Chapter 2
In 1970 I went to the University College of North Wales,
Bangor, and read Maths and Physics. What a release! I felt like a cork that had
been constrained in the long dark barrel of a pop gun, but had now been fired
and was flying free through the air and the light. A wonderful family put me up
temporarily while I was looking for digs, and offered me intimate friendship
throughout my time there. The contact had been made by my mother through the
Quakers. I obtained digs with a fellow student, and we were happy there for a
time. Then the landlord wanted to say when we could use the gas fire and when
we couldn’t. We did not like this. It was an experience of conflict where in
theory a resolution might have been found, and strangely lacking in bitterness.
The landlord eventually removed the knob of the gas fire, and we found other
lodgings. I went to Church Hostel.
The air on the North Wales coast has a quality of clarity. Some of the sunsets are breathtaking. The rain however can be heavy. Once there was so much that it flowed down the entire width of a street, not just in the gutters. I had a bicycle, and saw Caernarfon, Conwy and Beaumaris castles, and beautiful churches in Clynnog Fawr and Beaumaris. I was remarkably unadventurous in some ways. I thought Chester was difficult to get to.
Quite soon I started to wonder about the vehement agnosticism of my mother. How can you be vehemently agnostic? The question is, “Does God Exist?” Possible answers are “Yes”, “No” or “Don’t Know”. Necessarily “Don’t know” must be provisional, and likely to vanish in the face of either of the other two. There is a strength to the agnostic position, which is to be open to new insights, but I did not know that then. All right. Does God exist? I did not know that the question itself is a contradiction in terms. I simply asked it. It was immediately obvious that no human being had the stature to answer this question for me. One might say portentously “No”, and another might say with equal confidence “Yes”. I would have to find out directly. If the answer was “No”, I would have made a fool of myself, but then, if the answer was “Yes”, I would have been a bigger fool not to have asked the question. Accordingly I prayed “God, if you exist, show yourself to me.” I prayed thus for some time, and put a lot of effort into it. Eventually I had my answer in the form of a voice in my head which said “Stop being selfish”, accompanied by a feeling of certainty. The feeling was at a depth I had not experienced before. It was not the certainty of seeing an object that is straight in front of your eyes, but much more certain than that. I can only describe it as a soul knowing, performed by a different faculty from that which knows things in the normal way.
When I read the Life and Interior Castle of St Teresa of Avila, I was disconcerted to find that my experience, of a voice accompanied by a spiritual feeling of certainty, exactly matched her description of a locution. “Frequently, not only can words be heard, but, in a way which I shall never be able to explain, much more can be understood than the words themselves convey” (1). I was not holy in any sense, but literally, an absolute beginner! This is another thread running through this book. The great ones of former times, such as those listed in the preface, are not august, distant figures, superior even. Rather their greatness lies in this, that they were human beings like us, and spoke of the deepest things that concern humans with superb clarity and precision.
I went in great excitement to the family that had put me up when I first went to Bangor, and said “I have got God”. Perhaps I would not have spoken so had I had any idea of His size. The wife and mother of the family said to me, kindly and gently, that she had “got God” too.
Other things contributed to this experience. I had gone to Lincoln Cathedral. The Angel Choir in its peerless beauty seemed to be speaking a language where words were not required, but which I seemed to understand. One winter’s night the Salvation Army were playing carols near my parents’ house. There they were on the snow, gathered round a street lamp, and they prayed that their music would reach the hearts of those who heard them. These people were praying simply and humbly, and it was for them a perfectly reasonable thing to do. There was also a lovely girl called Gillian, who was a Christian.
It seemed obvious to me that I should join a church, to meet with others and share experiences. I did not want to go the chapel of Church Hostel because they seemed to drink blood, so I went to a chapel, where they had symbols, which was much better, as I then thought. I also started to devour the library of Church Hostel, and met many of my great ones there. My academic work suffered, but I was absorbed in a drive to know more of God. I did nevertheless obtain some experience of the scientific method.
I did not want to get involved with contentious books such as Genesis, so I started reading the New Testament at Matthew. Straight away I was faced with the question “Who was Jesus?” Much questioning followed, and meeting with people, and sermons, which were then like nourishment to me. One Sunday I had a cold, and could not hear very well. I was in the back of the chapel, and asked Jesus into my heart. Immediately I felt a peace such as I had never known flow through my whole body. The date was 6th February 1972.
Looking back, I did not ask Jesus to come in as anything, specifically as a personal saviour, but simply to come. At the time, I enthusiastically absorbed all that the chapel had to teach, such as the sacrificial death of Jesus, and the hopeless sinfulness of humanity, which makes everybody bound for hell unless they avail themselves of the sacrificial death. I therefore had to save people. We set up a coffee bar, and some of us prayed, and others went out on the streets of Bangor and invited people for coffee, so as to talk to them of the saving death of Jesus. We had little success. I began to wonder whether God did not care about all these souls that were being damned. I realised at once that God must care a great deal more than I did, so that was absurd. I could not place a finger on the absurdity, but as it were, filed the question in pending. On one occasion it was cold, and I took an electric fire to make the place more comfortable. I was told that it shouldn’t be too comfortable, the better to help sinners to see their awful predicament before a righteous God. I began to spend more time praying and less going out on the streets.
Once we were going on a Beach Mission. I thought it would be good if we had fine weather, so I prayed accordingly. When we were there, my colleague said “look!” and there above our heads we saw the grey clouds drifting majestically in opposite directions, and the blue sky appearing as we watched. My colleague checked later, and he said that nowhere else on that day had there been fine weather in North Wales. This isn’t an allegory. I saw it myself. I thought I was onto a good thing here. I pray and I get, and look at my telephone line to God! But no prayers after this were effective. I began to wonder why, and I think it was because my prayer had been made simply, without ego, and with plenty of presumption. Presumption is another theme of this book. As for my telephone line to God, well, I heard that my mother had died. I set off to hitch a lift home. I was unsuccessful, so I returned to Bangor. I had various other voices telling me to get up in the night and pray, and to fast. The leader of the chapel said “You know where these voices are from, don’t you?” I realised instantly where he thought they were coming from. When I heard that my mother was well, I knew that voices were not to be taken any notice of, and so they stopped.
One day on the beach mission, I was less than enthralled by the telling of the story I had heard so often by now. I saw a young boy similarly less than enchanted, and from somewhere we found a rich relationship with few words, making a tunnel in the sand. I wanted to know how you grew, but all I could pick up was that you grew numerically, by saving souls. A very serious problem was that so many of the unsaved souls seemed to be of intelligent and attractive people. If you think people are going to be damned, you can’t have a normal conversation with them. You try to bend each conversation in the direction of their damned status and proffered salvation, and so the entire fabric of human intercourse is distorted, and as this intercourse is one of the most important things on earth, this is a great evil. Also even while I fervently believed the doctrines, I began to wonder at the process of “I am a sinner – He died for me – I am grateful – So I love him”. The love runs in a ready-made channel.
O, Dearly, Dearly has he loved
And we must love him too. (2)
What would it be like if it were to roam freely? I should have to think the unthinkable, and not be grateful for the death.
I was baptised by immersion. As it was going to be a once in a lifetime experience I read all the biblical references to baptism, and was very expectant. For a robe I used the costume I had worn as one of the crowd in a production of “Yeomen of the Guard.” It was precious for someone had sewn it together specially for me. In Act One, I was the headsman. By the time of the baptism I was mentally exhausted no doubt, but it was a totally flat experience.
I thought I should acquire some virtue, specifically Charity, so I worked on my heart until I thought I felt the appropriate emotion. The very next thing I did was to speak very rudely to some people I met. This was a revelation. Thinking you have a virtue prevents you from acquiring it. It is the same phenomenon that got in the way when I was trying to learn the violin as a child. The same applies to knowledge, specifically knowledge of God, so that the more you think you know, the less you are able to learn, but that realisation came later.
I became very earnest at this time. The mother of a girl friend said that life had its funny side. I said that I regarded humour as a silly jigging about, and a distraction from the important business of life. Now, decades later, I know she said the truth, and more, that it is a major insight. I have seen pictures of serious young men since. Perhaps laughter is a grace more easily appreciated by age. Even so, I did begin to wonder why I was not more cheerful. I thought that the universe is honest, and if I was not cheerful, there was a reason.(3) The warden of Church Hostel seemed to be cheerful a great deal of the time, so I went to see him, and I asked him if he was happy. He thought a bit, and then said yes he was. I had been impressed by the worship that I sensed in Church Hostel. It seemed more than the smell of the incense. Also, as I now believed in the sacrificial death, it was not difficult to believe that the eucharistic elements in some mysterious way stood for what they were proclaimed as, the body and blood of Christ. So I left the chapel, with prayers that God would look after me, for the leader of the chapel had threatened me with damnation if I left, and joined the worship at Church Hostel.
About this time I visited Lichfield Cathedral with my elder brother. There was a service in progress, so we looked at the exterior. I began to feel more and more that I wanted to go to the service, but we were late and had spent time looking round as well. Eventually I couldn’t stand it any more, so I went in, impossibly late, and took communion.
A person I met at this time said that human beings consist of body, soul and spirit. I was happy with the idea of body and soul, but body, soul and spirit sounded a bit esoteric. He quoted a scripture about dividing asunder, or distinguishing, the soul and the spirit (4). I asked him, to try and get clear in my mind what he was saying, whether he had seen people who were mostly body. Oh yes, he said, with no hesitation. So then I asked if he had seen people who were all soul. He hesitated about this, so I asked if he had seen people who were nearly all spirit. His eyes and voice softened then, and he said “certain old ladies…” So I took it as a working hypothesis that we are body, soul and spirit.
I began to wonder how I related to God. God is everywhere, but I am here, occupying this space. I don’t think it is sensible to say that there is a Gervais shaped hole in God where I am, so in a purely geographical sense, God must be occupying the same space that I am occupying, so we must coincide. Do I believe that my soul and spirit exist apart from God? No, of course not. They would instantly vanish. All right then. At the levels of soul and spirit God and I also coincide. I thought that therefore at the level of spirit, I am God. I was horrified by this conclusion, and so I rejected it, but I could not see where the argument had gone wrong. This phenomenon of two things coinciding I called the vine principle. Jesus said “I am the vine and you are the branches.” (5) He did not say “I am the stem and you are the branches”, so that one ends where the other begins. Rather the vine is complete, and when we add our branches, there are no more branches than there were before. It is easy enough to describe the chocolate principle. I have five chocolates, and if I give you three, I will only have two myself. In the vine principle, it is as the father said to the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son: “Everything I have is yours.” (6)
A homely illustration can be performed in the bathroom. You fill the basin with water, and submerge the tooth mug in the basin. No, don’t take it out again. That would be the chocolate principle for then the water that is in the mug is not in the basin, and there is less in the basin than there was before. No, you leave the mug in the basin, and both are full, but there is no more water than there was before.
On one vacation back in Oxford I saw an elderly Don with an air about him of great holiness. He called me a babe in Christ. I said “Surely I will always be a babe in Christ.” He answered “No.”
I described above the flat experience of my baptism. On another vacation a family in Oxford who had previously been Quakers told me about the baptism in the Holy Spirit. They gave references, and said it would in no way remove me from the suffering of the world, but would speed up my walk. I was to go away and think about it, and come back in a week if this is what I wanted. I didn’t need time to think. Back I went, and was baptised in the Holy Spirit by prayer and the laying on of hands, and spoke in tongues, making a great release of feeling. The date was 28 September 1972.
The next day I spoke in tongues again, to see that it was still there. This was as much a failure as were my prayers after the one for good weather for the beach mission, and for the same reason. It was not simple. I tried to use this gift to see if I could find out about the higher levels. If only it were in English! The result was that eventually I ended up with a chant, the same every time. Back in Bangor, by some process that did not surprise me, though it delighted me, I met a man who took me regularly to a charismatic fellowship at 14 Devonshire Road, Liverpool. Have you ever heard a piano chuckle? That one did!
Here I saw the gifts of tongues for public use, that is, with an interpretation, and prophecies. I went up for prayer, and was told, concerning the one who put his hand to the plough and turned back, that my hands were glued to the plough.(7) He also said I would bring many souls to Christ. I experienced great joy and peace. Love, that is to say specifically for me, I did not feel. The people were loving and kind. I have only good to say of them. They said that the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace.(8) I felt joy and peace as I said, in large and unprecedented measure, so what of love? I was in error in saying this of course. It is not being loved that is the fruit, but loving. “Perfection consists not in consolations but in the increase of love.” (9) Nevertheless the error was not total. You need to be loved in order to love. It is a circle.
There were other charismatic fellowships in Oxford and Exeter. At one of them, somebody spoke winsomely of God as a fisherman, attracting people to himself. Come and be hooked!
This was a valuable incident in a steadily increasing conflict. God is attractive, yes? Yes, surely so. But the image of God I was picking up from the bible, which must be reliable as it is God’s word, was far from attractive. Two men were killed because they accidentally touched the ark of the covenant. The Israelites were bitterly castigated, not because they had committed genocide, but because they hadn’t committed it thoroughly enough. And what sort of glory had He won from Pharaoh, Omnipotence playing with an earthly ruler to make him recalcitrant so Omnipotence could beat him? What sort of God would make a man be born blind, so that his glory could be revealed? (10) What is God’s problem that He should deny Moses entry to the promised land after all his long service, because of an incident with water at a rock? Why did He want to kill Moses? How can anybody be blessed who dashes little children against a stone?(11) Why should I kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and I perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little? (12) I had invited him freely, not from fear. And what was God’s love for Jesus if He sacrificed him for anybody? What is God’s love for anybody if He damns them to Hell for all eternity? This list could be greatly extended. On the other hand there is that little word, Abba.
To digress a little, one must be able to judge the words of Jesus in the same way that one judges anybody else’s words, otherwise he has a tyranny over us which is alien to his nature. It is offensive to say that God would cause a man to be born blind to demonstrate his glory, but perhaps he meant “whether this man sinned or his parents is neither here nor there. That is knowledge that leads nowhere. That was in the past. Let the dead bury their dead. The point at issue is ‘What happens now?’ and what happens now is that the glory of God is going to be revealed in this man’s life”. A similar way of speaking is found in John 6:32. “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven”. Jesus is probably not, as the plain text reads, asserting that Moses didn’t give them bread from heaven, rather he is saying “That was in the past, dead and buried. Now there is real bread for you, not dusty histories. This is the real issue. This is important, that is not.”
At this time I spoke with a friend at Bangor, (13) and said I was worried that I might commit the sin against the Holy Ghost, and be lost. He repeated the question, and said he would go away and pray about it. The next day he came back and said this is what he thought God was saying: “Gervais, I love you. I am your Father. It is impossible for me to let you go, therefore you cannot commit the sin against the Holy Ghost.” I knew this was right, and so I adopted it as a touchstone, against which to test every other image of God.
“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense…God is his own interpreter/ And he will make it plain”.(14) The substance of this experience was to stop judging God by any criterion external to him, such as his supposed word, but to take God as the criterion for judging everything else; (15) to move from one platform to another, or rather, to move from what was not a platform.
I came across the quartet Opus 127 by Beethoven when I was in Bangor. I listened with my mind, with all the analytical power at my disposal, but also it raised me regularly to a state very much akin to ecstasy. The reason is that the music moves in high spiritual realms. For most of a term I would experience this ecstasy weekly, on Tuesdays I think, then I would go to a bread and cheese lunch for some charitable purpose because I liked the simplicity. I also got to know the Hammerklavier sonata Opus 106 at this time.
The normal joys of student life were not unknown to me, such as passing out in front of the Union from comprehensive alcoholic inebriation, or waking up in a garden on the way to the hostel at 5.30 in the morning with sick all over my jacket, and a hangover, which I thought well worth it, and which I could feel lifting by the minute. There was a poetic occasion when we painted a zebra crossing in emulsion on one of the roads. Alas by the time the Police arrived it was raining solidly, and our handiwork was washed away. I read Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” without difficulty in Middle English. I loved it when the angry friar in the Summoner’s Tale went tearing up the street because he had been insulted. He expressed his emotion so freely. The starkness of the Pardoner’s Tale appealed to me. The whole book was altogether marvellous, except for the sermons. I also loved Jerome’s “Three men in a boat.” There was an early music group, and an orchestra. Throughout my time in Bangor I received expert tuition in the cello. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that I was trying to get something, such as spiritual illumination, from the cello, instead of using it as an instrument to give something out, nevertheless I played two movements from Beethoven sonatas in public. I discovered an unexpected facility in the double bass. Once I had two friends round, and we sang through Byrd’s three part mass. This was the first time since my voice had broken that I produced an acceptable sound. The new warden interrogated me. Was I holding an illicit communion service? I said “How could we? We didn’t have a priest.”
I still had the problem of how to grow. One person advised that I should take one of God’s promises and hold Him to it. I mentioned the library in Church Hostel. There I read that the smallest heavenly joy was greater than all the joys of earth put together. (16)
It seemed to me that this was the life! I should like to be a mystic. I understood a mystic to be one who experienced the love of God in a direct manner. This is the promise therefore: “Ask and you shall receive” and what I asked was that God would show me his love.
My three years at Bangor came to an end. Not surprisingly I did not get a degree, nevertheless, I was well pleased with my time there. I had begun to laugh again, and I had the satisfaction of having some of the new year’s intake of serious young men worry that some of my reading matter was dangerously liberal.
1. Interior Castle, Fifth Mansions, Chapter 3. Also “When the Lord speaks, the words are accompanied by effects” and “His words are deeds. (Life Chapter 25)
2. Hymn: There is a green hill: Mrs C F Alexander
3. I do not mean that major life changes should be contemplated as a response to one or two bad experiences or moods, but you can judge whether the overall quality of your life is of cheerfulness or not. This is an extremely sensitive indicator.
4. Hebrews 4:12
5. John 15:5
6. Luke 15:31
7. Luke 9:62
8. Galatians 5:22
9. St Teresa: Interior Castle, 3rd mansions, chapter 2.
10. John 9:3.
11. Ps 137:9
12. Ps 2:12
13. This was the colleague who had pointed out the sky to me on the beach mission.
14. Hymn: William Cowper: God Moves in a mysterious way
15. Obviously I don’t mean that anybody else can use their view of God to judge what is right for me, and conversely.
16. This must have been a quotation from the Book of Margery Kempe, ch 17: “Than knew sche wel be her feyth that ther was gret joye in Hevyn, wher the lest poynt of blys with-owtyn any comparison passeth al the joye that euer myt be thowt er felt in this lyfe” (Early English Text Society, OS 212)
The air on the North Wales coast has a quality of clarity. Some of the sunsets are breathtaking. The rain however can be heavy. Once there was so much that it flowed down the entire width of a street, not just in the gutters. I had a bicycle, and saw Caernarfon, Conwy and Beaumaris castles, and beautiful churches in Clynnog Fawr and Beaumaris. I was remarkably unadventurous in some ways. I thought Chester was difficult to get to.
Quite soon I started to wonder about the vehement agnosticism of my mother. How can you be vehemently agnostic? The question is, “Does God Exist?” Possible answers are “Yes”, “No” or “Don’t Know”. Necessarily “Don’t know” must be provisional, and likely to vanish in the face of either of the other two. There is a strength to the agnostic position, which is to be open to new insights, but I did not know that then. All right. Does God exist? I did not know that the question itself is a contradiction in terms. I simply asked it. It was immediately obvious that no human being had the stature to answer this question for me. One might say portentously “No”, and another might say with equal confidence “Yes”. I would have to find out directly. If the answer was “No”, I would have made a fool of myself, but then, if the answer was “Yes”, I would have been a bigger fool not to have asked the question. Accordingly I prayed “God, if you exist, show yourself to me.” I prayed thus for some time, and put a lot of effort into it. Eventually I had my answer in the form of a voice in my head which said “Stop being selfish”, accompanied by a feeling of certainty. The feeling was at a depth I had not experienced before. It was not the certainty of seeing an object that is straight in front of your eyes, but much more certain than that. I can only describe it as a soul knowing, performed by a different faculty from that which knows things in the normal way.
When I read the Life and Interior Castle of St Teresa of Avila, I was disconcerted to find that my experience, of a voice accompanied by a spiritual feeling of certainty, exactly matched her description of a locution. “Frequently, not only can words be heard, but, in a way which I shall never be able to explain, much more can be understood than the words themselves convey” (1). I was not holy in any sense, but literally, an absolute beginner! This is another thread running through this book. The great ones of former times, such as those listed in the preface, are not august, distant figures, superior even. Rather their greatness lies in this, that they were human beings like us, and spoke of the deepest things that concern humans with superb clarity and precision.
I went in great excitement to the family that had put me up when I first went to Bangor, and said “I have got God”. Perhaps I would not have spoken so had I had any idea of His size. The wife and mother of the family said to me, kindly and gently, that she had “got God” too.
Other things contributed to this experience. I had gone to Lincoln Cathedral. The Angel Choir in its peerless beauty seemed to be speaking a language where words were not required, but which I seemed to understand. One winter’s night the Salvation Army were playing carols near my parents’ house. There they were on the snow, gathered round a street lamp, and they prayed that their music would reach the hearts of those who heard them. These people were praying simply and humbly, and it was for them a perfectly reasonable thing to do. There was also a lovely girl called Gillian, who was a Christian.
It seemed obvious to me that I should join a church, to meet with others and share experiences. I did not want to go the chapel of Church Hostel because they seemed to drink blood, so I went to a chapel, where they had symbols, which was much better, as I then thought. I also started to devour the library of Church Hostel, and met many of my great ones there. My academic work suffered, but I was absorbed in a drive to know more of God. I did nevertheless obtain some experience of the scientific method.
I did not want to get involved with contentious books such as Genesis, so I started reading the New Testament at Matthew. Straight away I was faced with the question “Who was Jesus?” Much questioning followed, and meeting with people, and sermons, which were then like nourishment to me. One Sunday I had a cold, and could not hear very well. I was in the back of the chapel, and asked Jesus into my heart. Immediately I felt a peace such as I had never known flow through my whole body. The date was 6th February 1972.
Looking back, I did not ask Jesus to come in as anything, specifically as a personal saviour, but simply to come. At the time, I enthusiastically absorbed all that the chapel had to teach, such as the sacrificial death of Jesus, and the hopeless sinfulness of humanity, which makes everybody bound for hell unless they avail themselves of the sacrificial death. I therefore had to save people. We set up a coffee bar, and some of us prayed, and others went out on the streets of Bangor and invited people for coffee, so as to talk to them of the saving death of Jesus. We had little success. I began to wonder whether God did not care about all these souls that were being damned. I realised at once that God must care a great deal more than I did, so that was absurd. I could not place a finger on the absurdity, but as it were, filed the question in pending. On one occasion it was cold, and I took an electric fire to make the place more comfortable. I was told that it shouldn’t be too comfortable, the better to help sinners to see their awful predicament before a righteous God. I began to spend more time praying and less going out on the streets.
Once we were going on a Beach Mission. I thought it would be good if we had fine weather, so I prayed accordingly. When we were there, my colleague said “look!” and there above our heads we saw the grey clouds drifting majestically in opposite directions, and the blue sky appearing as we watched. My colleague checked later, and he said that nowhere else on that day had there been fine weather in North Wales. This isn’t an allegory. I saw it myself. I thought I was onto a good thing here. I pray and I get, and look at my telephone line to God! But no prayers after this were effective. I began to wonder why, and I think it was because my prayer had been made simply, without ego, and with plenty of presumption. Presumption is another theme of this book. As for my telephone line to God, well, I heard that my mother had died. I set off to hitch a lift home. I was unsuccessful, so I returned to Bangor. I had various other voices telling me to get up in the night and pray, and to fast. The leader of the chapel said “You know where these voices are from, don’t you?” I realised instantly where he thought they were coming from. When I heard that my mother was well, I knew that voices were not to be taken any notice of, and so they stopped.
One day on the beach mission, I was less than enthralled by the telling of the story I had heard so often by now. I saw a young boy similarly less than enchanted, and from somewhere we found a rich relationship with few words, making a tunnel in the sand. I wanted to know how you grew, but all I could pick up was that you grew numerically, by saving souls. A very serious problem was that so many of the unsaved souls seemed to be of intelligent and attractive people. If you think people are going to be damned, you can’t have a normal conversation with them. You try to bend each conversation in the direction of their damned status and proffered salvation, and so the entire fabric of human intercourse is distorted, and as this intercourse is one of the most important things on earth, this is a great evil. Also even while I fervently believed the doctrines, I began to wonder at the process of “I am a sinner – He died for me – I am grateful – So I love him”. The love runs in a ready-made channel.
O, Dearly, Dearly has he loved
And we must love him too. (2)
What would it be like if it were to roam freely? I should have to think the unthinkable, and not be grateful for the death.
I was baptised by immersion. As it was going to be a once in a lifetime experience I read all the biblical references to baptism, and was very expectant. For a robe I used the costume I had worn as one of the crowd in a production of “Yeomen of the Guard.” It was precious for someone had sewn it together specially for me. In Act One, I was the headsman. By the time of the baptism I was mentally exhausted no doubt, but it was a totally flat experience.
I thought I should acquire some virtue, specifically Charity, so I worked on my heart until I thought I felt the appropriate emotion. The very next thing I did was to speak very rudely to some people I met. This was a revelation. Thinking you have a virtue prevents you from acquiring it. It is the same phenomenon that got in the way when I was trying to learn the violin as a child. The same applies to knowledge, specifically knowledge of God, so that the more you think you know, the less you are able to learn, but that realisation came later.
I became very earnest at this time. The mother of a girl friend said that life had its funny side. I said that I regarded humour as a silly jigging about, and a distraction from the important business of life. Now, decades later, I know she said the truth, and more, that it is a major insight. I have seen pictures of serious young men since. Perhaps laughter is a grace more easily appreciated by age. Even so, I did begin to wonder why I was not more cheerful. I thought that the universe is honest, and if I was not cheerful, there was a reason.(3) The warden of Church Hostel seemed to be cheerful a great deal of the time, so I went to see him, and I asked him if he was happy. He thought a bit, and then said yes he was. I had been impressed by the worship that I sensed in Church Hostel. It seemed more than the smell of the incense. Also, as I now believed in the sacrificial death, it was not difficult to believe that the eucharistic elements in some mysterious way stood for what they were proclaimed as, the body and blood of Christ. So I left the chapel, with prayers that God would look after me, for the leader of the chapel had threatened me with damnation if I left, and joined the worship at Church Hostel.
About this time I visited Lichfield Cathedral with my elder brother. There was a service in progress, so we looked at the exterior. I began to feel more and more that I wanted to go to the service, but we were late and had spent time looking round as well. Eventually I couldn’t stand it any more, so I went in, impossibly late, and took communion.
A person I met at this time said that human beings consist of body, soul and spirit. I was happy with the idea of body and soul, but body, soul and spirit sounded a bit esoteric. He quoted a scripture about dividing asunder, or distinguishing, the soul and the spirit (4). I asked him, to try and get clear in my mind what he was saying, whether he had seen people who were mostly body. Oh yes, he said, with no hesitation. So then I asked if he had seen people who were all soul. He hesitated about this, so I asked if he had seen people who were nearly all spirit. His eyes and voice softened then, and he said “certain old ladies…” So I took it as a working hypothesis that we are body, soul and spirit.
I began to wonder how I related to God. God is everywhere, but I am here, occupying this space. I don’t think it is sensible to say that there is a Gervais shaped hole in God where I am, so in a purely geographical sense, God must be occupying the same space that I am occupying, so we must coincide. Do I believe that my soul and spirit exist apart from God? No, of course not. They would instantly vanish. All right then. At the levels of soul and spirit God and I also coincide. I thought that therefore at the level of spirit, I am God. I was horrified by this conclusion, and so I rejected it, but I could not see where the argument had gone wrong. This phenomenon of two things coinciding I called the vine principle. Jesus said “I am the vine and you are the branches.” (5) He did not say “I am the stem and you are the branches”, so that one ends where the other begins. Rather the vine is complete, and when we add our branches, there are no more branches than there were before. It is easy enough to describe the chocolate principle. I have five chocolates, and if I give you three, I will only have two myself. In the vine principle, it is as the father said to the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son: “Everything I have is yours.” (6)
A homely illustration can be performed in the bathroom. You fill the basin with water, and submerge the tooth mug in the basin. No, don’t take it out again. That would be the chocolate principle for then the water that is in the mug is not in the basin, and there is less in the basin than there was before. No, you leave the mug in the basin, and both are full, but there is no more water than there was before.
On one vacation back in Oxford I saw an elderly Don with an air about him of great holiness. He called me a babe in Christ. I said “Surely I will always be a babe in Christ.” He answered “No.”
I described above the flat experience of my baptism. On another vacation a family in Oxford who had previously been Quakers told me about the baptism in the Holy Spirit. They gave references, and said it would in no way remove me from the suffering of the world, but would speed up my walk. I was to go away and think about it, and come back in a week if this is what I wanted. I didn’t need time to think. Back I went, and was baptised in the Holy Spirit by prayer and the laying on of hands, and spoke in tongues, making a great release of feeling. The date was 28 September 1972.
The next day I spoke in tongues again, to see that it was still there. This was as much a failure as were my prayers after the one for good weather for the beach mission, and for the same reason. It was not simple. I tried to use this gift to see if I could find out about the higher levels. If only it were in English! The result was that eventually I ended up with a chant, the same every time. Back in Bangor, by some process that did not surprise me, though it delighted me, I met a man who took me regularly to a charismatic fellowship at 14 Devonshire Road, Liverpool. Have you ever heard a piano chuckle? That one did!
Here I saw the gifts of tongues for public use, that is, with an interpretation, and prophecies. I went up for prayer, and was told, concerning the one who put his hand to the plough and turned back, that my hands were glued to the plough.(7) He also said I would bring many souls to Christ. I experienced great joy and peace. Love, that is to say specifically for me, I did not feel. The people were loving and kind. I have only good to say of them. They said that the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace.(8) I felt joy and peace as I said, in large and unprecedented measure, so what of love? I was in error in saying this of course. It is not being loved that is the fruit, but loving. “Perfection consists not in consolations but in the increase of love.” (9) Nevertheless the error was not total. You need to be loved in order to love. It is a circle.
There were other charismatic fellowships in Oxford and Exeter. At one of them, somebody spoke winsomely of God as a fisherman, attracting people to himself. Come and be hooked!
This was a valuable incident in a steadily increasing conflict. God is attractive, yes? Yes, surely so. But the image of God I was picking up from the bible, which must be reliable as it is God’s word, was far from attractive. Two men were killed because they accidentally touched the ark of the covenant. The Israelites were bitterly castigated, not because they had committed genocide, but because they hadn’t committed it thoroughly enough. And what sort of glory had He won from Pharaoh, Omnipotence playing with an earthly ruler to make him recalcitrant so Omnipotence could beat him? What sort of God would make a man be born blind, so that his glory could be revealed? (10) What is God’s problem that He should deny Moses entry to the promised land after all his long service, because of an incident with water at a rock? Why did He want to kill Moses? How can anybody be blessed who dashes little children against a stone?(11) Why should I kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and I perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little? (12) I had invited him freely, not from fear. And what was God’s love for Jesus if He sacrificed him for anybody? What is God’s love for anybody if He damns them to Hell for all eternity? This list could be greatly extended. On the other hand there is that little word, Abba.
To digress a little, one must be able to judge the words of Jesus in the same way that one judges anybody else’s words, otherwise he has a tyranny over us which is alien to his nature. It is offensive to say that God would cause a man to be born blind to demonstrate his glory, but perhaps he meant “whether this man sinned or his parents is neither here nor there. That is knowledge that leads nowhere. That was in the past. Let the dead bury their dead. The point at issue is ‘What happens now?’ and what happens now is that the glory of God is going to be revealed in this man’s life”. A similar way of speaking is found in John 6:32. “Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven”. Jesus is probably not, as the plain text reads, asserting that Moses didn’t give them bread from heaven, rather he is saying “That was in the past, dead and buried. Now there is real bread for you, not dusty histories. This is the real issue. This is important, that is not.”
At this time I spoke with a friend at Bangor, (13) and said I was worried that I might commit the sin against the Holy Ghost, and be lost. He repeated the question, and said he would go away and pray about it. The next day he came back and said this is what he thought God was saying: “Gervais, I love you. I am your Father. It is impossible for me to let you go, therefore you cannot commit the sin against the Holy Ghost.” I knew this was right, and so I adopted it as a touchstone, against which to test every other image of God.
“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense…God is his own interpreter/ And he will make it plain”.(14) The substance of this experience was to stop judging God by any criterion external to him, such as his supposed word, but to take God as the criterion for judging everything else; (15) to move from one platform to another, or rather, to move from what was not a platform.
I came across the quartet Opus 127 by Beethoven when I was in Bangor. I listened with my mind, with all the analytical power at my disposal, but also it raised me regularly to a state very much akin to ecstasy. The reason is that the music moves in high spiritual realms. For most of a term I would experience this ecstasy weekly, on Tuesdays I think, then I would go to a bread and cheese lunch for some charitable purpose because I liked the simplicity. I also got to know the Hammerklavier sonata Opus 106 at this time.
The normal joys of student life were not unknown to me, such as passing out in front of the Union from comprehensive alcoholic inebriation, or waking up in a garden on the way to the hostel at 5.30 in the morning with sick all over my jacket, and a hangover, which I thought well worth it, and which I could feel lifting by the minute. There was a poetic occasion when we painted a zebra crossing in emulsion on one of the roads. Alas by the time the Police arrived it was raining solidly, and our handiwork was washed away. I read Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” without difficulty in Middle English. I loved it when the angry friar in the Summoner’s Tale went tearing up the street because he had been insulted. He expressed his emotion so freely. The starkness of the Pardoner’s Tale appealed to me. The whole book was altogether marvellous, except for the sermons. I also loved Jerome’s “Three men in a boat.” There was an early music group, and an orchestra. Throughout my time in Bangor I received expert tuition in the cello. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that I was trying to get something, such as spiritual illumination, from the cello, instead of using it as an instrument to give something out, nevertheless I played two movements from Beethoven sonatas in public. I discovered an unexpected facility in the double bass. Once I had two friends round, and we sang through Byrd’s three part mass. This was the first time since my voice had broken that I produced an acceptable sound. The new warden interrogated me. Was I holding an illicit communion service? I said “How could we? We didn’t have a priest.”
I still had the problem of how to grow. One person advised that I should take one of God’s promises and hold Him to it. I mentioned the library in Church Hostel. There I read that the smallest heavenly joy was greater than all the joys of earth put together. (16)
It seemed to me that this was the life! I should like to be a mystic. I understood a mystic to be one who experienced the love of God in a direct manner. This is the promise therefore: “Ask and you shall receive” and what I asked was that God would show me his love.
My three years at Bangor came to an end. Not surprisingly I did not get a degree, nevertheless, I was well pleased with my time there. I had begun to laugh again, and I had the satisfaction of having some of the new year’s intake of serious young men worry that some of my reading matter was dangerously liberal.
1. Interior Castle, Fifth Mansions, Chapter 3. Also “When the Lord speaks, the words are accompanied by effects” and “His words are deeds. (Life Chapter 25)
2. Hymn: There is a green hill: Mrs C F Alexander
3. I do not mean that major life changes should be contemplated as a response to one or two bad experiences or moods, but you can judge whether the overall quality of your life is of cheerfulness or not. This is an extremely sensitive indicator.
4. Hebrews 4:12
5. John 15:5
6. Luke 15:31
7. Luke 9:62
8. Galatians 5:22
9. St Teresa: Interior Castle, 3rd mansions, chapter 2.
10. John 9:3.
11. Ps 137:9
12. Ps 2:12
13. This was the colleague who had pointed out the sky to me on the beach mission.
14. Hymn: William Cowper: God Moves in a mysterious way
15. Obviously I don’t mean that anybody else can use their view of God to judge what is right for me, and conversely.
16. This must have been a quotation from the Book of Margery Kempe, ch 17: “Than knew sche wel be her feyth that ther was gret joye in Hevyn, wher the lest poynt of blys with-owtyn any comparison passeth al the joye that euer myt be thowt er felt in this lyfe” (Early English Text Society, OS 212)