Today would have been James’s 95th birthday. He died quickly and peacefully at home just a fortnight ago, on a warm Autumn evening, 26 October, comfortable, cared for, and surrounded by love.
Continue reading 11 November 2022
Tristram
In the course of my long life there have been many people who have had a deep influence on me, and many from whom I have learned. One such was Tristram Beresford who farmed five thousand acres, and was agricultural correspondent for the Financial Times (for which he was awarded an OBE). What very few of his readers knew was that he was also a mystic; every morning before going to work he would spend three hours reading and meditating. Thinking how life is an ongoing journey, I recall the following remark of his:
The journey is from A-Z. I doubt if we get as far as Z in this lifetime; but it is a place from which we can look back and remember how it felt to be at the beginning of the journey. I conceive of Z as the ultimate state of perfect certainty – a complete absence of all doubt.
Journey’s end
Louder sing!
Letting go
I recall something I was once told by a physiotherapist who worked with the dying at a hospice in Hereford. She had observed that the people who had the easiest deaths were those who, throughout their lives, had learned to accept many smaller deaths, such as the death of a loved one, or an ambition, or the loss of some physical ability; whereas those who had fought against any kind of loss or change had the most difficult passing. Right up to the end it is important to learn how to let go. Once again, through the simple practice of meditation we can learn how to be open to change and how to move on.
A personal reflection
Although these reflections will not appear until 2025, I am in fact writing them in February 2022. This is my 94th year and I realise that I may not be here when they eventually come to be sent out … which prompts me to offer a reflection to those approaching old age. We are told to respect the elderly. This does not, however, mean we should be unduly subservient to them (to us I should say.) I am fortunate to have as a lodger a friend who, while keeping a watchful and caring eye on me, does not hesitate to challenge me occasionally. I try to be grateful for such feedback; but occasionally I am piqued! My ego has been pricked! But that is good, for one is still learning, right up to the end. As T.S. Eliot says in the Four Quartets: ‘Old men should be explorers still’.
The ear of the heart
By learning to listen with what St Benedict calls ‘the ear of the heart’ we learn also to become more sensitive to the tone of voice in other people. Someone telephones us or calls by out of the blue and starts chattering away. If we are alert we may detect from the tone of their voice that what they really want is to speak about something else – and so we wait patiently. Our task then is to listen wholeheartedly, not to rush in with good advice! More often than not it is the depth and quality of our listening that enables the other person to find their own solution.
Compassion
Many people make donations to good causes such as poverty and famine relief, medical research, the RSPCA, and to charities assisting the ever increasing number of refugees. But there is another aspect of compassion which is much more personal.
When someone asks to share with us some problem or dilemma, we have to identify with them, get under their skin as it were, to empathise with them. We may not be able to find an immediate answer for their issue but by listening wholeheartedly their burden is often lightened. Once again, it is through the simple practice of meditation, of learning to listen within, that we become more aware and better able to hear the needs of others.
Saints alive
We tend to place saints on a pedestal as paragons of virtue way beyond the rest of us, whereas in fact all of us, saints as well as common mortals, begin as a mass of imperfections which gradually we weave into a whole, becoming ever more integrated as human beings.
A perfect example is Dorothy Day. After much promiscuity and drifting in her early life she went on to found the Catholic Worker Movement, setting up houses all across America where members could live for free, and providing services for drop-outs, alcoholics and vagrant people. In this way she put into practice Jesus’ command to love her neighbour as herself, and became fully realised as an individual in the process.
Holiness is wholeness.
The pearl of great price
Jesus speaks of ‘the pearl of great price’ and exhorts us to seek it. We do not, however, find it through obedience to a prescribed set of ethics: ‘Do this. Don’t do that.’ Rather, we are called to be free, and freedom involves discovery. Each of us is a unique person and our task is to fulfil our particular destiny. We can only do this through suffering and joy, disillusion and fulfilment. Thus we find the pearl of great price and learn that the kingdom of heaven lies within us. At the end of our lives we should be able to say, like Jesus, ‘Abba, I have done the work which you gave me to do.’
Visitations
Someone once wrote to me asking if I believed in spiritualism:
I have been puzzled for seven years now about a vision I had twelve days after my husband died. I suddenly became aware that he was standing before me. He wasn’t a ghost but was quite solid, and he stayed there for two or three seconds. He was smiling the special smile he always kept for me. I wasn’t afraid – just amazed. So I leaned forward and spoke his name – and he’d gone! I felt much happier afterwards and thought he had come back to say he was alright and to say goodbye. I feel he is still nearby and keeping an eye on me. I can see him still after seven years.
I too have had a similar experience. Such visions are recognised as belonging to an entirely different order than that of the imagination, leaving a deep sense of contentment. And they are far more common than is often realised. My belief is that the dead are often allowed to visit us, sometimes in dreams, and to reassure us in this way, and then they are gone, to set about their own tasks, for the work of redeeming the cosmos is unending.