It is a little-known secret that right now the place to be
in the world is Brixton.
It’s a whiplash of a morning. Someone’s thrown me out of bed,
onto a tube, onto a bus which has spit me out onto the street for the 8 am
shift of the pro-life vigil. The air is damp with the smell of empty bottles of
cider. Day or night, Brixton always seems to be the same, as though its
inhabitants don’t notice the light changing.
Something is different. There’s a circle of pink graffiti
around me on the ground, an arrow pointing at the circle labelled ‘wierdos’,
‘Brixton is pro-choice’. It’s the kind of pink that might seem appealing on a
dark, drunken night out but when you look at it again in the morning it just
looks disgusting and makes you feel sick.
I have to admit, I’m feeling a bit small, standing all alone
in that pink graffiti circle, with my signs that are too heavy and too many for
me to carry. I don’t want to put them up yet for fear of getting mauled.
My fellow vigilant arrives, notices the graffiti and carries
on as usual. The affability of his manners is amplified by the fact that he’s
got a big pink arrow labelled ‘weirdos’ pointing at him. We start trying to
assemble the signs and a woman comes along and starts shouting at us, telling
us she is going to work in a children’s care home while we are standing there
harassing women. It’s all seeming a bit grim and dismal.
Then we start our prayers, and the sun comes out. I’m
watching the people going past and something is different. Almost everyone is
noticing, reacting even. A father is talking to his child about what’s going
on. People are looking up from their phones as though waking up from a deep sleep,
turning their heads to read the pink words on the ground that they can’t
possibly miss. Some are smirking, someone is laughing and taking a photo.
Someone walking her dog stops and asks us how long this is going to be going on
for. ‘I live across the street and it’s just quite a lot’, she says. As though
living across the street from an abortion clinic wasn’t quite enough already.
One of the worst things about abortion is the fact that no
one talks about it. This huge tragedy is going on in our country and we’ve got
this unbearably heavy, profound silence hanging over us about it. We’ve rocked
up in this land of darkness and, assuming this is about as light as it gets,
are sliding far too quickly into deeper and deeper darkness.
The beautiful thing that I saw that morning was people
finally starting to wake up about it, however begrudgingly. This country used
to be Catholic, and sometimes it seems a very long way away from being that way
again.
That morning, it didn’t seem such a long way off to me after
all. I saw that this pro-life vigil is God’s work, and God can move mountains.
He can move thick heavy clouds of darkness and silence about the prevalent
tragedy of abortion.
If you don’t want to come and pray with us at 40 Days for
Life, you are welcome to come and shout at us. Who knows? You might just
suddenly feel a whole lot lighter.
Anna Maria
The 40 Days for Life Prayer Vigil in Brixton, where we reach out to expectant Mums, will run for 12 hours a day, 8am to 8pm, seven days a week from Ash Wednesday until Palm Sunday. If you could spare an hour or more to come and pray with us, it would be of great help. The vigil takes place at the corner of Brixton Water Lane, London, SW2 5BJ. For more details or to book to attend please contact Gabriella on 07745711064 or 02077231740
For details about 40 Days for Life Prayer Vigils in Reading, Ealing, Southend, Liverpool, Nottingham, Glasgow, Leicester, Bournemouth and Sheffield see here and for the rest of the World see here
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