I think I was actually panting and certainly tinged with fear. It was as though I was standing on top of a cliff and ready to jump. I swayed backwards and forwards towards the door. Finally I grabbed the handle, turned and pulled it open.
I waited for this beast to dive in to the room, my life was over, I had finally been hunted down, right down here in the safest place in my mind. My eyes were tightly closed. I waited, holding my breath.
Nothing.
I opened my eyes.
"May I come in?" he asked.
I stood back and let him enter and closed the door again.
"What a nice little room you have and with all your favourite things as well. I can't tell you Adam how glad I am to have finally been invited in to your safe place."
This was not what I expected at all. The gentleness and sweetness of his voice.
My heart was melting and filling, his presence dominating the room. He stood with his back to the fire as though warming himself and looked at me. He waited. I hesitated but only for a moment and then I flung myself towards him and as I did so his arms opened wide to accept my embrace. Tears streamed down my face as he hugged me and I submitted totally to all that was and had to be.
"Do you love me Adam?"
I didn't need to utter any words, he knew my answer.
The room dissolved and faded and we were together. My last battle was over. I was his now forever. Always submitting to all he asked. I had never been happier.
Emma-1
Dear Adam,
It's been a long time since we were together. Could we meet sometime if it is convenient? I miss your company and our shared confidences. I can't tell you much I appreciate you sending me the completed writings of your Grandfather. You must be exhausted after getting it all down on paper. I value your trust in me and I have taken my time to respond simply because I have had to read it all several times before I could really get a chance to take it all in. Do you want my copies back - I hope you have a copy and didn't send me your only one.
I must confess I am a little puzzled by the writings. There could be so many explanations not only for the main body of work but also for the fragments you found elsewhere although you neglected to tell me where you found them and that aroused my curiosity.
I have mixed feelings in reading about the Room. It could be taken in many ways. At first reading I thought it as his way of coming out that he was gay and had been hiding from it all his life and only found peace when he at last admitted it. It could certainly be taken that way. I hope that doesn't cause you offence? And yet when I analysed it that way it didn't fit comfortably at all with the rest of the writings. The key for me was remembering The Light of the World by by William Holman Hunt. Do you think the one at the door was the Christ of the painting? That would rule out the gay theory and also I recalled The Hound of Heaven written by Francis Thompson. It was included in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse which I have in my library. Do you think that might be part of the whole theme of all the writings? Or does the Room manuscript perhaps reflect an earlier part of his life? Is it unrelated to the notebooks? I'm not sure whether you are familiar with the poem. So I have copied it out for you.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to:
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars:
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden--to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover--
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:--
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat--
"Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me."
I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
"Come then, ye other children, Nature's--share
With me" (said I) "your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine you with caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dais,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring."
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one--
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spuméd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day's dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak--
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noised Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet--
"Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me."
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist.
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must--
Designer infinite!--
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou can'st limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpséd turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."
Do you think he might have experienced the Hound of Heaven while he was in the cabin? I know you are less familiar with the mystical terms of Christianity than I am and wondered whether he was writing in an allegorical sense of the mystical sense of Christian experience. Might the Room precede in time the experience in the cabin, did one in fact describe his coming to Christianity and the other the deepening of the spiritual experience? I just ask and am only throwing ideas into the melting pot for further discussion. I feel we would probably manage better to discuss all this if were able to meet again face to face. I know and understand your reluctance to do that, I think. I too feel the temptation when we are together or am I misreading our situation? Perhaps I have said too much?
If I may turn briefly to the notebooks and their possible explanation.
Is it possible he is describing the journey through purgatory? Or is it an allegorical tale of a different type of spiritual journey. I sense a resonance in my own journey in that realm. I don't think for one minute that these are the ramblings of someone who has crossed a border of sanity nor do they read as drug induced dreams or fantasies. At least not to me.
I wonder if he was reaching out to you knowing that if you had embraced the faith you would understand his writings? Was he suggesting you take a serious interest in the mystical writings and experiences? I am just guessing here. I am surprised if I may lay bear my own prejudices to find such material coming from a Protestant clergyman, but then I didn't know him I have nothing to base that opinion on, had the material been from a Catholic source it would have been more understandable. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I know you are busy but I look forward to your response when you have time.
You are always in my thoughts and prayers, sometimes I confess in a most distracting way. I pray for guidance and strength but you cannot be unaware of my feelings.
Yours in Christ,
Emma
Emma-2
Dear Adam,
You are right to chastise me, although you have done so gently and I appreciate that greatly. Our lives have crossed and there is much that could happen between us so it is better to steer for moment clear of any physical meeting. Yet you can have no doubt that my heart does burn with love for you and I fear yours may burn for me. We have chosen the paths of celibacy and yet this attraction feels right rather than wrong. Yet my devotion and I pray yours too must be to serve the greater love, the one your Grandfather so obviously found. Yet he found it within the love of marriage.
I strive to follow in that path and the more I reread your Grandfather's journey the more I see it as a spiritual lesson for us to follow. You must pray for me for I fear I am weak in the flesh and where I ought to be able to seek peace and communion with the Divine my thoughts and emotions are interrupted constantly by you. I am making bold my declarations as I felt your last letters have enabled and encouraged me to be open and honest lay all before you.
I have to confess to you that one word from you and I would abandon all to be with you in a relationship of love and marriage and that of course is not possible without the breaking of vows. It has led me to dwell on the nature of love itself and how it is a reflection of the Divine love and union. So far have I dwelt on this that I come at last to question the benefits of celibacy and wonder about St Paul's advice that it is better to marry than burn. I fear I burn. Yet he also commends the better way of complete devotion to the Divine. I struggle day by day with this and ask you to join with me in prayer that our souls may focus on where they ought and that we may experience that deeper love.
In His Name,
Emma
****
Dear Adam,
I apologise for my last letter. I let my emotions
get the better of me. I know you declare a great fondness for me and say it is nothing more and yet I cannot quite believe that.
In quiet repentance,
Emma
****
Dear Adam,
My heart has been quietened at last. I am glad to hear of your spiritual progress and your greater understanding of the depth of the your Grandfather's experiences. From my own life and reading I have to stress to you that such states are not to be reached by acts of will or devotion, they are not even to be sought after, they come to us as gifts. Why they are given I do not know and where and to whom I have no idea. There is no reason as far as I can see. Those who experience such things have not sought them but have stumbled upon the experience or have had it thrust upon them.
I know my heart has been quietened in order to allow me to focus more fully upon that which is important. I do not believe I quieted my own heart.
In quietness,
Emma
****
Adam,
I am delighted to hear your news. It gladdened my heart.
I understand you have no words now.
Share when you can and when you are able.
Emma.
And in the end...
And in the end there was a great silence. I knew as my Grandfather knew. I was at peace. My struggle was over. I was home at last. All things fell away as dust falls from a shaken rug.
I understood at last what I had read. I understood why it had been left to me to read. I too faced down my own dragon and perfect love cast out the fear in my heart, I too at last found the road of complete submission and transcended all that had been normal in my life.
I had for a long while stood at a split in the path ahead of me and I struggled long and hard. Down one path had lain Emma and the possibility of both earthly and divine love and bliss. How easy it would have been to have taken that road. I stood there a long time struggling. Letters written but never sent. I no longer write. I chose in the end the other path, the choice was hard. The road was rough and far from easy and how often did I stumble and call out, almost a broken man and longed for the easy road instead. I was afflicted in my body. Knocked down and bloodied.
And in the end I came to the hidden place.
****
The red match head is scraped down the rough edge of the matchbox and jumps into flame. The darkness recedes. I can see well enough now to select my taper and light it making sure it has caught the flame before I blow gently on the match to extinguish the flame.
Inner Legacy Page 13
