Since its inception, my Benedictine friendship has included long periods without any contact. That is true in general terms – with my lifelong connection with Stanbrook Abbey and the later influence of time spent at Douai – as well as with the particular friend on whom my thoughts are presently focussed. Whenever such periods come to an end I am always surprised, usually concerned, and frequently disturbed by the sudden realization of how long they have been. As months passed, receiving a note, a card or a short email would prick my conscience, though even without one of those prompts a discomfort would arise, and I would begin a series of gradually more persistent ‘reminders to self’ to arrange to meet with her. And still more time would slip away, until I finally got round to doing the simplest and easiest of things: picking up the telephone. We would speak briefly, and fix a date and time for meeting. When that time came our meeting and talking would feel as though we had seen each other only a few days earlier, and even that we were picking up the same conversation where we had left off. Afterwards I would always be left with a feeling of having been spiritually recharged or topped up in some way.
For too many years these meetings have been almost my only meaningful spiritual contact with anybody, and that has made the long absences both more remarkable and more troubling. And in writing of it I feel that I am either contradicting myself or denying some relevant but unrecognized truth. ‘Troubling’ is the word which has become my perplexity for today.
I am as puzzled as ever as to how these long gaps occur. It would be easy to add that I am also as puzzled as to why, but for the most part, my conscience has always experienced the how and the why as being pretty much the same thing: slightly different responses to my semi-automatic and recurring feelings of guilt and shame. The mild confusion over what is going on is prolonged and made more demanding of further thought by the fact that those feelings, while being real, immediate and more or less continuous, are themselves never more than mild. It is as though something grips me by the shoulder asking, “Why the guilt?” ... “For what do you feel ashamed?” ... “Do you not understand better than that by now?” At which point I inwardly cringe at being reminded of how long it is since first beginning to wonder what I am called to do ... and that is it; nothing more. I look around, and wherever I happen to be, I find myself standing as in the middle of nowhere, wondering why I am talking to myself. And the guilt subsides. The title, ‘Soliloquy at the Very Edge’, continues to suit much more than just the feel of writing here.
My lack of contact seems contrary to everything I feel and experience as wanting and needing, and yet, with the repetition of both the long absences and my declared amazement at their length, it is gradually becoming clearer that it is only one half of me that truly wants such friendships to involve more frequent contact. I can trace a trail of that apparent character-trait running through my life from almost as far back as I can remember, though it is only now that I am starting to fully take note of it. These days, I sense it as being connected with my apparently endless inability to discern what I am meant to be doing as part of God’s work in this world.
As has always been the case, once my mind is focussed on this particular friend it feels that I have never been away; though it is no longer a question of arranging a time to meet, as her community's relocation has now placed us many miles apart.
It has often struck me as strange that the lengthy gaps in our contact have always been an apparently contradictory source of peace for me. It must have much to do with the fact that our friendship is genuine; that we do not forget each other when we are not in contact, and that we know we share something of infinite importance. The timelessness of that ‘something’ has spread its peace into our friendship in such a way that whether present or absent to each other, that peace remains unchanged and unbreakable. And that is the overriding quality of the gift we have been given. Clearly it is not of this world.
Absence, it seems, does not so much make the heart grow fonder, as make no difference whatsoever to friendships built upon truths beyond merely human contact and trust and shared interests. Any insecurity or hesitation in an otherwise apparently perfect friendship, will almost certainly be caused by some impurity in the relationship. Not necessarily – as frequently coming to mind at once for many of us – impure as in forms of attraction that have distinct and unbefitting sexual overtones, or, perhaps more dangerously, indistinct and unadmitted undercurrents of a similar and equally inappropriate nature, but lacking the purity of purpose and shared desire to journey together towards the one goal that has meaning beyond the sensed confines of our lives.
I am as puzzled as ever as to how these long gaps occur. It would be easy to add that I am also as puzzled as to why, but for the most part, my conscience has always experienced the how and the why as being pretty much the same thing: slightly different responses to my semi-automatic and recurring feelings of guilt and shame. The mild confusion over what is going on is prolonged and made more demanding of further thought by the fact that those feelings, while being real, immediate and more or less continuous, are themselves never more than mild. It is as though something grips me by the shoulder asking, “Why the guilt?” ... “For what do you feel ashamed?” ... “Do you not understand better than that by now?” At which point I inwardly cringe at being reminded of how long it is since first beginning to wonder what I am called to do ... and that is it; nothing more. I look around, and wherever I happen to be, I find myself standing as in the middle of nowhere, wondering why I am talking to myself. And the guilt subsides. The title, ‘Soliloquy at the Very Edge’, continues to suit much more than just the feel of writing here.
My lack of contact seems contrary to everything I feel and experience as wanting and needing, and yet, with the repetition of both the long absences and my declared amazement at their length, it is gradually becoming clearer that it is only one half of me that truly wants such friendships to involve more frequent contact. I can trace a trail of that apparent character-trait running through my life from almost as far back as I can remember, though it is only now that I am starting to fully take note of it. These days, I sense it as being connected with my apparently endless inability to discern what I am meant to be doing as part of God’s work in this world.
As has always been the case, once my mind is focussed on this particular friend it feels that I have never been away; though it is no longer a question of arranging a time to meet, as her community's relocation has now placed us many miles apart.
It has often struck me as strange that the lengthy gaps in our contact have always been an apparently contradictory source of peace for me. It must have much to do with the fact that our friendship is genuine; that we do not forget each other when we are not in contact, and that we know we share something of infinite importance. The timelessness of that ‘something’ has spread its peace into our friendship in such a way that whether present or absent to each other, that peace remains unchanged and unbreakable. And that is the overriding quality of the gift we have been given. Clearly it is not of this world.
Absence, it seems, does not so much make the heart grow fonder, as make no difference whatsoever to friendships built upon truths beyond merely human contact and trust and shared interests. Any insecurity or hesitation in an otherwise apparently perfect friendship, will almost certainly be caused by some impurity in the relationship. Not necessarily – as frequently coming to mind at once for many of us – impure as in forms of attraction that have distinct and unbefitting sexual overtones, or, perhaps more dangerously, indistinct and unadmitted undercurrents of a similar and equally inappropriate nature, but lacking the purity of purpose and shared desire to journey together towards the one goal that has meaning beyond the sensed confines of our lives.
'For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.' (Matthew 18:20)
Wherever and whenever the right persons meet together, He is there. I find that utterly undeniable. When people are constantly aware of His presence in their lives they do not need to declare that they meet in His name; nor do they need to consciously focus on making that a reality; the reality is there: it is impossible for them to meet in any other way. Nothing can get in the way of such a three cornered relationship precisely because it has all three of us. No doubt such friendships come into being, and thrive, and last, for the awesomely powerful reason that each person brings Christ to the table with them. And apparent differences between such friends – which may give rise to incredulity in others who find their friendship unfathomable – can be obliterated within the relationship by other shared but intangible factors.
John Henry Newman, in his sermon on Christian Sympathy, gives us a clear pointer to one contributory reason for this compatibility and close fellowship between particular Christians.
‘ ...whereas their sense of the heinousness of sin rises with their own purity, those who are holiest will speak of themselves in the same terms as impure persons use about themselves; so that Christians, though they really differ much, yet as regards the power of sympathising with each other will be found to be on a level. The one is not too high or the other too low. They have common ground; ...’
Wherever we may be on our own personal journeys, we can be unified beyond all expectations by the very fact that we are committed to our journeying. The paths we follow, though for the most part very much our own, traverse that common ground as they lead us to the Holy Ground on which we all long to stand. There is no way around it: its seemingly vast expanse has to be crossed; and to hope or attempt to travel beyond it without walking beside others for at least part of the crossing is to turn away from one of the central reasons for the existence of the community we have come to know as the Church.
Having progressed this far: having reached the point where we know we are among those who have been sent, we should also know that we have not been sent out alone.
Both in time and out of it; when called to be God's provision for others, and when in need of His provision for ourselves; when together and when apart; we have need of each other.
