Clear Light of Day (9 page)

She leaned forward eagerly. “I suppose what you mean,” she said, “is the relationship between holiness and wholeness. In the Lord's Prayer, ‘hallowed be thy name,' the word
hallow
means holy but comes from the same root as in the Old English greeting
wes hal!
which means ‘be thou whole!' and is the basis for our modern
hallow
. Healing, completeness, come from Spirit.”

Jabez nodded, wiping a trace of butter from his fingers onto his trousers as he completed the chewing of his teacake. He swallowed, his eyes kindling with pleasure at her ready interest, and said, “The Native Americans' tepees are circular dwellings arranged into circular villages because they believe the movement of power is circular, like the roundness of the sun and moon and sacred earth, the cycle of the seasons and the curving arc of life that comes back on itself from the helplessness of infancy to the helplessness of great age. Life has a circular dynamic. What goes around comes around. There is no escape from what we put into life; one day it will return to us again.”

“Do you think, then,” asked Esme, “that there is a separate God—a God over and above us, like the Father of the Christian faith, essentially other, standing apart from creation and watching over it? Or do you believe that there is divine Spirit diffused through everything like perfume or smoke?”

Ember had spread butter on the second half of his currant bun toasted for him by Esme, and put it in his hand. Having just taken a bite of it, Jabez shook his head.

“No,” he said, when he had finished it, “neither. I believe we are held in God. It is all sacred because it is held in the mind of God and maintains its being because it is held in the heart of God. We are in God as the wave is in the ocean; and God is in us as the ocean is in the wave.”

Ember grinned. “You want to watch out for my wave, it's got a stingray in it,” she interrupted. Jabez looked at her, but wouldn't be drawn.

“When I was a child,” he continued, “Mother had a text framed on the chimney breast there,
IF GOD FEELS FAR AWAY FROM YOU—WHO MOVED?
After Dad and Mother died, I took it down because I never liked it. Because I think if you feel far away from God that's just part of the loneliness of being we all suffer. Maybe it means you need a hug or a cup of tea with a friend or an early night, but it can't possibly mean you moved away from God; I mean, where would you go? ‘Whither can I go from thy Spirit?' God wouldn't be God if God had finite being—love you could stray outside of. Ember, is there any more tea in that pot—would you like another cup, Esme?

“I read a story once,” he continued, as Ember gathered their mugs and bent over the tray to pour more tea, “about a Zen monk on pilgrimage, who sat down at the site of a holy shrine and put his feet up on a statue of the Buddha. I expect I'm telling you what you already know if I say that in the East it's a grave discourtesy even to sit with your feet pointing toward something sacred—you got to keep them tucked back underneath you. So this monk was in trouble, and a fellow pilgrim passing by reproved him for his shocking disrespect, which was fair enough except, as the monk said, ‘But where shall I put my feet that is not holy?' Is that tea too strong—I like it that way, but you might find it a bit overpowering?”

“So everything is good?” Esme said. Jabez glanced at her briefly, but said nothing in reply. Ember grinned and drained the remains of her tea from her mug.

“And if everything is good,” Esme persisted, “where does the force behind greed and corruption and oppression come from? If we all live in God and all are holy, where do torture chambers fit in? If you take away the balance of heaven and hell, God and the Devil, you have an awful lot of explaining away to do.”

Jabez smiled, and looked into the fire. “Yes, I know,” he said. “There's lots of ways of resolving this, isn't there? ‘The problem of evil.' The Parsees—Zoroastrians—who were very big when the Bible was being made, so that lots of their thinking was woven into it, believed in a universe at war. They posed two supernatural giants, Ahura Mazda, the creator of light and order and peace, and Angra Mainyu, the creator of darkness and disharmony and disease. These two were eternally at war, and the whole cosmos was caught up into their battle. Every single thing every single one of us does would serve to advance the battle in one direction or the other. Every word or action or thought contributes toward the eventual supremacy of light and wholeness or of darkness and disintegration. It's interesting that, as far as I can tell reading the Old Testament, the ancient Jews didn't really have a formal belief in life after death. The immortality of the human soul is the concept of a different culture—Hellenistic, I suppose. The ancient Jews made little distinction between the individual and the community; you lived on in your descendants. Your living being came from God's breathing—he breathed out, you were created; he drew breath in, you died. But the Zoroastrians seem to have introduced a belief in spiritual orders of beings—demons and angels—which became culturally incorporated into our Testaments. Then of course, also, they divined wisdom astrologically—like the magi in Matthew's gospel, who would have been Zoroastrians. Matthew wrote from Syria, fairly near their territory, and like the book of Isaiah, which speaks so highly of Cyrus of Persia, there's a lot in his writing that resonates with Zoroaster.”

“Such as?”

Esme, fascinated and astonished by Jabez's easy erudition, wondered how he had come to such a familiarity with things most people she met knew nothing about, even ministers. She waited, intrigued, to hear what his reply would be.

“Oh,” he said, “in Isaiah, the rough places being made smooth—the Parsees believed the world should be perfectly round. The lumps and dents are Angra Mainyu's work. And in Matthew the broad way and the strait and narrow way—it's a reversal of a Zoroastrian teaching. But anyway, what I'm trying to get round to is that if you go back to ancient Judaism, you have a concept that all that comes our way comes from the hand of God to train and shape and discipline us—everything, ‘weal and woe.' I suspect this demons and devil stuff came from a different culture—very strong in Matthew, as I say, who seems to be much acculturated to Zoroastrian thought. For myself I'm quite interested in what William Blake said about the polarization of reason and energy, as an alternative concept to good and evil. I believe that everything has a circular flow, coming from good and returning to good; the circulation of God, maybe. When we try to go against the flow, we run into trouble; life hurts us then—it's a learning opportunity, a chance to find the direction of God's love. But then you'll ask me, how should we try to go against the flow if we're part of it? We make mistakes, don't we, awful mistakes, and we wound each other terribly. But I still believe in the goodness at the core of every human soul and the center of all living being. I believe it's all a chance to channel energy wisely. I believe every agony, every cruelty, every adversity is a chance to learn wisdom and compassion, a better way. Patience. Like the paintings that show Christ's hands open, with the nails in their palms. Not clenched. Agonized, but open. It isn't how it must have been, physically; it's an icon of the spiritual wisdom of the cross. And even while I'm struggling to explain, I know it doesn't all tie up neat. There's just some things I don't understand. But in my heart I feel it.”

Jabez stopped speaking suddenly and glanced at her, anxious. “Oh dear, I'm sorry—I'm going on too much. Esme, I'm so sorry—you must be bored out of your mind. I get carried away. I'm sorry.”

Esme sat looking at Jabez in some amazement. She had never met anyone quite like this. He flushed slightly under the intrusion of her gaze and looked down at his hands, gripped together in sudden embarrassment between his knees.

“What did you say you do for a living?” she said. “Mend bicycles?”

And Jabez's head shot up—stung, he flashed a glance at her, affronted.

“That's right,” he said, on the defensive. “That's me. But I can read and inform myself as well as any man. And I can think. Is that okay?”

“No, no! I didn't mean—of course it's okay—I didn't mean to imply there was anything wrong with that, I'm just surprised you haven't chosen to—er—”

“Make something of myself?” There was a dangerous glint in Jabez's eye.

Ember, who had taken up her knitting while Jabez was talking, said, “Sixty-nine years ago in January, the immortals in their grand stupidity made the blunder of entering Jabez Ferrall for the Human Race. All he done ever since is dawdle along admiring the buttercups and the vetch that grow alongside the track. He won't be coming in second place, he won't be coming in third place, nobody even suggested he might try for first place. If the gods are kind, they'll watch over him wandering along to the finishing line and give him a rosette saying ‘I had a go.' He's got all his grey matter intact, in a funny order be that as it may; but you could hardly accuse Jabez of being an achiever.”

Esme smiled. “I suppose it depends what you mean by achievement. I've no idea what academic qualifications he may have, but he clearly has the intellectual capacity for anything! And I don't think I could make a living with the work of my hands like he does. I simply haven't got the skills. Speaking of which, Jabez, it occurs to me—should I have the lawnmower at the parsonage looked at before the summer? Or will it just be all right?”

Jabez, relaxing, relieved to be let off the hook, placed a small log on the fire and asked, “What did you have done to it last year?”

“Last year? Nothing. I mowed the lawn once or twice when the grass got long and emptied the clippings onto the compost heap, and then I just put it back in the shed.”

“Did you clean it?”

“Well—no, I didn't actually.”

“Last time I serviced that mower was two summers before you came. Is it running all right?”

“I think so. I mean, I didn't find it very easy to start, and it coughs and splutters a bit—but it cut the grass. Would you—should I have it serviced? How often do you do Marcus's?”

“I look it over before he starts cutting in the spring and before he puts it away in the autumn. Are you asking me to come and see to yours?”

“Well, if that's okay. If you don't mind. How much do you charge?”

“Oh, well … pass me your mug.” Jabez began to gather the things together on the tea tray. Esme had an odd sense of seeing his spirit furling, of withdrawal, and a quiet shuttering of his soul.

“Thursday be all right for you?” he said. “I got to go into Southarbour then to have a look at the window frame in the bathroom at your superintendent's parsonage. I could come on after. Be about three o'clock I expect.”

“That would be really helpful,” said Esme. This sounded like something of a dismissal, and she stood up, concerned not to outstay her welcome.

“It's been ever so kind of you to invite me in for tea. It feels like, well, sort of like home here. You've done me no end of good.”

Jabez straightened up with the tray. He looked pleased.

“Next time you come,” said Ember, without looking up from her knitting, “you can bring some more of they buns if you pass through Brockhyrst Priory. I liked 'em. It's nice to have a treat. Maybe they do coconut macaroons?”

“Ember! For pity's sake! You can't—you mustn't—” Jabez blinked anxiously, and Esme couldn't help laughing at him.

“They do, as it happens,” she said. “I'll bring both.”

Ember nodded, continuing serenely with her knitting.

Jabez took the tea tray out to the kitchen and Esme followed him. She stood in the doorway to the yard. The rain had stopped, but the wind still blew cold.

“Thank you, Jabez,” she said, turning back to face him before she went on her way. “It's felt so nice being here today. I mean—” she hesitated, feeling shy; “—like being with friends.”

Jabez stood with the dishcloth in his hands, looking down at it. He nodded.

“I'll see you Thursday, then,” he said.

“Esme!” he called after her as she went out into the yard. She stopped. “Esme, when you come again, bring your car up into the yard. There's room. Don't leave it parked on the road.”

“Oh, I think it's okay there,” she said. “I know it blocks the pavement a bit, and I know Ember doesn't like that, but I park it carefully so pedestrians can get by.”

“Yes, but …” He shrugged his shoulders and buried his hands deep in his pockets, offering her a brief sideways glance. “Traffic comes by close sometimes and besides that … Bring your car into the yard, Esme; don't leave it parked on the road.”

“Well, okay, if you think so. Thanks anyway. Bye-bye!”

As she went on her way, Esme felt a warmth of acceptance and belonging somewhere at the center of her being. Next time you come … When you come again. She stowed their words away as a secret treasure of belonging. I love those two. They're amazing. I love that cottage, she thought. She walked cheerfully down the path to her car, smiling at the thought of Ember looking forward to macaroons.