A Garden of Trees (32 page)

17

Marius came to stay with me. In the mornings he went out early to do the business that still detained him in England, and I had the room to myself in which to work. In the afternoons I usually saw Alice. We sometimes had tea together.

One day when Marius was out Father Jack came to see me. He was an old man, but he climbed the stairs rapidly talking all the time and his small wrinkled face showed no sign of fatigue. He sat down and he did not notice the room at all, it might have been beautiful to him. He said:

“The trouble is that you do not understand the position, you do not understand it at all, you look upon the Church as a team of hospitable cricketers, a home for stray sufferers, an army of thin crusaders doing battle against the flesh. You see some special significance in the numbers that this army contains, in the individual behaviour of some of its members, in the errors that they may make. You talk of this significance as if it affected the function that is proper to an army. It does not. An army has its function no matter what its numbers and its mistakes. You imagine that we are engaged upon some game of tip-and-run with immorality, that we have charms to dispense with pain, that we are fighting for the truth and are concerned about our chances of victory. We are not. What you must realize is this, and this is everything, that whatever war we are fighting it is not one of which the issue is still in doubt. We are not marching towards truth because the truth has been given to us. We do not struggle for victory because the victory has already been won. We know the truth. We enjoy the victory. Our function now, if you like to use these metaphors, is that of a triumphant army in occupation of the world.

“You do not know these things because as a child you did not listen or else you were not taught. The world is full of people who have received no instruction or who have ignored it, and who do not know what Christianity is about. Many of these are settled firmly in a way of life that seems satisfactory to them, and when instruction is offered it is most often incapable of being heard. Others are not settled and are interested in instruction, but their condition of bewilderment is seldom one which can advantageously be used. A man must come to his own conclusions, he must not be persuaded by the rhetoric of a priest. There are practical considerations in this, as well as ethical ones. A conversion against a man's conscience is not a true conversion, and the results of it are dangerous for everyone concerned. A priest is dealing normally with practising Christians, and his function is one of service to the Christian Church. Instruction is given to children because that is the time for instruction; ministration is given to adults in the pattern of what they believe. It is true that now, in the conditions around us, the pattern is upset and the world is not normal. These are conditions which are unfortunate but which do not affect the position of the Church. Its function remains the same.

“This function you can learn to understand and practise or you need not learn to understand. That is up to you. It is quite a simple function, of love and worship, which begins with the sacraments and extends to the whole of life. You can learn it if you wish. I hope you do. But what I would say to you is this, that it is what a man believes that is important. I would rather a man lived faithfully by what he believes than attempted to persuade himself of what he does not. A synthesis of persuasion is useless: an antithesis of truth is not. This is perhaps what you will recognize. There is something of the truth in every man, however contradictory expressions of it may appear. It is this truth that can be respected: I should say more than this,—it can be loved. The claim that the Church makes, you see, is a very large one after all;—it claims that if every man will observe and honour the truth that is in him, then there is not much more that need be done. The Church, as it were, is doing the rest. It is working for the world in the only way possible for it. There is a good deal of confidence in this, and certainty. This is what you will learn to understand. Do I make myself clear?”

Marius came back in the evenings and he looked at me with eyes that curiously had no depth. It was difficult to talk to him. He said:

“Yes, I know Father Jack, he is a good man, a very good man, he is what they call their West End turn, does that shock you? I know what you mean, I didn't think he would help you, but don't let anything shock you until you know what it is about. Then you will see that he is a very good man, and not a spider—didn't he say so?—not a spider to entwine you. I do not think that he is the person for you to talk to, however, and I? no, of course not, I am not the person, but you know where you can go.

“In one way at least I think I am like Father Jack. The life of everyone is like a circle and at one stage you stand on the circumference looking inwards and you search for the centre and the centre is not there. Then you find it and you turn outwards because the centre is established and you don't have to search for it any more. You stand on the circumference looking outwards and outwardly your life becomes quite a passionless business, to do what ought to be done, and in the centre because it is established the passion is not seen. Passion is not often discernible in a thing that does not move. Passion in sculpture needs a specialist's eye to observe it. If you have not these eyes then you think it is dead. And it is not easy for some to turn inwards again.

“Perhaps I am dead, I say this for the last time, for the last time I go back into the centre, I do not think I am dead. But whatever has happened in me is established and I do not feel those things anymore. I am sorry about Annabelle, you do not know how sorry I am, but being in love is not necessarily a condition of marriage, she knew this better than I did, but we did not know it at the time. Marriage is when you find each other at the centre, and we could not pretend for us this was true. I could not give this to her and I cannot give what you want to you, because there are only certain things within my capacity. These I will try to do, and the rest leave to others. There is much for which I shall have to ask to be forgiven, as you must know.

“Perhaps there are only certain things in Father Jack's capacity, too. Perhaps he feels that reality is what it ought to be, and that it is unreality when it is not. He distinguished between what is becoming and what is. This is what you must do. There are others to whom you can talk. I think that you understand this, I think you know what I mean by being passionless and turned outwards and waiting. I think that when you have found your centre there will be a great deal for you to do. When I left Alice's house she said a strange thing to me, she said that you could not corrupt other people even though you tried to. Perhaps this is true. She meant that you did something else to them. I think that you will go further than I have done because you have the ability, and I have had to wipe out so much that I sometimes think that there is not much left of me anyway. I am not a Christian, not really a Christian. There are just certain things that I have to do each day and I have to have a standard by which to do them. When you have no emotions you have to have reasons. My marriage died. But one day you will go into the centre and the emotion that has taken you there will be a living one and then when you are turned outwards your life will be joy. It will be something, this, in the despair of the world, to know the vanity of it. The remedy for despair lies in possessing the means for action; and the means, at the centre, is what you will find.”

Mr. Palmerston was staying in a small bare room in Notting Hill. At night he wore a skull-cap made of wool. He sat leaning backwards with his hands between his knees. He said:

“I cannot teach you, teaching is not relevant to you, what is it that you believe? Teaching is only for those who believe already. You believe in nothing? My friend if you believe in nothing then death is the end of life and life is nothing and that is not possible, that life is not possible, because you know about this life, you have eyes to see this life, you know the evil of it. Man is evil my friend you know he is evil, I am not here to talk about sin, I tell you, you know about sin there is no need of me to talk about it. Sin is humanity and I tell you that it is impossible for humanity not to sin, that is the pill that you have to swallow, again and again you have to tell yourself things, that it is impossible for humanity not to sin. And therefore there is one thing and one thing alone that humanity can do, and that is to plead for the absolution from this sin and to remember the triumph that is the justification of its plea, the triumph of a life that did not sin and yet which died in the way that sinners die to make a triumph for them. Upon one day and between the hours of darkness and light there was given to this world its salvation and its redemption. It has been given no other.

“You say that you want no salvation, that you need no redemption, that you will take the responsibility for what you have done and you will live out each day of your life in misery for it. And I say to what end do you do this, to what end do you desire this misery? You do not desire misery for the sake of misery, you cannot, you desire misery so that truth may come in its place. And I say that this is the most foolish dream of the world, it is the dream of the mad dog barking for the moon, because you have no hope for it, no hope at all, because the mad dog cannot fly and you are human. If you wish to make yourself sufficient for your responsibilities that is an aim as wild as the moon and you will miss it, you will fail, you will end up in delusion and that is the greatest sin of all. You will think you have reached the moon because you will have stared at it so long that it will have blinded you, the image that you will hold in your arms will be the deception of your eyes. It is you who have talked of failure and I tell you that this is the most terrible failure of all because it is deliberate, it is the deliberate will to failure arising out of pride. It is the sin that we call unforgivable, and this is why we call it unforgivable, because it can only be committed by those who have seen the moon and who have had an opportunity to worship it and who in its light have decided to deride it. In envy they bark at it and in hatred they blind their eyes. If for one moment you will look into yourself with the eyes that you turn upon others you will see this, you will see this choice, the choice between humble worship and the mad and bloody hound. You still have eyes left, then do this for me, look into yourself as you look into the world and then dare to say that you can tell what is your truth and what are your responsibilities, dare to say that you can bear them, dare to say that you are so much less mad than the world is that you can bring light to it! Remember, you are responsible for everything! Look now and tell me what it is you see that is so powerful!

“And if you look and truly say as you are saying now that you can do nothing, that alone you can do nothing, then there is still something that you can do. Alone you are mad and useless as are dogs that chase their tails around the gutter, but you have a choice, you have a choice which even a dog has, you can do what you are told. And for you who know your uselessness, who in your own words for a year have lived in madness is this not a possible thing to do and even a necessary one, to give yourself up to that which can bear what you will never be able to bear, which can do within you what alone you will never be able to do, which can give you the moon when you do not even desire it? When you come upon beauty you have not asked for beauty and yet beauty is there, and when you see it it possesses you and what is beautiful is this, that you have given yourself up to it, that you are yourself no longer, that there is within you a gift that is greater. In all beauty there is something within you and something outside of you and something which exists between you and the world. In all love there is this threefold existence, the giving and the receiving and the gift itself. This existence is God. What you give to God is given back to you and this gift is a greatness beyond compare. That to which you have given is given within you and the gift is a fulfillment of freedom and love. This is what love is, and this is what freedom is, and this is God. But God has given already, and it is for you to receive Him. To receive Him you have to give yourself and this is the choice. You can live as a madman chained to his lunacy or as an angel free in the service of love. You have no freedom now except this choice.

“You have no freedom. You have said that you are a machine. You cannot talk about your failures or successes because you are living as a machine and not as a man. Only a man has freedom, who has chosen love. Until you have made your choice this futility will continue, you will never know what happens and what there is to be done. And for us who have chosen, who have attempted to make the choice, do not talk to us about our failures or successes because failures may be triumphs and it is not for you to say. Nor is it for you to presume that we should live our lives in misery; when here, now, there is a joy such as you have never dreamed of, once and for all and always there is this joy that was given at the moment of time, the greatest triumph in history that is the whole of history, the point of triumph of eternity. And when there is this triumph and this justification and this redemption it is not for us to be miserable, it is for us to do our duty to our neighbour, yes, but this duty is not what you would make it out to be, the comfort of sickness by pretending there is no health;—it is simply the living of lives in the light of this triumph and saying over and over again in every corner of the earth that there is this triumph and there is this light and that all a man must do is to lift up his eyes in humility to it. This is what we do. Man does not require comfort, he only partly requires aid, what he requires is absolution. Sin exists and man lives in sin, there is no real aid other than this absolution. This is what we work for. And when you have realized this and have lifted up your eyes to the light of this absolution then and only then will you realize what this world is and what is the perfection of it. You will realize then that everything in the world is beautiful, that every horror and every terror and every pain in every corner of the world is beautiful, that it is beautiful because it is known by God, because God himself has suffered it, and then you will understand. You will understand everything, you will understand even this,—that when the lion eats the heart of the deer, yes, that is beautiful; that when the hangman puts the noose around the neck of his innocent victim and the floor drops and the tongue comes out and the neck screams as it is torn from the shoulders, yes, that is beautiful. You will realize that even the hangman is beautiful. Think of this when you talk about misery. Then you will know the meaning of that moment in eternity.”