390 Days in a Purple Bubble of Love

“Not got your usual lift today then?” said Reg, the undeservedly maligned Asian shopkeeper. “No, not today” she said from under her blue-rinse. And taking her change she set off slowly into the car park. Hurriedly I bought my things and rushed after her. What was I to do? This was exactly why I had moved here, yet everything English about me said to ignore her. Eventually, trying to look as little like a hand-bag stealer as possible, I approached. “Excuse me, would you like a lift home with that?” On my first day living intentionally in south Abingdon, hoping to build links with the community, it felt like a test.

So, 390 days later, have things lived up to that? Who knows. What I do know is that South Abingdon, with all its madness and mad characters certainly has. It may look pretty, sitting on the Thames like the vast number of serene swans that live here, but under the surface, it’s kicking just as frantically to stay afloat. Normally, it manages, just. And, sitting here in my purple caravan on the drive way in Saxton Road amongst the most notorious houses in town, I love it. But what has happened in between to make me so sure?

There are so many images and events that linger… tragic, joyful, harsh, beautiful, completely absurd.

Like the drug overdoses, suicide, and far too many infant deaths and miscarriages, one particularly horrific. So many moments when I’ve been scared… sleeping in an ill-protected caravan straight after a break in. a brick through the window that missed my face by inches. Being warned that the local gang were coming to burn the caravan with me in it… and waiting, having decided to stay and talk it through (they never came).

The pain that at times is so close… a girl badly beaten only ten yards away, the fights between two drug addict friends that leave both permanently scarred. Watching a close friend descend again into the addiction that this time, it seems, may kill him. The sound of shouting at night. Being vulnerably housed with six threatened evictions. The frustrations of working when nothing seems to happen and everything is unquantifiable. The disappointments of false starts. The isolation of trying to get people to join a project they cant understand and the waning motivation to prayer walk alone – again. And if I’m honest, separation from many who share the same faith, but not the same vision. I have been lower this year than in ages… but isn’t that the point of incarnation, community, wholism, that what effects one effects all?

But the abiding images are of joy, relationship, transformation. The moment two neighbours spoke to me for the first time, nine months in. An addict friend taking ridicule to help me fix my recently-broken window. Sitting with the local nazi (his word for himself, not mine) as he weeps for the mother he lost 14 years ago. Playing poker for matches with a ten year old who’s mother has kicked him out again… watching the lad with a reputation for burning boats and writing off cars litter picking and offering to clean my car for free (he didn’t nick it). Various art projects with the local kids. The conversation with two young lads who were hiding from the police. Leaving a job I had loved and turning down a brilliant, well paid job because they weren’t local enough and took up too much time only to be immediately offered an 18 hour job at the local family centre. The bring-your-own-tree party (an article in itself), the conversations as I built the servants slum house in the front garden, and the 11 year old who then decided to give all her clothes and old toys to Oxfam (if her mum sees this, I’ll deny everything…). Being called on in emergencies “You’re always the one who helps”. How much more it helps me to know people can come to me.

And the plain ridiculous. Saying “she’s likely to put a crow bar through the window” as a crow bar came through the window. Moral dilemmas as to whether to encourage my friend to modify her behaviour or accept her request to help sew the seven foot high wings for her nude vampire modelling shoot. Chatting with a police officer like a good citizen, surrounded by stolen rosebushes (they were going to be bull-dozed…). Prayer walking bare foot cos it worked for St Francis… shame I picked November…. Giving an old caravan to a homeless guy who then demolished it to make a trailer for his motorbike and decided he didn’t want it. Skip day… 12 of them filled with neighbours rubbish in under 7 minutes. Chasing a jack Russell by car, pony riding down Sakky….

But mainly, what remains is God… a plus to being eternal, I guess. He was here first, and pops up in unlikely places. Like the selfless actions of a skin-headed, voodoo practising friend. Or the faith, love, support, prayer and evangelism of a follower of Christ who is adamant that there is no God. Or a stoned scottish giant who has a seven year mission to bring about the apocalypse but still finds time to love people and the world around him. These are my “men and women of peace”.

And He makes himself heard by speaking. He said that he would build his highway and enter by it when they dug the road up. And it was Him who promised that as bad as the word “Sakky” has been (slang for Saxton Road, the name of the local gang and an insult hurled at the locals), that is how good he would make it.

And as my first year of watching and waiting ends, He is doing just that. “SACCCI” is the name of the South Abingdon Community Co-operative Credit Initiative – the goods, skills and community activity exchange that my friends and I are starting, alongside SANE (South Abingdon News Exchange), a local newsletter. The council says people are now choosing to live here. Attitudes have changed as locals talk about community and start co-operatively buying organic goods.

And I see God here in all that I have learnt… about the nature of God, of people, of me, of faith, of life, of love.

As I enter my second year, there are still issues…. I’m currently facing another eviction, there is a long way to go with SACCCI and SANE, and does any of this really work anyway?…. But sitting in my purple, aluminium bubble of love, I’m glad I chose to give that old lady a lift home, and I’m glad God put me here.

[Miriam Hadcocks lives incarnationally in South Abington, England. For more information on Servants work amongst the urban poor in the West email us on: [email protected]]