The Only Way Forward
Some people can make do with seven hours’ sleep, others with six; I know several people who can manage with five. I need eight, and if I can get nine, I’ll take them. That particular Monday night, I slept for only four hours. If I wanted to rise to something more than the subhuman before Peter arrived again, I simply had to get more sleep. When I did finally emerge, I plucked up enough courage to step outside and bid what was left of the morning a cheery ‘Good day’, only to discover that it, too, had had a rotten night! Disgruntled-looking clouds were scurrying across the sky, peering threateningly down as if to dare you to wander more than a drenchable distance from home. I came inside and allowed myself a medicinal nip of the local wine. It is a much sought-after luxury in more equitable climates; in the Isles it is a necessity, an indispensable bulwark to fortify the spirits against the elements.
Peter arrived promptly at two o’clock.
‘You must be something of an oddity out here,’ I said, as he came in and sat down in his usual easy chair.
‘How do you mean?’ he asked.
‘Your punctuality,’ I answered quickly, before he could explore other unintentional interpretations of my remark. ‘I’ve always found that people out here have hardly any idea of time at all. Last time I went to Eriskay, the ferry arrived three hours late, but nobody seemed concerned.’
‘It’s a sort of phobia with me,’ he said. ‘My father was a fanatic about time.’ The sheepish grin I’d observed on the first day returned. ‘If he said I had to be in by 10.30, that meant that 10.29 and fifty-nine seconds was early, but 10.30 and one second was late, and there’d be trouble!’
Peter smiled to himself as he mused affectionately on the past, while he stared at the floor in front of him, gently tapping a nonexistent object on the carpet with the end of his stick.
‘Now look, Peter,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t made my position clear. You see, I’m not a Roman Catholic. I’m an Episcopalian and my wife was a Presbyterian and frankly I’m rather embarrassed to be staying in a Catholic presbytery. I feel I’m staying here under false pretences.’
‘But that doesn’t matter at all,’ replied Peter without showing the slightest surprise. ‘You’re a fellow Christian, and if anything I say can be of help to you that’s all that matters. There are no different denominations in heaven and there shouldn’t be any on earth either.’ Peter never brought the subject up again nor did he ever say anything that could be construed as trying to convert me to Roman Catholicism.
I’d spent the previous morning thinking up excuses to reduce our future meetings to two. What time had been salvaged from the wreckage of that morning was spent trying to find excuses to extend them to five, by making use of the Saturday morning before the plane departed. I had no intention, therefore, of wasting further time with trivial icebreakers. I was annoyed at the way Peter’s phobia about time had interrupted what was just turning out to be an absorbing conversation the day before, so I decided to carry on from where we left off.
‘Just before you left yesterday, you said, “There is all the difference in the world between knowing that you are loved and experiencing being loved”, or words to that effect,’ I began, eager to get things going again.
‘Well, I meant just what I said,’ he answered, shifting from side to side as if he had nothing further to say; but he added, ‘However, I do think the distinction has important implications for the spiritual life.’
‘In what way?’ I asked.
‘Well …’ he said, hesitating for a few moments. And then he was off. ‘When I was at Strawberry Hill, I stayed with a lecturer and his wife near Twickenham Station. There were six other students and a young psychology lecturer called Mark, all staying in the same house. Mark and I found we had a lot in common and, before I realized it, a deep friendship had grown up between the two of us. He was a brilliant lecturer and I often went with him to the many outside engagements that he accepted. Wherever he went, he would always begin by belittling his own competence, assuring his audience that he felt sure they knew far more about the subject than he did. If the contents and delivery of his material hadn’t blatantly belied his preamble, you couldn’t have blamed his audience if they had got up and walked out before he’d finished. I think it was what I originally took for genuine humility in Mark that initially drew me to him. It was only later that I came to realize that he took a morbid delight in denigrating himself. It was only because we had grown close that I was able to ask him why he always had to apologize for himself, run himself down in front of others. “I suppose I’ve got what we psychologists call a ‘security problem’,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if it wasn’t of any consequence. “I suppose I’m a classic case!”
‘I could tell he wanted to talk, so I just kept quiet. He told me something about his childhood, about his parents, how they’d done their best for him, done everything for him that they thought was right. They loved him; there was no doubt about that. However, because of some Victorian “hang-up”, they were prepared to go to any lengths to avoid spoiling him. They shunned all manifestations of affection. He was never kissed, never caressed, never held close or cuddled; all physical expressions of love were prohibited, even though it went against the grain. Naturally all this came out during his training. As he looked back over his past, he could see quite clearly, without a shadow of doubt, that his parents loved him. He was absolutely convinced of it; but they’d never shown their love; he had never experienced it and that made a difference – a big, big difference to his life. Because he had not received love, he found it difficult to build up friendships, difficult to let others love him, never mind love them. That is why he felt insecure and behaved so immaturely on occasions.
‘He was quite aware of his character problems and knew the reasons for them. But as he explained himself, knowledge alone is not enough. It may give you insight into yourself, but it does not give you the power to change.’
‘What happened to him in the end?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ said Peter, ‘when I went to Paris, he went to the States to do a postgraduate course. It was there that he met his future wife – at Harvard, just as you did. I met him just before coming out here and he told me what falling in love had done for him. He said that for the first time in his life, he didn’t just know, but rather he experienced through her love that he was lovable. He said the experience was like somebody breathing the breath of life into him for the first time. He came alive through her love and was beginning to discover a deep security, an inner strength to throw away the defense mechanisms with which he had surrounded himself over the years, and really start to become himself.
‘Now …’ said Peter, preparing once more to press the analogy home, ‘it’s exactly the same with our relationship with God. Through faith we believe God loves us. We know he loves us; there can be no doubt about that. We can list all the gifts that have been showered on us to prove it, enumerate not only what he has said, but what he has actually done. But this is not enough as long as this sort of knowledge remains on the level of dry abstract truth. No matter how indisputable it is – it may be logically incontestable, even scientifically provable – it won’t deeply affect anyone. Knowledge alone is not enough. Knowledge alone will never change anyone permanently. But the experience of being loved will!’
Peter delivered the last phrase in a hushed, well-modulated tone of voice, and then he paused for a moment’s respite. It was one thing to see a truth with the cold eye of an intellectual, quite another to view the same truth with the eye of the mystic, or the poet. It’s all the difference between looking at a stained glass window from the outside and looking at it from within, all aglow with vivid color, bursting with vibrant vitality and life. Peter was able to view a truth from inside, not just because he had a facility with words, but because he was inside, himself.
Before I went to Harvard to study for my doctorate in law, I spent three years studying theology at Notre Dame; it was here that I relentlessly searched for the truth, for spiritual wisdom. Firstly I had identified wisdom with knowledge and sought it out with all the urgent intensity of an alchemist in search of the ‘philosopher’s stone’. The haphazard plundering of dusty mystical tomes gradually gave way to the feverish desire to lay hands on the latest theological paperbacks. After several years of intensive reading I emerged with a wholly new and exciting vision, only to realize with disappointment that the visionary had remained the same. If knowledge of God could not change me, what about knowledge of man – man with whom Christ had identified himself? Surely this was what the Gospel was all about? This was the meaning of the Incarnation – that God had identified himself in Christ with the neighbor in need. All I had to do was to discover people’s needs, learn how to minister to them with all the professional expertise offered by the new ‘salvific science of sociology’. I became a dedicated exponent of the tenets of the Social Gospel, with all the verve and vigor of the new convert. Only somehow, my practice didn’t measure up to my preaching. My enthusiasm changed with the seasons, only to get snowed up in winter, when my inner reservoirs of philanthropic energy hardened and froze over. There was still a flicker of flame in my head, but no fire in my belly.
Knowledge of God had failed me; knowledge of man had failed me too. Then it suddenly struck me like a flash of lightning; why hadn’t I seen it before? The words of the Delphic Oracle rang out loud and clear in my mind: ‘Know thyself.’ Of course – it was obvious! I’d been blind all along. The real problem was within me; knowledge of myself would set me free. Surely this was the philosopher’s stone for which I had been searching: it was selfknowledge. I went away for a year before going to Harvard, to do a course in pastoral psychology and counseling. You name it, we did it! Group dynamics; sensitivity sessions; personal analysis tutorials; counseling techniques. I know the course did me a lot of good. I got a lot out of it. My faults, my failings, my problems of character, even my personal idiosyncrasies could be explained with detailed analysis of my childhood. At first, the experience was shattering. After the first few weeks I ended up like Humpty Dumpty in pieces on the floor, but bit by bit I was put together again – the better for my experience, I’m sure. At the end of the year, I felt I’d been liberated. The truth had indeed set me free. It was only gradually, as the weeks went by, that I realized once more that knowledge was not enough. The psychological knowledge I’d gained about myself was true – I am quite sure about that – but it didn’t give me the power to change myself. It showed me all the blemishes but it didn’t help me to get rid of them. At the end of it all, I was back to square one.
Peter smiled and nodded when I told him something of my odyssey in search of wisdom, as if my experience were a carbon copy of his own, which it couldn’t possibly have been.
‘When will we ever learn?’ he said. ‘Once upon a time, it was the educationalist who would save us. “Open a school, close a prison” was the slogan. Man’s problems would be solved overnight if we could only thoroughly educate everyone. When we all had free education and the Utopia didn’t arrive, we had to find another scapegoat. This time it was inflation, unemployment, housing conditions. The new religion was economics; the economists and the town planners were the saviors. After the Second World War, it was science that was hailed as the liberator. It was the panacea for all man’s problems, the answer to every human need. Everything was laid at the feet of the new scientific messiahs who had come to deliver man, to offer him salvation with a materialistic face. When people had had enough and began to prefer a human face, it was the turn of the sociologists and the psychologists – new gods, new religions, with their own hierarchies, their own priesthood and their own intolerant and insufferable brand of infallibity.’
Peter paused for a moment, gently moving his head from side to side, his lower lip lapped tightly over the upper as he mused sadly on the tragedy of the human predicament. ‘We’re like stupid clucking hens,’ he continued, still moving his head from side to side, ‘who will go any way but the right way, follow any path but the right one. You would wonder how generation after generation of rational animals could fail to see a truth so obvious, so simple, that even a child knows it by instinct, even before the age of reason dawns. We want to know fulfillment; we want to experience joy, to be lifted out of ourselves into endless ecstasy and to share our completion with others. The only drink that can slake our burning inner thirst is the living water of uncreated love. It is only under the influence of this intoxicating draft that we will be able to see ourselves, not only as the psychiatrist sees us – as we are – but as we are meant to be. It will give us the strength to grow into our true selves from the ruins that we are now. Then we will be able to reach out to the “other” with the genuine hand of brotherhood, to give of ourselves totally in love to the neighbor in need, because we have love to give, not just dreams to share!’
Peter shifted uncomfortably in his chair, slightly selfconscious at the extravagant way he had expressed himself.
‘I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m anti-intellectual,’ he said, smiling, ‘or that I despise contemporary learning. Not at all; I’ve advised many correspondents to go on for higher studies and several to study sociology. Only a month ago, I told someone to consult a psychiatrist because I realized that they were in need of the sort of competent professional help that I was unable to give. All I want to do is to reiterate and underline that no man-made branch of learning will ever answer man’s deepest needs. They may expose them, but they will never fulfill them.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ I said. ‘I’m grateful for all that I’ve learnt, though I must admit I was a bit disappointed when I found that the “truth” doesn’t set you free.’
‘Oh, but it does!’ Peter interjected immediately. ‘But you are forgetting: Truth isn’t just a body of facts; Truth is a Person. In God, Truth and Love are one and the same, both light and life. Truth not only shows you yourself as you are, but also as you ought to be. It not only gives you vision, but also the strength to fashion that vision into reality.’ Peter reached for a handkerchief, blew his nose and continued.
‘To refer back to the story of Mark for a minute …’ he said. ‘His adult analysis of his childhood experience was factual and accurate and in that sense true, but his knowledge didn’t liberate him because it was not The Truth. You see, in God, Truth and Love are one and the same, so his truth reaches out and touches the head and the heart at the same time.
‘Mark’s predicament was in one sense exceptional but, in another sense, it is merely the predicament of all of us in bright colors. We’ve not all got “king-size” chips on our shoulders, we’re not all overburdened with such weighty inferiority complexes, but we’ve all got what he called “security problems” of one sort or another; we all suffer from guilt. In our more clearsighted moments, we know very well that we are prize specimens of feeble human frailty. We fail time and time again to live up to even the cameo-size ideals that we set for ourselves. Day after day we experience the weakening moral incontinence that drains us dry, that leaves us apprehensive and perplexed even when we are trying our best. This is why we feel the need to hide, to clothe ourselves with layer upon layer of falsity, fatuity and fantasy, to disguise the spiritual nudity within.
‘What eventually happened to Mark must happen to us, if we are to be radically changed. After all, this is what the Gospel is teaching us on almost every page. It shows us over and over again the effects of Love unlimited, as it progressively invades a human nature, the human nature of Jesus. It shows how, under its powerful influence, he grows in “wisdom and understanding”, as his humanity ripens and matures under the influence of love.
‘To put it another way, Jesus was absolutely sure that he had parental love. He knew by experience that his Father loved him, because that love was tangibly present to him day after day. This is why he is the most mature human being that ever walked on the face of the earth. No man had ever experienced such depth or intensity of love before, nor been so absolutely sure of its continued and lasting presence. This is why he was in complete possession of himself, totally secure, fully himself.
‘People like to present Jesus as the model for Christian action by showing how he was so uncompromisingly available to all. They often fail to realize that he was only able to be open to all because he was first open to God. It was only because he had exposed himself without restraint to God’s Love that he could be filled with the fullness that he could communicate to others. Without the hidden years, the desert, the lonely garden or the inner room, there could be no compassion for the needy, no love for the loveless, no healing for the sick.
‘To follow him doesn’t mean that we should try and copy him as an artist copies a model. It doesn’t mean that we should merely imitate the outward manifestation of the inner light that burned in him. It means that we must expose ourselves to that self-same light, that it may set us afire too.’
As he was finishing his last sentence, Peter reached into the top pocket of his donkey jacket and pulled out an old watch fastened to a broken strap. He put the watch back into his pocket and looked down at the floor for a moment in silence. I knew there couldn’t be much time left.
There are rare moments in everybody’s life when there is a sudden flash of insight that strikes like lightning, so swiftly that it defies measurement, but leaves a microscopic vision that expands in your mind like the ripples from a stone tossed into a clear pool. As the vision rapidly opens out, it loses its intensity as it spans away from the center and you are suddenly left desperately trying to hold onto the experience by hastily transposing it into words in your mind. This had happened in an instant, as Peter had been checking his watch.
Words are laborious bricks to build with, and hardly before I’d started, the vision faded into no more than a faint mirage in my mind. When I had finished my hasty attempts at verbal reconstruction, the edifice I’d built was no more than a third-rate summary of all Peter had said, but it had been much more.
I’d thought myself enlightened because I’d long ago tossed aside the dead hand of the institution that always tends to emphasize the law that guarantees its own survival rather than the love for which Christ had founded it. I talked of love, but where I was going to conjure it from, I had no idea. I noticed that the trendy exponents of the ‘conventional wisdom’ became rather vague and woolly at this point, assuming as a matter of course that once the child in you had been released, then the mature adult would emerge and fountains of inner energy would flood into your conscious mind, bringing liberation, a profound inner security, and moral equilibrium. Marcus Aurelius would ride again by kind permission of modern psychiatry!
With Peter’s help I had come to realize that there is only one source of energy to revitalize human beings. It is only when the dynamic rays of God’s inexhaustible love begin to permeate the very marrow of our innermost being that we receive the strength to stand upright and grow, to ripen and bud under its influence, and finally to open out, to blossom forth. Without this source of light, we’ve no more chance of growing than a drooping geranium in a dark room.
We can only begin to expose ourselves to the Light if we are fundamentally convinced that we cannot grow without it. This is why the proud, the pompous and the pretentious will never be able to see the direction of the Light, let alone expose themselves to it. Once we see clearly that the spiritual life begins with God, everything else begins to slot into place. It does not begin with us trying to love him, or other people for that matter, but with trying to allow his love to burst into our lives. If we first seek the Kingdom of God then everything else will fall into place. Only when this process gets under way properly will we be radically and fundamentally renewed, will we be able to love him in return, create community, and enter into others in a way and on a level that we’d never envisaged before. All this will be possible not just by the power of our love, but because Another will live in us, and love with and through us.
Now the way ahead seemed crystal clear. At least the central intuition of my vision remained; everything pointed in the same direction. There was now only one road for me to follow, only one way for me to go. All I had to do was to learn anew how to open myself to God, how to welcome his love into my life and how to experience that love throbbing within me. In short, I had to start at square one, to begin again to learn how to pray. Everything Peter had said or implied, everything I’d seen in my fleeting vision, led to this same realization. I had started years ago along the road, but been continuously sidetracked. Thank God, at last I’d been given the grace to cry out with all the urgency and heartfelt sincerity of a prodigal son: ‘Lord, teach me to pray!’
Peter was on his feet. There was a click as he straightened his iron caliper into a vertical position. It had been less than a minute since he looked at his watch but a lot had happened in my mind, far more than I will ever be able to tell.
‘Everything points in the same direction,’ I said with a knowing grin, as if I’d discovered his little game.
‘How do you mean?’ he asked, innocently unaware of what had been going on in my mind.
‘Everything leads back to prayer. There is no other way forward,’ I said, triumphantly pronouncing an old truth with all the enthusiasm of a child who had suddenly discovered for the first time that two and two make four.
‘But of course!’ said Peter, looking at me strangely, as if I were trying to be funny.
But I wasn’t trying to be funny. I’d seen something for the first time that had been staring me in the face for twenty years.