IF YOU DON’T live the life you are born for, it makes you ill. That’s what Helen Parry told us this morning, dispensing wisdom. Helen’s Buddhist friends in Thailand say it is a matter of your dharma, she said. You must live according to your own dharma, even if you could be very successful at living someone else’s. If you don’t live your rightful dharma, then you will cause grave spiritual injury to yourself.

I remembered an artist I knew in my twenties. He said an unfinished painting was a form of malignance. He said an artist must complete their work, good or bad, lest it make them sick.

After Helen Parry made her condescending remark at the breakfast table, she didn’t appear to hear Bonaventure respond very quietly, ‘I was born for this life,’ and I understood that this is not just a fight with Helen, but with Sister Jenny.

What I could not tolerate was the ‘falling in love with Jesus’ talk that I knew would come next, and it did. I find it nauseating; surely this life should be composed of something more sober than that. Something austere, and momentous, and powerful. Close attention, hard thinking. A wrestling, to subdue … what? Ego. The self. Hatred. Pride. But no, instead we have Sissy, and also Carmel, simpering that they are here because I fell in love with Jesus and want to live with him in heaven. As if they’re talking about some teen idol crush. I have learned not to roll my eyes but there are times it is nearly impossible. Right at that moment, forcing myself to stay at the table, I was surprised to find myself meeting Helen Parry’s glance, and more surprised still that both she and I held each other’s gaze. Then she gave a tiny movement of her head in microscopic mimicry of Sissy’s and Carmel’s simpering, and I had to turn away not to laugh, in the process most completely failing to subdue my ego, the self, pride.

Sissy is no fool, though. She saw, and she faced Helen Parry at the table and asked her in a sweet, dangerous voice: ‘Why did you come here, do you think, Helen?’

Her question was a shocking one, I think to all of us. Helen left a pause before replying, smiling, ‘To bring Sister Jenny home, obviously.’

She looked around the table, and then she and Sissy met each other in the moment of silence that followed, and Helen considered the question inside this silence before, finally, she showed herself to us. ‘And to see my mother,’ she said, ‘before she dies.’