Absolute Truths (91 page)

Jon raised an eyebrow but withdrew without a word to the kitchen to retrieve the bottle. When our glasses had been refilled Aysgarth
said to me: ‘You mentioned at the beginning — before you spewed
out all that rubbish at the end — that you still believe God wanted
you in Starbridge but the problem was that you hadn’t been able
to realise your full potential. Well, I don’t believe God ever wanted
me to come to Starbridge. I should have stayed in London and developed my gift for fund-raising by working for some large
Christian organisation.’

‘
That’s something only you can know. But speaking for myself,
as I recall the last eight years of my bishopric —’

‘Forget the past eight years, Charles. That was just the rehearsal. This is where your bishopric really begins.’

I stared at him. ‘How do you manage to come to such an
irrational conclusion?’

Aysgarth enquired of Jon with deceptive mildness: ‘Is there
anything to beat the sheer intellectual arrogance of a professor
from the ivory towers?’

‘
I’m sorry,’ I said hastily, ‘I withdraw the word "irrational".’

‘No need — simply apply it to yourself ! You’ve delivered yourself
of this dramatic and detestably gloomy argument for your resig
nation but it’s all based on a false premise.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘Try a little humility, Charles,’ said Jon. ‘Say to Neville civilly,
amiably: "Please can you tell me what the false premise is? I’m
afraid I don’t follow your line of argument."‘

I took a deep breath. ‘Please can you —’

‘
It’s the premise that you’re weak — so weak that without Lyle
you’re unfit for life in the real world and can only survive by
locking yourself up in Cambridge with a lot of books on the Early
Church. Can’t you really see that by some process which I can’t
begin to imagine you’ve now been granted the enlightenment
which will make you strong — strong enough to fulfil that potential
of yours and be exactly the bishop you’re supposed to be?’ Turning
to Jon he demanded mystified: ‘Obviously Charles has been
granted the strength and the guts to see all his faults in the light of truth, but why does he have to botch up this useful revelation
by screaming that he’s too weak to do anything but commit pro
fessional suicide?’

‘I didn’t scream. I simply said —’

‘
When I first met Charles in 1937,’ said Jon to Aysgarth, ‘he
had a very poor opinion of his own worth. He did become more
realistic about himself, but every so often, when he’s under acute
stress, this poor opinion surfaces and clouds his judgement.’

‘Are you trying to tell me he has an inferiority complex?
Charles?
The man who’s always the last word in public-school self-
confidence?’

‘It all goes back to my relationship with my father,’ I said. ‘He —’

‘
Say no more!’ said Aysgarth. ‘I know all about parents — and
uncles — who mean well but cause havoc. Now Charles, be sensible
for a moment. The loss of a spouse can be the most traumatic
event. Of course you’re going to knock back the whisky for a while until you claw your way back on to an even keel! And as for that woman you mentioned — well, no matter how far you went (if
indeed you went any distance whatsoever) you should be reminded
that it takes two to tango, and if the lady took advantage of you
when you were in a desperate state, I don’t think you should
flagellate yourself too hard about what happened (if indeed any
thing
verboten
happened at all). Don’t be so hard on yourself !
Your whole life’s been smashed up — do you really think you can
sail breezily along with only a slight wobble or two to hint that
you’ve suffered rather more than a minor inconvenience?’

‘In other words,’ said Jon, ‘he’s forgivable.’

‘
Of course he is! Charles, try to get it into your head that you’re
only human. You’re not a cardboard hero out of
Boy’s Own
and
you’re not a marble statue on top of a plinth marked BISHOP.
You’re a bereaved man and you should be allowed to behave like
one. Being overwhelmed by bereavement doesn’t mean you’re
weak and unworthy, just as failing to be a perfect bishop doesn’t
mean you’re an episcopal write-off. You’re not required to be a
superhuman ecclesiastical robot! All God requires is that you
should be you!’

‘Well spoken, Neville!’ exclaimed Jon.

‘
To say to yourself: "I’m weak and worthless,"‘ pursued Ays
garth, ‘is the false modesty of Uriah Heep. To speak the truth — and achieve true humility — you should say to yourself instead:
"Yes, I’ve been through hell and I’ve made some humiliating mis
takes, but at least I’ve got the brains and the guts to pull myself up
by my bootstraps now and serve God much better than before."‘

Instantly I suffered a Pavlovian reaction to this theologically
careless statement, that salvation could be achieved by a mere act
of will. Like an automaton I declared: ‘That’s the Pelagian heresy.’

My companions looked at each other. Aysgarth said to Jon:
‘He’s getting better!’ and Jon said to Aysgarth: ‘I detect signs of recovery!’ They both spoke at almost the same moment.

Clinging to my theology as a child clings to a blanket which
symbolises security, I began: ‘St Augustine —’ but was interrupted.

‘Your difficulty at the moment,’ said Aysgarth kindly, ‘is that as
you’re hanging on the cross all you can see is the dark. But don’t
forget that we look back on Good Friday in the light of Easter
Day.’

‘
The light and the dark intermingle to form the pattern of
redemption and salvation,’ said Jon. ‘The dark doesn’t become less
terrible but that pattern which the light makes upon it contains
the meaning which will redeem the suffering.’

But Aysgarth was still pursuing his own line of thought. ‘During
one of my own Good Fridays,’ he said, ‘Jon told me that when a man gets to the spiritual crossroads, he can either turn aside and
go in a completely different direction, or he can go on but in a
completely different way. You could go back to Cambridge,
Charles, but where would the meaning lie in that decision? You’d
have a comfortable life, no doubt, but how well could you live
with the knowledge that you’d never given yourself the chance to
repair the flaws in your bishopric and put everything right? It
seems clear to me that although we both now stand at the cross
roads, we’re being called to take different paths: I’m to turn aside and do something new; you’re to go on but in a revitalised, resur
rected way.’

We were silent in that quiet room. Only the ticking clock
reminded us that we were embedded in the temporal world as we struggled to interact with our creator in eternity, and only the cross above Jon’s bed reassured us that such interaction was possible. No
darkness was so impenetrable that it could not be pierced by light
and transformed. I thought of Harriet’s hands touching the ugly
mass of clay which she would transform into a statement of beauty and truth. The clay would still be clay but she would have created
the pattern which gave it meaning, and in that pattern every one
of her costly creative steps would be redeemed.

At last Aysgarth, my companion, my fellow-traveller, my mirror-
image whom I had failed to recognise for so long — Aysgarth said
to me as one old friend to another: ‘What are you thinking?’

And still grieving for Lyle, still confused about the future, still
spiritually bruised, emotionally drained and physically exhausted
after my difficult birth into a new life, I was nonetheless able to
say: "‘All things work together for good to them that love God."‘

Aysgarth exclaimed: ‘The old magician here must have reminded
you of that quotation just now! I was reminded of it too when he
talked of the
intermingling
of the dark and the light.’

‘
Am I allowed to be human for once?’ said Jon crossly. ‘Am I allowed to thwart your repeated attempts to turn me into a shady psychic? Am I allowed a moment of anger? Am I allowed to say
how very much I dislike being referred to as an "old magician"
and an ‘old pirate"?’

‘I’ll always think of you as an ecclesiastical buccaneer with an
overdeveloped taste for magic,’ said Aysgarth fondly. ‘When I
remember how you bounded around back in the ‘forties during
that appalling ministry of healing —’

Hastily I interrupted: ‘Why did you put your heavy emphasis on "intermingling", and how does it link up with that sentence I
quoted from "Romans"?’

‘The correct translation of that passage is actually: "All things
intermingle for good to them that love God." I know you think
I’m a rotten theologian, Charles, but at least my New Testament
Greek is sound.’

I flexed my memory to recall the verb under discussion. ‘But
what’s the point of the alternative translation?’

‘It gives you a better impression of synergy — the process where
two different things are put together and make something quite
new. If you just say: "All things work together for good" — as if
the good and the bad are all stirred together like the ingredients
of a cake which later emerges from the oven smelling wonderful
— then the man who’s dying of cancer will want to punch you on
the jaw because he knows damned well you’re understating his
pain and playing fast and loose with the reality of his suffering by
implying that his disease is in the end a good thing. But if you
say: "All things intermingle for good", you’re implying that the
good and the bad remain quite distinct. There’s no question of
well-mixed cake ingredients which emerge from the oven smelling
wonderful. The bad really is terrible and the good may seem
powerless against that terrible reality, but when the good and the
bad intermingle — not merge but intermingle —’

‘
They form a pattern,’ said Jon, ‘as I pointed out a moment ago.
The darkness doesn’t become less dark, but that pattern which the
light makes upon it contains the meaning which makes the dark
ness endurable. Do you remember telling me, Charles, that when
you were a POW you found that human beings could endure
almost anything so long as they believed their suffering had mean
ing? What they couldn’t endure was the possibility that there was
no meaning which would allow the suffering to be redeemed.’

‘
Talking of redemption,’ I said, struggling to my feet, ‘it’s time
I took an active part in the redemptive process again instead of
sitting around on my bottom and feeling demoralised. I’m going
to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and —’

‘
Do I hear the Pelagian heresy?’ interrupted Aysgarth at once,
greatly entertained.

‘Heavens above, I must be going senile! What I meant, of course, was that by the grace of God —’

‘
I think you can rely on us to know what you meant!’ interrupted Jon, amused, as he and Aysgarth also rose to their feet. But ending
the meeting on a more sober note he added: ‘You meant that
your new knowledge has given you new power, the pattern of
redemption is now clearer to you, and your recent suffering will
be given meaning by the new life which begins for you today.’

We stood there in our ecclesiastical triangle, the conservative,
the liberal and the mystic — the Catholic, the Protestant and the churchman from the Middle Way — three strands of one tradition
forming a single band of light, and then as if we all became aware
of our final creative alignment at exactly the same moment, we
reached out to clasp one another’s hands.

NINE

‘
To enter into God’s plan for us is to be most sovereignly
ourselves; it is through giving us the power and courage to
be ourselves that he fulfils his purpose in us ...’