Shining the Light on a Life Well Lived

I can't quite recall what set me on this track, so perhaps it`ll just remain a mystery, but what has emerged from that spark of interest is now taking on a life of its own.

For some reason (can't think why) my wider family has seen me as a useful depository of family history. I know not whether it was having a large loft, and so offering a convenient solution for what to do with them, or some smouldering interests in such things just waiting for the spark. The backdrop is probably too many stories of a convenient skip being thoughtlessly utilised, post-mortem. That at least prompted a more cautious approach, but my attic now has its fair share of dusty materials that nobody has read in a long time. Not a problem. Well, that’s not actually true, as the question should be, whose problem could it all become the fullness of time?

In the interim though, back to the story. Yes, for some reason, fairly recently, I did take a look at the material I have on the life and living of my paternal grandfather, James Wright and by extension, my grandmother too. This threw up an immediate dilemma, once we got past the kinship. He was a man of the cloth, and I have no contemporary sympathies with the church as an organisation or focus of faith. Does that matter? Well not really, but I know of one or two relatives who are encumbered with strong anti-church burdens – for whatever reason that may be. So, to sidestep that potential issue in whatever interest there may be in the wider family, I started to look for the man, the human being, his character and personality. Surely James Wright was much more than a dog collar?

You`ll have guessed by now that I got drawn into what I started poring over. The more I read, and began to organise it, the more I realised I`d an unusually complete set of some key documents in his journey as a minister in the United Free Church of Scotland. There were glimpses into his humanity that were either true expressions of his calling or, and this is the crux of it, the human needs that went with it: `I was hungry, and you fed me`, with all of its implications (surely?). I discovered that he went the extra two miles on that one and several others of the same ilk. Equally, I discovered that he was as highly regarded by his congregations for who he was as a person of diverse interests, as how he performed in the pulpit of a Sunday morning.

I look at one photo, a snap, taken in the vestry at the signing of the register for what was probably the very last wedding that he conducted. The thing that shines out of that snapshot is his incredibly kindly face. Old, frail, and recently widowed, all I see is kindness and genuine human caring for the nervous young couple on their big day.

The only childhood evidence that seems to remain so far, is a petition he organised when he was about sixteen. He was pleading to the headmaster, on behalf of his classmates for an extra day's holiday before the Christmas break. In the all too brief petition, beautifully written he argues a good case. A youthful sign of potential leadership, perhaps?

From youth to old age, marriage to parenthood and the loss of a child to appendicitis, through rambling groups, family holidays, a rich sense of quirky humour, wars, urban life in what we would now call an area of multiple deprivation, to provincial town and rural calm, he faced it all with wit, purpose and imagination – a personality with vision.

This gives a flavour of what I gleaned from the random stuff in my attic. Then I met up with the archivist from the church he was in for about twenty years. What she so kindly produced will keep me reading for some time to come, I suspect. Then there are of course major gaps, so a visit to the Glasgow archives in the Mitchell Library is now overdue.

I`m also trying to dig a bit deeper, as there is at least one major question I feel I must address. Certainly, the Church of Scotland and no doubt the United Free Church in its day proclaimed a ghastly attitude to Catholicism. The reasons for this emerge in any study of the history of religion in Scotland`s post-reformation journey. A deeper analysis of this is surely for another day and another place though. But here was James Wright, MA, described by all as a lovely, kind, generous-hearted human being, working for an organisation that was in a sense the antithesis of this. How could this be? I`m still trying to resolve it, but I think I may conclude that the fact he was `called` by each congregation is the clue. A form of democracy and not prejudice was being played out in the pews. These ordinary people knew what they wanted in calling their new minister, and what seems to be emerging, is that he should not be encumbered with any baggage.

So what was practised over the many years of church work was every bit as much about people, per se, as tending his flock spiritually. People mattered a lot to James Wright and the evidence for this lies in what was said, written, in a snapshot or two, and strongly, by inference.

In teasing all this out, I warm to the man who coped as best he could, with all that life and death threw at him personally, at the same time as supporting countless other people who encountered much the same challenges. He seems to have done this, with compassionate, good-humoured humanity, throughout.

I will dig deeper, and feel confident that everything I discover, will bear out, this all-too-brief assessment of James Wright.