I envy Catholics/Q

I envy Catholics, indeed all kind of Christians, indeed all kind of people of faith, indeed also Freudians, person-centred therapists, socialists and communists. They all have a clearly stated faith and even if they have tensions around it they still belong. Me after 20 years I am bit of a lapsed Quaker (and Quakers struggle with the idea of whether they are Christians anyway!). I’m vaguely humanistic with a spiritual bent, I’ve been a Guardian reading liberal since I was 13 and I am still proud of the Guardian – think phone hacking for a start but I am ashamed by what Liberal Democrats are doing in government – not that I have ever been a party member. And I can’t do class properly even though I am middle class my origins are on class borderlands and my accent is not right and I don’t come from the right part of England. I guess I have inherited being an awkward sod from my dad though that seems a bit bone headed at times. So here I am missing my friend Chris and wondering what life and death are all about and remembering the last time I visited my spiritual director Q.

- Hi Q!
- Hi Boss (Q will insist on calling me this!)
- Q I envy Catholics….They have some clear things to believe in, clear things to hang on to, even though their faith is sometimes thin or challenged like Mary’s is just now
- Hmm
- I have so little to hang onto beyond my experiences and I feel so fragmented at times
- Hmm
- Oh Q your’re Hmmming me!
- Yes
- I just wish I could feel more whole more of the time
- When do you feel this wholeness?
- Sometimes at Quaker Meetings, usually in the silence, some times elsewhere. And sometimes when I feel really connected and close to someone… often it’s quite emotional… I struggle with emotion sometimes I feel too many tears too much of the time. It’s all getting a bit much…. Last time I felt this way back in 1982 I had a neat story to explain, opening up on my 3rd eye….. I don’t have a story this time just the tears.
- Is that really so bad?
- (Big sigh) No I guess, I just sure as hell would like to know here it was all leading to
- You would?
- Yeah as long as it was a good story
- Consider Christmas
- (Big sigh) more tears and same old story perverted by consumption
- But the story?
- I know it’s about hope, new birth, belonging. The other day I had an image of my daughter when I first held her in my arms, she was a few minutes old and her mum was in need of some attention from the midwife so I held her and talked to her (sobbing) and she felt like a bit of heaven to me (more tears)
PAUSE
- When it is like that nothing else matters one bit, not one bit.
- Yes!
- So you want me to hold on to that?
- Is there anything better in all creation?
- No.

Q again

The Boss once more consults Q his spiritual director. Q was seated in his study come consulting room in front of a warm log fire which was a neat contrast to the cold frost outside. The room was crowded with books and artefacts including a meditation hanging, a fat Buddha statue, a wrought iron Celtic cross and sizeable lumps of amethyst and rose quartz crystals.
- Hi Q
- Hi Boss
- Prayer doesn’t work!
- Oh Yes?
- Yes, I’ve had toothache real bad… have taken pain killers… it took the edge of it but I still couldn’t sleep. So I prayed and nothing happened
- You fell asleep?
- Eventually
- Yes but-
- Nothing happened!
- You got to a dentist?
- Yes but-
- And you are OK now?
- Yes, for the moment
- So was your prayer not answered?
- Well… if you put it like that…. But that’s kind of cheating
- Cheating?
- Cheating! I was so tired it overcame the pain and of course the dentist did her job well
- And all of this is nothing to do with God, nothing to do with prayer?
- Hmm, depends how you see things
- So how do you see things?

Silence and a deep calm enveloped them and there was just a hint of a smile on Q’s face.

The Boss meets Q again

The Boss, perhaps my alter ego, once more consults Q my imaginary spiritual director
- Hi Q
- Hi Boss, long time no see
- True…
- So what bring you here at this festive time?
- I’m still struggling with death… and life
- Right
- It feels as if my sense of my mortality is dropping lower inside me, inside my consciousness, affecting me on deeper and deeper levels…
- Hmmm
- Sometimes I feel a bit flat, even depressed with it… like what is the point?
- What is the point?
- Yes! But I don’t want to turn and face the wall… and I can live more in the moment knowing that my future is finite in physical terms at least…
- Hmm
- A lot of what I do, a lot of what I spend my time doing is pretty futile when faced with death… Only the quality of human contact and of my contact with creation seems to matter. I feel that if there is any immortality then it is in that.
- In that quality of contact?
- Yes. Everything else will fade away for sure. I don’t especially want to leave money and stuff behind me as I die, well just a bit for my family - I certainly want to travel lighter now - … I just want to be remembered with fondness … I guess that is where I have come to. It doesn’t answer the big questions but it gives me a place to live from for now.
- Hmm
- Q this has been absolutely brilliant!
- But I have hardly said a word
- Exactly you have not got in the way of the unfolding that I needed to have happen and couldn’t seem to do on my own. So thanks.
Q nodded in appreciation of the Boss’s words and they descended into a deep silence in which as ever everything made sense to the Boss, even the tears of gratitude that ran down his face.

Meeting Q again

The Boss consults his spiritual director Q once more:

- Hi Q
- Hi Boss, what brings you here?
- Well Q, I have this feeling, this fear, that I might not ever reach retirement from work, almost a feeling of dread that my work here will go on forever, or at least until I drop, or perhaps even worse until I am incapacitated..
- Hmm… there is so much in what you are saying. I hear your fear… None of us knows when we will die or when we might become incapacitated… but you do have some choices however limited
- True and I have begun to work through my things to do when I retired list. The trouble is I have got too busy…
- Good problem!
- Too busy, so the only way forward is to semi retire!
- Sounds good
- I just get anxious that I’ll never escape work
- Would that be so bad?
- Well it would if it carries on like it is now
- Hmm
- And there is so much I think I want to do but I can’t truly know until I retire. It may all be an illusion…
- The word retire implies a retreat
- Retreat now there’s a thought…. Retirement as a withdrawal from my current work followed by a retreat and then who knows?
- That sounds better!
- It sure does – retirement -> Retreat -> new life

The Boss meets with Q again

The Boss meets with Q his spiritual adviser
- Hi Q
- Hi Boss, long time no see
- Yes, well (the Boss squirms ion his chair) I’ve been busy…
- There’s no need to justify
- No… no but it’s true
- So what brings you here today?
- I have been wrestling with serious illness and death and what it means
- Hmm
- I have realised though it is hard to accept that I can’t do anything about death – it is inevitable - and I don’t believe in physical resurrection... maybe my soul or spirit continues but I think it’s Heaven or Hell split polarised like that. I am more inclined to Carl Jung’s idea that if there is an after life it is rather like this one…
- You sound pretty figured about all this
- Sound yes, thought out maybe, but it doesn’t feel that way at all. I am scared of death even though if it is the end I wont be there to be scared of it. I am scared of dying though it is inevitable, I am sacred of the pain of it and most of all I am scared of becoming older and frailer
- I here a lot of fear there
- Sure and I see friends of mine becoming frailer and I think what’s the point of that? Why can’t we all just die in our sleep?
- Good question
- And?
- Look it is clearly not what happens
- Yes I know that (the Boss begin to get grumpy)!
- Can you not accept that even increasing frailty could be purposeful?
- It’s hard especially when it involves me directly or indirectly
- True but you will just (‘just!’ interjected the Boss) you will just have to live with it
- OK…OK but that still doesn’t explain it
- I know, I guess we are asked to surrender to what it is
- Not that damn word ‘surrender’ again. I am sick of surrender
- What is is what is
- OK Q but you don’t have to be so smug and gnomic
- I think I would insulting your intelligence to suggest that karma might be being resolved
- And in any case if God is so compassionate and merciful why do any of us suffer?
- Death, frailty and now suffering!
- Yes Q
- I know it is a challenge to faith but the world is as it is and we have to find a way of best living with what it and raging against the inevitable is probably rather futile
- A bit of rage never hurt anyone!
- Makes a change from fear
- Rage, rage against the dying light!
- Why not… and afterwards?
- Peace

They fell into a deep silence. In its depth the questions and challenges fell away. The Boss became blissful fro no reason other than the experience of the silence. At last he had an answer to his nagging questions as they dissolved in the silence.

[As told to me this morning]