Chapter 3
I had a summer job in the Royal Waterloo Hospital, London,
as a porter. When I heard about my degree, I continued in it. There was a
lovely companionship among the porters.
A kettle was kept permanently on the boil. After a while, one of the
porters called Carlton said I was fussy or prim. He said “You would even find
something wrong with crapping.” I said “Well of course I do. It stinks!” We
laughed hugely in delighted mutual incomprehension. Another porter said “Cheer
up, it may never happen.” It became a refrain. I had a motorbike. This was so
thrilling that on the night I bought it I rode and rode, never mind that I had
a prom ticket for Byrd’s four part mass. I arrived late for the concert.
Anyway, in the porters’ mess, I was due to take something to St Thomas’
Hospital. I sensed that something was up, so I looked at the motorbike before
trying to start it. I found a piece of paper between the spark plug and the
cap. I could feel the amazement of my colleagues as I rode triumphantly away.
I played double bass in a scintillating performance of “Messiah” by the St Thomas’ Hospital Music Society, in Southwark Cathedral. I had been given a fine double bass on extended loan by a musical friend in Bangor. It was stolen shortly before the performance, but we obtained another one for the evening.
Again I was remarkably unadventurous in London, but I did attend some excellent concerts in the Royal Festival Hall and the Proms. I went often to Westminster Abbey, and conceived a great love for the place. Partially it was the extreme beauty of the architecture and fittings, but it seemed to me to be something more. There seemed to be a special kind of worship going on in the heights of the vault, well symbolised by the censing angels in the transept. The window in the cloisters, opposite the chapter house, is out of this world. I also went to St Margaret’s Westminster and enjoyed the fine music.
At this time my girl friend finished with me. I had tried to conduct this relationship on Christian principles, that is to say, wait until we are married. I was very conscious of St Paul’s dictum about wives submitting to husbands. My girl friend didn’t see it like that. It was a precious experience. We had gone to Switzerland on holiday, and I had met some friends of hers, and her parents. They took me to All Souls, Langham Place. Being finished with caused a big upheaval. I thought then that Christian principles were no way to run a relationship! Much later I met her again, and her husband and son, and that was a healing experience. I now had those elements of maturity that she had missed in me when we were together, but it was too late.
I also went briefly to the Kensington Temple, and then to a church in Kennington. The Abbey and St Margaret’s represent the very best in the Church of England and it was a great mistake to leave them. My motivation was to join a church as I had been advised to do, to engage in its life. It was a sacrifice, but I had not yet abolished that concept from my outlook. The intimate fellowship I was expecting did not materialise. I had been steadily moving towards the high church, and this was a high church. I was confirmed in Kennington. I thought that confirmation was surplus to requirements, because it symbolised the receiving of the Holy Spirit, and I had already received the Holy Spirit. Still, it did me no harm, nor good. I had real joy in attending a charismatic fellowship in Southgate. All the time I was aching. Surely, if the eucharist is so special, I should feel something. Why is it that I am given Christ dead and sacrificed, when I want him alive and resurrected? To see if the problem was in my response, I once went to communion every day for a week. Nothing.
At the beginning of my time in London, I stayed in a place which my indefatigable mother obtained by pulling strings at her old college. Later the reprographics officer at St Thomas’ Hospital got me a room in a house in Kennington, which was run by two men. I often talked with the reprographics operator. I liked him for his gentleness, and he was very pleased with that epithet. Eventually I realised that he loved me. I should have liked to share my religious experiences with him. We were coming from such different starting points that our dialogue necessarily failed, but it was a pity.
Certain practices at work began to irritate me. We were supposed to look busy at all times, even if there was nothing that needed doing at that time. Also the porters, so I was told, were not expected to use the canteen for breakfast before coming on shift. This offended my egalitarian sensibilities, also the breakfasts were very tasty. We had to empty the bins according to a fixed schedule, and sometimes they were nearly empty and sometimes full to overflowing. I thought it was a much better idea to empty them whenever they were full. I had a magical Christmas on duty. Alcohol appeared from various sources. There was no need for the perpetual kettle. One of the nurses put some brandy on a pudding to light it. I knew what to do with the rest of the bottle. The atmosphere was extraordinary: vibrant and peaceful at the same time.
Apparently I had been irritating as well as irritated, because soon afterwards I was dismissed, over the issue of the bins. My colleague who had said “Cheer up, it might never happen” said “Well, it did happen.”
I got another porter’s job at the Balham Maternity Hospital. This lacked the comradeship of the Royal Waterloo Hospital, but when I left, the mother of one of my new colleagues, who also worked in the hospital, said she didn’t want me to go, and she would sorely miss my smile. This is what had happened to make such a response possible:
At the end of the Bangor experience I had prayed that God would show me his love. I kept on praying this, like the old lady who grates on the ear of the unjust judge. (1) I knew viscerally the meaning of the proverb “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,”(2) and as for “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days,”(3) my bread was well and truly cast on the waters. Eventually I was prayed out. If I continued, it would be words only. I was nonplussed for a little time, and then came down to earth. This was a major movement of the soul, and had several components. God as portrayed in the Bible is an improbable fiction. Rather I am in the image of God. I shall look to myself and to all nature for information about God, concerning whom, I now jettison all preconceptions. All people are in the image of God, therefore there is no chosen people. I know his will because it is the same as mine. A girl in Bangor had said, ruefully, that she wondered what her will was, and then assumed God’s will was the opposite. Since I express the life of God by the vine principle, it is to be assumed that there is one will, self-delusions excepted. The word “ought” disappears from my vocabulary. What is “ought” but somebody else telling me what to do? The bible has no more authority than any other book, and has to be judged by me, since the writers had no higher status than I have now. After all, how many Gods are there for people to be in the image of? As there was no time when I was not in the image of God, the doctrine of the Fall disappears, and with it the theory of the sacrificial death. Hadn’t Julian of Norwich said that in God may be no wrath? (4) No indeed. And what did I think I was doing praying to God for his love and ignoring his women? Not surprisingly, the whole world seemed to come alive. I was a significant part of it, organically, intimately. I listened and looked, and the Creation told me things in abundance. There were also things it did not say, such as the sacrifice of blood. George Fox expressed it with greater doctrinal content but it was the same experience: “Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell”.(5) I had read Bishop Robinson’s “Honest to God” at Bangor, and had exulted at every turn because in my then fervent evangelical faith I said “This is what I do not believe”. Now I read it again, and met another soul who saw God within in preference to God “out there.”
With this experience, a wound opened up, or I became partially aware of it. It expressed itself as a hard edge to my laughter, or a dim perception of a great incongruity. Although I was now experiencing God very directly and immediately in the creation, I think it was because I thought I would have no experience commensurate with my deepest levels, but there would always be a profound loneliness.
I went again to the fellowship in Southgate. I had told them of my searching and longing and distress. Now they could see that I was altogether calmer. While talking to a lovely woman there, I realised that she trusted me, but I was no longer the one who had inspired her trust.
1. Luke 18:1ff
2. Proverbs 13:12
3. Ecclesiastes 1:1
4. Showings, or Revelations of Divine Love, Chapters 13, 46
5. George Fox: Journal, ed NIckalls, Religious Society of Friends 1975, p 27
I played double bass in a scintillating performance of “Messiah” by the St Thomas’ Hospital Music Society, in Southwark Cathedral. I had been given a fine double bass on extended loan by a musical friend in Bangor. It was stolen shortly before the performance, but we obtained another one for the evening.
Again I was remarkably unadventurous in London, but I did attend some excellent concerts in the Royal Festival Hall and the Proms. I went often to Westminster Abbey, and conceived a great love for the place. Partially it was the extreme beauty of the architecture and fittings, but it seemed to me to be something more. There seemed to be a special kind of worship going on in the heights of the vault, well symbolised by the censing angels in the transept. The window in the cloisters, opposite the chapter house, is out of this world. I also went to St Margaret’s Westminster and enjoyed the fine music.
At this time my girl friend finished with me. I had tried to conduct this relationship on Christian principles, that is to say, wait until we are married. I was very conscious of St Paul’s dictum about wives submitting to husbands. My girl friend didn’t see it like that. It was a precious experience. We had gone to Switzerland on holiday, and I had met some friends of hers, and her parents. They took me to All Souls, Langham Place. Being finished with caused a big upheaval. I thought then that Christian principles were no way to run a relationship! Much later I met her again, and her husband and son, and that was a healing experience. I now had those elements of maturity that she had missed in me when we were together, but it was too late.
I also went briefly to the Kensington Temple, and then to a church in Kennington. The Abbey and St Margaret’s represent the very best in the Church of England and it was a great mistake to leave them. My motivation was to join a church as I had been advised to do, to engage in its life. It was a sacrifice, but I had not yet abolished that concept from my outlook. The intimate fellowship I was expecting did not materialise. I had been steadily moving towards the high church, and this was a high church. I was confirmed in Kennington. I thought that confirmation was surplus to requirements, because it symbolised the receiving of the Holy Spirit, and I had already received the Holy Spirit. Still, it did me no harm, nor good. I had real joy in attending a charismatic fellowship in Southgate. All the time I was aching. Surely, if the eucharist is so special, I should feel something. Why is it that I am given Christ dead and sacrificed, when I want him alive and resurrected? To see if the problem was in my response, I once went to communion every day for a week. Nothing.
At the beginning of my time in London, I stayed in a place which my indefatigable mother obtained by pulling strings at her old college. Later the reprographics officer at St Thomas’ Hospital got me a room in a house in Kennington, which was run by two men. I often talked with the reprographics operator. I liked him for his gentleness, and he was very pleased with that epithet. Eventually I realised that he loved me. I should have liked to share my religious experiences with him. We were coming from such different starting points that our dialogue necessarily failed, but it was a pity.
Certain practices at work began to irritate me. We were supposed to look busy at all times, even if there was nothing that needed doing at that time. Also the porters, so I was told, were not expected to use the canteen for breakfast before coming on shift. This offended my egalitarian sensibilities, also the breakfasts were very tasty. We had to empty the bins according to a fixed schedule, and sometimes they were nearly empty and sometimes full to overflowing. I thought it was a much better idea to empty them whenever they were full. I had a magical Christmas on duty. Alcohol appeared from various sources. There was no need for the perpetual kettle. One of the nurses put some brandy on a pudding to light it. I knew what to do with the rest of the bottle. The atmosphere was extraordinary: vibrant and peaceful at the same time.
Apparently I had been irritating as well as irritated, because soon afterwards I was dismissed, over the issue of the bins. My colleague who had said “Cheer up, it might never happen” said “Well, it did happen.”
I got another porter’s job at the Balham Maternity Hospital. This lacked the comradeship of the Royal Waterloo Hospital, but when I left, the mother of one of my new colleagues, who also worked in the hospital, said she didn’t want me to go, and she would sorely miss my smile. This is what had happened to make such a response possible:
At the end of the Bangor experience I had prayed that God would show me his love. I kept on praying this, like the old lady who grates on the ear of the unjust judge. (1) I knew viscerally the meaning of the proverb “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,”(2) and as for “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days,”(3) my bread was well and truly cast on the waters. Eventually I was prayed out. If I continued, it would be words only. I was nonplussed for a little time, and then came down to earth. This was a major movement of the soul, and had several components. God as portrayed in the Bible is an improbable fiction. Rather I am in the image of God. I shall look to myself and to all nature for information about God, concerning whom, I now jettison all preconceptions. All people are in the image of God, therefore there is no chosen people. I know his will because it is the same as mine. A girl in Bangor had said, ruefully, that she wondered what her will was, and then assumed God’s will was the opposite. Since I express the life of God by the vine principle, it is to be assumed that there is one will, self-delusions excepted. The word “ought” disappears from my vocabulary. What is “ought” but somebody else telling me what to do? The bible has no more authority than any other book, and has to be judged by me, since the writers had no higher status than I have now. After all, how many Gods are there for people to be in the image of? As there was no time when I was not in the image of God, the doctrine of the Fall disappears, and with it the theory of the sacrificial death. Hadn’t Julian of Norwich said that in God may be no wrath? (4) No indeed. And what did I think I was doing praying to God for his love and ignoring his women? Not surprisingly, the whole world seemed to come alive. I was a significant part of it, organically, intimately. I listened and looked, and the Creation told me things in abundance. There were also things it did not say, such as the sacrifice of blood. George Fox expressed it with greater doctrinal content but it was the same experience: “Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell”.(5) I had read Bishop Robinson’s “Honest to God” at Bangor, and had exulted at every turn because in my then fervent evangelical faith I said “This is what I do not believe”. Now I read it again, and met another soul who saw God within in preference to God “out there.”
With this experience, a wound opened up, or I became partially aware of it. It expressed itself as a hard edge to my laughter, or a dim perception of a great incongruity. Although I was now experiencing God very directly and immediately in the creation, I think it was because I thought I would have no experience commensurate with my deepest levels, but there would always be a profound loneliness.
I went again to the fellowship in Southgate. I had told them of my searching and longing and distress. Now they could see that I was altogether calmer. While talking to a lovely woman there, I realised that she trusted me, but I was no longer the one who had inspired her trust.
1. Luke 18:1ff
2. Proverbs 13:12
3. Ecclesiastes 1:1
4. Showings, or Revelations of Divine Love, Chapters 13, 46
5. George Fox: Journal, ed NIckalls, Religious Society of Friends 1975, p 27