Absolute Truths. Susan Howatch

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       SIX

      ‘Oh God, save me from myself, save me from myself … this masterful self which manipulates your creation … this self which throws the thick shadow of its own purposes and desires in every direction in which I try to look, so that I cannot see what it is that you, my Lord and God, are showing to me. Teach me to stand out of my own light, and let your daylight shine.’

      AUSTIN FARRER

      Warden of Keble College, Oxford, 1960–1968

       Said or Sung

      I

      I had met Jon in 1937 at the time of my first catastrophe, an event which I have discreetly alluded to as a spiritual breakdown. I judge it unnecessary to describe this episode in detail here, so I shall merely say that although I never lost my faith I became for a time incapable of functioning as a priest. This nightmare was the result of various psychological conflicts which Jon helped me to resolve. He was then still a monk, the abbot of the Fordites’ Grantchester house where I made a prolonged retreat in order to master my problems.

      At the time of my second catastrophe – my capture by the Germans at Tobruk – Jon had left the Fordite Order and was living in the Starbridge diocese with his second wife. It was here, in 1945, that he again played a vital role in steering me back to spiritual health, and since I owed him so much it was not surprising that I tended in those days to view him through rose-tinted spectacles. But as the years passed I realised that although he was a most gifted priest he was not without his problems and failings.

      Jon did not leave the Order because he wished to remarry. His departure, approved by his superior, was in response to a call from God to return to the world in order to use his gifts on a larger stage, and after many trials and tribulations he was led to the Starbridge Theological College which he ran most successfully in the years immediately after the war. (It was only after his retirement that the College descended into the mess which I had to mop up when I became bishop in 1957.) This post-war career of Jon’s primarily exploited his gifts as a leader and teacher, and it was not until he retired from his position as principal that he was able to concentrate solely on his favourite work: spiritual direction.

      Let me now say something about the qualities which made Jon such an original priest. He was a mystic – by which I mean he was one of that army of people, existing in all religions, who understand themselves and the world in the light of direct experiences of God. Such people do not fit easily into conventional ecclesiastical structures, as their individuality is at odds with institutional life, but the best Christian mystics, the ones who have been able to explore their special knowledge of God to the full by attaining a holy, disciplined life, are always those who have managed to integrate themselves into the institutional life of the Church. The mystic who insists on steering his own course runs the risk of isolation, self-centredness and delusions of grandeur, and this is never more true than for those mystics who are psychics. Not all mystics are psychics and not all psychics are mystics, but there is a degree of overlapping between the two. Both groups tune in to the unseen, but mystics do not necessarily experience the paranormal phenomena which are considered by all spiritual masters to be more of a hindrance than a help to those following the spiritual way. I should stress that neither psychic powers nor mystical inclinations guarantee spiritual health. Any gift can be prostituted; or as Jon would say, anyone can dedicate their gifts to the Devil.

      Jon was one of those mystics who are also psychic, but he had long since dedicated his psychic gifts to God’s service and he kept a firm grip on them by operating within a strict framework of Anglo-Catholic religious practice. Before I met Jon I did not believe in psychic powers. I still do find it hard to believe some of the things that appear to go on in defiance of rational expectations, but since I had become a bishop I had learnt that pastoral help is consistently sought by people whose lives have been made miserable by paranormal phenomena, and that although most of the cases prove capable of a rational explanation, there remains a group for which no explanation is possible. As an academic theologian I am not at all keen on this state of affairs, but unfortunately the phenomena do not depend for their existence on whether or not I happen to be keen on them. Jon helped me to keep an open mind and restrained my urge to retreat into a furious scepticism.

      His own psychic speciality was telepathy, which stood him in good stead in his counselling, and he was also a clairvoyant, occasionally experiencing visions. He never spoke of these gifts to me until we had been friends for at least twenty years, although I had suspected from the start that his insight into my problems hinted at the existence of rather more than a well-developed intuition. For a brief time in the 1940s he had been involved in the ministry of healing and deliverance, but this had ended in disaster and he had always refused to take an active part in helping me solve paranormal problems.

      As an academic theologian of the twentieth СКАЧАТЬ