Ellen Bassani
I invite the Holy Spirit to join me in a walk instead of a Zoom Meeting for Worship. This time perhaps, being present would work. Present enough on this glorious Sunday morning to discipline skittish thoughts and employ the unfolding of God’s will. To listen, discern, accept, and surrender to the promptings of the Divine is my deepest longing. Unfortunately, I’m just too human. If surrendering is to happen it’s my will that must be ignored. Somehow this morning I listen. Despite me, God’s agenda begins to unfold.
Out of the door of an Anglo Catholic church comes a haunting Gregorian chant. My chest flutters. I open. God seems very near. If there’s anything in reincarnation, I was a medieval monastic. Fanciful, I know. Yet what does that really mean? Other than a recognition when listening to novels where the protagonist is a monk of that time, I have little experience of monastic life.
It is the same scene each flashback. It’s a small courtyard, with stables and granaries on three sides. I stand in the lower right corner, with the path to the main cloisters behind me. The late afternoon sun is diagonal to where I wait. The overwhelming feeling is of melancholy. This out-of-the-way corner seems desolate, even though there should be bustling life. I’m young and small.
Of course, as a retired Roman Catholic, most stories read to me were of Saints who were monks. As for the haunting music, well I’m at home with it. Yet the spiritual recognition goes beyond just the familiar. God feels more present. With reluctance the work continues.
“Hello Ellen”, comes a voice I’d not heard in ten years. We exchange love, news and confidences. She needed to talk and I was available. I listened fully present. How could I not?
Twenty paces later someone else greeted me. They didn’t know me but just wanted to say hello. We pool experiences about child rearing. Her baby was only months old. With that giddy joy and trepidation of new motherhood she shares, and we laugh.
Another thirty paces and I’m greeted by name. It was a couple of ex-members of Quaker Meeting who were disillusioned by the unkind behaviour of certain Friends. We talk of Quaker values and old hurts and part tenderly.
Yet again, someone calls my name. This is the father of a contemporary of my daughter. For the last year I’ve passed this house wanting to knock on the door and apologise. Why is an apology required? When my children were very young, I was barely coping. So much disability in a small family and the responsibility for keeping us afloat rested on me. I dropped in on his family far too often and yet there was always a polite welcome. How heavy must have been the weight of me and my problems? Fifteen years ago, all contact with these kind people stopped. Bemused by this apology, he laughs and hugs me. It was over.
I wander back through the church yard amazed by these random meetings. However, the Good Lord had more gifts to bestow. There stood the priest with one of his parishioners. Yet again I am greeted.
Maybe the delights of the last hour make me bold. In I stride with my ideas on spirituality which the poor priest, still in vestiments, responds to in a traditional Catholic way that no longer resonates with me. Am I backward in saying so? Unfortunately not … I was simply blind to the fatigue of the celebrant. However, the exchange is enjoyed by the other who lives in my street and who engages me in spiritual matters a day later. Ego popped its familiar head up but happily not enough to stifle a rewarding openness.
Back in the churchyard on that wonderful Sunday, I bid the priest and the neighbour farewell and walked straight into my gardener who I’d not called, and about whom I was feeling a touch guilty. She is wonderful but I’m ambivalent about weeding. The wellbeing of wildlife matters. Always a manicured garden is wasted on me. She understood. Another source of guilt surrendered.
These encounters are unusual. How can they be coincidences? There was a flow far beyond my control. Surely the divine Spirit was at work?
On that Blessed Sunday morning, those joys enriched me, and I’d like to think the other nine were also touched by the Divine.
Worship wears many cloaks, don’t you think?
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 510 • October 2021
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW