‘Central to study is the acquisition of a memory. Yet this is not so that we may know many facts. We study the past so as to discover the seeds of an unimaginable future.' (Timothy Radcliffe OP. Sing a New Song.)
It is not only the bad occurrences that need experiencing only once to create their lifelong effects; our lives can be, and should be, changed utterly by the influence of God’s presence in receptive hearts, all forms of which are aspects of His making His home within us. Through His look, His touch, His word, His light, His strength, His protection, His direction, His forgiveness; through the fulfilment of every need we may have, He calls us to become wholly His. When His provision includes specific forms of human support, the experience is made more than a purely personal spiritual milestone by being firmly anchored in the physical realities of our lives. It leaves us with the knowledge – however incompletely we may interpret it – that whatever has happened within us is not meant to wholly separate us from the world in which we live, but has a bearing on our willingness to contribute to the conforming of mankind to God’s will, and on our ability to influence the workings of our world in some way.
I do not look back as frequently as once I did, and I no longer make any conscious decision to do so, but parts of my experience over a relatively short period, while having receded from their prominent position in my mind, still live as meaningful turning points in my life. They will not release me from the grip in which they first held me in spite of all peripheral attachments and emotions having been laid to rest years ago. Their continued prominence in my life, coupled with the ever increasing certainty that all that has resulted from blessings received at that time did, and still does, move me forward in the direction God wills for me, has not only made the marker into a milestone, but has turned the milestone into something even more significant. It has almost become a monument: one of the rocks upon which I have been rebuilt. Using the idea of a monument – even the mere use of the word – at once brings to mind the unwanted suggestion of misplaced significance, and even hints at a form of idolatry, but there is nothing to be doubted in what I experienced, in what I recall, and in the power still emanating from the memories of that time. Even the thoughts involved in my writing about it now are somehow part of my present rather than of my past; I have not called them up by looking back and searching for them. They have brought themselves forward with the passage of time, maintaining their undiluted presence within my day-to-day life and continually merging more completely with the awareness of God’s presence in my life, which began with those now rather distant events.
The milestone had been something I could locate and return to whenever I wished; something in the past; it became a monument when it was no longer necessary to look back and reflect to link it to the present day, but became part of the present, clearly visible without having to even glance back in time. Dwelling on such ever-present and maturing realities will not immobilize and confine us, nor leave us indifferent and unconcerned if we judge their source aright. They will teach us, enable us, and play a confirming role in our quest for freedom.
The freedom we seek includes being freed from the grip of all unreal, unwanted and unholy memories and their associated distractions and attachments: from all that can be discerned as not having come from God. Quite unlike the memories some people have of their ‘worst of times’, but also not of God, are some of those peripheral happenings which become entwined with an awareness of the central Truth and Power of Goodness in our lives, and then embedded in the remembered feeling of the experience. These can be unrecognizable and inseparable from the underlying truth during their manifestation, and even after some considerable time, when their lack of worth has been recognized, they can remain as part of the experience from which we are just not willing to break away. In time, and with perseverance, our recognition becomes acknowledgement of their true place in the mosaic of memories, and our ability to refine our assessment and memory of events grows in keeping with our increasing spiritual maturity.
After my own spiritual awakening, it was a long time before I could fully separate the fruit of my experience from the superficial and superfluous blanket with which I had unwittingly cloaked it. I have been reminded of the stages in that process by a recent visit to Douai Abbey.
It is some time since I last called in there; the place where I spent my last five years of schooling, and the monastery from which had come the Benedictine monks who had served as my parish priests for so long; (though the last in that Benedictine provision was a much loved member of the Downside community).
The opportunity arose when driving home alone from London, and now that Stanbrook has moved out of easy reach to Yorkshire, the thought that Douai may provide me with a focussed space for prayer and the quiet pondering of questions, brought me to the Abbey doors once more. There was also the chance that I may have seen the monk who had been my parish priest during that immensely important stage of my journey, and whose words had set the whole process in motion.
The small amount of looking back I did while there was a quiet flicking through pages that formed much of that worthless blanket under which I had half-hidden the wonderful reality of what had happened to me, and the whole train of thought was begun when I wondered what may have happened to something I had left there years ago. Had someone found it? If so, was it one of the monks? - a lay parishoner who may have been cleaning the church? – a visitor? And having found it, had they retained it or had they thrown it away? What happened to it does not matter; the important thing is that it is gone from my life, but I felt that if the finder had kept it, or had at least wondered where it had come from and why it was there, I would like him or her to hear the story behind it.
But, in thinking that, as in my writing about it now, I also wonder whether I am once more making both the object and the story behind it significant in ways that will draw me away from the truth and the grace received at that time. The one way to negate these potential distractions must be to lay them open for all to see. It would be so easy for some people to simply ask about it, but I continue to hold back in so many ways. What I can do however, is briefly tell the story here. Something may come of it, though it will not matter one way or the other, as the distraction will probably fade into oblivion with the telling.
And that, after all, is where it belongs.
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