The Greening (39 page)

“It sounds very New Ageist…,” I said.

“Many people would agree with you. Through prayer and meditation, one can become a channel for God’s light and love, sending it out to the world or to individuals who need help or healing. When we channel the light, we lift all humanity. Nothing is ever wasted. One person can change the world.”

“You know, I’m surprised that these ideas are accepted here,” I said.

“I’ve been very fortunate. Mother Abbess allows me to use my prayer in the way I believe I’m meant to use it. There are other orders where it would not be permitted. With Mother Abbess’s agreement, my whole life, everything I do, including my painting, is offered up as a prayer,” said Sister Eleanor.

After a few more moments of reflective silence, the Sister said, “I am so very grateful to you, Joanna. When I saw my journal yesterday I could hardly believe my eyes. I’ve prayed a great deal about it. I always felt that my experience of searching for Julian could be of
use to others. I believed that some day the right person would come across the journal and take up where I had left off; someone who would complete my story about the search for Julian and the truth of her message of God’s abiding love for each one of us.”

“But it’s your journal, Sister, and your story. Why don’t you complete it yourself?”

“Please call me Eleanor. I feel as though we’re friends. It seems that you became the absent friend to whom my journal was written. No, I’ve completed that part of my journey. My way is now a way of prayer – that is my contribution now. My life will be lived in this quiet place. But Julian’s message of love needs to be told out in the marketplace, by someone who lives in the everyday world.”

I did not know how to tell Eleanor that I was sure I was not the right person for the job. I said, “I wish I could bring you your original journal, but it can’t be found.”

“It’s not important. Who knows what may have become of it? Perhaps it still has work to do and when its time comes it will emerge. Someone will take it from a shelf full of books and begin her – or his – journey. One day, perhaps, the book that began it all, so many journeys, yours and mine, and who knows how many until now and in the years to come – Julian’s great book – will come to light in just the same way.

“Thanks to you, Joanna, God has answered my prayers wonderfully. Loose ends hamper the contemplative life. I wanted to see my journal again, so that I could finally close that chapter of my life, but there seemed no possibility of it ever happening. And yet, you have come here and put it into my hands. That is a small miracle – an everyday miracle, performed by the God of the Wayside.” Eleanor took my hand and said quietly, “Thank you”.

I looked out of the window, across the garden and at the marshes beyond. Eleanor said, “I love the view from here. There’s something about the East Anglian light; it has a particular quality. When I sit here, looking out across the land and sky, I feel I’m in the right place at the right time. From here, you do see the world in a different light.”

We sat together quietly for a few minutes; then Eleanor said, “The world is looking for love today perhaps more than ever before. I feel as though the planet is moving away from the old dominating energy, personified for some by an angry God, towards an awakening to his Motherhood and to the Christ light and life that manifested through Jesus – the traditional character of the Second Person of the Trinity, of wisdom and the Divine Feminine. That, perhaps, is the lady who has been lost for so many years and who is about to be found. This is Julian’s time, because now the world is ready for her message.”

After a few more moments of quiet reflection, Eleanor turned to me and asked, softly, “And what about you, Joanna? Have you found answers to your questions?”

“I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I’m meant to have only questions.”

We were both silent for a few more minutes; then Eleanor said, “What is it that you’re looking for?”

“Meaning, I suppose. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“And to feel about?” she asked softly.

Eleanor rose and came towards me. Bending down, she put her hand gently upon my arm. “Dear Joanna,” she said. “You have travelled so far and carried such a heavy burden. Let it go now.”

Suddenly the tears came flooding from me. I found myself sobbing like a child. Eleanor knelt down and gently took me in her arms and rocked me like a baby. We remained like that for several minutes, while the pain and anguish continued to pour out of me, in tears and in words, as Eleanor soothed me.

“I feel so alone. There seems to be no one and nothing I can turn to. I don’t know what the future holds. I feel as if I’ve just been abandoned, just been left here to struggle through as best I can. But whatever I do, however hard I try, nothing comes right and one year goes by after another and I never achieve anything worthwhile, I never have any certainty in my life, I’m always on the edge of a precipice, I’m always running hard, trying to catch up with what I should do and who I should be and where I should be. I’ve never not tried. I
want to belong somewhere, I want to know that what I can do is of use to someone, that there was some point in my coming to this planet. What I see and feel is pain and uncertainty and despair. I feel as though I’m trembling inside, all the time, and trying to get a grip on things and force some sense and meaning into my life. I want to know that my work is of value, that I am of value. I want to be happy. I want to be loved. And I am so, so tired…” I sat back in my chair and Eleanor gently released me from her embrace.

“What can I do? How can I change?” I asked.

“Love is his meaning. Love yourself. Dear Joanna, you are overwhelmed and exhausted. You have struggled alone for so many years, relying on yourself, trying always to do the right thing. God has let you come to a point where you simply cannot cope any longer, so that, at last, you will turn to him.” She smiled. “Only when God finally prises our hands off the driving wheel can he get into the driving seat and steer us in the right direction!

“You know, Joanna, Julian’s challenge is still waiting to be answered, by each of us: Do you believe that you are beloved through all eternity? When you believe that you are so loved, and put your trust in God, that is when your path will open up before you. All other roads lead nowhere. But first, you must let go. You must stop fretting and worrying, because while you do so you remain in charge and cannot find your direction. Let go. Then there will come a pause and in that pause something will move. You may find that different work awaits you. But if you continue with the wonderful work you do, how much better it will be if you do it not from anger and fear, but from love.”

I said, “I need to make some kind of sense of Paul’s death. If I can do that, then perhaps I can move forward.”

“Dear Joanna, go to that quiet place within yourself and you will find the answers there.”

The next few days passed peacefully. I spent my time walking in the garden, thinking and setting time aside for the quiet contemplation that Eleanor had recommended. By the time I was due to leave for
home I felt a great deal more at peace. I felt I was drawing into my life something substantial that would comfort and sustain me.

I telephoned for a taxi to collect me at two o’clock. My last half-hour was spent with Eleanor in the garden. We sat together, looking out across the marshes.

“You have brought me such a great gift, Joanna,” she said. “Because of you, my prayer life will now be fuller. My calling will be enriched, my contribution greater than it might have been had I not met you. And your work, out in the world, will also be blessed. Take Julian with you. Tell people about her. I believe that’s why she brought us together. She would like her message to be heard in the hustle and bustle of people’s troubled lives. She is saying to each of us, ‘You are beloved for all eternity. Believe it, for it is true. Accept this gift and place it in your heart and be at peace.’”

A few moments before my taxi was due to arrive we walked round to the front of the house. As we turned the corner, I heard the car’s engine and saw it draw up at the gate. Eleanor walked with me towards it. I suddenly remembered something I had meant to ask her. “When you said you heard the hymn, while you were in the water meadows at Winchester, did you mean that you actually heard it, or imagined it?”

“Something between the two, I suppose. I heard it, if you can understand, with my inner ear. Yes, I heard it,” said Eleanor.

“I think I understand.”

“I’m probably not explaining it very well. Perhaps you’ll experience something like it one day.”

I thought of the bird that sang in my garden after Paul had died.

I said, “I think perhaps I already have.”

Eleanor looked at me and smiled gently, as one might smile at a much-loved child. “God bless you,” she said. She took me in her arms and kissed me on the cheek and then, from her deep pocket, took out my copy of her journal and placed it in my hands.

I said, “I’m thinking of writing something about Julian. I’ve had a few ideas. I promise to do the best I can for her.”

“I know you will.” As I was about to get into the taxi, she said, “Wherever life takes you, Joanna, never forget that you have a friend here, in this quiet place…” She smiled. “A friend who was lost, but now is found.”

As the taxi pulled out through the gate and into the road, I turned to see Eleanor raise her hand in a gesture of farewell.

At home once more, I needed time to reflect upon my meeting with Eleanor. It felt like a completion, but also a beginning.

It suddenly seemed extraordinary that I had never been to look at the three copies of Julian’s book in the British Library. I determined to go as soon as possible and put a date in my diary for the following Wednesday. I rang the library, to arrange to view the manuscripts held there – the short text and two of the three long texts.

I travelled by train from Hampshire to Waterloo station, and then by underground across London, to King’s Cross station. I walked the short distance along the Euston Road towards the British Library. There, among millions of books, the three copies of Julian’s book awaited me. I felt excited at the prospect of handling the books that had brought Julian’s message safely through the centuries.

In the manuscript reading room, I selected a desk at which to work, gave its number to the librarian and waited. After a few minutes the three books were brought to me. For several minutes I could do no more than look at them. I hardly dared to touch them. I thought:
I am looking at some of the most precious things in the world
.

Is there another book in some library, hidden, forgotten, tucked away on a dusty shelf, kept safe for another time? Is it perhaps a book written in Julian’s own hand? Is it another, later version, with even more profound insights, the fruits of further years of contemplation by Julian? If so, it surely must resonate with a power
that will draw someone to it, some seeker after wisdom, as Serenus Cressy was drawn to the manuscript in the library in Paris more than three hundred years ago.

If the book exists, I hope there is someone, perhaps someone a little restless, whose life has left unsatisfied some quiet desire, who pauses on a cold winter night to look across the land into the unfathomable distance, searching for a particular star. I hope that he or she is already engaged in the quest for something hidden that will bring meaning.

I reflected again on the way in which precious things can be protected by being surrounded by ordinariness. To many people, Jesus was just another young man who would pass unnoticed in a crowd. Others, like the woman who touched the edge of his robe in order to be healed, knew him for what he was. Eleanor’s childhood image of the hidden primroses came into my mind.

The short text was in an anthology of late medieval religious writings – MSS Add. 37790, from the Amherst collection. It was copied in the mid-fifteenth century from an original dated 1413, which says that at that time Julian was still alive. It contained many partially illuminated capitals.

I handled the two long texts – the Sloane MS2499 and MS3705 – both dating from the seventeenth century, both copied in ink on parchment, simply, with no embellishments of gold leaf or colour.

It was the MS3705 that particularly touched me. It is copied in two hands, one neat, artistic and feminine; the other large, masculine, plainer, less careful, more daring. In the sweet, feminine hand there was the most wonderful sense of reverence, of such love. The scribe honoured and treasured the work that she or he copied. If you can read a personality in a hand, then I encountered a beautiful soul in this. There was something so diligent and quiet and true in the careful copying of, perhaps, Julian’s original work.

As the word “diligent” came into my mind, I was reminded of the homely figure in the line drawing on the cover of
Enfolded in Love
, and the way in which Julian writes of the mother’s hands being diligent about her child. The words describe so well the way
in which one’s hands are always busy about a small child – wiping a nose, handing a toy, caressing – with a ceaseless, watchful readiness that anticipates the child’s needs. How reassuring that constant, loving touching must be to the child who receives it.