Times and Places

by Keith Anthony

  14

  Lancashire – May 2013

  No, Fergus wasn’t a member of the clergy, but he had always believed in God… he had done so for as long as he remembered, going all the way back to compulsory church attendance with his family as a young child. Over the years, all the prayers, the rites and rituals of the services had built up layer upon layer in his soul until, now, life without God was unimaginable.

  He had never, though, heard Him. Yes, he had felt God in those church rituals, also in private quiet times at home and walking through its beautiful surroundings; he had felt Him especially by the sea, gazing from some windswept headland at the untamed ocean stretching out wildly as far as the eye could see and, it seemed, infinitely beyond. And, yes, he had felt Him when holding Justine in his arms for the first time. But God’s voice had always eluded him and, if he were honest, he had never felt His direction, nor ever known what He wanted him to do in life. Apart from his silent God, Fergus didn’t really relate to the modern church or its people: he found services were getting bouncier and louder, more entertaining, social and celebratory, less the deep reflective, introspective rituals of his past. Yes, Fergus was a contemplative, even if he felt his approach was increasingly considered dull, dusty and dying, steadily falling out of ecclesiastical fashion and favour.

  When Sylvie went off to art school for a week in Spring 2013 (their first full week apart since their marriage some thirty-two years earlier), Fergus decided to go off on retreat: eight days of silence in a spiritual centre he had read about, a few miles inland from the coast of the Irish Sea, in rural Lancashire. The purpose of going wasn’t specifically related to Justine, though the experience of her death was now an ingrained part of his spirituality and so he suspected she would be there with him, at least at times. But no, this retreat was between Fergus and God and he hoped finally to hear Him in its silence.

  As he drove up the motorway he played his CD set of Bach’s St Matthew Passion from start to finish… it filled up most of the journey and he hoped its weaving and soaring arias and its dramatic choruses would prepare him psychologically and spiritually for the week ahead. Shortly after the last chorale finished, towards the end of a long country lane, he arrived at the Retreat Centre’s gates and, taking a deep breath, he turned in.

  “You promised ‘Seek and you will find’

  And now I have come looking…”

  Fergus closed the notebook he had brought with him to record his thoughts and prayers. His room was small and simple, with a bed, a desk, a wardrobe and some drawers, along with a window which looked out over the grounds to the world beyond and, in the distance, the Irish Sea glistening in the evening sunshine. He had been feeling anxious, turning the car into the driveway had indeed required an act of courage, as had getting out and walking inside the centre: was eight days too long? Would he climb the walls, metaphorically, literally perhaps? Would he miss Sylvie terribly?

  The initial challenge had been surviving the first supper, it was the only meal of the whole retreat where talking was allowed, the silence not commencing until eight o’clock that evening. He had been worried as to what he would say as they ate, who he would meet, would they have anything in common, would he be out of his spiritual depths? In the end he barely spoke at all, beyond introducing himself to those with whom he shared a table. Everyone was relaxed and friendly, but he felt put in his religious place, firstly when two women described how they were members of religious orders and then, behind him, when someone introduced himself as a Church of England vicar. As if this wasn’t daunting enough, one academic looking young man – he seemed little more than a boy to Fergus – peered dryly over his glasses and told the group he was studying a doctorate in post-enlightenment comparative monotheism. Fergus gulped and prayed hard that he wouldn’t be ‘found out’, that nobody would ask him what he did, that he wouldn’t be chased out of the centre as the fraud he felt himself to be – those prayers at least were answered. Thereafter, following a brief introductory tour of the building and a group meeting, where the rhythm of the next few days was explained, Fergus and his co-retreatants were finally released into the security of the silence.

  In fact, the only daily speaking on the retreat was a thirty minute session with his guide, who would listen to how things were going and suggest Bible texts for him to ponder. Most of these passages were about seeking and getting to know God, about listening for Him in the quiet places. They were well selected and his favourite was the story of Elijah, who, from the entrance to his cave, heard God’s voice not in the wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in the subsequent silence. Fergus contemplated these passages, spending several lengthy periods doing so each day in the quiet of one of the centre’s several chapels.

  On the fifth day, he was given a longer passage to read, John Chapter 1 verses 35 to 42:

  The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

  When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

  They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

  “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

  So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

  Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing that Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.

  This was the passage that was to have the most impact, though not quite yet.

  When he wasn’t in meals or sitting quietly in the chapels, Fergus would walk in the garden, the labyrinth or the nearby hills. The first time he walked the labyrinth, Fergus said a vast number of prayers: for himself, for Sylvie, for Justine of course, for his deceased parents, for his few friends, for people he had wronged, people who had wronged him, as well as for those in need more generally across the world. God must have had His hands full that evening. On the advice of his retreat guide, he sought to be more contemplative the next time he walked the maze: on the way in asking himself the question Jesus had asked Andrew “What do you want?” and on the way out putting that same question back to God. After a short while waiting for God’s reply, Fergus lost his nerve and started helping Him out, offering suggestions as to what He might be looking for him to do. When he reported back to his guide the next day she asked:

  “Why did you feel you had to ‘help God out’?”

  “I was afraid I would walk out of the labyrinth without hearing anything.”

  “Why would such a silence have been a bad thing?”

  Her question seemed both obvious and paradoxically mystical. The next time Fergus walked the labyrinth he left it to God whether He wanted to say anything. If He did, it was lost in the silence, because Fergus did not hear it, but he was less sure it mattered.

  There was also a short daily mass late each afternoon where Fergus enjoyed receiving communion and where the prayers felt poetic and deep:

  “Through your goodness we have this bread to set before you, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life… Through your goodness we have this wine to set before you, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become for us the cup of salvation.”

  Supper came soon after Mass, followed an hour later by a silent communal prayer session, for which, as the light faded, the staff and retreatants gathered again in the main chapel, each praying for whatever was important on their own island. Fergus didn’t struggle with any of this. He felt at home in the location and at peace in the silence. Despite his previous fears, he was never once bored, though he did miss Sylvie. In silence he found everything changed and, with nothing much to do, the world
slowed down. His guide’s question was challenging, but somehow for Fergus the silence wasn’t enough, he still wanted to hear God, writing in his notebook:

  “Your voice is too soft. I strain to hear it and

  In straining I cease to relax and you disappear.

  Speak more clearly, so that the first words

  I hear You say will not be, when it’s too late,

  That I did not do Your will.”

  He re-read his words, they looked foreign to him on the page and he wondered if he had really written them and, if he had, whether they were inspired or crazed or (worst of all) pompous.

  While he was waiting to hear God, he certainly saw signs and metaphors everywhere. Some were obvious – he got lost on a walk and didn’t know the way – others were more subtle. His favourite occurred in a little chapel on a wooded hill, about a mile’s walk from the main house. As he sat there on his own, it was as though he were in the middle of an endless line of thousands upon thousands of people who over the past centuries had prayed there and thousands upon thousands of others who in future centuries would do the same. He felt a connection to them across time, both into the future and back to the past, and today it was his turn. A Bible had been left open on the simple wooden altar and, waiting in the stillness, Fergus noticed the tiniest of spiders crawling across its pages. It struck him that this minute creature was quite oblivious to the fact it was in the heart of this lonely chapel, a consecrated building set in a stunningly beautiful corner of the world, walking across the pages of a holy book. How often, he wondered, was he himself walking over, on or through the sacred, but oblivious to it? He suspected much of the time.

  The simple lifestyle on retreat gave other fresh perspectives, for example, mid-afternoon, small cakes were put out for the guests to eat as they served themselves a cup of coffee or tea. Fergus came to savour that little cake each day: in the outside world he would have eaten it in one bite without even noticing, here though it became one of the milestones of his new daily routine, something to be looked forward to and enjoyed.

  However, the silence also did strange, less pleasant things to his mind. With nothing much else to hear, the St Matthew Passion, which he had listened to in the car on the journey up, often played inside his head, disturbing the quiet. It had been meant to prepare him for his retreat, not to be its musical backdrop, but he guessed that, had he not played this on his drive, then something else, perhaps less beautiful, would now be filling the void instead.

  Also, unable to communicate with his fellow retreatants, he found himself feeling some of them didn’t like him, even becoming convinced of the fact, though how they could have taken such a dislike to him on a silent retreat he wasn’t sure. It came as a huge surprise when, on the last morning, after the silence finally broke, the woman he had thought most hostile asked with genuine interest, and in a super-friendly manner, how he had got on. It dawned upon him how paranoid he had become in his own mind and how much junk there was up there. He thought back to how often he had sought to read people’s thoughts in the outside world: how many times had he imagined non-existent dislikes, or perhaps likes too? How much time had he spent fretting over relationships that hadn’t gone wrong at all? He was resolved: mind reading was a skill best left to others.

  The retreat had indeed been an adventure of the mind, it hadn’t all been serene, but it had gone better than he could have hoped. Eight days had not been too long, despite his fears, and the silence had been liberating rather than restricting. He almost felt ashamed to admit to himself that, for the first time in nearly a decade, Justine had not haunted him; instead, although he had remembered her in his innumerable prayers, he had been able to focus on himself, on God and on the relationship they shared.

  Before setting off for home on the final morning, he skimmed through his notebook and came to the prayer that he had written about the spider:

  “In a small, lonely chapel

  Isolated on a hill

  Deep in countryside and weathered by wind,

  A tiny spider crawled across the open pages of a Bible,

  Unaware it was on a holy book and

  Neither knowing the building nor the place it was in.

  Help me Lord more and more to see your holiness

  In my everyday life

  And to walk in reverence and wonder, aware that

  There is much more of your sacred presence each day

  That in my ignorance I miss than in humility I see.”

  On re-reading his notes, they seemed rather intense and again he couldn’t decide whether they were inspirational or embarrassing, he hoped the former but feared the latter, in any case they were certainly very private. He knew that the intensity would ease as he re-entered the world, he knew that there would be dark days again, but he hoped, as he had expressed in the spider prayer, he could retain at least some of the perspective and peace he had experienced, as well as the closeness to God.

  Anyway, beyond all this, there had been a miracle, or at least what had felt like one, it had happened just two days earlier… a fleeting but intimate encounter with God that he would take away and ponder – he felt sure – for as long as he lived.

  15

  Eastern Atlantic –

  Wednesday 30th November 2016 AM

  Up on deck the light was breaking through the morning cloud and Fergus was confident it was going to be another beautiful day, though he felt depressed to think they were already heading north again and (perhaps unfairly to the Canaries) he resented the fact that they were leaving Cape Verde behind. He found a quiet recess on deck, sat down with his feet on the lower rung of the rails, put in his earphones and began his meditation.

  Taking in deep breaths, he settled down and, with the help of his mindfulness app, went through his routine. He closed his eyes and felt the sensation of his body weight in the chair, his feet on the rail and his hands in his lap. He listened for sounds: the deep but quiet background hum of the engines; the sea breaking remorselessly against the ship’s side; and the wind blowing across deck, little more than an ocean breeze, depositing the faint and faintly familiar taste of salt on his lips. He observed his mood: definitely relaxed. He remembered his motives: he wanted his life no longer to be dominated by anxieties and sorrows, hoping that, instead, he could live more fully, for his own benefit, for Sylvie’s and for those of his remaining friends. He didn’t want to lose his grief but he did want to have a healthier relationship with it. He hoped that, in getting better at sitting in silence, he would feel closer to God again and more sensitive to Him, as he had on retreat some three and a half years earlier. He scanned his body from head to toe, looking out for any tensions, pains or other feelings, pleasant or otherwise, and then finally he settled into focussing on his breath, fixing his awareness on it as he breathed in and out, in and out…

  Easier said than done. Despite having been meditating like this for over a year, Fergus still found that he could only take a few breaths before his mind began to wander: some encounter he had had, some task he needed to complete, some TV programme he had seen… the potential distractions were infinite, but he had learned that they were also inevitable and so, instead of beating himself up, he had taught himself to observe these thoughts, to note them and then to return his attention back to his breathing. This would happen time and time again during each twenty minute session.

  Sometimes the distractions would be in the form of short dreams and these both interested and annoyed him, a fascinating twilight world of his mind, but did they mean he was sleeping rather than meditating? Why couldn’t he stay focussed on the breathing? Silent contemplation on retreat had been easier, but there the stimuli had been fewer, the whole environment had been designed for stillness and prayer. He sought to note his annoyance. The worst was – and it happened a lot – when he actually did fall asleep for a few moments or, occasionally, minutes even, because this made
the whole exercise feel a waste of time. Nevertheless, he didn’t get too discouraged, he understood that it was all part of the process, frustrating though it could be, and that noting the frustration was part of that process too.

  Today had been no different, with its own distracting thoughts and feelings: disappointment at the lost day in Cape Verde; worry about the accident they had seen on the drive down to Southampton; wonder at the singer and her enigmatic sadness; a memory surfacing of a train and sea trip with his daughter down to Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, such a long time ago. He even found himself daydreaming about Katie, the detective who had become almost a friend in the years after Justine’s death, seeing and hearing her in his mind as she delivered to them one of her – as they came to call them – ‘No progress reports’, but doing so in a way which had touched them both deeply, as she strove to be professional and sympathetic, whilst conveying an unjustified shame and awkwardness.

  He was thinking about these things as his meditation came to an end. He mentally came back to his seat and sought to picture in his mind where he was, before slowly opening his eyes over an ocean that was even more perfect than he had imagined. He sat there a few minutes longer, wondering what Katie might be doing at that moment.

  “Hello there early bird!” It was the dancer.

  “Oh, hello there,” Fergus fumbled, instantly losing his hard won calm.

  “Will we see the great swimmer back in the pool again today?”

  “I think there’s every chance I’m afraid. Perhaps the Captain could put out a cautionary announcement: I’m a sight for sore eyes in my trunks these days.”