The Clear Light of Day

by Penelope Wilcock

  He held out to her a plate of steamed vegetables and an omelet cooked to perfection.

  “I’m not volunteering for housecleaning, but I can have a little go at your garden if you like,” he said gently.

  Esme looked at him and burst into tears.

  “There’s never any time!” she wailed. “No time for anything important—life, love, walking in the beautiful woodlands! The world is torn by war and greed, and our country has a big part in that. But there’s no time to make changes, because changes take thought and time; and all the thought and time are taken up with churning out papers and satisfying expectations and meeting targets and millions of detailed thingummies that use up every single second—anyway, why can’t Mrs Whitworth’s sister-in-law’s own blasted people go and visit her? What’s the matter with her, hasn’t she got any friends?”

  Jabez sat down on the sofa beside her and took the plate off her lap as she dropped her face into her hands and wept.

  “Here. It is clean.” She felt a handkerchief being held against her hands, and she took it obediently and wiped her eyes and her nose.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Eat your supper. I’ll make you a cup of tea. You’ll feel better in a minute.”

  “I tell you what.” Esme looked up at Ember’s face, an odd mixture of sympathy and mischief. “Give me your visiting list, my love, and I’ll go and see ’em. I reckon we can soon cut it down.”

  Esme had to laugh, as the vision of Ember as pastoral visitor sank into her imagination.

  “Jabez makes a good omelet,” Ember added. “I’d eat that, my love, while it’s still hot.”

  A great sigh shook Esme’s frame, and she began to eat her supper, feeling comforted and understood. It was delicious. Afterward, holding her mug of tea in her hands, she said, “When I very first came here, Jabez, you said this was a bit of a refuge, and so it is. It is for me.”

  He nodded. “Well, it’s here for you.”

  Esme pondered this thought for a moment, and then she said, “How do you do it, Jabez? How do you make it like this, a place of sanctuary? Everything feels calm and on purpose here. My life should be like this, peaceful and orderly and quiet; that’s what spiritual people are supposed to be like. My life should be like a candle burning, beautiful and recollected. Instead of that I’m just rushed off my feet and guilty and resentful, tired and cross with so much to—”

  “Ssh, ssh. Calm down.” Jabez smiled at her. “One thing at a time. Can I pontificate for a minute while you eat your supper? Stop me if I annoy you. First thing: Right now, I mean right now this very minute, apart from being tired and a bit burnt out, what problems have you got? I mean, have you got a pain, or an appointment? Are you expected somewhere else? Are there any more deadlines to meet tonight?”

  Esme stopped and thought about this, her fork in her hand. “No,” she conceded.

  “Then be here. Don’t give away this time to tomorrow or let it be soured by yesterday. Time may come when you’re incontinent and diabetic and alone, frightened and hungry, riddled with osteoporosis or arthritis or cancer. Tonight you’re warm—I hope—and fed, and comfortable on my sofa, and with people who love you. That’s to treasure, I think. I’m certainly treasuring you being here. Tomorrow will come with all its tasks and demands, but it’s a way off yet. D’you know—Esme, am I wearying you? Tell me to shut up if you don’t want to hear all this.”

  “I’m listening.” She smiled at him.

  “My hat, that was an opportunity missed,” murmured Ember, resting her chin on the rim of her mug as she gazed into the fire.

  “Well, what I was going to say—when they found the Cullinan diamond, the biggest one ever, they didn’t realize what they’d got at first. The chap who discovered it brought it into the office, and the story I heard was that the bloke in there laughed at him, said, ‘That’s not a diamond!’ and chucked it out the window. The thing is, a diamond is just a rock among rocks if you don’t look with a seeing eye. And moments are the same. Among all the dusty bits of rubble that make up the ordinary life, there’s a scattering of diamonds. The important thing is not to throw them out of the window when the miner puts them on your desk. Today was hard work and by the sound of things so is tomorrow. Don’t lose this little bit that comes in between. Keep your balance; stay poised on this moment. You’re here, with us; we love you, it’s peaceful. Chill out.”

  “Okay.” Esme nodded. “You said that was the first thing. What’s the second thing?”

  “Hang fire, how long is this list?” asked Ember. “Where’s me knitting?”

  “The second thing is about simplicity. Simplicity is the key to everything.”

  “Short and sweet, simplicity is,” Ember interjected. Jabez frowned at her.

  “The whole thing about practicing simplicity is you got to mind your boundaries. Don’t let other people give you the runaround. They got expectations—so what? Let ’em keep them. You don’t want their expectations seeding into your patch. Expectations breed, grow like wildfire. Thanks but no thanks to anyone’s expectations. Don’t fulfill ’em and they’ll fade away. Expectations is like stray cats—don’t feed ’em if you don’t want ’em. In each day, attempt one thing in the morning and one thing in the afternoon, and leave the evening for peace when you can. Okay, you got meetings at night. Have a sleep in the afternoon then. Visit not so many people but spend more time with them when you go. Plan times to enjoy.”

  Esme sighed. “It sounds wonderful, Jabez, but I wouldn’t get half as much done.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You’d get twice as much done, and it would be better quality.”

  “Slow my life down? You know, I’ve noticed, when I go out and about on my bike, I see more people. I can stop easily, so I pause to chat and I go into the little shops and see the people that live near the parsonage. Perhaps I should get rid of the car—I seem to spend half my life in the car.”

  He shook his head. “You got to be practical, Esme. You have responsibilities and a living to earn. Go on the bike when you can and use the car when you must. Don’t be all or nothing; give yourself a break.”

  “Okay,” she said, with sudden resolve, rooting in her bag for her diary. “Give me some principles. When I’m rushed off my feet and I’ve no time to stop and think through it all, I need some principles. What are the principles you live by? Go on. Number one?”

  Jabez laughed. “Esme, really, I don’t think—”

  “Yes you do, you never stop thinking. Go on; I’m waiting.”

  “Well, all right then. Number One: Simplify. Your home, your wardrobe, your possessions, your ambitions, your schedule, your whole life. Simplify. Everything. Number Two: Schumacher’s dictum—‘small is beautiful.’ Own few things, eat plain food in moderate amounts, avoid clutter. Keep meetings short. Avoid Southarbour High Street like the plague. Refuse to be a consumer. Buy what you must have from small, family businesses. Eat food grown locally. Brings me to Number Three: Cherish the living earth. Avoid buying things that have traveled a long way in manufacture and production. Remember the earth is our home—our life and breath. It’s to be held in deepest reverence, and loved and respected. Eat food grown by farmers who nourish it and live alongside the wild creatures in peace. Don’t use many chemicals in your household. Almost every manufacturing process wounds the earth, so recycle, reuse, and don’t buy much stuff in the first place.”

  “Okay. Number four?”

  “Bless the community where you live. Whenever you spend money, meditate on the journey of the coin you spend. If you spend it at a small local family firm, it will be reinvested in that local community. Big business carts money away in barrow loads and impoverishes the community like a cuckoo in the nest.”

  “Got it. Five?”

  Jabez thought for a minute. “Gandhi’s maxim—thinking globally and acting locally. A knock-on effect of doing business with small local family firms is that not only does our custom give us influence in local trade practice, but also it leaves other par
ts of the world free to do the same. We think the bad old days of slavery and the empire are all gone, but they’re not. We still keep slaves. Slaves make our clothes, our fireworks, provide our sugar and tea—but they’re slaves to a huge worldwide system of which we’re all a part. Cash crops and monopolies and big business are bad news the world over. Things like tea and coffee and chocolate and sugar that have to come from overseas, if we insist on having them, we should at least make sure they were fairly traded, so the people who produced them had a decent living and basic health care and education. Anyway, what goes around comes around. There is only one world. We’re all in it together. Sooner or later whatever we put out into this life will return to us. We reap what we sow.”

  “Gandhi … think globally, act locally. And?”

  “Watch your boundaries—what I said before; your soul boundaries, life boundaries. We live in a speeded-up, cluttered, exhausted, stressed society. People love fly-tipping their problems. If you got an empty hour, an empty garage, a space to think, someone with a cluttered life will be agitating to fill it up for you. You do them no favors if you allow them to extend their own disastrous agenda into your life. You’re a spiritual teacher, and you should be teaching peace by example, and peace comes by minding your boundaries and saying ‘no.’”

  “Okay. Any more?”

  “Well—choose what is handmade with love. Minimize the influence and involvement of machines in your life. Avoid mass-produced stuff, especially stuff produced by ruthless big business in places out of sight and out of mind. Things made in small numbers, by hand, with pride in the work have a soul quality beyond price. And if you make things yourself, at home—bread, your clothes, your supper, anything—it builds up the light intensity in your soul. Digging the garden, kneading dough, scrubbing the floor are activities all contemplatives prioritize. Zen monks sweeping the steps or Poor Clare nuns turning their compost, or hermits collecting firewood in the forest. Okay, they got computers and sewing machines these days, but they know the connection between spirituality and manual work, physical effort—and these people aren’t silly.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s the philosophy I live by. That’s it.”

  “So: Simplify; small is beautiful; cherish the living earth; bless the community where you live; think globally, act locally; watch your boundaries; and choose what is handmade with love. Hmm. There’s a lot about where to do my shopping and nothing about quiet times and meditation. And I would have thought if I forgo my one-stop supermarket shop and start running around market stalls and farm shops, I’ll need two lives running concurrently. But you reckon, if I do these things, my life will run smoother?”

  “Well … Yes, actually, I really do. Anyway, it’s wholeness. Attending to integrity in the ordinary daily things is what spirituality is. It is a meditation by itself. But the most important thing of all, to have in focus every day, is simplicity. It helps you create slow time, and sidestep all this rush and tear that’s wrecking friendships and families. Time was an ordinary bloke could do an ordinary job and feel a pride in his ordinary achievement. Give it five more years at the present acceleration of targets and clock-watching, and all the ordinary blokes will be chronically sick with shame and failure and depression, their multitasking wives will be full of hatred born of too many adrenaline toxins from running on empty, and there won’t be enough supermen to juggle the management and supervise the machines. Simplicity lets your soul catch up with your body. Prayer, making love, good conversation, gardening, home cooking, manual skills, quality of life; they grow only in slow time, which is created through simplicity. That’s me done, I’ve talked too much, I’m saying not another word.”

  “Ember,” said Esme, “do you have things like that, that you live by? Was there anything you wanted to add?”

  “Yes.” Ember laid her knitting down in her lap, and her small dark eyes winked like jewels in the lamplight. “Don’t eat food you don’t like. Don’t be deprived of firelight. Don’t take anything seriously. Don’t let the blackguards grind you down.”

  Jabez smiled as Esme jotted this down in the back of her diary. “I don’t know why I bother,” he said. “That’s it in a nutshell. I heard a thing on the radio last week, it was a program about China, and they were saying, ‘Among our people, the old are respected for their wisdom’; and I thought, I like that, that’s how it should be.”

  “Rubbish,” said Ember, in brisk contempt.

  “Pardon, Ember? You don’t agree?”

  She stared at him irritably. “How many old people do you know? If you know someone who’s old and stupid—and I could list you a few in this village alone, starting at the chapel—and you revere them for their wisdom, then you know one more stupid old man which would be you, Jabez Ferrall. Get a grip. In any intelligent society, the wise are respected for their wisdom. Goats, for example.”

  Esme started to laugh.

  “I feel completely different now,” she said. “I feel all keen and full of hope. I’m still tired, and I think I ought to go home to bed, but I feel sleepy-tired and relaxed. I don’t feel cross anymore.”

  She looked at the list in the back of her diary.

  “Simplify; small is beautiful; cherish the living earth; bless the community where you live; think globally, act locally; watch your boundaries; choose what is handmade with love; don’t eat food you don’t like; don’t be deprived of firelight; don’t take anything seriously; and don’t let people get you down.”

  Ember looked at her curiously but said nothing. Esme snapped her diary shut and slipped it back into her bag, and then searched in its depths for her car keys.

  “Right. I’m away. Tomorrow I’m doing assembly at the infants’ school and a funeral in the afternoon. In the evening we’ve got a circuit leadership team meeting. There seems to be one thing after another for the best part of three weeks, but I’ve no doubt I’ll be round before long—if only to complain about time-tabling all this extra integrity activity into my life.”

  She stopped and looked up at Jabez and felt rather disconcerted to meet his brown eyes contemplating her. But as soon as she looked at him, his eyelids flickered, and his gaze shifted to the glow in the grate.

  “Aren’t ready-meals a form of simplicity?” she said. “They certainly simplify my life.”

  “What are the containers made of that they come in?” he asked.

  “Well—plastic or metal, usually, with a cardboard or plastic film top and a cardboard sleeve.”

  “And what happens to the containers when you’ve eaten the food?”

  “That’s the simplicity of it. I just throw them away.”

  Jabez nodded.

  “Is it still simplicity if there’s no such place as away?” he asked quietly.

  “I suppose one kind of simplicity precludes another,” Esme said. “I mean, going to one big shop instead of three little ones is simplifying in a way, isn’t it? And it’s simpler to get all the ingredients in one ready-made meal than to have to buy them all separately in their separate bags and packets.”

  “Where do they come from, these meals?” he asked. “Who makes them? Do they make them there in that shop?”

  “Goodness, no! I’ve no idea where they come from, or who makes them! Does it matter?”

  “Well—it might. Look, Esme, I don’t want to criticize. You got a lot to get through and you can only do your best. Still, for tonight you had food cooked by me, with love: my hens’ eggs seasoned with herbs from Ember’s patch, cooked in Squirrel Farm butter, with Bill Patterson’s potatoes, and Mrs. Willard’s carrots and greens from the farmers’ market.”

  “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.