Dear Jeff –
You are in a very serious stretch of life right now and though it might sound grandiose or question-begging, (or a strange mixture of both) it’s nonetheless also absolutely true that you are drawing closer to one of the central mysteries of existence. It’s because of this that I thought I really had to write you a letter that I wouldn’t otherwise write. One that spoke about something I haven’t talked about with you at all really for a very long time.
There are 1001 things about life, reality, the whole schbang, that I know absolutely bugger all about. Despite this, and the fact that in many ways I am no great shakes, there are nonetheless some areas of experience that I have been privileged to witness that many other people haven’t and when you are between a rock and a hard place, I think it could be important to give an account of something of that experience. I’m just going to talk about one – it might even be that I mentioned this to you back in the 80’s (close to when it happened) but I don’t think I did, and I certainly don’t think I went into full detail about it.
Some time in 1980 or 81, I went to hear a talk on one of the most interesting and complex of the so-called Fathers of the Church (a man called St.Maximus the Confessor that the Western church has only recently started to learn about – he writes about the Vision of God and human theosis or deification).
This was in a place off the Banbury Road in North Oxford that they used to do various Patristic and Orthodox stuff in, and the lecture that I went to had an audience of twenty or so people. This was in full head of hair days, and looking like a Motorhead roadie made me somewhat self-conscious as I moved into the large room and thought about where to sit.
I went for somewhere roughly in the middle of things, and was sat quietly waiting, when an old lady made her way over and took the chair next to me. From her chat to some of other people in the room it was clear she was an old Russian émigré who was more or less a regular at these things, and who obviously knew many of the people there. I think she nodded at me when she sat down, but aside from that we didn’t have any communication at all. I wasn’t exactly dismissive of her presence, but turning my attention in her direction, my nose caught a slight but still distinctive ‘Old-Lady’ smell (pee and whatever) and although it wasn’t powerfully off-putting it was powerfully down-to-earth and made me think of absolutely NOTHING to do with err, transcendence / divinity / engodded humans or whatever else might be classed under the extraordinary or miraculous and wonderful, blah, blah.
‘Oh bless her,’ thought I, ‘she isn’t one of those Holy Ruskie types you read about, she’s just a real, run of the mill, old woman . . ho hum . .’. That took less than a few seconds, and I then turned my attention elsewhere, looked serious, and waited for the talk to begin, which, after a few more minutes, it duly did.
The talk was good and very interesting, but as well as involving a discussion of the contemplative life of this famous ascetic figure, it was also very complicated, because Maximus is a thinker of the first order, and the ‘spirituality’ that he practiced and wrote about is a richly complex business.
I can’t remember what particular point had been reached in the talk, but I was aware of the lecture having reached an especially difficult area, and that I was trying VERY hard to follow the points that were being made…just at this time I started to feel an awareness of something taking place to my left hand side (which is where the old lady was sitting) and when I turned my thoughts away from the bloke talking in front of me, and down to my left-hand side (leg and arm next to the old woman) I suddenly started to feel a tremendous burning sensation running all along and down my left-hand side.
All at once I thought, ‘WHAT IS THAT ??’ and also ‘IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS ??’ and, as I started to turn my head to look at the woman (through whom or in whom this burning was emanating from) I realised that this wasn’t ‘a deeply unusual religious – thing that you read about’, it wasn’t a generic, abstract splurge of ‘The spiritual’, it was the presence of the Living God and it was burning away to the side of me (with REAL heat).
Though part of me absolutely wanted to turn around and look at her properly to see her/ see God in her, I was checked by a deep sense of unworthiness, and kept my eyes lowered in a humble and absolutely heartfelt prayer.
Some amazing things happened in the room directly after this – the entire room blizzarded with gold / different vistas of reality opening out / archangelic beings unfolding their wings – yes, I mean it !! but the experiential feel of all of this on the skin and to your body and mind as you sat there was like a Nuclear bomb going off (and then some) and it was the old lady’s illumination that was at the centre of it. The POWER of this was like sitting in the middle of enormous explosions as they went off in slow motion, but the whole of it was utterly pure and utterly innocent and utterly loving, however weird that sounds when you read it in words…
It was and is, one of the most important things that has ever happened to me in my life.
This was on a pleasant afternoon having had nothing stronger than a cup of tea. I hadn’t been experiencing anything in particular before it or after it, and I wasn’t screwing up my psyche in order to experience X or generate Y – it just happened.
I had never seen or heard anything about the old lady before, but I subsequently found out she was called Militsa Zernov and either she or her husband (who had apparently died some years before) was under consideration for canonization by the Orthodox church. I don’t exactly spend much time considering contemporary Sainthood, but she’d get my vote I tell you . . .
Going some way back, I know I’m associated with psychoactive journeys and having mind – blowing this that and the others, which is one of the things that made me want to tell you about an experience of God’s reality that had absolutely nothing to with drugs of any kind.
Recounting this happening will give rise to 1001 questions I know. Likewise, me writing it down here doesn’t provide a magic carpet for scooting us up and away from the problem of suffering, or help us explain why there is such evil and pain in the world or answer any number of other, perfectly sane, justifiable and outraged questions that any reasonable person would want to ask in the face of the often appalling elements of this earthly existence. But this experience and many others that I’ve had and that have been related to it, have shown me that love and truth and goodness do actually matter and that, despite the ‘well-meant’ intentions of inexperienced conceptualists, there is only one way to God. (This, however infinite in number the pathways to that road might be, and that’s important, even if I start sounding like a bloody God squadders’ Sat Nav)
Two weeks ago, I was really lucky and got to spend time in William Blake’s cottage in Felpham near the sea. It’s the only place left that Blake lived and worked in (three years, from September to September 1800-1803) and the main part of the cottage he and his beloved wife Catherine lived in has been kept very close to what it was then. As you know, Blake wrote a great deal about God and about Christ and much else besides, but while I was there I kept thinking about what he wrote in idiosyncratic Greek in the first pages of his last great work, ‘Jerusalem’, – ‘Monos o Iesous’- i.e., ‘alone Jesus’.
I’m off on holiday this weekend and I’ve got a ton of packing & preparation to do if I’m going to get off, so I really must bring this letter to a close. Please forgive whatever I’ve bungled the expression of, and know that I really just wanted to say something, despite the clunkiness of this or that idiom of communication, about what certain very special moments have shown me and about what, I think, lies behind and above all the pain and all the suffering.
You and your wonderful family are much, much loved and I will be bothering you for a visit after I’m back (about a fortnight)
Take good care of ya’sel marra . . .
Your Chum,
(Mark)