From East Bergholt to East Didsbury
Father Callum’s housekeeper had made a packed lunch so I took it with me to eat outside. I settled down on a flat rock, about halfway between the cottage and the shore, and began to reflect over the three typescripts I had just read but, as so often happens, I was sidetracked by my own uncontrollable imagination. I began to daydream. In no time at all I was lost in a Walter Mitty world of my own making. I was imagining myself as a spiritual Columbus of the twentieth century, discovering a new world of almost limitless spiritual riches and making them available to everyone. Maybe I could publish all of Peter’s writings and shine with his reflected glory.
A simply gorgeous, bouncy little rabbit suddenly attracted my attention, and saved me from slipping any further into the childish fantasy world that was threatening to engulf me. He was skipping and scampering around his mother on the foreshore in front of me. The cheeky little imp would suddenly dash up to Mum and snuggle in close for a free feed, before rushing away again to gambol playfully in the grass that skirted the sandy bay. I couldn’t help smiling at the earnest way he began to burrow into a patch of sand with all four paws. When he paused for a moment’s respite, the whole area around his little snout was covered with sand. He glanced back at his mother, looking for all the world like a naughty three-year-old who had been caught in the act of raiding the chocolate biscuits, but his mother’s attention was engaged elsewhere. Her soft motherly bearing had suddenly stiffened; she was tense and nervous. I thought that she had become aware of my movements, as I was eating my lunch no more than thirty yards away, but no. Then I began to sense something. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. It wasn’t so much the sense of fear that seemed to grip the rabbit; it was more a sense of impending presence that took hold of me. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anything or anyone to explain the atmosphere that seemed to overshadow us. At last the little rabbit got the message from Mum; the mischievous sparkle faded from his eyes and in an instant both had vanished into the safety of their underground home.
Once more I looked round. The sheep continued to graze as before, but there was a difference. Though their heads were bowed low, and though they continued eating, they no longer relished what they ate; their minds were elsewhere. It was their eyes that were the giveaway; they glanced nervously upwards, though their mouths continued to chew as before.
I turned round, following their gaze into the sky, and there to my amazement and delight I saw a huge golden eagle, no more than a hundred yards away and as many feet from the ground. Its head and shoulders were set hard into the strong prevailing wind that blew in over the headland. Its vast, shaggy wings spread imperiously out to leave you in no doubt that here in person was the Lord of the Isles. He remained almost motionless, staring impassively out to sea. Although he gave no sign, he was well aware of the effect his presence was having on the humbler inhabitants of the island. All the other birds seemed to have vanished; they had cautiously retreated to every nook and cranny, from where they could safely regard their powerful overlord with fearful reverence and awe. I had never seen such a superb specimen before, though in past years I had trekked for miles over barren mountains and boggy moorlands in the hope of a distant glimpse of this magnificent bird.
There was a hush, a sense of quiet that enveloped the whole island. The very blades of grass seemed to waver against their will, and even the little cottage appeared to lower itself upon its haunches, not daring to move or flex the merest muscle that might attract the attention of the mighty bird of prey. Then all eyes stared incredulously. Even the breeze held its breath as a tattered old crow, the island idiot, fluttered and flapped its way upwards and above the great bird. In a grotesque attempt at a dive, the clumsy creature had the audacity to try and mob the eagle singlehanded. Just one stroke of those terrible talons would have been enough to send the simpleton to the ground senseless, but the great Lord of the Isles wasn’t going to demean himself by doing to death a mindless minion before a motley group of peasants. The slightest movement of his great wings was enough to send the imbecile sprawling downwards in humiliating disarray.
Twice more the pathetic creature attempted to repeat his dangerous ploy, with the same embarrassing result each time; but enough was enough. Without warning the mighty eagle began to rise higher and higher over the headland with hardly perceptible motion to more than a thousand feet, far beyond the idiot’s reach. Then, before I could get back to the cottage for my binoculars, he had disappeared over Eriskay, heading towards the rugged easterly coastland of Uist. I was thrilled. I had never imagined, even in my wildest flights of imagination, that I would ever see my favorite bird of prey at such close quarters, nor have the good fortune to witness the scene that had just been enacted before me. I stood gazing to the north for a long time after the speck had disappeared from my view. Then I turned to make my way back to the cottage. I had had a busy few days and I felt tired. After a rather long siesta, I made myself an evening meal and then settled down to read Peter’s next typescript. It was entitled:
FROM EAST BERGHOLT TO EAST DIDSBURY
I only saw my brother for a few brief moments before Christmas because, together with the other students, he was engaged in a whirlwind of activity, preparing for the great feast that had, as I was later to learn, a special place in Franciscan spirituality. There were practices, not just for the plainchant and polyphony, but also for the play and the pantomime, all of which I was destined to savor with various degrees of seriousness as the Christmas celebrations got under way. I had come across the phrase ‘Franciscan charity’ in a purely secular literature, but I had never experienced it myself until that Christmas – everyone immediately accepted me as one of the family. I felt as if I’d known all the friars for years and they accepted me as a brother without any of the phony affectation that so often characterizes religious communities, where people can be so busy trying to ‘put on Christ’ that they usually put you off him for years.
The Christmas celebrations were so hectic, but so enjoyable, that it was a week before Tony and I could sit down for a serious talk, yet without that week in which I’d experienced for myself the brotherhood which he was to talk about with such enthusiasm, I don’t think I would have been able to appreciate precisely what had attracted him to join the Franciscans. Tony had all the looks in our family and the brains too. There was a film-star quality about his appearance that turned heads wherever he went, and hearts too for that matter, but I never felt jealous or envious. I was far too busy being proud that he was my brother.
‘What on earth brought you here?’ I asked him as we sat down in his room, which commanded a beautiful panoramic view of the Suffolk countryside.
‘Nothing on earth,’ Tony answered, grinning. ‘I suppose you thought I would have been married with a couple of kids by this time. Well, I suppose I would have been but for the pull that kept drawing me away from the marriage that everybody had been expecting. The strange thing was that it wasn’t that I didn’t love Beryl; it was just that something, or perhaps I should say Someone else, seemed to be drawing me elsewhere, and this Someone else kept getting between us. Eventually I had to break off the engagement, pack up my studies at the university and go to Ushaw College, Durham, to study for the priesthood. However, even that wasn’t enough, because the pull that made me want to give myself to God in a more radical way was still there, but I didn’t know what to do or how to go about it until I read Chesterton’s Life of St Francis of Assisi. However, my spiritual director said, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating. What you find in a book is not necessarily the same as you will find in the friary, so next holidays go to a friary and see for yourself.” I came to East Bergholt and wasn’t disappointed.’
‘If I hadn’t experienced the friendly fraternity and the brotherly love for myself during the past week,’ I said, ‘I don’t think I would have fully understood all that you’ve been trying to say. But I have, and so I do; but it all seems a bit too good to be true. What was your novitiate like? Was the approach totally different from my experience?’
‘No, I’m afraid I can’t say it was, but we didn’t take it too seriously. I’m afraid it was based on the old-fashioned stoicism that you had to endure. It had nothing much to do with the Gospels, or Franciscan spirituality for that matter, although paradoxically stories from the Franciscan sources were told ad nauseam to illustrate a Christian humanism that had little to do with St Francis.’
‘What makes you so hopeful about the future?’ I asked.
‘Well, the new biblical theology that is even now spreading like wildfire all over the Continent is just beginning to reach us. It’s a back-to-the-Gospel spirituality that is evidently here to stay. What could be better news for Franciscans? I believe we are once again on the threshold of a “new Franciscan spring”, and so does everyone else here. That’s one more reason why there’s such a tremendous spirit among the students.’
‘Well, Tony,’ I said, ‘I don’t mind telling you, you’ve inspired me with all that you’ve said. In fact I already think I’ve found here what I’ve been looking for, at least in part, though somehow I don’t feel I want to join you. For some time now, I’ve become more and more convinced that I want to pursue my spiritual journey alone as a layman, but I can’t see any reason why I can’t become a lay Franciscan – if there is such a thing.’
‘Of course there is. Don’t forget, Francis never became a priest and he founded a Third Order especially for people like you. Go and have a chat with Rufo about it. He’s the expert on the Third Order.’
‘Who?’
‘Father Rufino. He lectures in dogma and he’s a very good man. Go and have a chat with him. I’ll arrange it for you if you like.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Quite apart from anything else, I could do with going to confession.’
* * *
I was sitting on a bench in the garden, thinking over all Tony had said, while I waited for the time Tony had arranged for me to go and see Father Rufino. I had never seen Tony, or Samuel as he was now called, so enthusiastic about anything before. What a pity that so many of Tony’s dreams faded, as the support and brotherly love that he experienced during his student days at East Bergholt waned with the years, and finally seemed to let him down in South Africa where he worked as a missionary. Somehow his dream of extending the great vision of Francis to a country stricken with the insidious disease of apartheid wasn’t shared by all his fellow missioners, or at least the practice was pitted with too many compromises for him to accept.
As he felt the support of his fellows failing, at least in what he thought mattered most, he sought it elsewhere and found it in a new form of life that changed the whole direction of his spiritual journey. But that’s another story that he has told in his own book, Love with No Regrets.
I was so lost in my own thoughts that I hadn’t noticed a young and extremely attractive nun who’d apparently been walking around the garden for some time, until she suddenly perched herself rather uneasily at the far side of the bench that I was sitting on.
‘You must be Sammy’s brother,’ she said, rather coyly.
‘Yes, I’ve come to spend Christmas with him.’
‘We call him Gregory Peck,’ she said. ‘He’s the heart-throb of the convent, and beyond. When it’s his turn to serve on the altar, all the girls from the village flock to swoon over his every move. You’re not bad-looking yourself. Are there any more handsome young men in your family?’
‘I have a younger brother, David,’ I replied, ‘but he’s still at school.’
‘And you’re studying in gay Paree, I hear,’ she said, shuffling a little closer to me on the bench. ‘I know what young men get up to in Paree, so there’s no need to be shy with me.’
I felt more and more uncomfortable, as she moved far too close for comfort.
‘Did you see the poster in Liverpool Street Station on your way down?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Pity,’ she said. ‘You’d have laughed if you did, because some naughty little boy had written something rude underneath it.’
‘Oh, really.’
‘Shall I tell you what it was?’
‘You can if you like,’ I said, though I was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable. No nun had ever spoken like this before.
‘Well, it said “Harwich for the Continent”, and underneath was written: “and Paris for the incontinent!”’
I blushed slightly, but managed a pathetic little laugh to hide my confusion rather than to share the joke. And then, would you believe it, she looked me straight in the face and said, ‘Are you continent, Peter?’
I turned scarlet and simply didn’t know what to do or what to say, and then things went too far. She put her arm around me and said, ‘If I come to Paree, Peter, will you show me the night life? Take me to the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère?’
As she made as if to kiss me, I sprang to my feet and burst out in a loud voice, ‘I’m going to confession!’
As I turned round to go into the house, I was horrified to see that almost every window in the friary was open, and all three floors seemed to be full of faces looking down upon me and the squalid little scene that had just been played out in the garden. It was like one of those terrible nightmares where you are caught up in a compromising and embarrassing situation, and you are just beginning to thank your lucky stars that no one will ever know about it when a curtain sweeps back, lights are turned up, and a spotlight beams in to highlight your humiliating circumstances. I took one look at the audience and then glanced back to see the seductive little sister laughing convulsively in a deep baritone voice, which instantly betrayed the practical joke that had made me the laughing stock of the community.
* * *
Father Rufino was a fascinating character – small, round and dumpy, with a God-given tonsure that looked as if it had been painted on him by some irreverent cartoonist. If the Order had only had the foresight to patent him before the salt-and-pepperpot designers had copied him, they’d have made a fortune. But despite his rather comic appearance he wasn’t particularly amused by the antics of the students. It wasn’t that he lacked a sense of humor – far from it – but he thought that they ought to behave with a little more sensitivity to the feelings of visitors, and save their practical jokes for themselves. His concern for my feelings and his obvious sense of compassion touched me, and Tony’s obvious reverence for him made me determined to explain myself to him as fully as possible and to ask him to guide me forward in the direction that I myself could not see clearly.
‘I’m afraid that’s one thing I can’t do,’ said Father Rufino. ‘People always want me to tell them where to go and how to get there, and the truth of the matter is, I simply don’t know. I had a letter this morning that is typical, from a congregation of sisters who want me to come and talk at their chapter, to tell them what they must do and in what direction they should be going. My reply is always the same: “I don’t know, but I know someone who does.”
‘I believe that we are at a critical point in the Church’s history, and it’s the time not so much for doing but for being; for being totally and radically open to the Truth, or we will never know where we should be going, never mind how we should be getting there. My reply to you, then, is exactly the same as I will give to them. Try to restructure your daily lifestyle in such a way that you have time each day to allow the Truth-giving Spirit in – then, as Jesus promised at the Last Supper, he will make all things known to you. The experience you had in Notre Dame was undoubtedly authentic. It was the genuine touch of God. I have no doubt about it. St Francis had a similar experience that was the moment of truth in his life. He had been dilly-dallying for far too long when, late one evening when he was singing his way home with his drinking pals, he suddenly experienced the touch of God as you did, and it gave him the strength to do what he’d been putting off for many months.
‘He spent almost three years in solitude, living the life of a hermit, so that the Spirit of Truth could gradually enter more fully into him, to show him what he must do and give him the power to do it.
‘There’s no such thing as instant sanctity, as Francis had to find out for himself the hard way. I believe in everything from instant coffee to instant resurrection, but instant sanctity – I’m afraid there is no such thing, and never let anyone tell you otherwise! I’m prepared to believe in instant conversion, instant emotion, instant tongues, instant healing, and instant miracles if there is evidence, oh yes! But instant sanctity – oh no! Never be deceived, Peter.
‘Sanctity is a gradual process that is God’s work. It is only brought to completion in years if a person believes firmly enough to persevere in prayer beyond the first emotional beginnings into the prayer of naked faith, when they have to journey on, practicing the repentance that teaches them how to turn repeatedly and open themselves to God, even though they might feel as if they are talking to a brick wall.
‘To persevere in that sort of prayer is the certain way to sanctity, as you must learn for yourself – then you are open to the action of God as never before. When he gets inside you, it is with a love that will empty you of all other loves that prevent you from making the total surrender to him which will enable you to become his perfect instrument. This is what Francis had to learn, but it’s a hard lesson because it means experiencing a radical inner purification through which the power of the “Old Man” is prayed out of you by the only true exorcist, the Holy Spirit.
‘Yes, prayer beyond first beginnings is a real exorcism. That’s why it is so painful, and that’s why so many people who start so well end up by running away from it, and that’s why there are so few saints. Francis didn’t run away, but the experience was so grueling that at the end of several months of this purifying prayer people hardly recognized him for the bright and breezy young man who went into solitude in the first place.
‘I’m telling you this, Peter, because you, too, have been touched by God; you, too, have been called to journey into the desert of prayer where the oases are few and far between, and I want to encourage you by fortifying you with the truth, so as to help you to persevere when all seems purposeless. It was in his solitary prayer that Francis was gradually purified and prepared to see what God wanted him to do, though he did not see it for several years. Then, when the first stage of his spiritual journey was over, he was open and sensitive to hear the voice of God that his old soiled self could not hear before.
‘You must do what Francis did, Peter. Follow the call that you have already received. Neither I nor anyone else can tell you more than that, except how to persevere, because it will be in and through your patient perseverance that the Spirit of God will touch you further in his good time to enable you to see what you must do, and at the same time give you the power to do it.’
After speaking to Father Rufino I was now quite clear in my own mind that I wanted St Francis to be the person whose example would inspire me to follow in the footprints of Jesus. I prayed every day that God would show me how I, as a layman, could follow that way. Only four days before I was due to return to Paris, that prayer was answered, although I didn’t fully realize it at the time. It all began with a letter from Madame de Gaye, the lady with whom my brother David had been staying in Paris. David had apparently told her of my rather dismal lodgings at Place Pigalle, made even more dismal by the departure of my friend Boris. She was quite adamant that I should stay with her at Rue de Magdebourg for the remainder of my final year at the Sorbonne. The letter was providential and my immediate acceptance turned out to be one of the major turning points in my life.
* * *
You can have too much of a good thing and I think I’d had too much religion for one day, so I lay on my bed unable to sleep as my mind went on and on, turning over and over. I picked up a book on the Highland Clearances to help settle my mind so that I could sleep a little more easily. It not only sent me to sleep but also into the most terrible nightmare that I have ever experienced; a nightmare that woke me up in the early hours of the following morning to experience something even worse.