Category Archives: Astray

I returned to Felkirk for a few days. Again I noticed the difference between the monastery proper and my room in the annexe. In church and at meals there was a formal stillness. Back in my private room between the offices it vanished. I lay on the bed, turned on the television, scrolled on my phone and my mind slackened. I thought about going down the road for a half before evensong. I thought about the monks praying in their rooms.

As usual, there were a couple of Oxbridge men, guests whose ingratiating manner confused me. Their words dripped with irony — so unlike those of the Brothers. I couldn’t tell if they were mocking or being polite. At lunch a young man in jeans at the table said, when asked, that he came from a non-denominational church in Nottingham. Ah, said one of the men with a sly smile, very different I imagine. Come to see how we do things, have you? Yes, he said, without returning the smile, just wanted to see what it was like.

Later I saw him in the apple orchard. I didn’t see you at mass, I said. I went to the offices, he said, but the mass is… we don’t do it that way. Yeah, it’s different here, I said. I asked about his church. We have a hall, he said. He told me how he came to faith after a bad year in college. His mother was a clairvoyant in a spiritualist church. She died of cancer. He started reading John’s Gospel one night and it all came together.

I told him a little of my own story, but I could hear myself arranging it. When he left we shook hands and wished each other well, knowing we’d never meet again.

When I got back to Norwich, I went straight to the pub to meet up with some old literary friends from uni. We drank under the heaters. They talked differently. I spoke faster to keep up. I found myself slipping into the old cynicism, pretending I’d read things I hadn’t, even making ironic comments about the Brothers, who only hours ago I talked to and took the Eucharist from as if it was the most important thing in the world.

Before the Easter vigil I went to Confession to come clean about hardly keeping Lent. I didn’t say the half of it. The priest advised me to read Psalms 51 and 130. You’ll know them, he said, but try to read them with new eyes, then sit in silence.

Then: solemn mass and Easter joy. Candles in the Cathedral, resurrection light.

The next day, after the service, a walk in the Broads with Stewart. All winter’s hidden things were coming out from the banks, ditches and reeds. Buds were opening one by one. We saw mining bees and brimstones, skylarks and swallows, heard chiffchaffs and blackcaps. The reeds moved in long shivers. Somewhere inside them a bittern boomed. Stewart stopped and raised his hand. We stood still until it came again.

We went on down the muddy path. One thing I’ve found with all this, I said after a while, is that even when you’re just going out of habit and mouthing the words, when you might as well not bother, something can still open. And the more you press on, the richer and deeper it gets. Like there’s no end to it. The more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you, he quoted. Yeah, I said. Only sometimes you’re too curved in on yourself to search. Or trying too hard to make it happen, Stewart said. Sometimes you just wait.

Funeral today for Marion, a regular at the Boar’s Head. People had to stand at the back of the church. She’d been known by half the city, it seemed. Her office colleagues and neighbours in formalwear, a couple of rough sleepers, women from the charity shop, teens from a youth group. The relatives did their best not to break down during their eulogies. She lived a better life than most of us, said the priest. Even towards the end, he said, she was more worried about the woman in the next bed than herself.

At the wake in the pub there were sandwiches, crisps, sausage rolls, small cakes, jugs of orange juice. Everyone had a story about her giving something away: money, plants, food, knitwear: she used to sit and knit in the pub. She made rounds to the homeless when she could still walk. She knew who’d disappeared, who’d got housing, who’d died.

I approached Henry, a young low-church priest who insists on being called by his first name. He was drinking Guinness. He was with Tim, an elderly Congregationalist who lives in the countryside. A retired farmer I think. We were joined by Stewart, with whom I sometimes go on country walks. He’s taking the initiation course at the Catholic Cathedral while also going to the little Orthodox church on Oak Street. He’s unsure where he belongs.

Brave thing to say in a sermon, said Tim over the noise.

What was? said Henry.

That she lived better than most of us.

It’s true, said Henry.

Oh yeah, Tim said. But true in what sense?

Stewart smiled at that, not kindly or unkindly. He has a way of listening as if he’s trying to catch some accent.

In the sense that she loved people, said Henry. Fed them, noticed them, stayed with them. I’m sure God is as interested in that as we are.

Sure, said Tim. But God isn’t just a word for being kind.

Henry said nothing for a moment. Someone near the bar laughed too loudly. A woman in black was crying into a napkin while another woman rubbed her back.

I was tempted to ask where they thought she was now. She’d put us to shame, but hadn’t believed or taken the sacraments, as far as anyone knew. I kept quiet of course; it was an indecent thought.

Stewart said that in the Orthodox church they pray for the dead because love doesn’t stop at death and only God knows the state of a soul. They don’t declare, he said, they pray.

We pray for the dead too, said Henry.

Tim took a sip of juice. The trouble is, everyone wants mercy without judgement.

I thought of the bank app, the man outside the cashpoint, the money sitting there with its quiet power. I thought of Marion making her rounds on a crutch.

Henry said, a bit sharply, I’m not in the business of measuring grace at a funeral.

No, said Tim. Nor am I.

When the glasses had multiplied and the room grew warmer, Stewart talked about the Orthodox liturgy, how at home in mystery they seemed to be, whereas we’re always irritably reaching after problems and ways of working them out. Tim said churches lost their way when they started dressing up the Gospel with all kinds of nonsense. Like what? said Henry. All of it, said Tim. Incense, fancy robes, gold cups. Cathedrals. Popes and bishops. Rock bands in churches. Instead of preaching Christ crucified. Well, I’m with you on Christ crucified, said Henry. I’d keep the incense.

I listened and drank and exchanged a few words with people I knew who passed by. I watched the mourners carrying paper plates and swapping stories about her.

On the way home the question returned. Where was she now? It seemed both childish and terribly serious. It stayed with me for a couple of days until I started to forget about it.

When I walked through town to Sunday service there was an ugly feeling I couldn’t place. I couldn’t tell whether it was in me or outside. It was windy, leaves and wrappers skittered about; it was if the city itself was askew, or as if unresolved fights from Saturday night were lingering. A passing man said to his friend, If I hadn’t let them do all that, I wouldn’t be so fucked now. A woman yanked her crying child into a pram. In church a humming child kept kicking the back of my chair. Someone came in smelling of urine and queued up for the Eucharist. As I was leaving, a drunk kicked over the Church is Open sign; as I looked back I saw the church warden come out, and hoped he didn’t think it was me. I was confused the whole day.

I sometimes feel for the priests, especially in Lent. They must have to fake it from time to time like we do; their minds must stray like ours. I wonder if the mood comes over them too. I never know whether other people feel it. But the masses are beautiful and true whatever our moods.

*

I spoke to Giuliano after Friday mass in Julian’s cell. He said he was behind on the rent. I took some cash out of my pocket but he held up his hand, almost annoyed. Maybe he wanted to spare me the self-satisfaction of helping him. Or maybe he was annoyed with himself for his weakness in telling me.

Ash Wednesday. Noon service with the imposition of ashes. ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’ Mingling of dark and light in the old words and the winter light through the windows. Have mercy on us. Make haste to help us. We’re so entangled in sin we can barely think straight.

Some of us gave token money to the homeless man who shrewdly comes and sits outside the church with his dog before mass. I spoke to him. He told me sharper things than some of the folk in church.

I’m calmer these days, happier. The background static of money worry has quieted. That’s a new feeling. But there’s something money can’t fill. Evensong fills it, bar billiards and banter fills it, but the mood still waits for me in my room at night.