Absolute Truths (29 page)

* * *

‘
8th March, 1964. An astonishing thing’s happened and ifs all tied up with that purchase which was a complete failure, that
dreary book I bought at the SPCK.

‘
Eileen Pearce, aged under forty and looking so unline
d I could slap her, arrives at t
he South Canonry this morning to say she’d
been thinking what a pity it was that there was no women’s prayer-
group because in Gerry’s last diocese there’d been a wonderful
woman of great spiritual power who ... etc.,
etc.

‘
I listen with glazed eyes and think how exhausting Evangelicals
can be. Finally I’m allowed to say: "But Eileen my dear, unfortu
nately in this Cathedral Close we’ve no women of great spiritual
power who could lead a prayer-group." I thought that would close
the conversation as tactfully as possible, but no, she’s shining-eyed
and unstoppable. "Oh, but Mrs Ashworth," she says,
"you
could be our leader! That nice man in the SPCK bookshop mentioned yester
day that you’d bought a book on prayer not long ago, and as soon
as I heard him say that I thought: YES!
There’s
the woman who could
do it! You’re so admired, Mrs Ashworth, and such an example to us
a
ll! Everyone thinks you’re the perfect wife for a bishop!"

‘
I thought: my God, if only she knew.

‘
I’ll have to get out of it, although I don’t quite see how. Sitting
around with a bunch of women all talking about motherhood
and exchanging recipes when they’re not offering up embarrassing
prayers — no, it would be intolerable.

‘
MEMO TO GOD: Get me out of this, it isn’t
what I want at
all, I can’t do it, can’t cope.’

* * *

‘
14th March, 1964. Marian Lindsay arrives hotfoot from
St Martin’s vicarage and says she’s heard I’m starting a prayer
group for women and she does hope it isn’t confined to the
Cathedral Close because she’d love to join. By coincidence she’d
been thinking of starting a prayer-group at St Martin’s, but natur
ally I’d be better at it than she could ever be because she’d never
bought a book on prayer in her life whereas Eileen Pearce had
told her I’d been to the SPCK bookshop and ... etc., etc. "And
of course," she concludes, quite pink with enthusiasm by this time,
"everyone admires you much more than me because you’re so
lever and efficient as well as being such a devout Christian — all your committees, all your charity work, and yet you always find
the time to
give
Charles such tremendous support ..." And so
on and so on.

‘
I really wonder sometimes whether anyone knows anything
about anyone else at all. To buy myself a little time to recover from
this extraordinary onslaught I say vaguely: "What does Malcolm think of the idea?" but to my surprise Marian just laughs and says
she hasn’t told him. "He’ll be the last to know!" she says cheerfully.
"Men are always so condescending when women try to do some
thing important together— and you know how all clergymen secretly
think churchwomen are only good for arranging flowers!"

‘And suddenly, when she said that, I had a revelation,
it
was as if God had finally given me a blast on the trumpet,
I saw it all.

‘
I thought: This is my chance to be
me.
In this context I wouldn’t
be just a perfect clerical accessory with no life of my own and an
identity which is being subsumed by my husband’s job. This would
be me being ME. God created me to be this special person at this particular time in my life, and
I’m
going to be her.
I’m
like a lump of wax which is being called to life — I
feel as
if my creator has finally reached out and taken me in his hands to reshape me — I feel overcome by excitement and hope.

‘
Or at least I did, when I had that conversation with Marian
some hours ago, but now that I’ve
come
down to earth
I’m
wondering how the hell I’ll ever run a prayer-group since it’s so
absolutely not my cup of tea. But never mind, it doesn’t matter, I’ll manage somehow, I
shall
do it, I SHALL! Churchwomen of
the world unite — join a prayer-group and cast off your chains!

‘MEMO TO GOD: I hope you’re having a big laugh
about this somewhere.’

* * *

‘
1st April, 1964. I break the news to Charles that
I’m
starting a prayer-group. He thinks it’s an April Fool. I assure him that I’m serious.

‘
He’s most surprised and asks very politely, like the gentleman he
is, how I got the idea. I tell him about the overtures from Eileen and
Marian, and add that I became interested in prayer as the result of
Venetia moving out of my life. He says, ultra-courteous: "I see," and comments kindly: "I think it’s a very good idea, ifyou have the time."
That’s a hint that
I’m
not to neglect him, but a bishop has to encour
age anyone who wants to pray, so he’s decided that the new prayer-
group can exist
as
Lyle’s Little Hobby. Probably he finds it all rather
charming. How smooth Charles is sometimes, but he’s not insincere. He genuinely wants to be kind to
me.

‘
I’d actually like to ask his advice, but I’m not going to. I don’t want a professional treating us as amateurs with the result that we
feel foolish and inferior. We don’t need any clergymen here anyway
because God will look after us. Do I really believe that? Yes. Have
I finally gone round the bend? Possibly, but I don’t think so.

No, of course I haven’t gone round the bend! God’s simply
made himself clear at last, and about
time
too.

‘
MEMO
TO GOD
: Please use me in such a way that I don’t
let the prayer-group down.’

* * *

‘
7th April, 1964. A nasty moment: Dido Aysgarth arrives saying
she’s heard about my prayer-group and it’s all too, too divine.
With mounting horror I wait for her to announce that she intends
to join us, but finally she reaches the peroration of her monologue
which is: "... and
I’m devastated that I can’t take
part, but I have to devote
all my
time to darling Stephen and the children — and really, life’s simply too
frantic at
present — but don’t worry, Lyle
my dear, because I’ll offer up my own prayers for you all and make
sure
I’m
with you in spirit!"

‘Ghastly woman! Why does everyone go on and on speculating
about why she and Stephen ever got married? The answer’s
as
plain as a pikestaff: they were
made
for each other.

‘
MEMO TO GOD : Thanks for
saving us from Dido. Or should
I be regretting her absence and sparing a prayer for her? But again
— how can one pray for people one detests without being hopelessly
insincere? Answer this one, please. It’s beginning to bother
me.’

* * *

14th October, 1964. I really did mean to keep up this journal to
chart the progress of the prayer-group, but I haven’t. I can only
conclude that ifs been more important to pray than to write about
it.

‘
It all turned out rather differently than I anticipated. I’d thought
some hefty recruiting would be needed and a certain degree of
organisation, but no, people just appeared, word travelled around
just
as
it always does in this kind of community, and in the end
all I had to do was set aside a room at the South Canonry, provide
coffee and make some sort of introductory speech which wasn’t a complete failure. To my surprise I was very nervous – me, after all
my committee work! – but I shrieked silently to God: HELP! And
the next moment I was opening my mouth and gabbling: "Look,
let’s forget I’m Mrs Bishop, let’s forget who our husbands are, I know nothing about this sort of thing, but I’m willing to learn,
and let’s all start by calling each other by our Christian names,
because we’re all equal before God, all special in his sight, and this is about us being US, talking to God
as
our true selves and hoping
he can use us effectively in some way which we may find difficult to visualise at present but which by his grace will become increas
ingly clear to us."

‘
It was surprising how well that
went
down. People sagged in
relief and said they didn’t know much about prayer either – and
the ones who kept silent, of course, were the ones who did know
something, so straight away I was able to pinpoint who the natural
leaders were.

‘
But I soon discovered that leading doesn’t mean the same in
this context
as
it
means at a committee
meeting. One has to mop
up the idle chatter occasionally, but most of the
time
one leads by
taking a back seat and encouraging others to step forward. A
paradox.

‘
One or two people dropped out but others came in and finally
we decided ten people were quite enough. We start by having ten
minutes’ silence so that we can collect our thoughts and "tune in", as it were. Then we embark on some general prayers which focus
on
three or four categories in turn
– like the intercessions in church,
except that there are no words, someone just names a category –
the poor, the sick and so on – and we all pray in silence. At
the
end
of that phase we do talk – we discuss the special subjects we
want to pray about, and people reveal their problems. For example,
someone’s sister-in-law is dying of cancer, how could God allow
this to happen, and so on. Of course it’s not all on that level, but
even the minor problems can be intriguing. Eileen’s
little
boy
suffers from bed-wetting. Someone suggested that might be because she goes out to work. Eileen was furious. Everyone
hastened to pour oil on the troubled waters and I was asked what
I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Something might be adrift in
the family, but possibly the little boy just has a weak bladder.
In the end I just said with deep feeling:
"All families
have their
problems," and everyone looked at me gratefully. They know
Charley ran away from home and Michael was chucked out of
medical school, and – bizarrely – this is now an advantage to me,
as if weakness had been converted into strength. People know I’ve
sailed through murky domestic waters, they know I can empathise
with them.

‘
After the discussion we pray about each problem and the people
who are affected by it. More silence, but this is the most intense
because ifs easier to focus on specific people than on huge groups
such
as
the poor. If this silence were a noise it would be deafening.
Ten people together can make so much more noise than one person
shouting.

‘
The most surprising thing about the group is that many of
my preconceived notions about the participants have been over
turned. For example, my chum Marian Lindsay, who I thought
would make the whole enterprise bearable, is often a source of
irritation – she can’t concentrate for long, and if you give her a
chance she’ll start talking about her hysterectomy. But Emma Granger, who I always thought was so quiet and mousey, has
shown great wisdom and strength. And what about me – me,
Lyle? Now here’s another paradox: I’m becoming more me by
thinking less of me. I’m getting involved with these people. My
fundamental problems remain unchanged, but
I’m
changing.
Does that mean the fundamental problems will change too?
Surely it must! If I’m a number in a sum, any change in me will
affect the other numbers in that we’ll all add up to a different
answer.

‘
At the beginning I used to think to myself: do our prayers
work? Are we a success? But now I know that these are the wrong
questions to ask, they’re irrelevant. It’s not for us to judge how successful we are — and anyway what does "success" mean in this context? To be successful is to do what God wants — and I
know that what God wants for us at these times
is
to
be,
lining
ourselves up with him so that he can use us to batter away at the
suffering in the world. If we can only
be,
then he can use us and
arrange us in the right patterns so that we’re playing an active
part in his creative purpose, an active part in his redemptive
love.

‘
Emma Granger has lent me the latest edition of the
Revelations
of Julian of Norwich, a work which in the old days I found unintel
ligible and repulsive. It’s odd how interesting I find that book
now. Dame Julian and her "showings" ... Masses of people used
to go to Norwich and talk to her in her cell. I wish I could go
and talk to her about Charles, but I’m several hundred years too
late.

‘
Charles never asks about the prayer-group. I can’t make up my
mind whether his silence arises from misguided tact and
a commendable desire not to intrude, or whether he’s like
Rhett Butler and doesn’t give a damn. Never mind. It doesn’t
matter.

‘
What matters is that Charles’s problems don’t get any better.
But what’s happened is that I understand them better — in fact the
more I pray about him the more I realise that he’s got himself
trapped in a theological blind alley and that this is blighting not just his life but my life and the boys’ lives too. I’m not supposed
to know anything about theology, of course. Well, I’m the first to admit I couldn’t write a learned article about that pig-headed old
fanatic St Athanasius, but I can certainly say with conviction that this hard-line, ultra-conservative stance which Charles has found
himself compelled to adopt isn’t making him happy — and that’s primarily because it doesn’t reflect his true nature. Charles does
indeed have conservative leanings — and why shouldn’t he? Most
men of his age do — but he’s actually a flexible thinker, quite
capable of taking on board new ideas (look how he reorganised
the diocese by using the very latest secular theories about manage
ment!) and he’s also more than capable of a deep, non-bigoted
compassion on ethical issues (look how he rescued that ninny
Desmond Wilton from London!), but all this intellectual flexibility
and moral compassion have been lost in a thundercloud of right
eousness as he proclaims his absolute truths with the vigour of an Old Testament prophet — or with the pig-headed fanaticism of his
Early Church heroes.

The truth is he’s become a caricature of himself, with the disastrous result that the press delight in pillorying him and Charles in
defence gets driven deeper and deeper into this fierce dogmatic
role which he’s not at heart equipped to play. Of course it goes
without saying that the press have got everything wrong when
they mock him as a sex-hating old misery, but the question which
I’m increasingly asking myself is: has Charles got everything right?
And I don’t think he has, not by a long chalk. Of course he has to
condemn immorality and uphold tradition, but why is everything
getting so distorted and strained in consequence? I find myself
asking: can this really be what God requires from the Bishop of
Starbridge?

‘
I wish I could talk to Charles about it, but I can’t. He’d be
upset – and I think he’d be angry too that I was criticising him in his work. No, my job is simply to keep him going and not bother
him when he’s under such stress doing what he honestly believes
is God’s will. But I shall pray for him. I shall pray and pray and
pray.

‘
MEMO TO GOD: Next time Jon Darrow tunes in to you,
tell
him to get off his bottom and
do
something about Charles. Why
doesn’t Jon make Charles question himself more? I mean, what the hell’s Jon doing out there in Starrington? But perhaps Jon’s
saying all kinds of
things which Charles simply can’t hear — or
maybe he hears but prefers not to understand because it’s too
difficult, too painful, too frightening. Anyway there’s a limit to
what Jon can do. He can’t forcefeed Charles information which
Charles isn’t ready to accept. Maybe Jon, like me, is gnashing his
teeth and muttering to himself: "All I can do for Charles is pray
for him."

‘
Dear God, in the name of your son Jesus Christ, HEAR OUR
PRAYERS. Amen.’