The mountain and the sea

On the morning my husband Bernard died, as I vigiled with him I also kept an eye on my inner viewer, where I could see a small sailboat slowly making its way out of a harbour to cross the bar and reach the open sea. Behind the boat I could see the dark headland of the sheltering hills, and I knew once he passed the end of the headland he'd be free. And so it turned out, and after his last breath I didn't see the white sail and the little boat any more.

But, it's not just in dying we put out to sea. I've also watched my mother (though I suppose that is also dying, just waaaaay more protracted) slowly putting out to sea in the last years; retreating into vagueness, declining responsibility for her actions, letting memory go. She doesn't do it on purpose, though to those of us still standing on the shore it can look like that. She's just drifting out to sea, leaving behind the commitments and engagements and responsibilities that make entanglement with this life what it is.

Then, as well as the open sea there's the high mountain. I wonder if you know Edward Burger's documentary about Zen hermits in China, Amongst White Clouds? Absorbing, fascinating, beautiful.

It gives expression to something I have never incarnationally experienced, but which is very real inside my spirit — how far up the mountain one lives.

In my early twenties I read Catherine de Hueck Doherty's book Poustinia, which made a deep impression on me. Her book Welcome Pilgrim I have never read, but it looks very interesting and I think I will. The poustiniki, about whom she wrote in Poustinia, were (are?) Russian hermits who lived alone up the mountain in small huts, in austere simplicity. They devoted their lives to prayer and studying the scriptures, but — and this is key — they also came down and helped in the village. They didn't just stay up the mountain doing their own thing, they offered useful practical help to people who needed it. But, on the other hand, they didn't become embroiled and enmeshed in the push and tug of life in the village. They had what a minister I once knew used to refer to as a hit-and-run ministry; they came, helped and left. Heheh — like Lynne Truss's book about grammar and punctuation, Eats Shoots And Leaves. Like anchorites, with one window into the sanctuary and one onto the marketplace; but higher up the mountain than that.

I've been intrigued by the identification, of other women in my age group, with my imperative, urgent, irresistible need for quiet, solitude and withdrawal. Several of you have written to me and told me of this. 

Earlier decades of my life were characterised by heavy involvement with people's lives — in hospice, in prison, in the church, and just socially. We never locked the door of our home because people were always finding their way to it, coming to find us, asking for refuge and help, somewhere to stay, someone to listen.

Over time — and, interestingly, not of my own doing or my own intention exactly — all this changed. Decisions have consequences and consequences have long tails. Choosing loyalty to marriage and family over career had profound and complicated consequences for me. Choosing to take seriously some insults and criticisms levelled at me, and receive them with humility, also had consequences — lasting years in the case of both those choices. Choosing to set up house with artists has had huge consequences; the portcullis was drawn up overnight! 

And in those movements of life, as I passed through them, travelling slowly on foot through the years, I did not really perceive the direction of travel. I just walked along the track life offered me, following the twists and turns as I came to them. But they took me higher up the mountain, and that came to be the place where I felt safe and peaceful and wanted to be.

Eventually, it came about that when anything especially vicious kicked off, my instinct started to be not to engage and talk it through and sort it out, as once I would have done, but to get out, to withdraw, to go higher up the mountain.

I find myself at a place where my soul flatly refuses the grief and struggle of engagement. There's a hymn (do you know it?) Sweetly the holy hymn, that includes the verse:

Upon the battlefield
Before the fight begins
We seek, O Lord, thy sheltering shield
To guard us from our sins 

I am conscious that, even somehow without my permission, my feet have walked off the battlefield and set off up the mountain. My boat has cut loose from the harbour and is drifting out to sea. I no longer have any fight in me. I no longer have the wisdom to pick sides advisedly. I hate the wounding and the casualties and the ruined lives, of ordinary everyday human warfare, in homes and in the church. I can't mend it, patch or heal it, but neither do I want to give my tacit consent to all the in-fighting and lacerations by staying there, silently watching while people get hurt. The only thing my inner wisdom tells me to do is walk away, go higher up the mountain. 

But I still want to help. I still want to be part of putting gentleness and kindness and healing balm into the world. The only thing I know to do is live more and more simply, and just be here for anyone who wants to find their way to me, and write books about simplicity and kindness. These are the only things I do that prove useful. If I get muddled up in the fray, nothing good comes of it. I think I am entering the "Sssssh" part of my life.

I think, from what you tell me, you feel the same. 

But — and this is important — because a lot of people read this blog without making themselves known in the comments, to you I want to say this: if the church has hurt you, if life has hurt you, if your family and the people who should have loved you have hurt and betrayed you, not listened to you, stopped your voice and ruined your work, I am so very sorry. Because I am part of the human race, I say to you on behalf of all of them lost in blundering human frailty, I love you, I am sorry, please forgive me, and thank you. 

Thank you for your song, your face, your unique and particular soul. Thank you for the hope in you that never dies and the tender, human reality with which you were born. Thank for being dear, loveable you. Just as you are, the mystery at the heart of life, the I Am That I Am, loves you, cares about you, sees you, hears you and is with you. Take comfort, brave soul. You are not alone. xxx

(I have linked the above picture so it is properly credited to its source. I love the picture but am not especially recommending the course or products on the other end of the link. It's just that the picture says exactly what I mean. The course, products etc might be excellent — I just don't know)