When she'd read this blog post from the beginning of this month, and got her misbehaving electronics under control, Vicki was back in touch with some further thoughts.
She said, about life at St Alcuins in the 14th century, that "Life was so much simpler and so much more complicated. The way you have portrayed life at Saint Alcuin’s, I have often thought that I could have lived there except for two things: getting up in the middle of the night in the cold, and the food."
She wanted to pass on to Brother Michael — "Please let Brother Michael know that he would have to work very, very, very hard to make me feel patronised or offended in any way. (I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be offended)."
And she wondered, about Paradise: "But if our “dear departed” are in Paradise with Jesus, how can they also be with us? God the Father is with me, Jesus said he would never leave me or forsake me, and the Holy Spirit of God lives in me. What about the “witnesses”? How/where do they fit in?"
Those are just some snippets from her letter. I mentioned these things to Brother Michael, and he listened carefully, then he said: "Thank you. Always such a relief to avoid giving offence! But — my dear sister, little Ghost — I hope you don't mind, I have more to get through than hours in the day to cram it all into. Would you — of your charity — might you take up these things with our abbot? If he's free, of course."
He did look distinctly harassed in my opinion, so I pushed off to give him some space to get everything done, and went to find Abbot John.
It's a bit unfair really, that if I show up like a ghost in their monastery, they don't have much option over whether to see me or not. I'm just there.
"Oh — hello!" says the abbot, looking up from the mass of letters and what we'd nowadays call "paperwork" on the big oak table where he works. He puts his pen down. "Can I help?"
So I say again the things about getting up in the night, and the cold, and being offended and Paradise, and he listens quietly.
How many people do you know who really listen? These men do. It's very refreshing, I can tell you!
But as he thinks over what I've said to him, I think he seems a bit uncomfortable about something. Absentmindedly he picks up his pen again, and turns in over in his fingers, looking down at it. So I just wait, wondering what's bothering him.
And then he says, "I don't know... that is... I assume your friends who say these things to you also read your stories about our life here. If they do — if they have read the last one you wrote, about the light of one lamp, then they'll have a fair idea about Brother Michael and me, and that'll have given them a candid insight into giving offence and being offended, and the muddle I got into and trying to unpick it all. It... well... embarrassing, I suppose, and it wasn't easy. The thought of hundreds of people reading about it... oh... what a nightmare. Still, I'm glad your friend Vicki doesn't take offence readily, and I dearly wish I could say the same about myself; but the fact of the matter is, I can be more than a little touchy sometimes. Comes from jumping to conclusions and not looking deeply enough, or just getting stuck in my own point of view."
Then a small, lopsided, rueful sort of smile, and he lays the pen back down on his table, and glances up at me again.
"The cold? Yes, that can wear anyone down. But we wear wool and we light fires and eat hot food. We wear socks and wooly hats, and we keep moving. It's not so bad."
Then I ask him about something I've heard, with reference to getting up for the Night Office. I've read that back in the day it was normal to have two sleeps — people would go to bed when darkness fell, then naturally wake up during the night, even get up and do things or have something to eat, then go back to bed and fall asleep again until morning.
He frowns slightly. "Yes," he says. "Is... don't you do that, too?"
I wonder whether to talk to him about electric light and decide not to bother. I just say, "We've found ways of keeping the house lit so we can stay up as late as we like. So we go to bed near to midnight, maybe ten or eleven o'clock, and sleep through until morning."
He considers this, and we talk for a while about different patterns of sleep, and young men who stay up carousing and then find it hard to get up in the morning, and about the value of going to bed and getting up according to the rhythms of the season, and how beneficial it is to go quietly to rest, not overstimulated, and let the day end. That sort of thing. I was interested in what he had to say about it, but I must confess I've forgotten most of it now.
He moves on to what Vicki said about Paradise. "I'm not sure about that," he says, "but this I do know: there is no power but that of God. There is nowhere to go that did not proceed from God and is not in the reach of his Spirit."
Then he says, "Quo ibo ab spiritu tuo? Et quo a facie tua fugiam? Si ascendero in cælum, tu illic es; si descendero in infernum, ades. Si sumpsero pennas meas diluculo, et habitavero in extremis maris, etenim illuc manus tua deducet me, et tenebit me dextera tua."
And I look at him blankly. "What?"
"You... you don't know Latin?" He looks bewildered. "But... in your stories..."
"Oh, yeah," I tell him, "but I look it up in English and get it translated."
He still seems somewhat taken aback, but he immediately says, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Well, in English it would be, Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present. If I take wing in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me. Something like that. It's... um... it's from the Psalms."
Well, yes, of course it is.
"So I think," he says, "there is — maybe — nowhere to go except the presence of God. What varies is how we feel about that, how we respond, or react. Whether we are at rest after death, or are here on Earth, whatever or wherever, the only reality is Him. Perhaps. You might want to ask Theodore, if you like. But probably not right now because they'll be ringing the bell for Vespers very soon. Try him after supper, if you can. I don't know how hard it is for you to travel between your now and ours." He grins at me. "But I do know that both of those are in God. Everything is. Would you not see it like that?"
"So, no separation, you think?" I say. "Not compartmentalised?"
"Experientially, maybe," he says. "Perhaps like the spokes of a wheel are separate from each other. But they are all conjoined at the rim and meet at the hub. There are many spokes, but there is one wheel. How we look at it determines whether what we see is one or many. And we belong to one another because we belong to Him. We find one another — and discover our own true selves — when we take refuge under His wings. It is our frailty that divides us, that keeps us from perceiving how all things hold together in Him. It is the limitation of our humanity; but even that is held in Him, and becomes the conduit of the mystery of this unity. What Jesus said — "Ut omnes unum — oh — erm — sorry —That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. He is the ground of all that is, of all being."
And then, just as he anticipated, they begin to ring for Vespers. He waits, courteously, but I can see it's time for me to go. I don't really want to leave, I wish I could stay and ask him what parting even means in view of what he's just said; but yes, there is Reality and then there is reality. There's the ground of all being, but there's also Vespers and twenty-first century Hastings. So it's time to come back here.
As he gets up, ready to set off for chapel, I mention that Vicki remarked on God having a sense of humour, and Abbot John laughs. "Yes," he says. "He certainly does if He sent you here to ask me about all of this. I do my best, but I'm relieved if He just thinks it's funny. It could be worse. He might have been expecting I'd come through with something intelligent."
But — I think he did, didn't he?
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