an art gallery. The snowdrops remain.)
Of the evening spent at the Halls I remember two things.
First was what Terry said about his experiences with the captors:
“If you are bitter, it will eat you up and do more damage to you than to the people who have hurt you.”[
This is a brave and very true statement. It is so easy to pour metaphorical burning oil onto those people who have hurt you. One wishes the most horrific things would happen to them in the most abject moments when reflecting on one’s ostensible injustices.
It must be very difficult to forgive those who steal five years of one’s life through false imprisonment. At least the special envoy’s life was spared although Waite was told by his gaolers on one occasion that he would be executed .Some people may recoil at the thought of forgiveness. Others will shy away from offering the other cheek if they are the victims of an offence. But what happens then? No closure? No end to recriminations? What if you walked down the High Street and met one of these persons? Would you smile ’hello’ or would you ignore them and walk away quickly?
The astounding thing is that Terry Waite actually returned over twenty years later and met his captors in a reconciliatory gesture.
There is something truly satisfying in achieving closure on any unresolved wrong. I believe this is what Terry Waite means when he says that continuing bitterness about a situation one has found oneself in will always hurt more than the actual wrongs suffered.
We, poor humans, always seem to carry a list of real and presumed injustices inflicted upon ourselves. We may not pretend to be saints and try to forget them for they will always be there. The only way to stop them from affecting us with bitterness is to reflect that it’s not a good idea to allow them to infect our existence with malignant growths.
That wonderful French songster Edith Piaf, whose life-story was particularly fraught with disappointments and hurts, sang that ‘I regret nothing’. So is every trial sent to us to make us better beings then? No pain no gain? Turn the page and burn the previous ones? Let’s see what we can do…
What was the second thing that I remember about that memorable evening with Terry Waite in Blackheath?
It was the singing of his favourite piece of music. The one, when he appeared on BBC radio’s ‘Desert Island Discs’, that Terry declared that if he could have only one piece it would be this one.
It’s Ivor Gurney’s setting poem ‘Sleep’ a poem by John Fletcher, playwright and contemporary of Shakespeare.
Sleep
Come, sleep, and with thy sweet deceiving
Lock me in delight awhile;
Let some pleasing dream beguile
All my fancies, that from thence
I may feel an influence,
All my powers of care bereaving.
Tho’ but a shadow, but a sliding,
Let me know some little joy.
We, that suffer long annoy,
Are contented with a thought
Thro’ an idle fancy wrought:
O let my joys have some abiding
And here is Gurney’s setting
‘Sleep’ is one of the Five Elizabethan Songs (or ‘The Elizas’ as he called them) written by Gurney (1890-1937) while he was still a student at the Royal College of Music, and published in 1920. Gurney was himself a hostage of sorts. A victim of First World War shell shock as a result of his time in the trenches of northern France Gurney spent the last fifteen years of his life in mental hospitals, where he was diagnosed as suffering from “delusional insanity, and died at Stone Park hospital in the Dartford marshes. (The hospital has since been closed and turned into luxury flats).
Listening to the radio news this morning I can see that bitterness, particularly in that part of the world where Waite passed five years of his life in darkness, will never seem to be relinquished but will instead build up an insufferable store among anguished people. When will it ever end?