AN INTRODUCTION TO MY LIFE STORY.

      I have never done things in the same way that other people do, and this many have found difficult to understand, because they feel their real purpose of life is to conform to a pattern which is generally accepted. For this reason, many people have often considered me to have a very strange nature. That perhaps why I have never felt very comfortable in a relationship, because I do not respond in the approved way to life’s events and accidents and at certain times and events, I have often felt different from other people.  I have always been very conscious of this fact that my reactions are very different from what is normally accepted as the usual in my attitude to life and so I have always done things in my own way, but at the same time I realize that I am somehow differently programmed in a way that is unusual. I am sure that if anyone other than myself were to try to write a series of notes to record the different experiences that he or she had had in their lives, and then continued to write about some of the most important  events that they had remembered that had happened to them, and if that person had then started to record their feelings about those events as they happened and the repercussions that followed, influencing the future course of events, he or she would almost certainly have spent some considerable time in enquiring from other people who may  have been involved and also investigating on the internet as well as in newspapers, diaries, letters and any other relevant documents in order to ensure absolute historical accuracy. He or she might well also have spoken to relatives and friends to see if their memories coincided with the writer’s own recollections, but I suppose that because I am not like other people expect me to be, none of these things have I done to any great extent, although as I have begun to share my story with other members of the family I have been reminded of what has been missed.  I may have therefore missed out many of the experiences which have affected me, and I may also have included events as seen from my point of view as important, but are not the events that other people would consider the most significant.  I therefore willingly admit a certain amount of bias in my reporting; other people might remember events in a different way, and might well feel that their position has not been fairly stated. I would also willingly admit that there may have been occasions when I have not always been scrupulously fair in my criticism of other people, while at the same time I may have been in some places more than somewhat partial in my own favour. But I am what I am, and I have deliberately taken up this position because I wished to preserve, for future generations to come and anyone else who might be  interested, my feelings, my immediate response to what happened to me as now I with the benefit of hindsight remember what happened and perceive the effects on my story and therefore also on the stories of other people that followed.

     Of course, these same events will have influenced the stories of other people in a way that I never have known, and maybe never will know.  So therefore, in the unlikely event that anyone would wish to challenge the accuracy of my statements, I would be prepared to accept their amendments as their own thoughts as of equal value to my own remembrances, but would still maintain my belief in the accuracy of the expression of my feelings at the time, and of what then were the results that I remember which followed these events.  It is not given to everyone to reach even the allotted span of three score years and ten, and then to be able then to go to experience more than another seventeen years of life on earth in happiness is while not unknown is exceptional. Moreover, to be happily married for what is as I write more than sixty-five years is a welcome bonus, so it is with gratitude in my heart that I write this set of memories. Already you can see how I think differently from other people. The first two chapters are not strictly speaking about ‘my life’, for they will be full of information about events that happened before I was born; I am therefore unable to swear to the accuracy of what I have written, but what remains clear to me is that the ‘memory’ of these stories have affected me in all sorts of ways.

    Just as no-one can understand the great rivers of the world, such as  the Nile, Thames, Amazon, Ganges or Shannon or even smaller streams like the one that flows at the bottom of our garden in Stondon Massey, without looking at the various places from which those very different rivers spring, so no-one, least of all I, can understand my own background without a knowledge of the influences of the grandparents and ancestors further back beyond my knowledge. These springs that have been responsible for the flow of my river of consciousness of course go further back, much further back than my grandparents and my own memories of them and there have been and still are influences of historical events on my life that I can never fully appreciate. I have no real memories, of course, of the time before I was born, no memories either of distant ancestors and members of the various strands who have each contributed something personal to the being that eventually became me. There are, however, obviously genes that have been handed down to me that have influenced my feelings, if not the actual impact of events. Perhaps some events recorded in the first two chapters of my story, while not being events that I personally have experienced in history but certainly will have shaped my life, will shed a light on the being that I am. At the same time, I realize that the question of what exactly have been the influences that have shaped me is like a riddle that no-one can answer, except God Himself, the Creator of the whole world; that world includes of course not only me and you, whoever it is who reads this, but also in addition those who never knew me and those who perhaps will come after me.

     This is a situation which I contemplate whenever I look out into the garden and see the ancient oak tree in all its majesty. According to the copy of the old village map which is dated at some time in the early 1700s (the period when John and Charles Wesley were born) there was at the time of the survey a tree in that very spot; that tree must have been sufficiently large at that time to have been significant enough to have been noted on the map. Of course, without consulting a dendrologist, I cannot be absolutely sure that this is the same tree, but I have watched the tree grow even more majestic during the twenty years and more that we have lived in Stondon Massey. Yet during that relatively tiny part of the at least three hundred years -and perhaps even considerably more –of the story of that oak tree that is known to me I have seen how that tree has had an influence on many generations of birds, animals, insects and flowers, and I must include myself on that list, as I have been made aware of its seasons of growth as well of the shedding of its acorns and its leaves. That tree stands there as a tower of strength and relative permanence. Everything about that tree proclaims what I am sure in my own mind is its ancestry. I realize at once that that tree’s antecedents are more impressive that my comparatively short life.   

    How relatively unimportant are human beings in comparison, but yet it was human beings whom we believe Jesus came to rescue.  I wonder if that tree, being also a part of God’s creation, is in some way conscious of the possibility that there may be also trees in heaven? Is the tree really able to be aware of that possibility? Does it also have an inkling that God’s creation never ceases to exist, but will always be there, or in heaven, to provide shelter to humans, birds and animals and all created things? Does the tree have any idea of the part that it has played and still plays in God’s plan for his creation? I shall never in this life be able to answer that question. Just like every other creature in the animal world, and indeed every created thing in the natural world of fauna and flora – and in that description I hope that I may include that majestic oak tree in the garden that I have already mentioned - I had a beginning, and just like everyone else also including that oak tree, I shall certainly have an end, at least as far as this world is concerned. Some lives are short, some lives seem, like that of an oak tree, to have been very long, but even these in comparison with the world itself are only a blip in the immensity of time, which is beyond our comprehension. The beginning of the oak tree would probably be due to the fact that just one of the many acorns that fell from an earlier tree was destined to fall (or if you prefer to use the word ‘happened’) to fall in the right spot to germinate, and that then was not disturbed by any wind, insect, animal or bird but allowed to grow in peace.

    It could also be said that it was a matter of chance that just one particular acorn among so many would have survived to be responsible for its growth into a full-sized tree. An army of many millions of acorns (and this is no exaggeration, for I do mean millions, for some years I personally and with the assistance of my grandsons when they still were young enough to be persuaded, in order to clear the lawn for football practice, have collected over five thousand acorns in one autumn and disposed of them) would have fallen from any particular tree. So why did this one particular acorn survive when so many others fail to germinate, or were destroyed before they grew to an adult tree?  Was it due to any particular strength? Was it programmed to be the progenitor of a tree? Was it really just a matter of being in the right place at the right time? When I see the number of acorns that have this year fallen from this tree, I wonder which of those five thousand or so to fall every year will bear such fruit, and for how many more hundreds of years the oak’s own family tree will last before that line dies out for ever; perhaps the line will continue as long as earth survives. There is also another dreadful possibility – that a disease may take all the oaks in the world just as what we called ‘Dutch’ elm disease has dealt with the elms.  A passing thought!  Isn’t it strange to note how we English always have tended to put the blame for our disasters on a group of foreigners? Like the elm disease, we also blame the Dutch for the sternness of our uncles, and the French for the abruptness of taking leave or else taking sexual precautions!

     But let us resume our exploration of the world of nature. The destruction of trees could happen in the same way that dinosaurs and other creatures are now extinct and unknown except as fossil remains in our contemporary world. The world is a very different world without dinosaurs and possibly would be very different world without oak trees! The same thoughts have led me to both my own family tree and to the family tree of the human race. The beginnings of the human race are still shrouded in mystery, although through scientific research we – or rather those human beings who have the learning and ability - are gradually trying to reconstruct them.  To the best of my knowledge, my own beginning happened when I was conceived in my mother’s womb, and there again that beginning probably was from one of so many seeds of which some thousands or millions have failed either to germinate or to thrive. Certainly, I did have not only one but two sisters, and only one of them has had a long life – the other died after a brief life of only a few days; the reason for this is still shrouded in mystery, although through scientific research we – or rather those human beings who have the learning and ability - are gradually trying to reconstruct them. This is something which in this life I shall never understand, and I look forward to the time when all is revealed, and I hope that I shall then become wiser in the presence of the Almighty.    

 John Woodbridge