Mystical Paths (57 page)

Lewis started out by living in the curate’s flat at the top of the house, but lately he’s moved down to a large room on the ground floor and I’ve had the cloakroom converted into a bathroom for him. He says he doesn’t need much space now, but the truth is that an arthritic hip has made climbing the stairs too painful. He’ll have to have the hip replaced, but he keeps putting off the operation; he says that hospitals are where you pick up an infection and come out in a box. He really is getting very cantankerous — quite as cantankerous, I’m sure, as his Great-Uncle Cuthbert — and Rosalind occasionally asks me how I stand it, but I like having an old man to look after. It reminds me of my youth.

Strange how Lewis looked after me and now I’ve wound up looking after him. I suppose it is a father-son relationship in that respect, but at present I feel he’s more like a brother — and I was always accustomed to a brother who was much older than I was. Martin’s death left a void in my life; we got on far better once I was no longer jealous of his success in living the life God had called him to lead. After he died I organised a lavish memorial service for him at St Paul’s, Covent Garden — the actors’ church — and all the show-business celebrities said to me afterwards how much Martin would have enjoyed it. Thatwas a long time ago but I often think of him. He was a good brother to me, better than I deserved.

Sometimes when I try to work out my current domestic situation, I wonder if the time has come for me to return home and begin a ministry centred on the chapel, but I always wind up deciding that I’m not ready yet; I feel such a move must wait until I begin to leave middle age behind. The Community broke up after my father died, but the Abbot of Starwater approached me for a lease and the monks at present use the house for the retreats which they conduct for clergy and laymen. The Fordites are on the increase again; the tide has turned. Their temporary acquisition of Starrington Manor represented a small but significant expansion after their massive retrenchment in the 1960s.

The tide has turned in the Church too with the Evangelicals on the march at last, the Liberals in retreat and the AngloCatholics beginning to realise they should change their outdated image and promote a new dawn for Anglican Catholicism. And mysticism is everywhere, pouring into the ecclesiastical structures which were so weakened in the 1960s, and acting as the cement which binds together all the bricks in a wall. Books on prayer and spirituality sell in thousands now, and at times I’m tempted to think all the world is trying to go on retreat. Or if people aren’t trying to go on retreat they’re speaking in tongues and joining the charismatic movement. Lewis takes a dim view of this mass outbreak of glossolalia and says it’s enough to make any decent exorcist’s hair stand on end, but I just say to him: ‘Remember the empty pews of the i960s?’ and he shuts up. At least he approves of the burgeoning popularity of retreats and the monks’ current work at my home.

°The Fordites’ lease is coming up for renewal soon,’ I said last week to Rosalind. ‘Are you by any chance secretly wishing I’d reclaim the Manor so that we could begin a new life in Starrington?’

‘Starrington’s heaven, of course,’ said Rosalind, ‘but I do realise you’ve got lots of work still to do at St Benet’s, and since I’m quite happy in Surrey ...’

I wonder what she gets up to down there.

Nothing, probably.

But I wonder sometimes.

‘Rosalind should come up to the rectory more often,’ growls Lewis. ‘She should make more effort to share your life here.’ Quite. But Rosalind knows I’m so busy during the week that in the evenings all I want is silence and solitude. The ministry of healing’s exhausting. I never accept social invitations when I’m in London. Venetia’s just asked me to dine with her, but I shan’t go.

‘I’m very suspicious of this woman,’ says Lewis, growling away again. ‘I don’t think you should counsel nymphomaniacs, Nicholas. It’s all a very bad idea.’

But finally after all these years I’ve got the chance to deliver Venetia from a way of life she despises, and I’m not going to let her languish any longer in her spiritual prison. I’m going to help her beat back that Great Pollutant at last, and no one, not even Lewis, is going to stand in my way.

‘I thought I’d never get past that crusty old curate you keep!’ Venetia said crossly on the phone when she rang about her proposed visit to St Benet’s for counselling.

‘He’s not my curate. He’s my colleague at the Healing Centre.’

‘Well, chain him up somewhere – I can’t bear misogynists ...’

After the phone call had ended I said to Lewis: ‘That’s the only woman I’ve ever met who can recognise a quotation from Wittgenstein.’

Lewis looked at me as if I’d just signed
^.
my own death warrant.

But I’ll be all right. I’m going to heal someone who’s sick, and by the healing I shall transcend and transmute the past .. . But didn’t I once think along those lines when I tried to heal Katie? Perhaps I’m being too arrogant. I pray daily for the grace to approach my work with humility but I don’t pretend to be perfect and I know that it only takes one crack in the psyche, one lapse into weakness, for the Devil to wriggle hisway in and cause havoc. No matter how strong the Light is, the Dark is always battling away to blot it out.

What am I going to do about Rosalind and that awful fake-farmhouse in Surrey where I spend such comfortable weekends? What am I going to do about those two strangers, my sons? Should I go on at St Benet’s or should I try to draw my family together by returning home to the Manor? And last, but by no means least, can I really afford, at this stage of my life, to refurbish the soul of a magnificently original woman with whom I was once very much too intimate after an unwise dose of champagne?

I know I must lay all these questions before God and pray.

And now once more I see with my psychic eye the Holy Spirit moving across the dark waters of the earth in a ceaseless outpouring of light and life. The power of the Spirit never fails; that’s what Uncle Charles would have called an absolute truth, a truth no pollutant can ever destroy. And as I see far beyond time and space to the mystery that veils the Godhead, I can feel at the very centre of my being the spark which connects me to that ultimate mystery, the mystery which no man will ever unfold on this side of the grave. All one can do in this life is to embark on that journey to the centre, where the immanent God dwells, and fight to continue that journey no matter how many obstacles are thrust in one’s path. I know that in order to serve the mysterious transcendent God to the best of my ability I must continually work to align myself with the immanent God, the God within; I must continually strive to realise the blueprint of my personality and become the man God created me to be.

I must lay my problems before God, pray that His will be done, pray that my will be united with his, pray that I may move forward with faith and hope and love upstream on the river I’m called to navigate. And now another absolute truth seems to be pressing so hard on my psyche that I seem to see it written in letters of fire: serve God, love God, trust God, and the door will open into eternal life. Or in the other language: don’t violate your true self by worshipping only what your ego demands, don’t override the call of your true self in order to respond to the summons of false gods, don’t sink into disintegration by turning your back on the one road which can guarantee you the happiness of fulfilment. Our task is to be whole, not fragmented, to be fully human, not mere naked apes, to reach upwards towards the Light, not to dive headlong into the Dark, and always God is there, calling us to integration, to self-realisation, to eternal life, by pressing on our psyches to lure us on towards Him. We may have to struggle on our inner journey through the labyrinth of the unconscious mind, but the guiding light is always there ahead of us at the source of the river within.

The telephone rang, interrupting my meditation.

Perhaps it was Rosalind, phoning to announce that she was running off with another man or that the boys had staged a break-out from Starwater. Or perhaps one of the people I was counselling was ringing to threaten suicide. Or perhaps the Archdeacon was calling to say I ought to take a firmer line against militant Christian homosexuals. Or perhaps the militant Christian homosexuals were calling to say I had to give the Archdeacon hell. Or perhaps the Anglo-Catholic die-hards were calling to tell me my attitude towards women’s ordination was unacceptable. Or perhaps the Movement for the Ordination of Women was calling to demand that I should sack Lewis. Or perhaps – Unable to stand the suspense a moment longer I picked up the receiver. ‘Father Darrow.’

‘Darling, it’s Venetia again. Forgive me for pestering you like one of those ghastly neurotic women who go wild at the sight of a cassock, but I’ve been thinking so much about the extraordinary way you’ve now recurred in my life – and of course the extraordinary way you’ve so often recurred in the past –’

‘Something tells me we should avoid certain excursions down Memory Lane, Venetia.’

‘Darling, that’s exactly why I’m ringing you up! It occurred to me that you might be a little nervous in case I was planningto drown you in nostalgia, and I just wanted to reassure you that you have absolutely nothing to worry about. I want to turn over a new leaf, not romp around a compost heap of shady Memories, but darling, are you really so sure I can heave my new leaf over? I mean, I’m such a raddled old wreck of a society woman! Do you truly believe I can resurrect myself from the dead and begin a new life at last?’

I thought of Lewis quoting St John’s Gospel long ago in my father’s cottage: "‘... he that believeth in me,
though he were
dead,
YET SHALL HE LIVE –"" It was the call to self-realisation, to the integrated life designed by a Creator who was bent on triumphing over death, and as I remembered those famous words, I thought how my own life had been so radically transformed.

‘I don’t just believe you can rise from the dead, Venetia,’ I said, speaking not as a Gnostic soothsayer but as a Christian priest proclaiming the eternal Christian message. ‘I KNOW.’

‘Darling!’ she cried, much moved. ‘I adore you!’ And she blew a kiss into the phone before replacing the receiver. I fingered my pectoral cross and wondered what on earth the future would bring.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Mystical Paths
is the fifth in a series of novels about the Church of England in the twentieth century. Each book is designed to be read independently of the others, but the more books are read the wider will be the view of the multi-sided reality which is being presented.

The first novel,
Glittering Images,
was set in
_1937.
Glamorous
Powers,
narrated by Jon Darrow, opened in 1940,
Ultimate
Prizes
was narrated by Neville Aysgarth after the war, and
Scan
dalous Risks
viewed the Church in 1963 through the eyes of Venetia Flaxton. The sixth and final novel,
Absolute Truths,
will take place in 1965, three years before the main events described by Nicholas Darrow in
Mystical Paths,
and Charles Ashworth, the narrator who opened the series, will narrate the novel which brings the series to a close.

The ecclesiastical era of Nicholas Darrow’s youth was dominated by ARTHUR MICHAEL RICHARD RAMSEY, who was born in 1904. While still in his thirties he became the Van Mildert Professor of Divinity in the University of Durham and a Canon of Durham Cathedral. Two years later he married. A short period as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge preceded his appointment as Bishop of Durham at the age of forty-seven, and his ascent to the top of the Church’s hierarchy continued to be rapid: by 1956 he was Archbishop of York, and in 1961 he became the one hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury.

Ramsey combined a first-class intellect with a striking appearance and a considerable degree of eccentricity and originality in his speech, manner and dress; a member of the Catholicwing of the Church, he was the first Archbishop of Canterbury to adopt the uniform of a purple cassock instead of the traditional frock-coat and gaiters. The combination of eccentricity and a deep personal holiness made him seem a remote’ figure to some in the turbulent days of the 196os, but others appreciated his traditionalism at a time when all traditions were coming under attack. Hostile at first to the outbreak of radical theology he later adopted a more flexible approach, recognising that the widespread questioning of both Christianity and the Church needed careful answering, not instant condemnation.

‘It may be the will of God that our church should have its heart broken,’ Ramsey said before his enthronement at Canterbury, and this proved a prophetic statement. During the secular triumphalism of the 1960s, the Church suffered a loss of confidence and a numerical decline, but Ramsey provided the spiritual leadership needed to sustain it during the dark days of demoralisation, and to lead it towards more fruitful times.

Having retired from Canterbury in 1974, he died in 1988 in the midst of an era very changed from the one over which he had presided twenty years before.

The thought of Jon and Nicholas Darrow reflects the work of CHRISTOPHER BRYANT, who was born in 1905 and ordained not long after he had graduated, like Michael Ramsey, from Cambridge University. In
₁₉₃₅
he became a professed member of the Society of St John the Evangelist, known as the Cowley Fathers, which is the oldest religious community for men in the Church of England. For almost all of the next twenty-five years he was based at the Society’s house in Oxford; he became first novice guardian, then assistant superior, and it was here that he began to make a special study of psychology.

In
₁₉₅₅
he was put in charge of St Edward’s House, the Society’s London home, and he became increasingly famous as a
^s
piritual director. As he approached seventy his writing career began: he embarked on committing to paper the insights into religious belief which he had obtained from studying Jung’s psychology. The book failed to find a publisher, but another religious community came to the rescue and published it under their own imprint as
Depth Psychology and Religious Belief
His other books, however, found favour with a well-known religious publisher and all his work came to have a wide readership.
The River Within, The Heart
in
Pilgrimage
and Jung
and the Christian Way
were published before his death.
Journey
to the Centre
was published posthumously. He died in 1985.