This woollen jumper
It was very much like any other charity shop I now regularly frequented, small items of furniture with carefully placed nick knacks to your left, followed by rows of dog eared books on battered wooden shelves. To the right were women’s clothes presented as if they were high fashion on a number of mismatched mannequins, followed by racks of dresses and coats, all cast off because there was no more room in the wardrobe. Then came the moribund racks of shirts, jackets and trousers, dead man’sclothes, the shapeless remains of a meaningless existence, brought in by widows now looking for a fresh start. Beyond these forlorn racks stood a wooden dining table, upon which a thin, pale faced and slightly greying volunteer, who might have been a deserter from the Salvation Army, had just placed a cardboard box containing the woollen item I was now examining.
I studied the worn rust coloured woollen jumper that lay on top of the items in the box, its cuffs frayed, body misshapen and elbows worn thin, looking at it I pondered the question the pullover posed, can evil really dwell in a cast off garment of clothing?
I for one think not but it is surprising how easily we imbue objects with supernatural powers.
Are we really any different from the animists who feared and worshiped stones and rocks? We think we have such layers of sophistication to our modern cosmologies but how often do we find ourselves touching wood, crossing our fingers or saying good morning to a solitary magpie?
Two thousand years ago, did not Paul himself write to the Corinthians to tell them it was perfectly permissible for Christians to eat food sacrificed at the pagan temples, that, as there was only one God, food could not be tainted by any mumbo jumbo to none existent idols (not his words exactly, it was more like). “Food will not condemn us to God, we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat”
No worse, no better, a rational I can understand.
So why do I hesitate now? Why can’t I simply pick it up and put on this woollen jumper. I’m a perfectly rational human being, I use to adviseothers how to get the best out of their savings in old age, that is, until I set up a hedge fund of my own for my clients to invest in. It’s true I am in slightly reduced circumstances now, the two plastic bags at my feet containing all my worldly goods and one should not look a gift horse in the mouth. Ha! A gift horse, that’s what got me here in the first place, a sure fire investment, guaranteed twenty percent every year. What a fool I was, what a greedy fool. Now I stand hear in a Gloucestershire charity shop, contemplating the nature of this rust coloured woollen jumper. I ask you how could a past association transfer itself to someone else?
What is the nature of evil? Is it something that could possess objects and dark places, lurking, waiting, hiding from the light? What was its origin? Has it always existed, even before the fall of the Archangel Lucifer or is it something that grows slowly almost imperceptibly in a cold damaged heart.
Could this jumper possess a charge so powerful that it could turn ordinary people into monsters or is it merely a trigger releasing something that is already in us, is it the jumper we should be afraid of or is it ourselves?
She took pity on me, “new in today” she said, a box of clothes and amongst them this jumper, “only I suppose I should tell you that the box was donated when they cleared out Fred West’s house, before they knocked it down” the notorious serial killer. Without any further deliberation I picked up my two plastic bags and I walked out into the cold night air, I felt warm, a tingle ran down my back as I stood there in my new rust coloured jumper.
