Next came a basket, from which she took a bottle of wine and a single glass. I recognized it as one of a set of beautiful eighteenth-century crystal glasses that she owned. The wine and the glass were placed next to the hamper. Then she got back into her car and drove away.
I cannot tell you how profoundly that action affected me. I sat and listened to the hum of her car’s engine as it grew fainter and fainter. I stared at the things she had left for me. I opened the front door for the first time in many days. The autumnsun streamed in and I stood in the doorway for several minutes, breathing in the clean, fresh air and feeling the warmth upon my skin.
I walked across to the vase of flowers, lifted it and brought it into the house. I placed it on a table near the window. I drew back the curtains and the sunlight revealed the deep, glistening red.
I brought in the food and the wine. I placed the single crystal glass carefully next to the vase of flowers. Then I cleared the papers and clutter from the table, took a cloth, dampened it from the tap and wiped the table top. I placed the crystal glass in the centre of the table, carefully, so that I should not accidentally break it. Next to it I placed the bottle of wine, which I noticed had been chilled.
I took the cooked chicken and salad from the hamper, along with the cutlery and a napkin. I brought a chair to the table. I uncorked the wine and poured myself a glass. I raised the glass to my lips and drank. Standing in a shaft of sunlight, I felt warmed and revived. I sat down at the table and I ate.
Later, I walked out into the garden. As I watched the sun setting I felt my legs losing strength, and sank to my knees. I began to sob, and suddenly I could not stop. The grief and loneliness and pain poured from me in a seemingly endless tide. It felt as though some poison were being washed away. That night, for the first time in weeks, I slept till morning.
It would be Christmas in two weeks’ time and I dreaded facing it without Paul. Last Christmas we had married and been full of hope. Now there was no hope, because Paul had gone.
Louisa, my sister, had been begging me to allow her to come and look after me and finally I agreed. She came down the week before Christmas. She wanted to take me back to North Wales, to share the holiday with her family, but I could not bear the thought of it and felt I would only spoil their happiness. Though I did not want to be alone, it seemed the best option.
On Christmas Eve I attended a carol service in our little church, slipping quietly into a pew near the back. I had always enjoyed the atmosphere of Christmas, the sparkling frosty white on trees and Christmas cards, the way the snow silenced the land. It was a special time, when the world seemed to pause and take a breath. In the creation of that moment – or perhaps the acknowledgement of a moment that is always ours to take – I found great comfort. It gave hope that things did not always have to continue in the same way. People could change their lives. Even as a child, I had always hoped this was true.
Catherine, the vicar, welcomed us to the celebration of Jesus’ birth with a warmth that encompassed us all. At the back of the church, I felt that I, too, was included. But I wondered how was it that the others in the congregation believed in a God of love when I had encountered only a God who did not seem to care? Anna had seemed to see truth and purpose in Julian’s message of love, but had not she, too, been let down? I wished I could know the end of her story. She believed that Julian had touched her life – but had she found redemption and release?
As I puzzled over these thoughts, I realized that the choir was singing a favourite carol of mine, “Adam Lay Y’Bounden”. This time I listened more carefully than usual to the words:
Adam lay y-bounden,
Bounden in a bond,
Four thousand winters
Thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took,
As clerkes finden
Written in their book.
Ne had the apple
The apple taken been,
Ne never had our Lady
A-been heavene queen.
Blessed be the time
That apple taken was,
Therefore maun we sing
Deo Gratias.
The words reminded me of what Julian had said about sin being inevitable and necessary and God’s toleration of it honourable. Was it true that all the bad things that happen are allowed by God so that we may grow and learn? Was there really a purpose? Were there really grounds for hope, authentic hope?
Ismene sent me a hamper of food for Christmas. Being her usual sensitive self, she did not send one full of rich, traditional celebratory fare. Rather, her gift was a selection of organic produce, tasty, wholesome, nourishing food, fresh vegetables and fruit. On Christmas Day she telephoned me. We talked about Paul and the value of the work he had done in his life. She spoke of him as a man who had contributed a great deal to others, a man of conscience, a man who had left a lasting legacy to the world, a man who had loved me very much and whom I had made very happy. I was soon in tears.
She said, “This time will pass. We are never alone. In love there is no separation. We sometimes have to give up the ones we love, but it is only for a time. The people who love us are always close by, whether they are in this world or the next. And we are reunited with them, in God’s time.”
But if Paul really was still alive, in heaven, then surely he was with Sushila and might no longer want me?
“There are many things we cannot understand,” Ismene said. “But in a place of love, everything comes right. Love for one does not exclude love for another. Love grows by love, and more love is the result.”
Using Paul’s contacts, I intensified my reporting of human rights stories, working as a freelance for several newspapers. It was my way of keeping some part of him alive. The work became my whole life. I tried particularly hard to push the East Timor story; but editors were reluctant to give it space. Despite the worldwide condemnation of Indonesia, following the massacre at Santa Cruz Church in Dili, East Timor was still not considered an important story.
The Guardian agreed to take regular opinion pieces from me, and as correspondents out in the field reported on the horrors of Bosnia, I wrote about the inadequacy of our government’s response. The unspeakable atrocities being committed seemed too grotesque and appalling to believe. How could people who had once been neighbours do such things to each other? The UK – like other world powers – was talking but doing nothing. I wrote that we should arm the Muslims, so that they could defend themselves against the Serbs. But in my heart I felt there was no right answer. And words – in which I had once placed such great faith – seemed to be of no use or value. I confided in Ismene my feelings of helplessness and impotence.
She said, “It’s water upon a stone. We cannot know what the outcome will be of anything we do. We can only do – and must do – what we believe to be right.”
I missed Paul terribly. I lived and I worked, but inside there was a big, empty chasm, a desperate sadness and hunger and a pain from which I was never free. I hugged my sorrow to me, like a protective cloak. The place where I lived with my grief was private. Kind friends tried to persuade me to talk about Paul and how I felt, but I resisted. Nobody could possibly understand. Because I knew this, because I did not wish to be pressured into conversations that would cause me further pain, and perhaps because I wanted to disconnect the part of myself that felt and needed love, I distanced myself from people other than work contacts. My home became both sanctuary and prison.
My phone would ring at all hours of the day and night with news of a story that someone, somewhere, needed desperately to have publicized. I was glad of it. It gave me a purpose and an outlet for my energies. I came to care about people who were thousands of miles away, people to whom I could give practical help. I knew that meticulous reporting, rather than polemic, was my best weapon in their defence. One inaccuracy could undermine the authority of a piece, but the truth could not be refuted. Julian had taught me a lesson about r
eporting faithfully even those things I did not understand.
My thoughts often turned to Julian… Julian, who had been cheeky enough to question Jesus, as he gave her a message of love from the cross, as to how what he said about all being well could possibly be true when you only had to look around you to see how miserable people were, doing bad things and causing grief to themselves and to others; Julian, who piped up with a “Would you mind clarifying what you just said?” at a press conference with God. How could I fail to like her? She even had a great sense of humour. While miraculously recovering from her illness, after being given the last rites, an enquiry from her priest as to how she was feeling elicited the response, “I have been raving half the day!” which made him chuckle. It is all there, in her book.
Sometimes I would seek solace in my copy of Enfolded in Love. One quotation in particular touched me: “He did not say, ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted’. But he said, ‘You shall not be overcome.’” The words made me feel safe and at peace. They reminded me of a hymn we had sung at my mother’s funeral, about travelling across life’s tempestuous seas to a better place, and having no fear of the raging storm because “Fy Nhad sydd wrth y llyw” – my Father will be at the helm.
In the spring Ismene invited me to the annual Julian Lecture. It was to take place at St Julian’s Church on 8 May, the anniversary of the visions. Sister Eleanor, Gregorio’s friend, was to give the talk. Ismene told me that her convent, St Etheldreda’s, had helped Gregorio’s sister to set up a Julian prayer group in East Timor. I accepted Ismene’s invitation, wanting to believe there was some pattern, sense and meaning to life and hoping it might be revealed to me on that day.
I met Ismene and Gregorio in London. Over lunch, Gregorio shared with us his worries about his country, where the brutality of the illegal regime continued unabated. His family had been influential under the Portuguese, before the Indonesian occupation, but today, like everyone else, they lived with the constant fear of imminent death. Almost every day a neighbour or friend disappeared. He felt helpless, believing he should be able to do more.
We travelled by train to Norwich and arrived at St Julian’s Church half an hour before the lecture was due to start. The church was already packed. Everyone seemed to know everyone else and there was a lively buzz of conversation. Sister Eleanor was introduced by Sheila Upjohn, a local writer. She announced the title of the lecture as “Julian and the God of the Wayside”. Sheila spoke briefly of her own experience of Julian, saying, “Once she gets her hooks into you she won’t let go until you’ve done the work she wants you to do!”
I loved this description. Practical love was such an important part of my maternal family heritage. Stories about my grandmother and great-grandmother were all about how they helped others. Giving a helping hand to someone in distress was so natural to my mother that there was always a little gift here, a word of kindness there, some small act of generosity, done without fuss.
She used to tell me how my grandmother would give money to the miners employed by my grandfather when they ran out of cash before pay-day. She told me how my great-grandmother had carried clean bedlinen on her back across the mountain at Senghenydd, in South Wales, to a woman who was bedridden and neglected, with a houseful of children. “And the doctor said, ‘For heaven’s sake, Mrs Jones, cut her bloody toenails!’”
People used to joke about Blodwen, my aunt, that if you wanted to find her you should look in the house of the person in the village who was in most need. Like Blodwen, Julian was a practical woman. Surely such a woman would not let me down with promises that would not be kept? Julian, the person, had become important to me. Was she someone in whom I could put my trust?
Sister Eleanor stepped up to the lectern. She gave us a welcoming smile that seemed to embrace each one of us. I was astonished to hear her hit upon the very subject that had been on my mind. She said, “When life is painful and we suffer, it may seem impossible that there is any pattern or plan and that there is a God who cares for us. But it is our blindness that makes us think this way. Because we are poor in love, we cannot comprehend God’s love, which is great.
“When we know his love and have seen it at work in our lives, then we begin to see clearly. We begin to understand that our Father is very much in charge, and indeed so intimately involved in our lives that he lives within us.
“We have Julian’s testimony for this. Julian tells us how her spiritual eyes were opened and she saw her own soul, in the middle of her heart. She says, ‘The soul was as large as if it were an eternal world, and a blessed kingdom as well. Its condition showed it to be a most glorious city, in which God was seated, in rightful peace and rest. His Godhead rules and upholds both heaven and earth, and all that is, and is supreme in might, wisdom and goodness. Nor will he quit the place he holds in our soul for ever… for in us is he completely at home and has his eternal dwelling.’
“When I first encountered Julian, there was a great deal that I did not understand. And yet all the while, I felt I could trust her. I felt I had come home. The better I have come to know her, the more I have come to understand her, and to love her, as so many of you dear friends here today love her.
“I love her because she loved me first. There can be no doubt of that. It’s so clear in the way she speaks of her ‘even-Christens’, the ordinary people whom she loved. And it’s clear in the diligent way she carried out her sacred task of interpreting her message. From the pages of her book shines a mother’s love.
“But for some of us, it is very hard to simply accept her assurance of God’s love, her insistence that God regards us as his darlings and never stops loving us, no matter what we feel and no matter what we do. Because many of us have never experienced anything approximating to that kind of love.
“We are living in a new Dark Age, in which the world is enduring a loss of love, a loss of tenderness, a loss of imagination, a loss of trust, a loss of soul. For so many, the pain is so great that there can be no trust in relationships and no safety in the universe. The yearning to love and to be loved is stifled and replaced by a constant watchfulness and a defensiveness. Lonely people, belonging nowhere and to nobody, cope as best they can.
“The search for intimacy has never been so desperate. Yet many people go in fear of ridicule, condemnation and rejection. Others carry the burden of self-hate. They pass the ultimate judgement upon themselves, as if, somehow, to deaden the pain of intolerable anxiety. They are filled with inner desolation and feelings of failure and worthlessness. Yet they are beautiful, and they are truly loved and they have reason to hope.”
The Sister’s message touched something deep within me. I quietly searched for tissues in my handbag.
Sister Eleanor continued, “How are we to take into our hearts the unconditional love that God offers us? How does a hungry vagrant approach the table of a generous host who has thrown open his doors and said, ‘Come in, you are welcome! You are the honoured guest we have all been waiting for. You are the prodigal returned and we are longing to kill the fatted calf!’ How can he believe that he is really wanted? He knows what he is – or at least, he thinks he does. Why should anyone want him?
“It is hard to accept the limitless love God offers us, because we do not understand the nature of that love, because we are so poor in love. So God comes to us in small ways that we can understand. For the great God who rules heaven and earth is also the God of the Wayside.
“If we want to find the truth, to encounter God, we must look in hidden places – the kindness of someone who offers us a seat on the bus when we are tired, who notices the need of another and goes out to meet it. When we keep our eyes open for small acts of kindness and generosity and consider where the impulse to perform those acts originated, then we meet the God of the Wayside. For such acts always spring from a loving heart. As Julian says, all goodness comes from God, and it reaches the ‘lower self’, or human personality, from the higher se
lf – which is the soul of God who lives in us.
“And so, to grow in love, we must learn to recognize God in others and to find God in ourselves. We are asked to accept the kindness of others. We are asked to do those things that the heart tells us to do, so that in time those actions become second nature and we grow in compassion.
“In this way, we learn to give love to all people, not just the special few. We come to see people in a different light, each as an individual, each deserving of love. And we come to see ourselves in the same way. This is how the world is saved, and how we are saved.
“But when we refuse to acknowledge truth that has been revealed to us, when we resist the impulse to be kind, perhaps through fear of being misunderstood; when we reject the kindness of others, perhaps because we suspect the giver’s motives or think we do not deserve it; then we quench the Holy Spirit, as we are cautioned against in the Book of Thessalonians, and we stop the action of love. By giving and receiving love, we come into God’s way of life, we open our hearts to him and allow him to enter and change us, we grow to become what we were made to be – part of God – a destiny that will bring us joy and peace and the true fulfilment of being our real selves.”
Sister Eleanor explained that when Julian said nothing happened by chance, she was saying that we should accept and embrace all that came our way, however painful it might be. We should not try to protect ourselves from life, but take it all as an opportunity for learning.
“Julian assures us that God will not allow anything to happen to us that cannot be turned to our good. Life is our teacher and we learn and grow through our relationships with others.
“So we must not hug our pain to us, but strive to learn the lesson it brings us. We have Julian’s assurance that one day we will be glad that everything happened in just the way that it did. If we seek the companionship of the God of the Wayside, he will walk with us along our path through life, showing us that, despite the difficulties we face and the suffering we endure, it all makes sense, and that, as Julian promised us, all shall be well.”
The Greening Page 23