THE HOLY SOUL WHO LOVED KIPLING

 

Circa 2001, when I was a schoolgirl in Ireland, I burst out of school one day filled with joy at having been introduced to an author whose work filled me with zest for living. The author of which I speak was Rudyard Kipling. One of my teachers, a native Gaelic speaker had passed around copies of Kipling's If, which she said was her personal favorite poem. As I walked home, I had these exhilarating lines resounding in my head: 

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools"

 I bumped into an elderly Irish Catholic who asked me a familiar question, namely what had I learned in school. When I said we studied a poem by Kipling, the person snapped back and looked like I'd squirted lemon juice in their eyes. "Pah! Don't you know that Kipling was the darling of the British Empire? He wrote to prop it up! Why is an Irish colleen reading his stuff?" This made me feel guilty for my burgeoning desire to read Kipling and so I moved to other authors. 

Many years later, someone who is close to me asked me to pray for their deceased grandfather who they never met. Their grandfather was an Irish Catholic, and a surgeon by profession and I was surprised when I learned that their grandfather had also been an avid fan of Kipling. Well, this didn't dissuade me from offering devotions for him, and I took to prayer for their grandfather. Then the more I learned about him, the more I liked the sound of him. He was a most remarkable father and husband, and did incredible works of charity, his poor patients never received a medical bill. 

In recent months, I felt called to ask the grandfather for prayer. I trust he is a holy soul or maybe he has entered the pearly gates already. Holy souls may pray for us, they may not pray for themselves. But something very peculiar happens every time I ask the late surgeon's prayers: there is a sighting of Kipling. I offered a Rosary one morning and asked this man's intercession and in the late afternoon, a dear friend in England was in touch with a photo they had taken at the Kipling museum - the one that accompanies this post - and they felt called to send it to me when we had never previously discussed the author of The Jungle Book. The next time, I requested prayer, hours later I was sent a podcast recommendation for Jordan Peterson's talk with Stephen Fry where Fry holds forth on Kipling. There has been several occurrences like this, but the latest happened on the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation when merely minutes after asking the late surgeon's prayers, I was looking up poetry written in praise of Our Lady, and stumbled upon the poem that Kipling wrote in honor of the Mother of God:

"Ah, Mary, pierced with sorrow, 

Remember reach and save, 

The soul that stands tomorrow

Before the God that gave." 

I didn't include this verse with the post because it is more befitting of Good Friday or the Feast of the Seven Dolors. But I had not known Kipling was devoted to the Mother of God.  Kipling could be very secretive about his religious beliefs. This may owe to a hellish period in his childhood when from the age of 5 to 12, he was sent to live with a couple in their boarding house and on a daily basis they bullied him as to whether he was following them scrupulously in their Protestant beliefs. Kipling could be very enigmatic, even antithetical in his self-assessment, and when asked as to his religion, he used answer that he was, "A God-fearing Christian atheist". 

But I ask you, could someone of no faith, write the above tribute to the Blessed Virgin?

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This post was informed by Andrew Lycett's biography of Kipling. The classic painting is La Dolorosa was executed by José Camarón y Boronat