A VICAR in Southport, Merseyside, undertook a marathon New Testament reading from Braille last Saturday: a fund-raising event to assist to safeguard a sustainable future for the constructing and congregation of St Francis of Assisi, Kew, a C of E/Methodist LEP.
The Vicar, the Revd Alex Galbraith, has been registered blind since birth. Chemotherapy after a terminal cancer diagnosis two-and-a-half years ago damaged the vestige of sight which he had, and he now sees just light and dark. The treatment also left his fingertips inclined to soreness and sensitivity, but he read all 4 Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles over a 16-hour period, punctuated only by two 15-minute breaks.
“I did experiment with surgical gloves that I got from the dentist, but fortunately my finger held out,” he said on Monday. So, too, did his legs, dispelling his wife’s worries that they could seize up and cause thrombosis — one other concern after the chemo. He just “needed to stand up and jump about every few hours”, he said.
Previous fund-raising endeavours have included white-water rafting, climbing Snowdon, and aeroplane acrobatics: he suggests that jumping out of a plane might be less daunting once you’re blind.
“I’ve all the time found blindness as being a present, in a way, and I’ve tried to treat cancer in the identical way,” he said. “I’d somewhat give you the option to see, and I wish I didn’t have cancer, but I’ve been capable of speak and visit and understand people in a way I wouldn’t otherwise have been capable of do.”
His prognosis is between six and 12 months, and, within the certain knowledge that there won’t be a full-time incumbent in the long run, he intends to die in service at St Francis’s, where he has been Vicar since 1997.
He read to an appreciative audience. “It’s a recent church, and never very big, but people could hear me, and I kept my expression up, because that’s how I wish to read aloud,” he said. One of the symptoms of his cancer is that his voice might be weak, and he experiences tiredness; but, after a time off from preaching on Sunday, his voice survived.
The total raised up to now, through JustGiving, on Monday, was greater than £1600; the modest goal was £1000. “It’s been response,” he said, expressing gratitude to his wife and to everybody who got here along to support him on the day.
“I’ve been on the church a protracted time, and I really like and look after it, and wish to do all I can to offer it a sustainable future. The money will help the church just to maintain going. It’s a really small congregation, nevertheless it serves a big community, and recent members are all the time made very welcome.”
