The Long Fall — our Humilis Hastings edition of this is now published

At last we have this available on Amazon in both paperback and e-book.

You can get it here on Amazon UK and here on US Amazon.

 It's taking us a while to gradually bring all the first Hawk & Dove series out under our own imprint (Humilis Hastings). The work is slow and patient, requiring multiple checks, because of the changes in formatting needed as we take the text from the files the original publisher used, re-format them to something we can work with, edit and proofread, then format again to upload for paperback and (different format required) for e-book. Each time the format changes, oddities occur in the text — eg the paragraph indentation slips or the italics vanish — so the text has to be proofread and corrected again.

Happily, both Jonathan who works on the paperback and creates the cover from Alice's and Hebe's artwork, and Tony who prepares the e-book, are meticulous and thorough. Without them, you would not have this book.

Anyway, for those of you who are collecting this new edition, or reading it for the first time, here it is.

As this book has been through different editions with different publishers (originally Monarch in England, then Good News in America, then Lion Hudson in England, finally SPCK), most of the tiny errors that slip through in a text had been spotted and nuked. But in editing this time I wanted to correct a few historical errors occurring from simple ignorance when I first wrote the book at the beginning of the 1990s. At the time, though I knew that such vegetables as potatoes and tomatoes were not available in the 14th century, I assumed that other root vegetable were — for both human and farm animal consumption — but they were not. The introduction of roots for cattle feed in the eighteenth century revolutionised farming and human wellbeing. Until then, both animals and humans were dependent on grain to se them through the winter, and in a hard year there wasn't enough to go round — especially in the 14th century as it happens, when they had a lot of wet winters and the grain harvests suffered.

So the practice had been to slaughter the animals they could spare at Martinmas, when there'd be a big feed-up followed by lean days through the winter as milk gradually dried up and egg yield dropped off and the grain stores eroded. They had dried beans, of course.

Once roots (turnips, beet etc) became a thing, there was more food to go round both humans and cattle, so slaughter for food could be more measured, not all at one go at Michaelmas. 

The food of the fourteenth century, then, was mainly animal products (meat, poultry, eggs, milk, butter, cheese), grain, fruit, and green vegetables. We read of garlic, onions and leeks being eaten, but I suspect they don't mean what we take them to mean — the kind of fat, round garlic and onions we buy at the supermarket now, and the hefty leeks.

If you look up three-cornered leek, also known as white-bells, also known as three-cornered garlic — Allium Triquetrum — you find these:

The whole thing is edible and tastes like spring onions (scallions US), but with a somewhat milder taste. They're easy to grow, spreading like wildfire if you plant them in the garden.

So I think that's what they meant when they talked about onions/garlic/leeks. There's also wild garlic — sometimes called ramsons — and as it's a ubiquitous indigenous plant I assume they had that too. They also ate nettles and rocket and chervil and cultivated lots of herbs. So, plenty of green fare, but not much of starchy veg before the 1700s.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, because there was thriving sea trading, the cooks of the fourteenth century did use ingredients like oriental spices, almonds and rice — and I think they may have had citrus fruits available to them that early by the same means. Certainly they did by the Elizabethan era.

When I first wrote The Long Fall, I just assumed roots were available for both humans and animals; so for this new edition I went back into the text to correct that error. Other than that, it's all pretty much as it was in previous editions. This, the third book I wrote, mattered to me very much; I had grown in confidence enough to dig my heels in about some editorial changes (yes, specifically "hot and soft and wet") urged upon me for the American market — I wouldn't change it. In this book, written out of experience working as a care assistant and and a hospice chaplain with people going through chronic/terminal illness and end of life, I wanted, even waking with the somewhat anodyne requirements of Evangelical publishing, something real, something that gave a voice to lived experience.

Six more of Series 1 to publish under our own imprint, and two more of Series 2 to write (I've made a start).

I hope you like this story. 

What Debi wanted to say to Father Francis.

 Debi, who helped me so much with understanding Father Felix, had a question for Father Francis. This was what she wanted to say to him:

“When you had your "dark night of the soul" and discovered Jesus outside in the darkness, it changed you. In the aftermath of my own dark night experience, I say that God rewrote my story, helping me see Jesus' presence throughout the most difficult parts of my life. I also say that my healing journey has been one part instantaneous and nine parts hard work. I am wondering what your experience has been. What did Christ's presence instantly change for you, and what has been the work you have done to find peace and wholeness? 

I would also like to let Francis know that his story was the first time I ever knew someone else struggled in the same ways I did — with shame — and was part of my own healing journey.”

I wondered if maybe I should ask the abbot’s permission to seek personal and private information from his prior, with a view to writing it up on the word wide web. He looked at me with a certain level of amusement. “Go ahead,” he said: “I mean, you always do.”

I suppose he’s right, isn't he? 

“If you want a good moment,” he added, “catch him after Vespers. He’s usually here, there and everywhere, and rarely on his own, in the middle of the day. I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. You can talk to him in the parlour if you like — I’ll ask Brother Thomas to light the fire for you.” 

You must admit, these are exceptional men: how many people do you know who would set up an appointment, fire and all, for one of their community to talk to what appears to be a ghost?

Everything’s earlier in the abbey after Michaelmas — Vespers and supper at a quarter past four, and Compline at half past six, which is when darkness falls in north Yorkshire at this time of year.

The parlour Father John meant is between the abbot’s house and the refectory, and opens onto the abbey court. So I turn up there at half past five, and find Father Francis sitting quietly by himself, waiting for me. Brother Tom has lit a small fire on the hearth there, as promised — just enough to be cheerful and warm the room: a fire for an hour or so; sticks, fir cones, some charcoal, and two or three chunky not-quite-log-sized bits of birch. It looks friendly and it smells nice.

I think Francis was considering Debi’s message, which I wrote out and left with Father John to pass on. He’s certainly looking thoughtful; but he stands up to greet me with that smile everyone who comes here knows and loves, welcomes me in and invites me to sit down in one of the chairs, and closes the door so we won’t be interrupted.

Something that makes me very peaceful here in this place — balm to my soul — is the lack of small talk. Don’t get me wrong, they’re kind and courteous, never blunt or rude, in fact I think I could learn quite a bit from them when it comes to that; but they get to the point. There is never that long for us to talk before the next obligation claims their attention. In fact they are even better at gentle and courteous goodbyes than they are at saying hello. There is, in short, no point in hanging about. So, “Did you read what Debi said, then?” I ask.

And Francis nods. “I did,” he says. “I certainly did. I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. Will you tell her, please, how grateful I am that she let me know my own struggles helped strengthen her and gave her hope. That means a lot to me. If her path has been similar to mine, then one thing I know is that she has many times been lonely, and scared. When — even across a separation of centuries like this — someone stretches out their hand to you, looks round to say, “Me too”, it alleviates loneliness. It is encouraging. It lifts you up. Say thank you to her, please, from me.”

I promise him I’ll pass that on.

“Then, that’s such an interesting thing she asks,” he says, looking down at the scrap of paper he holds in his hands, tilting it so it catches the light from the candle in the sconce on the wall: “one part instantaneous and nine parts hard work . . . and, what did Christ's presence instantly change for me, and what has been the work I have done to find peace and wholeness?”

“Honestly? I had to think hard about that. The moment when I had that . . . vision, I suppose; when I found the presence of Jesus in the place of abandonment and despair, and realised he would be with me always, even there — it did, right then, change everything. It healed me and gave me the hope I needed to  . . . er . . . well, just to live, to carry on, to let myself be seen and known. And also to trust, I think.

“So then I had to ask myself, how did I build on it? What work did I have to undertake to find peace and wholeness? That’s what I’ve been asking myself all this afternoon. At first I couldn’t find my way to the truth of it, but then when I was sitting in chapel just before Vespers, I managed to identify it. 

“I think, for me, the healing was complete, not partial. There was born in my soul, right then, this sense of peace, the companionship of Jesus — that he is with me, that he goes ahead of me into any thing I have to face; that he will never leave me, never abandon me, never let me go.

“This isn’t to say that everything since that moment has been straightforward and easy; by no means! But I realised the difference — maybe — between my experience and Debi’s is that she had to work toward wholeness and peace: ‘one part instantaneous,’ she says, ‘and nine parts hard work’!  But it was different for me. In my case, the hard work came as a consequence of the wholeness and peace that the Lord Jesus gave to me as a gift of healing, as a grace. It wasn’t, for me, that I had to work for it, but that from that moment on I knew I must work from it. It became, I suppose, the obedience laid upon me to fulfil — doing whatever might be in my power to live out that wholeness and peace, to let it be seen, and to pass it on. Nothing forced, nothing beyond what is simple, just committing to be real with people, so they would somehow sense that I am with them, that I am for them, in the same way that the Lord Jesus let me see he is with — and for — me. Unconditionally.

“I — er — I hope that makes sense. It’s a matter of remembering, when I feel uncertain or inferior or under attack, that this loving presence of Jesus is something I can entirely trust, he will not abandon me. So I can afford to let myself receive that, and open my heart, my soul maybe, to pass it on, until we have a continuum of love, an infinity loop of companionship and healing. And . . . I hope this doesn’t sound conceited . . . you don’t wait. You just move forward in trust that it will work, that the peace will hold firm, that somehow it will make the change that’s needed in any given situation. I hope that makes sense for Debi. Please thank her for the connection, and for making me think about it — this undeserved enduring gift of peace.”

And this, as it happens, is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi; how pleasingly apt.

What Tony wanted to ask Brother Conradus.

The thing about Brother Conradus is that he’s always busy. It took me a little while to find a time when he was free to chat. But I waited and an afternoon did eventually arise that looked promising. So this is what happened.

The kitchen faces east, and the door leading out to the garden and the well stays open most of the time through the summer months — more or less from late April until the middle of October, where we nearly are. So the morning light comes in, a good time for food preparation; handy because their main meal is at midday. Now, after the bowls and mugs and spoons and all the serving dishes from that main meal have been washed, the serving platters and tureens stacked on their shelves in the kitchen and the rest of the crockery returned to the frater in readiness for supper later on, there’s a moment of relative calm in the kitchen. Brother Benedict has gone for a walk, Brother Cyril is in his cell pursuing his studies, and the couple of men who come in from the village to help out have gone home — pleased to each take with them a bag of apples from the store and a small barley loaf from yesterday. They’ll bring the bags back with them; Conradus always finds he has a bit of this and a bit of that he can spare for hungry mouths at home in their cottages.

The afternoon light is more diffuse and dim, but not enough to need a lantern lit at this time of day. The open door lets the room air, but the main kitchen fire is kept in, for the soup that hangs over it to simmer in its iron pot, and also for the bread to rise in half an hour or so.

Because that’s what Brother Conradus is doing right now — making the bread. I watch him measure out the flour and the oil, the dried herbs and the salt, and fetch the jug with the barm in it for raising the dough. Then as he starts to mix it, I read out to him what Tony wanted to know, which was this:

“Lent is a difficult time for an enthusiastic cook catering for the needs of a monastic community. What is your favourite Lenten meal? How do you reconcile the requirement to feed hungry men and to embrace the spirit of the Lenten fast? What is the first meal you serve at the end of Lent?”

“Oh, Lent!” says Brother Conradus. “Yes! Glory be! It has its challenges. We eat just the one meal a day in Lent — and it’s a very cold time of the year. And damp. Very damp. Everyone wearing his mittens and a drip on the end of his nose. 

“The responsibility of the cook is to find something sufficiently sustaining to help them through the fast without getting dispirited. You know — I take it — that the brothers never eat the flesh of fourfooted beasts? Well, that is, except anyone in the infirmary who is frail enough to need building up, and for them we make exception. So, most of us rely on birds and fish, eggs and cheese, along with plenty of butter and cream, for the strength and substance we need to get through the day. But in Lent all that is gone. It’s down to grain and herbs, nuts, and such fruits as we have still in store or dried.

“So anyone might wonder, do we eat our bread with no butter then? Do we make our porridge with just water? Penitential indeed!

“Now, I take the view that the requirements of the fast are stringent enough — no need to make them harder.” He scoops a scant handful of flour from the wooden tub of it standing open on the table where he’s working, and sprinkles the surface in readiness for kneading his dough. 

“So, yes, we have no milk, no butter, no eggs — but that need not defeat us! There are options, there are possibilities! My mother always used to say there is always hope, and that — it turns out — is entirely true. With patience and a pestle and mortar you can reduce cob nuts to a butter. It takes ages, and of course it isn’t as smooth as butter, but with a little salt in it the result is very pleasing. Tasty. And you can make a kind of milk from rice, or from almonds. Not the same as from the cow, of course, but palatable enough if you understand even Lent doesn’t last for ever. I believe you can make milk from some beans too, but you have to be careful with beans. They can be poisonous if you don’t cook them long enough, and a bit barkish on the tongue, furthermore. Acrid, you know? Rice or almond milk are better, especially with a couple of dried dates in to sweeten them. Honey’s frowned on in Lent, of course — after all, it is a fast! But fruit we can have. Dates do very well. They're expensive, of course; we can't grow dates in Yorkshire! I have to be frugal in my use of them, very sparing.

“But I think the meal the brothers most look forward to in Lent is hot bread. The herbs and a little salt make it flavoursome, it elevates pottage to something you can actually enjoy, and served with cobnut butter it is very sustaining. Sometimes we add a bowl of rice pudding to end the meal, especially if the bread wasn’t hot that day, and the pottage was less hearty. They also appreciate herb dumplings to go with the pottage. Anything hot and filling. But with all that said, for sure it doesn’t take you through like a nice flan with plenty of eggs and butter, or a roast bird basted with plenty of butter. And then of course, in Holy Week, we go down even deeper; just bread, herbs salt and water. The whole week.  As you can well imagine, the bread had better be good!”

I watch him kneading his mound of dough, so deft and practiced, stretching it, turning it, adding a little oil, a little flour; watch it grow pliable and silky under his capable hands.

“And my favourite recipe for the end of Lent, you said? Well, it’s lovely to enjoy something sweet again; I always make them a simnel cake. Oh, it’s delicious! Lots of eggs, a generous dash of wine, fruity and spicy and plenty of almond paste on the top — March bread, as they call it — with rosewater and honey and a handful of cob nuts ground in with the almonds. And then eleven little balls of it on the top, one for each of the apostles after Judas — Lord have mercy on him — had taken himself off. I think our brothers would be bitterly disappointed if Easter Day dawned and I’d not made them a simnel cake. Outside the wall, of course, they often make them on Laetare Sunday, because they’re allowed that break from their fast. But here in the cloister we plod on right through to Easter morning; and then it’s eggs back on the supper table, porridge made with milk, and cream and honey on it as well for a special treat.

“Lent — it’s a special time, a holy time, recalling us to the serious purpose of our lives, a time to sit quietly in the presence of Jesus and open our hearts to him. Lent is a treasure, in the journey of faith. But to my mind it’s all the better for knowing there’ll be a good wedge of simnel cake waiting at the end of it.”

He takes the kneaded dough in a great bowl covered with a dampened cloth, and sets it down to rise on the hearth, near- — but not too near — to the embers of the fire.

Thinkabout for The Campfire Church on Facebook for today, the feast of St Michael and All Angels.

 

The British Isles experienced evangelisation from two sources.

One was St Augustine of Canterbury. He brought a version of Christianity that came to us from Italy, after the conversion of the Roman emperors. This form of Christianity was shaped and structured by Roman concepts of civic life and their judicial system — it arrived in England already filtered through the Roman cultural perspective.

Now, this didn’t sit well with all of England. In fact the division in church practice was eventually addressed by King Oswiu at the Synod of Whitby in 663 and 664 AD. St Peter was the person in the gospels to whom Jesus said, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Until then, Peter had been know by his birth name, Simon (he was renamed by Jesus because of the word Petrus meaning “rock”)   Peter was therefore considered to hold the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and there is a strong association between St Peter and Rome — according to writers of the time, he was martyred there under Emperor Nero.

So in honour of and deference to St Peter, King Oswiu ruled in favour of Roman Christianity, and thus England followed the Roman expression of Christianity after that until the Henry the 8th’s Reformation.

The synod where this decision happened took place at Whitby Abbey — a double monastery for both men and women under the leadership of Abbess Hilda — who nurtured and encouraged Caedmon the poet, who wrote the fragment that remains as one of the very first evidences of English verse. Hilda would not have been pleased at the outcome of the synod vote, because she — like Queen Eanfled (King Oswiu’s wife) — favoured the other expression of Christianity that had come to England from St Columba’s monks based on Iona. They were the original missionaries to the British Isles, and under their influence Northumbria was converted before Augustine arrived.

Now, St Augustine was prior of a monastery in Rome when, in 595AD, Pope Gregory the Great sent him to evangelise King Aethelberht and his Kingdom of Kent. Up until then, the Kentish people followed the religion of Anglo-Saxon paganism.

So there was a two-pronged ingress of the Gospel into England. When Columba was thrown out of his monastery in Ireland, he was commanded to go until he could no longer see Ireland any more. So he travelled by sea up as far as Iona, and from there he could no longer see Ireland, so that’s where he settled. He established his monastery there on Iona, and so came down through Scotland into Northumbria, evangelising first Scotland and then England.

Meanwhile Augustine sailed from Italy to south-east England — he landed at Thanet in Kent — and brought the Gospel by that route.

You would have thought, then, that southern England would have been evangelised by Augustine. But he encountered resistance. The Sussex people have a saying, “We won’t be druv”. In case you don’t understand that, it means we will not be driven. The Sussex people are markedly stubborn. Here, where I live, in East Sussex, in this little pocket, Augustine completely failed. But where he failed, Columba’s monks, as they gradually permeated the country, succeeded.

King Offa of Mercia, who ruled for about forty years in the second half of the 700s, took advantage of instability in southern England to establish himself as an overlord. His daughter Eadburh married Beohrtric of Wessex, and between them they established sovereignty over south-eastern England — Beohrtric and Offa. Towards the close of the 700s, when King Offa gave a parcel of land on England’s south coast at Bexhill, to be dedicated in perpetuity to the praise and glory of God, the treaty was signed according to Columba’s Celtic form of Christianity.

The difference between these two approaches to Christianity (Columba’s and Augustine’s) was massive.

Roman Christianity was highly structured — it was based on the Roman legal system, after all — hierarchical and patriarchal.

Celtic Christianity was more rooted in the natural world, both in inspiration and expression.

Anglo-Saxon paganism harmonised far better with Columba’s approach than Augustine’s. Augustine’s was imposed from without and above and established dominance— and yes, it took hold — but Columba’s monks worked with what they already found in place, and showed the people how it connected with the vision of the Gospel.

In the old religion, the natural world was sacred, alive, ensouled. The wells were holy, seen as the places were life issued from the womb of the earth, as a woman’s waters break when a child is born. Everything was holy — the trees, the streams, the rocks, the birds, the animals. All of it was alive with spiritual power. 

Their religion was expressed in the wheel of the year, the turning of the seasons in farming and in the seasons of the light — England is quite far north, the winters are very dark and cold, but the summer days are long; and we have prolonged dawns and dusks at the beginning and end of each day, the mysterious twilight times when the veil between the world is thin; the veil that separates us from what the old Celts called “the realm of weird”).

What Columba’s monks did was to settle upon each of the existing pagan festivals a Christian equivalent, exploring a Gospel theme that resonated with the seasonal theme of the Old Religion — but at a respectful distance of a few days, to allow space for the observance of both, and it worked.

At the very xenith of the year, at the midsummer solstice in June, when the light is at its greatest ascendant, Columba’s monks set the feast of John the Baptist, the herald of Christ. 

This is brilliant. Christ is the light, the day-star, the sun is analogous to his glory. But that’s not his feast. Standing there at the height of the year, John the herald points down to the dark, deep days of the winter. It is there, at the deepest, darkest, coldest moment, the time of hunger and frost and death, that the infant light is born at the winter solstice; what the Old Religion spoke of as Yul, “the Turn”, the moment when, in darkness and death, light and life are born again. That’s where the monks settled Christmas, the feast of the Incarnation.

But halfway between the feast of St John the Baptist in June, and the feast of the Incarnation at the winter solstice, comes the Autumn Equinox — Alban Elfed, the Harvest Home.

The harvest season begins when the sickle is put in to reap the barley at the beginning of August — Lughnasadh in the Old Religion, where Columba’s monks settle Lammas, which comes from Loaf-Mass, for the barley loaf that fed the people.

But the harvest season concludes at the autumn equinox when the weather changes — and now by this time all must be safely gathered in, so the barns are full because the cold, lean days are coming.

There at the autumn equinox, alongside Alban Elfed, Columba’s monks settled the feast of St Michael and All Angels. The angels are the reapers of God’s harvest, ensuring all is safely gathered in. St Michael stands at this golden time of harvest thanksgiving, pointing down the year to the coming winter; and his message is “Prepare, for the dark days are coming. Be ready.” He’s not talking about the harvest of wheat and barley, he means the harvest of souls. He’s pointing down to the ending of our days in death, the winter of life. The time of the coming of Christ, but this time in judgement. And he’s saying, “Prepare. For yourself and your household, your family: are you ready?”

Today, the 29th September, is the Feast of St Michael and All Angels.

May we heed his word to us — “Prepare, for the dark days are coming. Do the work of body and of soul. Life is uncertain, and it ends. Stand always ready.”

The things Wendy wanted to ask Brother Michael

I had a message from my friend Wendy with a question for Brother Michael in the infirmary — but I want him to see the whole message, not just what she said to ask. So I copy all of it out to show him. It was early evening when I got her message, and I had a few end-of-day things to do still. In any case, I thought just then Brother Michael would be taking care of the old mens’ supper, then clearing up, then Vespers, then going round with the evening medicines and helping his charges get ready for bed. But by seven o’clock I decide he’s probably all done, and might have time to talk to me before Compline.

I gather Father William is still under obedience to spend at least two evenings a week in the calefactory — evidently Abbot John does not consider him to have overcome his antisocial tendencies yet! I meet him walking along the cobbled path toward the abbey buildings just as I'm making my way down to the infirmary. He lifts one hand in a kind of understated wave when he sees me coming his way. When we meet up, I ask him, “I know this might strike you as an odd question, but if someone asked you to describe Brother Michael, what would you say? What does he look like, in your opinion?”

I feel intrigued to hear what he might say. I mean, I know Brother Michael very well, I can tell you what he looks like with no trouble at all. For a start he’s Irish, although that's not an appearance thing, I know, but they have a look, the Irish, don’t they? Something humorous and quirky, a kind of wit, something merry but — equally — something decidedly immoveable and courageous . . . oh, do you know what I mean? Anyway, he’s of medium height, quite stocky but not plump at all. His hair is either light brown or dark blond, with just a hint of auburn. He has blue eyes. Fair-skinned. Level brows. A straight shortish nose. He walks gracefully, and has a purposeful stride when he’s going a distance — say, to fetch something from the abbey. He has a very ready smile. How am I doing? But look, you want to know what William said. Which was: “Calm. Kind. Competent. Perceptive. Understanding. Is that it? I’m so sorry — I absolutely promised Thaddeus a game of chess, and he’ll be disappointed if I keep him waiting any longer than I already have. Is that all you wanted?”

I assure him that yes, it is, and he does one of his almost-a-smile and courteous little bow, and then he's off on his way. I carry on down to the infirmary, interested that William didn’t specify anything physical at all. But he’s quite right — that is what Michael looks like.

Anyway, I expect you’d like to know the rest of Wendy’s question, and here it is:

“Hi Pen, I am absolutely loving these posts! It feels like such a luxury to be able to ask the monks a question! Actually, I have two, and they're both for Brother Michael. The first, which might be impertinent (and he doesn't have to answer if he doesn't want to) is "what did Father Peregrine say and advise when he and Francis confessed their attraction to one another?"  The second is "How does he keep his state of abiding joy when he is beset by night terrors and can't be with the person he loves? Is the joy a blessing which comes naturally to him, or does he have to work at it? And if so, how?" I'd also really like to know what Brother Michael looks like. I can picture in my imagination most of the other monks, but I am absolutely stuck when it comes to him! Maybe Father William could describe him?”

Reaching the infirmary and going inside, I first come across Brother Christopher, folding some sheets they’ve had airing in front of the fire (it's been a soggy day, but infirmary laundry can't always wait on good weather). “Hello!” he says. “Who were you looking for? Brother Michael?” When I tell him that, yes, I was, he folds up the drying racks — wooden, with leather hinges — and invites me to sit down by the fire.

“I’m sorry to ask,” he says: “I'm not meaning to pry; but is this something private or not particularly?”

I tell him that I think this could definitely be rather private, yes; so he says in that case he’ll finish folding the bedding somewhere else. He bundles up the unfolded sheets on top of the folded ones, scoops them all up in his arms and takes them away, saying with a smile. “He won’t keep you waiting. He’s just setting out the night doses for later on. He’ll be here in two shakes of a duck’s tail. It’s nice to see you.” And then he's gone. 

    It surprises me how blasé they all are about me appearing and disappearing. I think those men see more of the invisible world than they let on.

I’ve not been there long when I hear the easy, unhurried tread that tells you Brother Michael is on the way. “Welcome!” he greets me, sitting down on the other chair at the fireside. “It seems like an age since I saw you! What a treat! Is all well? How’s the gut pain? The foot numbness? The dizziness? Are you surviving church? Less lonely? Doing any writing? Managing a walk each day?”     

    So we talk about that for five minutes, and then I hand him the email I’d copied out. I want to be sure he has time to think about it carefully before anything else intervenes to claim his attention. He takes it and gets up to bring the candle to the end of the table near his chair, so he can hold what I've written to the light. I watch his face as he reads it all through, serious and thoughtful — and as William said, calm and kind. Yes, he’s quite right. Yes, that is what Michael looks like.

He lets his hand rest in his lap, still holding the piece of paper. 

“Two things,” he says, “before I answer what she asks. “The first is, please will you tell Wendy that I will be praying for her, and for her mother too. Every day. I will hold her in my prayers. We will walk this way together. And I will ask Father William to say Mass for her. Please let her know. We are with her. Yes, we are. The second thing is this — I have no way to evaluate how an answer might be received, in your times, to what she asks concerning Father Peregrine. This . . . would it hurt anyone’s faith, if we touch upon such things?”

So I tell him — and I hope I’m right — that 2023 is a very different time from 1326; social attitudes have moved on. Thinking about it now though, I do wonder. People have been very good at not necessarily saying things, haven’t they? Since forever. 

Brother Michael listens to that carefully, and nods in acceptance. “Well then,” he says, “let’s get that out of the way first, shall we?

“We went together to see Father Abbot, Francis and I. We told him how we felt and what had passed between us. He listened, and he said that of course there are many kind of loves, and this has always been so. He thanked us for coming to tell him, for trusting him, for being honest with him. He said we must surely know it happens often enough. He said that sometimes it has a poisonous quality — concupiscent, manipulative, predatory. But he said sometimes it is love pure and simple, something that flowers naturally; only, then we have to decide what to do.

“He asked us, each of us separately, first Francis and then me, to tell him what the quality of it was — not the expression of it, but the inner reality, the power of it. He said, please be honest; and we were. Francis said it had the quality of a flower or a sunset, or a butterfly, or a song or a flight of birds across the sky; something that enraptures your whole being such that you never want to let it go, but you know it has to end. It was all a long time ago, to be sure, but I shall never forget him saying that. And me . . . I could only say it was just the dearest thing, precious, a treasure lodged in my heart. For always.

“Father heard us both; and then he asked us — so, what about your vocation? What about your vows? And we explained that’s why we'd come to see him; we needed help to find the courage to let it go. Not to deny it but to release it. We — both of us — we wanted Jesus to be our first love. We wanted the thing we had come for, to live the way of the cross, to live with an open heart. To make ourselves both vulnerable and available, nothing closed off for a particular and primary relationship. He took our word for it. He trusted us to make and keep it so. And we did. We always have. I know, and he knows — Francis — that the song abides, the beautiful flight of birds, the heart’s treasure, the simple love that cannot be erased . . . and should not be, I think.

“But there’s what you feel and what you do, isn’t there? This is the tension of faithfulness, the discipline of love. And we have kept faith. The unexpected beauty of it is that, in keeping faith with the whole community and the vow of celibacy, I realised I had also kept faith with him. There was no discord, as it turned out. It has its fulfilment in the wholeness — the integrity — of daily life, of love.

“Father also said to us that in the practice of consecrated life, there always has to be the discipline of restraint; because, he said, the very nature of temptation is that it deceives us into mistaking a problem for a solution. In grasping for relief, for what temporarily feels good, we mire ourselves in deeper. You cannot be a disciple if you can’t say no.”

He looks at me. “Yes?” he asks me. “Is that . . . ? Do you see? Does that tell you what you need to know? This will not be unsettling for anyone?”

I thank him, and I say that yes, it's just perfect, and that I think if anyone has a problem with that then they're the problem, not him.

“Very well,” he says. “You judge it appropriate to write it down then, in your . . . er . . . thing?”

The electronic world is not a concept they easily grasp, I have found.

“Yes, I do. Oh, thank you, Brother Michael,” I say. “Thank you ever so much. And then — about the abiding joy?”

[Shall I remind you what Wendy asked?

“How does he keep his state of abiding joy when he is beset by night terrors and can't be with the person he loves? Is the joy a blessing which comes naturally to him, or does he have to work at it? And if so, how?”]

He smiles. “There’s quite a bit in that, isn’t there! One by one, then. Night terrors: there comes, in my dreams, this dread — an absolute horror — suffocating, consuming — of being overwhelmed, being insufficient, being engulfed by the need and pain and suffering of others. That there will not be enough of me, that I will not be able to hold steady for them, that they will drag me down with them into the hell that has hold of them, and I will not be strong enough to pull them out onto terra firma, offer them the hope and stability they need. It haunts my dreams — only sometimes, and especially when it’s been a long and tiring day, a difficult day. I start out of sleep panic-stricken and distraught. But when that happens, I whisper the name of beloved Jesus, I reach for his presence; and gradually the spring of joy inside me re-establishes, and I can go back to sleep in peace. 

“As to being with the person I love — well, I am. I think your friend might have noticed that nothing draws us closer together than a common vision and a shared task. Two people can be in a marriage, or work together in a farm or at an inn or something, or they can be part of a circle of acquaintance trying to have a good time. But if they have no shared task and no common vision it comes to feel hollow, it falls apart. The apostle said we must not be unequally yoked, and Jesus commended us to take his yoke upon us. If we do that we are together — the bodily relationship as lovers is a very secondary thing. Love is fulfilled and consummated in shared vision and common task. We have that, Francis and I. We are — both of us — Christ’s. Nothing can ever take that away from us, and it unites us. Yes there is renunciation in it; but deeper, there is joy.

“Then, her question, is it something that comes naturally or do I have to work at it.” He stops, and laughs. “I’m so sorry to be mysterious, but no. Neither. It is in me but not of me. It is there for any of us. The spring of life, of hope, of joy, the fountain that wells up to eternal life, it is the presence of the Spirit of Jesus. It is the consequence of being loved, of being his. It’s not mine, you see — it’s his. It’s just that I find it on the inside; it isn’t located  in any external reality. It’s at the core of my being. And yours. And Wendy’s. It’s there for the finding, for those who belong to him. Abiding joy. Yes.”

“Blimey, Michael,” I say. “You are something else!” 

He looks at me somewhat quizzically, and I realise what I just said was not really fourteenth century idiom, was it? But he doesn't question it; all he says in reply is, You'll not forget, now, will you? You'll remember to tell her — I'll be praying for her, and for her mother. Every day."