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BARBADOS RUM: Man And Superman - by Ben Davis - an inspirational instalment, telling of Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and Ben's calling to be a doctor. https://shinealightonlife.wordpress.com/2020/10/28/barbados-rum-man-and-superman-by-ben-davis/
I have worked as a doctor for thirty-six years. I never really felt I was worthy of such an exalted position and so the influence of Mr Tracey Forster freed me to give it a go. There were other changes that came upon me at that time of my life as well.
It all seems to come back to that walk down Rodney Street. I walked from the Catholic quarter to the Protestant.
There is no delicate way to put this. I am a Christian. I believe in God. It is as if God wanted me for his or her own special reasons. He wanted me to firmly believe in his existence and to do what he told me.
I can see how he has been there modeling me according to his requirements. My belief comes, not from some great gift of unreasoning faith, but from the reality of knowing God. I am a “suck-it-and-see” Christian. I have tried this Way of life, and it works.
Preparation starts before you are born. Ancestry has a profound effect on who you are, what your talents are and what you become. I am a mongrel. Of my eight great grandparents, five are Irish. Two supported the Irish Republican Army – that is the terrorist group IRA.
Three supported the “Black and Tans” who were sent to Ireland to quell the Catholic Irish independence movement of the 1920s. Violence met violence on the streets of Irish cities and its echoes lived on through the football teams of British cities.
Liverpool FC fans were loyalist protestants where Everton supporters were Catholic. The same was said of Glasgow Rangers FC (protestant) and Glasgow Celtic FC (Catholic) fans. One wonder if Catholics voted for the Labour party and Protestants voted for the Conservative party.
My other three great grandparents were regarded as English Gentry. Arthur Moore Barton, my Great Grandfather was from Sleaford in Lincolnshire. His father, Benjamin Samford Barton, had lost the family lands to the crown.
His father, Benjamin Barton, was Lord of the Manor of Manningtree in Essex. How these lands were lost, was the stuff of legend and was duly passed on to me by my Great Uncle Victor. Victor’s full name was Arthur Edward Victor Barton. He has a most profound influence on my life.
He was, after all, the family hero. Without this man’s generosity, I would not have been born.
It was his daughter, my mother’s cousin Hope, who helped me down that road from Paddy’s Wigwam, as the Roman Catholic cathedral was known, to the Anglican cathedral. However, it was my grandmother “Gong,” who unwittingly set me up for this.
During my mid-teens, I was encouraged by my mother to walk the three miles, from Claughton, where we lived, on Ashburton Road, to Grafton Drive in Upton to visit Gong.
I would walk up Ashburton Road with its imposing, late Georgian houses and its allotments, to the curved imposing Vyner Road South, with its even more expensive mansions. I would pass Noctorum Lane and then was faced with a decision.
Should I take Thermopyle Pass directly to Upton Station, or the footpath to Beryl Road? I sometimes took the longer route by Beryl Road just in case I got a glimpse of Stephanie, a girl from the local convent school who I was quite smitten with.
Gong tried to encourage my interest in an attractive protestant girl who lived 3 doors up from her on Grafton Drive. Gong liked me to visit regularly. I would mow the lawn and walk to Upton Village to do some shopping for her.
I would also listen to her stories and learn some of her skills. Her Irish Catholic relatives were what were known as “Peasant Catholics.” Some of their traditions were anything but Christian.
Thus, I learned to “Read the Cards.” From a pack of playing cards Gong would extract all those worth six points and below and then ask me to shuffle the remaining cards without looking at them.
She would then deal a certain magic number of the cards in a grid pattern onto the card table in the corner of the dining room. Then, with an air of sharing some great secret, she would tell me the story the cards showed about my future.
I remember that each suit had different tales to tell. The spades were threatening and bad. The hearts were about love and were good. The diamonds were about wealth and money and the clubs were about business matters. Then certain combinations of cards told of upcoming events.
The ace and eight of spades positioned near each other, could mean a death was imminent. All this was fascinating stuff for a nerd like me and I told fortunes for some of my friends by reading the cards.
The other thing that happened at 5, Grafton Drive in Upton, was that I was regularly given pocket money. This consisted of a shiny half-crown piece. It enabled me to buy the new American comic books that were just appearing in the News Agent’s in England.
They were printed in colour, unlike the British Beano and the Dandy where the stories were in black and white. The main companies purveying American Comics were Marvel Comics and DC comics. Nowadays these stories and characters appear in blockbuster films.
I got heavily into reading them. My favorites included Dr Strange, the X-Men and Superboy.
Hope Barton is Uncle Victor’s daughter. I still make a point of ringing her and visiting her in her nursing home in Bristol. The reason for that is I owe her a lot. This is what she did. I expect if you are Christian this sometimes happens to you.
Suddenly the Lord sets you a task. You don’t quite understand how you know but there is an imperative placed on you. You do it and forget about it and may never know its outcome. Hope did that for me.
She gave me a copy of a book by Graham Pulkingham called “Nine o’clock in the morning.”
I was a Catholic who knew all the ceremonial actions of the Mass. I had been an altar boy for 14 years.
The idea that Jesus had Super Powers and that there were followers of his who also had Super Powers due to something called “Baptism in the Holy Spirit,” and furthermore used them today to heal people was mind bending. Some of them even walked on water!
In my first weeks at Manchester Medical School, I met a guy called John Gollege. I asked him if he went to the Christian Union. He said yes, but he was not popular there as he was a Pentecostal. I could not help myself.
Much to his embarrassment I shouted “Alleluia!” at the top of my voice outside the main student halls of residence. I insisted on going to his “House Church” with him the following Sunday.
Over the next few weeks, I was baptized in water, in the bathroom upstairs and the Holy Spirit, in the main meeting room. It was not where the Lord wanted me. Every time someone was healed, I was somewhere else.
I did not see one member grow 2 extra inches on his leg and so loose his limp. The elders prayed over me and told me I was to be a GP. I wanted to be a super powered healer, or at least a consultant. They were right and I was wrong.
Barbados Rum - by Ben Davis ( https://shinealightonlife.wordpress.com/home/blog-index/barbados-rum-memoirs-by-ben-davis/)
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