From the slums of Scotland to the Glory of CalvaryI would like to take the readers of this book on a spiritual journey. It is my wish and earnest desire and prayer, that this story will glorify the Lord Jesus and bring comfort and hope to all who read it. Through poetry and stories I hope to touch the hearts of many, and bring comfort to all those who hurt, whether physically or spiritually. I have found through experience that our Lord Jesus will certainly lift up the head that hangs down, will bring hope to a hopeless situation. I come from a small working class shipbuilding town in Scotland. It is situated on the River Clyde and the area is extraordinarily beautiful. When the sun did shine, and I admit that was not too often, it would bask our valley in magnificent warmth and splendor. The hills rise dramaticly on either side and are shadowed by the mountains behind. Most often the mountains would be shrouded in mist and one could see very little of anything. It gave a very claustrophobic feeling and I always remember feeling trapped. The river ran through the center of everything. It dominated our whole lives. Almost from every Government house, one had a magnificent view of the Firth of Clyde. It is almost three miles wide , but to a young Greenock boy, it might have well been the Atlantic. How mysterious was “the other side.” The town of Greenock stood in stark contrast to the surrounding beauty. It was a dirty little industrial town from the Victorian area. Mostly red or grey sandstone buildings, blackened by generations of smoke that would billow from a thousand chimney pots. Many slums still existed and most people lived in “Tenements,” high rise sandstone buildings that mostly consisted of one bedroom apartments. In a typical tenement there would be maybe fifteen families up one “close.” There was five of us in a one bedroomed apartment. The three children slept in the bedroom while my mom and dad slept in the living room which was the dining room and also we would bath in the sink. My mom and dad had a bed that fir into a recess in the wall and after they got up in the morning they would simply pull a curtain over the space. Since it rained so much in Scotland, we would dry our clolthes by hanging them from a line attached to two pulleys or small wheels in the ceiling.The vast majority of men worked in the shipyards and faced very harsh working conditions.The class system was firmly entrenched and there was a very small middle class community. At least 90% of the community would be working class. . My father had came from a working class family. His father of course ,was an alcoholic. He worked at local distilliry, making whiskey. My grandfather would steal this whiskey and it would be hidden around his apartment. When it was found, it would be poured down the sink by my grandmother who was a staunch Catholic and made a living by cleaning stairs in the tenements. I never knew my grandfather, he died at the age of 58 through his alcholism, my father was 19. He had left school at 15 and entered the shipyards. This was a very tough working envioroment where drinking was the measure of a man, that and violence. My father followed his father in the path of alcholism.My mother came from a working class family also.Her father also worked in the shipyards. My grandmother had given birth to ten children and collapsed and died at the age of 60, my mother being 16. My mother was advised not to marry my father, and like so many others before her, she would ignore this advice and perhaps find comfort in him. My father “wore the pants” in our house. Like most Scottish working class women, my mother did what she was told. As long as she did, there were little problems, apart from the usual struggle to survive and pay bills. Frequently men’s wages would be drunk before they returned home on a Friday night. Often one could see anxious women waiting outside the “yards” to catch their husbands and at least get some money for food before it was lost to the bars or the Bookmakers. My mother, like many women in the sixties and seventies in Scotland, lived on the edge of her nerves, trying to put food in their children’s mouths and avoid the debtors. Silence had to be observed many times when the familiar knock on the door would come on a Friday night. The “tally man” had come looking for his money, and more often than not, there was none to give. Valium was a tremendous friend to a great number of women , my mother being one of them. My story really starts when I was seven. My mother came home and announced she had found Jesus. She went out that night because my father, in a drunken fit, was screaming at something that was not there and said that "The devil wanted him." My mum, as if speaking prophetically and not even saved said "he will not have you Frank." She went out and found herself in a Salvation Army hall and she responded to an alter call. As a Catholic boy, I knew who Jesus was, He was the Son of God. He had died on the cross, everybody knew that. One day, probably after ten thousand years in purgatory, most of us would get to see Him. In fact , Purgatory was the place to “shoot for.” No-one was good enough to say they were going to heaven, avoiding Hell was my main concern. I once heard a Priest describe Hell. He said that we were to imagine a giant metal ball, the size of the earth. Every thousand years, a dove would come by and brush its wings against the ball. When that ball was totally rubbed away by the dove’s wings, we would still be in Hell. My mother was completely different. The smoking was gone, the valium too. My father went nuts when he heard. Although he did not really know what being “born-again” meant, he knew they were whacko’s , fanatics. And although he was a non-practicing Catholic, he firmly believed that everything outside of Catholicism was ungodly. And yet, I am sure , in the back of his mind, he knew that he was no longer in control of this woman, and that he was no longer the center of her universe. There was no situation that was not turned to the glory of God. Many times our electricity was cut of. One time it was of for three months. And every night for three months there was a brilliant star that seem to light up our living room. I would sit and stare at "my," star. My Mom told me that the Lord had sent a star to light up the darkness of our room, I believed it. When there was no food on the table, she told us that we had to believe and that the Lord would provide, and then we would hear a letter dropping. We would rush to the door and there would be an envelope with money in it. We found out years later that a wonderful woman in Christ would often be led by Jesus to put her tithe in an envelope and drop it through our door. No name, just obedience to the Holy Spirit's leading. As a child, I would walk down the road, and my mother would stop and talk to the "bum's." down and outs, rejected by society, foul smelling men, foul talking men, but never in front of my mother. She would tell them about Jesus, how He loved them, how He died for them. One night one of these men responded to my mothers invitation to come to church, a small Assemblies of God church. He was dressed very badly and smelled worse. As they took their seat somewhere near the back, some people moved. The man realized and began to weep, telling my mother that he was not dressed "properly." My Mom told him "don't you worry about how your dressed, Jesus doesn't care how your dressed."Just then the men of the church came back and led this man to the front of the church and sat him down in the front aisle. This is the Jesus that I encountered as a small boy of seven. This Jesus who looked at the worse of sinners, the rejected of "moral," society and embracesd them. He reached out across the divide of decent society and said " Oh how I love you." The light of Jesus shined into the darkest corners of hell with a glorious love that cannot be comprehended by an enemy whose only design is to divide and destroy. He embraces the "untouchables," with a love that cannot be comprehended by an enemy who knows only division, strife, fear, hatred and suspicion. After my mother came to know Jesus, our family was plunged into a world of violence and intense hatred. My mother sufferred many beatings for simply loving Jesus and going to church. She suffered a broken jaw and a thousand black eyes.My father would constantly call me an idiot. I never heard my name on his lips. Often he would put a knife in my hand in drunkeness and try have me stab him, of course I would not. He would slap me on the side of the head and tell me that I "did not have it in me." Oh how I longed to be loved by this man but he had my heart in his hand and was slowly squeezing the life out of it.Little did I know that Satan had planted his flag of ownership at the very core of my heart, and that this would shape me and enslave me for years to come. THE PROCESSMy heart is shredded, it lies in piecesThink, I must thinkHer comes the hammer, it cannot missThe blow, and now I shrinkThe shrinking ends , I am no moreOne chance to survive, I take itAnd now I am no moreOnly one choice , I thought, and I took itAnd walked on through the doorThe blows are coming nowBut I feel a little lessSurely my heart grows strongerAh, but no caressI now reside in this world of mineAnd the blows keep raining downStronger , even stronger nowNo more thinking, the sun has gone downMy heart, my heart, it is no moreIt is completely encased in steelMy God, My God, Oh help me LordMy God I cannot feel.I look down in horrorNo heart, no flesh , just boneI look around in horrorMy God, I’m all aloneWhere is this place I thought I knewIt’s dark, it’s dimly litMy God, My God, I’m almost at the bottomOf the bottomless pit. And in that moment, right where I wasMy God He came to meMy son, my son, my son He criedI have come to set you free.Oh my God, Oh my LordIs it true, can I be freeOh please dear Jesus, please dear GodPlease don’t look on meMy son, my son, you are my sonAnd I will put you on the RockBe quiet now, be quiet sonShh, do not talkI have a Son, My only SonHe died upon a treeHe is My Son, He is your LordHe’s the Rock that will set you free.And so it was, and so it isMy Father took me in His HandOnward , ever upwardOut of the pit, into the Promised landHe set me on the Rock and I looked downNo longer a heart of steelI could see and I could touchI had flesh and I could feelSo come to the Rock, come to ChristAnd He will set you freeIf you will just open your eyes He will let you see. ----------------------------------This next poem is much the same, I would like to include it anyway as it gives a different angle of the same process.SHADOWS IN THE DARKLANDInto the shadows of the darklandWhere the roaring lion roams freeNever to return to the world of innocenceThis cynical dimension has forever trapped meFor years I wandered in the twilightVoices of the world echo unclearThis is a place of abandoned desolationForever ruled by shame and fearHow is it that these world’s CO-exist in timeA child in one, a slave to the otherSurviving daily in a colorless jungleYet sentenced forever to continually sufferA childless child in a demanding worldLonging to return to a different timeTo a place of warmth and sweet embraceOh to laugh again, how sublimeThere were times when I thought I had found the wayI could almost feel the sun on my faceBut just at that time, the lion did pounceAnd I ran screaming back into that placeAnd so I walked on, chains pulling me downSeemingly going nowhereYet I was being pulled towards an enormous pitAnd I did not have the strength to careAnd before I knew it I was fallingHaving finally gone over the edgeI was grasping and scraping and calling outBefore I came to a stop on a ledgeI looked down and I could see the bottomIt was the bottom of the bottomless pitI looked at myself, I was covered in slimeAnd I said to myself, this is itI looked up and I could see no lightAnd I cried out , oh God help meAnd in an instant, His Hand came downAnd before I knew it I was freeI was out of the pit and standing on the RockI could feel the sun on my faceNever again to walk in the shadows of the DarklandBut to live forever in a continual embrace. Part two to follow.
