Clear Light of Day

by Penelope Wilcock

  “How about the tea?” She grinned at him.

  “The milk in it came from Squirrel Farm same as the butter. The tea comes from Kenya, but it’s fair-traded, so is my sugar.”

  He glanced at her, serious.

  “I think it matters. To me, my religion, it’s not going to church, it’s the little things. Keeping faith with all else that lives. Their lives—your life—is entrusted to me, same as my life has to trust them, and you.”

  “Okay, you win; I see you’ve more than thought this through. I’ll give it a try.” She got to her feet. “Good night, Ember.”

  Jabez came outside with her into the yard, which lay bathed in moonlight.

  “I love the earth and the moon and stars. I love the rain and the wind and the night air full of the fragrance of the plants,” he said. “Take time to love it. Good night, Esme. Go carefully.”

  Driving slowly home, thinking about all he had said, Esme felt unsure if it would be of the slightest use to her. It seemed all very well, but it went against the grain of modern life entirely. She could see the point he made about simplicity; and the modern shortcuts of e-mail, text messaging, edge-of-town supermarkets, takeaways, and Internet news summaries seemed to be the way to bypass time-consuming traditions of going to market, cooking, writing (and buying stamps for and posting) letters, spending time with people, and reading newspapers. She wondered if it was just that Jabez was getting old, had time on his hands, and had been too poor and too out-of-date for the electronic revolution. Still, she thought she would bear it in mind. Some of his ideas seemed impossible—after all, where would she buy fairly traded coffee if she didn’t shop in a supermarket? Unless … I wonder … she thought, as she drove through sleeping Brockhyrst Priory and the country roads widened into the faster approach to the town … if someone at Portland Street—and maybe Brockhyrst Priory, too—not Wiles Green, Miss Trigg would never let us trade on a Sunday … but maybe, in the other two, somebody—Susan Marsh perhaps at Portland Street, maybe Margaret Somers or Annie O’Rourke at Brockhyrst Priory—would be willing to set up a stall as a Fair Trade rep, and we could make some money for chapel funds at the same time. I wonder …

  Esme thought it could be very uniting, very positive, and help the congregation to find a clearer awareness of the world about which they prayed earnestly but were only hazily informed. Okay—well done, Jabez! she thought as she turned into the drive at the parsonage: I’ll check out the Web site after the leadership team meeting tomorrow.

  As she went to bed that night, Esme found herself beginning to feel again for her work the hopeful enthusiasm and alert interest that so often fell casualty to the endless detail of administration, diplomacy, pastoral visiting, and liturgical responsibility that created a treadmill if she allowed it to. And it was hard not to, because all those things were so pressing, requiring so much attention that it was easy to lose the broader, more fundamental vision of Christian mission, the grounded, realistic outliving of Christ’s command to be known as his disciples by a life of practical love.

  Inspired, she got up early and found the Web site of a supplier of electricity from sustainable, renewable resources, and the Web site of a bank who handled investments in strictly ethical projects—microcredit in poorer parts of the world, organic farms, self-employed craftsmen, social housing, and community ventures. She printed off the information from both sites, enough copies for everyone at the circuit leadership team meeting. We could do this, she thought: Our circuit chapels and parsonages could run on electricity from sources that respect the environment. Our deposit accounts could be shifted to investment in ethical enterprises. Jesus would like that.

  Excited, she stapled the printed sheets into packs, slipped them into a wallet file that she stowed in her rucksack, and set off to cycle across town to her superintendent’s parsonage for the meeting.

  The agenda, apart from essential routine business, was short. Esme asked for time under Any Other Business to present a suggestion. The main business item was circuit restructuring—beginning seriously to consider the future life of some small and shrinking country chapels, their viability now, and the implications of that for future circuit staffing.

  The discussion was long, careful, and detailed. Her two colleagues with pastoral responsibility in outlying rural areas spoke of tentative plans for amalgamation or even simply closure in four of their chapel communities. Members continued faithful, hardworking, and supportive, but old age brought shrinkage by death, and three of the chapels had fewer than ten members, all over seventy and not all resident in the communities the chapels served. Closures seemed inevitable, such that next time one of the ministers was due to move on, instead of reinvitation being suggested, a cut in numbers of pastoral staff would be necessitated. It seemed desirable that the three remaining full-time ministers should care for the larger chapels, with possibly an active supernumerary or (had they had one) a homegrown minister in local appointment rather than a full-timer appointed in from elsewhere, to mop up the little rural causes while they still soldiered on.

  The delicate question to be tackled—which of the staff would be the one to forgo reinvitation and move on—came next under consideration. Esme had two years to run on her present appointment. The superintendent’s reinvitation had already been agreed at the spring circuit meeting. One of her colleagues was nearing retirement and hoping to see out his active ministry without another move. The fourth minister of the staff had an elderly mother in a nursing home nearby, a husband who had only recently established and built up his own business, and children coming up to public exam years: So she was also anxious to stay as long as possible before moving. Everyone at the meeting sat and pondered in silence. The superintendent got up and put his head round the door to call his wife to make more coffee. Esme realized they were all waiting for her to volunteer to be the one to move on. She had no dependents nor was she tied by a husband’s work commitments. Although all three of the chapels in her section were still viable and in good heart, Brockhyrst Priory and Portland Street being positively robust, with impressive attendance figures, nonetheless she saw that she would have to be the one to go.

  “Well,” she said brightly, “I expect a change would do me good.”

  And smiles of relief all round the room rewarded her.

  They spoke to her encouragingly about the positive benefits of frequent moves for gaining experience in ministry; about the wide range of possibilities—chaplaincy in schools or hospices or hospitals; overseas posts in Sri Lanka, the Bahamas, the Shetlands, or Malta—or opportunities in the central London offices or in some of the challenging inner-city missions.

  Esme listened with mixed feelings. She had grown to care about her church members in the Southarbour circuit, but not so much that it would break her heart to leave them behind. She found the prospect of new forms of ministry exciting. When she honestly consulted her heart, she knew that she had just one serious reservation: She could no longer imagine life without Jabez and Ember. She could no longer imagine life without the refuge of Jabez’s cottage or the encouragement of their friendship always there for her. Yet, surely, this was what all ministers experienced when the time came for them to move on? And if she had been one of the ones to stay on, when after three years extension to her appointment the time eventually came for her to go, it would very likely be even harder to leave them.

  Esme made a deliberate effort to put aside the misgivings that began to fill her mind and pay attention to the discussion about the redistribution of the sections in the circuit once the number of ministers with pastoral charge had been reduced. A new animation had entered the planning now that everyone knew which minister would no longer be continuing.

  Eventually, when it was growing late, the superintendent began to draw the business to a close, pleased that the outcomes had been so harmoniously agreed so far, and relieved to have no ill feeling among the staff over the
question of who should move on.

  Glancing at the scribbled notes on his agenda, he suddenly remembered that Esme had given notice of something to raise under Any Other Business.

  Esme took out her file with the notes on ethical investment and suppliers of electricity from renewable sources, but somehow the whole issue felt less relevant now than when she had printed them out this morning. She had observed in the past that issues of environmental or social concern were viewed as nonessentials, dilettante intellectual luxuries to be made the subject of a seminar and forgotten as quickly as possible. She had been at synod and witnessed resolutions passed determining that all Methodist church members would do their best to affirm and promote fair trade and social justice—which made everybody feel good and committed them to nothing. Even as she spoke about the importance of caring for the living earth and in our practice and choices working positively for a more equitable world, whether or not that was less financially rewarding than following the crowd, she knew she was wasting her breath. The chance of the circuit stewards getting their electricity from any supplier but the cheapest or lodging the advance fund with any bank other than the one offering the highest interest, was slender at any time. Today, when their minds buzzed with administrative and pastoral restructuring, only politeness made them pay any attention at all. They did not even turn over the pages of the notes she distributed. Esme saw it was not going to happen and closed the matter in her mind without pushing for any real consideration of the issues, too disappointed to allow herself to dwell upon it.

  Later in the week, as she prepared to meet with her chapel stewards to draft the business of her church councils and break the news of the changes ahead, she wondered whether it would be worthwhile now to put the suggestion of beginning a stall for fairly traded goods. Would it be better simply to let that go? After all, there was very little more than eighteen months left before she would be leaving.

  Esme thought about it, gazing out through the window into the front garden of the parsonage as she sat at the desk in her study. Undecided, she took a break from thinking to make herself a cup of coffee. I suppose, she thought, reaching absentmindedly for the biscuits as the kettle boiled, that it would be a start to buy fair-traded coffee for myself. I wonder if they do biscuits, too.

  As she returned to her desk, she opened her diary to the memoranda pages at the back. BIKES Jabez Ferrall, she read with a smile, and, turning a few pages further in, past hastily jotted details for funerals and contact numbers for wedding couples, she found and read again Jabez’s list of principles. Think globally, act locally. She remembered him saying, “I think it matters. To me, my religion, it’s not going to church, it’s the little things. Keeping faith with all else that lives.” And she thought, Oh well, why not? Let’s go for it. There’s still time. She added to her stewards’ meeting agendas for Portland Street and Brockhyrst Priory a note to propose the commencement of fair-trading. As she sat reading through the notes she had made, it occurred to her that at Wiles Green, apart from Miss Trigg who would certainly oppose it, the congregation would most enthusiastically introduce and support a Fair Trade stall. She frowned thoughtfully at her agendas. To avoid conflict and confrontation in general seemed only wise, but she felt her life being directed and reshaped by Miss Trigg’s convictions and prejudices. “Mind your boundaries,” Jabez had said; “don’t let other people give you the runaround.” She added a note to her Wiles Green stewards’ meeting agenda—“Fair Trade stall and rep.” She reflected that she might as well have written down “Cause trouble” and accepted the necessity of some kind of a showdown with Miss Trigg.

  She liked the principles of life Jabez had outlined, but at the same time she felt conscious that contemplating them created dissatisfaction with her choices; she was a minister of an institutional religion. Is it ever possible for an institution to express simplicity? The restlessness that disturbed her soul intensified as she thought about the gulf between the way Jabez had sketched for her and the inescapable requirements of professional ministry.

  Several times that week, Esme came into the parsonage at the end of a long evening meeting, switched on the fluorescent light in her tidy, impersonal kitchen, made herself coffee, and took it into the sitting room to drink in her armchair beside the gas fire, turning it on low to dispel the chill of the evening. She looked at the deep-pile, grey-and-purple nylon carpet—a generous choice by the circuit stewards who had furnished the parsonage and had selected similar tones in the easy-care polyester curtains and inoffensive wipeable, embossed wallpaper. It had been kindly done by practical and thoughtful people; but her mind wandered to Jabez’s cottage among its apple trees, the smell of wood smoke, the simple pine table his father had made, and paper sack doormat in the kitchen, the floorboards more or less covered by an ancient rug of faded pattern in the living room with its low ceilings and shabby furnishings illuminated by lamplight and firelight. That’s where I’d like to be, she thought. Somewhere like that.

  Her drink finished, she checked all the windows were fastened and the doors locked, and made her way up the stairs, past the closed doors of the three empty bedrooms. Behind the parsonage, through the gap next to the house whose garden backed onto hers, and just beyond the low garden wall in front, streetlights shone all night, so that it was never really dark inside, and outside it was possible to see the moon but very few of the stars. In the corner where the ceiling met the wall, the sleepless red eye of the security alarm system flashed and winked as she moved about the bedroom.

  Very tired and somehow dispirited, Esme climbed into her cold bed. She felt too tired to read and too tired to relax. The Methodist church, chronically addicted to incessant bureaucratic change as one of the less helpful outcomes of its democratic structure, had altered its stationing procedure twice since Esme had last gone through the process of appointment and come to Southarbour. She had asked her colleagues what the new system was, without very coherent result. She thought she’d better get in touch with her district chairman for advice.

  Every night that week, she lay for a little while waiting for the bed to warm up, wondering what the future might hold and what she was supposed to do next. She thought about her colleagues and her congregations. She thought about parsonages and about how long it takes to get to know a new neighborhood. She thought about what makes a house feel like a home. She wondered about the possibilities of her churches espousing the principles of fair trade. And she thought about Jabez. But before long, each night, sleep came.

  On Sunday night Esme presided at a Eucharist at Wiles Green, Miss Trigg on duty as her steward. She preached a straightforward expository sermon from the lectionary readings set for the day, avoiding controversial interpretations or any remarks Miss Trigg might construe as flippant or inappropriate. The congregation was tiny but the atmosphere peaceful. Esme wondered if they would miss her when the time came, sooner than she had planned, to move on. She wondered if she would miss them.

  Afterward, turning out of the car park, she glimpsed the new poster in the Wayside Pulpit, saying REMEMBER YE THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP IT HOLY, and thought of her forthcoming stewards’ meeting with misgiving. She drove up Chapel Lane and turned into the village street, then with a lightening of her heart into Jabez’s yard.

  He had anticipated her coming, and a bowl of homemade vegetable soup with bread and cheese awaited her. Happily she curled up in her corner of the sofa, beside the fire that Ember had recently lit.

  “This feels more like coming home than when I go back to the parsonage!” she said. “It’s so nice of you to take care of me like this.”

  “Ah,” said Ember, “’tis rare to find a kindness without an ulterior motive. Even here. Jabez don’t cook for everybody. Not even for himself, some days.”

  She shook out her knitting, a vast stripy thing using a motley assortment of ends of yarn.

  “Ember, that’s colossal! What are you making, anyway
?”

  “’Tis a jumper for the winter,” Ember explained. “I likes my clothes baggy,” she added unnecessarily.

  For a while, silence lay between them as Esme devoured her soup and bread, surprised to find how hungry she was once she stopped to think about it.

  “Delicious!” she pronounced as she finished it. “Thank you so much.”

  She reached down and piled her crockery on the floor beside the sofa. She wondered if now would be the time to tell them about the move she had agreed to but somehow felt unable to bring it closer by discussing it. Instead she chose to stay in the temporary reality of the present.

  “Jabez,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about all you said to me last week, and it’s given me an idea—I thought I might see if we can begin to sell fair-traded things in the chapels I pastor. But I can’t do that at Wiles Green without taking on Miss Trigg. Have you got any ideas about how I might sort her out?”

  Jabez laughed as he considered this. “I can far more readily imagine her sorting out me than the other way round,” he said. “But surely Miss Trigg will be in favor of fair trade?”

  “I expect so,” Esme replied, “but not in favor of buying and selling on a Sunday. Once when my car was in for service and I went to chapel in a taxi, she remarked that it was okay because I was digging my donkey out of the ditch.”

  Ember gazed at her, perplexed.

  “You know—necessity. From the thing Jesus says about ‘Which of you if your ass or ox falls into a pit on the Sabbath day will not pull him out?’ But I strongly suspect that trading on the Sabbath, fair or otherwise, will be strictly off limits. Although, mind you, if I could only remember where it comes in the Gospels, Jesus speaks about doing good being lawful on the Sabbath, doesn’t he—and if fair trade isn’t good, I don’t know what is.”