27th June 2014.
The day dawns in a minor key, rain patters at
my window, seagulls wheel over the tiled roof domes, pricks of moving
brightness in the sun shafts that pierce the charcoal and leaden skies. This morning I can lie in bed until
breakfast, I am weary, achievement is so
fatiguing...
This attic floor of pilgrims is a
distant world of its own, far removed from the ‘real’ life below. I feel I’m in Gormenghast without the white
cats for company. Gone are the days of
waking in the clothes of after-shower-yesterday, pinning the damp spare pair of
socks to the mochila, collecting
staff and hat, anointing and swaddling feet to paddle to the boot rack, all in
silence, walking out into another new morning, the first yellow arrow a ray of
welcome, and off I go.
I amuse myself by reading some of my Camino
diaries, now two of them; laugh again at some of the many moments of humour,
flip to the photos I have glued in the back of each of them before leaving for
the Camino, reflect on the people: Father Bede with HH Darling Lama, a photo
taken in Australia during the time Fr Bede was my house guest in 1992.
Mrs
Tweedie in London; me in India, in sannyasi robes, a pilgrim; Thérèse in
Townsville leading the Gyuto monks to the sea to dissolve the sand from their
sand mandala.
Caroline on her visit to Townsville to find the Black Australia
of her childhood dream, there she is standing under the grand waterfall of
harlequin bougainvillea tumbling from Thérèse’s cliff top garden to the road
below.
St Francis, the Cimabue image; St Mary Our Lady of Glastonbury, in her
red skirt and gold mantle and pale veil,
standing and crowned like the Queen of Heaven she is.
In the front I glued tiny copies of my
Hare and Hoopoe, and how apt they proved to be at my Epiphany. There is a tiny photo of me, unidentifiable
in the distance as anything more than a woman, a woman clothed in the sun; it
is archetypal, as it should be. I am
alone, walking through the courtyard of the great Monastery of St John of
Patmos; responsible for the Twinning in Perpetuity between Glastonbury, the Ancient
Sacred Isle of Avalon, and Patmos, the Holy Isle.
The two saints, Joseph of Arimathea and St
John the Beloved would have known each other, something I was made scintillatingly
aware of as I sat in the Cave of the Apocalypse in 2007. A presence in the Cave
impressed upon me, as I sat there alone, that linking these two holy places is
a task I am beholden to do. I dismiss it
of course; I don’t do ‘public’. The
presence and its insistence persisted for three days; I was compelled to
approach the Abbot of Patmos. I walked
to the Monastery. A large monk, speaking
nine languages, wearing a long grey beard and a black chimney pot, a rogue of a
man with a chequered and fascinating past including, incredibly, a stint as
something professional in the huge and now defunct asylum in Wells; he knew
Glastonbury well. He led me to the
Abbot, acted as translator. The Abbot
and I were in accord, he embraced the link, knew and appreciated the legend of
St Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Thorn, urged me to speak to the Mayor of
Glastonbury on my return.
And so it came to pass, a grand five
day event for the visiting Patmos delegates, tours and the Tor, Chalice Well
and lunch, a gala dinner with all manner of dignitaries present. One of the high-ranking clergy present
congratulated me on having brought together at the same table for the first
time in 500 years representatives of the three major Christian faiths since the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, seriously misnamed the Reformation. Glastonbury shone with sun and warmth that
September of 2009. I had spoken with the
Government official responsible for setting up Twinning protocol, unsure how to
name our link. She said it had to be a
Twinning in Perpetuity, applauded me for creating the first such Twinning in
Great Britain; for what else could a link between saints of 2000 years ago be but
perpetual? John Michel told me in March
he felt that his prophetic book The Dimensions
of Paradise published forty years earlier had now been redeemed. He would feel privileged, he said, to speak
at the Gala Dinner. Three weeks after
our conversation John died. His presence
remains.
This tiny archetypal photograph mirrors
chapter twelve of St John: a great sign
appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with
the sun. In the photo, taken from a
great distance and without my knowing, I am clothed with the sun, walking in
the sunlight between the shadows of the arches.
It is not me I see walking through the shadowed centuries of cloistered
patriarchy here, but all women, women
walking in their own Light.
I see my life is a mosaic, nothing
appears to link one thing with the next; no rise and rise in a career path; no
continuation to even the most remote success; my life’s single theme is my
Obedience to the Other, a theme invisible to the onlooker. It is a lonely path but sometimes I am blessed
to look into the eyes of a fellow pilgrim of the inner way and we recognise
each other through the eyes, know each other.
These are my friends.
Since 2011 a small number of people have
begun an ordinary twinning association between the two places, based on cultural
and social ephemera. It has no causal
link with saints, nor anything perpetual, twinning association longevity being limited
to the committees that uphold them. They
are different, these social twinnings, friendships more or less of good will
between nations.
A Twinning in
Perpetuity is a singular event. A woman from
the Midlands, having a Jewish connection, but none with Glastonbury or Patmos
until after their being twinned in Perpetuity, encouraged the new social
twinning. It seemed to me and to a few
Patmians that her interest served to promote a personal platform; but that’s
the Way of the World and we render unto Caesar that which is inevitable: Ἀπόδοτε οὖν τὰ Καίσαρος Καίσαρι καὶ τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῷ Θεῷ. When I return I must address an insult, a public
insult and personal to me and the Twinning in Perpetuity. It threw me off balance at the time, but time
has passed, my mind has cleared and I can respond to this woman, this oversized
cuckoo who can feather her own nest without sullying mine, thank you very much! Lying in bed blissfully horizontal waiting to
go down for breakfast has brought up this unfinished business.
I am, naturally, riven with faults and
failings, they abound, but I’ve spoken with each over the years, spoken of them
to myself, my Higher Self, to Holy Mary, to a good Jungian analyst, and am
reconciled to my frailties and humanness.
I will give no quarter to guilt when I return home and clear the air; I
smile, will add relish to my response to the cuckoo’s silly ego. My temporary head-trip fades as I think
delicious thoughts of re-arranging an ego ... hers, and in great good humour I
shower and dress and skip down four floors and eight flights of stairs to
breakfast.
Today I am doing churches and museums,
leisurely.
Only a day or so, The End is Nigh ...
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