I TALKING TOGETHER I

TIME TO LAUGH AND TO WEEP
By Constance bit
0 you have to be, well-
sort of holy in a woman's feature for a Catholic paper?" The short answer—and it had to be short, as we were about to part company on a Tube platform—was that everything in life is "sort of" holy, and the one easy thing about talking with convinced Christians is the common understanding of this Perhaps in this case the short answer was best. even though the acquaintance who enquired looked :lightly as though ! had tricked her. (After all, you never know with people who number Jesuits among their friends. do you') It would be presumptuous. and inaccurate to be my own chairman and say I need no introduction. But I have met some of you on this page before. and so I am delighted to be talking to you in a regular series. I look forward to turning over all manner of topics with you—topics belonging to Earth and Altar. I might add. belonging to stove, typewriter. desk or shop counter too, and I am sure that G. K. Chesterton will not mind my enlarging on the title of his lovely hymn.
Sometimes, I expect you will talk, too.
There is, we are comfortingly told. "a time to weep and a time to laugh. . ." I hope that most often it will he time to laugh, as it were. in this column, or at least to share happy ideas and discoveries. great or small. In any case. it is so much easier to laugh with the people with whom also one can. if need he. weep. In a feature for people sharing the same Faith, we start off with a common foundation no less enormous than Passiontide and Easter; so it tends to make other differences, however varied, seem completely unimportant.
However. that is not an easy "rass for me to assume that you will like all my column all the time. In fact. as this is essentially personal talk. I expect and hope that you will not hesitate to take to your pen and protest if your ideas do not chime in with mine That happens in any real talk.
We differ. dispute and come out usually better friends. without even a feather missing. That last remark was due to a recent reminder of how many men still hold the curious notion that women talking arc always women quarrelling or back-biting. Ah. welll that promising subject will keep.
Season of the Star
TODAY I can't help seizing on the handiest happy thought oi the moment—or of all time for that matter. Epiphany season. with the Holy Family Feast due on Sunday, makes for me a particularly warm time to open any talk among. with or about women
The Season of the Star always brines hack closely to my mind a headmistress who gave Epiphany. right through to Lent. a sparkle
which cannot rub off with time That talk of hers. "Head's Div." before Sunday lunch. left an after glow which even crept into dormi tory chat (forbidden) more than once that term.
Being nostalgic for the Christmas holiday. perhaps we were specially receptive to the sublime discourse on the Star in the East, shining ahead of the Mystics on their dramatic journey those sages who had not even received the promises to Israel.
There it was, shining down too, it seemed. on to our classrooms. ISYni, hockey fields. Our Head Just made it impossible for us to keep the Star in church. '
The details of her talk I do not remember, for she was a scholar vho spoke majestically splendidly above our heads at times. But the completely still lines of Sunday silk blouses, and the almost tiresome passing of the first lunch bell come back whenever I really take time to think about the Epiphany.
Maybe snore than one ex-schoolgirl prayer goes up for that teacher with her eyes and mind on the Star.
Rich retirement
THAI was a woman with no personal family of her own, and like that of many others. her retirement was a solitary but most rich and "un-lonely" one. She would, I think, have felt completely at home on the Feast of the Holy Family too. There seems to be so real a sense in which some women share Our Lady's function of extended motherhood, whether they have offspring or not.
believe that every woman in every situation can, to sonic extent, share it, even apart from those in religious houses, where oustandingly fine "mothers" are abundant. One has rare opportunities of knowing great ladies who do it in special measure, and unforgettable they are.
One thinks of theirs not as being 'minus" children, but as giving more than "ordinary" mothers are even called upon to give.
Revolving on 'Mum'
THE importance of families and the position of Mothers are so unassailably clear, especially to Christians. that to state them seems almost an impertinence. But it is good to see how it emerges in llfe, without theory. among real, likeable families.
I was recently with a woman who has a big position in the Advertising World She--Mary Gowing was answering some of my questions about the Peckham Family Health Centre, that fine and successful experiment started by two doctors, and closed down for financial reasons some years ago. Its aims and history I cannot embark on this week's space. but in "Holy Family" week such a distinctive adventure. as an idea, deserves a thought Many families still reap the benefit of their contact with the Centre. Mary remarked how clearly one could see that "Mum" was the centre of each family unit. Mum. in every family problem. trouble or toy was the main guide. for better or worse. and happtly so very often for better.
At that Centre was demonstrated what "works" in families even accordine to the natural law. I am not talking about the medical side but happy social relations in and between families.
Curry adventure
DOES Wise Cooking I rom the
East seem a far cry from Wise Men ? I don't think so. A most interesting hook called "Indian Cooking". by Savitri Chowdhary. has come to my desk.
I promised to share pleasant ideas with you and when 1 can clear an evening for abandoned experiment and tolerant visitors. an Adventure with Curry strikes me as very pleasant idea. It might defeat arty frost or fog of January. I look forward to further talk next week.
*Andre Deutsch (10s. 6d.).
Big Game Hunt
GRAND SAFARI, by Thomas AS. Arbuthnot (Kimher, ik.) N excellent book of big game hunting in Africa. The author's approach. is a particularly happy one—without too much imagination we are able to put ourselves in his placequavering with fear before the charge of a rhinoceros. hiding from the spring of a leopard. or following, with trepidation, a wounded lion
CHARMING PORTUGAL
PORTUGUESE JOURNEY, by Garry Hogg (Museum Press, 16s.) DORTUGUAL is a sadly neg lected country, both by tourist and writer: this book fills a gap. It is not a guide book, but an flies.trated travelogue of charm and colour.