Dedicated to those who have done the greatest damage
I
am a simple woman on whom the gift of language might be said to be largely
wasted, really, since I cannot speak of worldly affairs, nor influence men to
cease doing harm.
However,
I am well able to articulate personal experience, and I have the ability to see,
and make, connections between corporeal and spiritual, between mysterious
and rational dimensions. This can be useful to readers.
So,
I want in this story to testify, describe an event that happened in my body,
for you to make of what you will.
It
happened the Sunday before last, on the 8th of June, at the Pentecost Service. I was in
Hogsback and attended with a dear friend.
Boughs
of pyrocanthus and red hot poker lilies leaned into the dressed stone walls on
either side of the altar, and another cherished friend had created an
arrangement of coaly roses which glowed over the food table in the vestibule.
Pastor
Barry named all the instances of fire as they occur in the Bible, and his arms
and words fanned the yellow, orange and red flames of that famous day when the
Holy Spirit came to the disciples and all of us mortals on earth.
As
I listened to him holding forth, both impassioned and humour-filled, I became
aware of a fine, fierce, contrapuntal gust pushing itself up inside me, sitting
at the end of a pew beside the scarlet carpet that runs down the middle of the
little chapel’s nave. From the waters of my sacrum I could feel a slender,
burning blueness ascending.
As
he ended his sermon, the pastor encouraged us not immediately to chat outside with
one another after the communion, but to be quiet for a bit and pay attention if
God’s voice was wanting to come through to us. He emphasised that God has a
unique way of reaching each one of us, tailored to each individual’s capacity
and predilection.
When
the three friends who were sitting beside me rose for communion, I was obliged
to get up too, to let them through, and, despite the confusion inside my body,
I was pressed from behind by the parishioners moving all together to the
pulpit. It was not my first time attending an Anglican service in this
non-denominational chapel, and I cupped my hands deferentially to receive
Christ’s body, a weightless white disc, and stepped towards another friend in
the community, Helen, who was holding the tray of tiny glasses brimming with
vermilion liquid, the sacred symbol of the gory story.
At
that moment, the blue fire blew abruptly through my heart, it was a torch in my
conscience, and a whisper that found its way past my lips.
“I
can’t! I can’t!” I breathed, staring at Helen.
“It’s
grape juice,” she replied reassuringly, but I stared and repeated, “I
can’t!”
I
dropped the pale white disc into a tray of ice that just happened to be there,
and stepped outside, feeling clean and light. I was aware of how icy the air
had suddenly turned and how cleanly it entered my lungs.
I
went around to the front of the chapel, where some people were huddling in
spots of watery sun while others took shelter in the vestibule. Serenely I
joined in the eating and talking. The pastor approached me, my sudden refusal
of the holy communion had not escaped him. He asked whether I was a Roman
Catholic and when I replied in the negative he invited me to come and see him
sometime, adding that he would pray for me. I must have looked nonplussed, for
he added benignly,
“But
it’s okay.”
That
made sense to me and I echoed, “Yes. I know it’s okay.”
We
ate, talked, and then carried, washed, dried and packed away the cups and
plates and tiny glasses. It was close to twelve when we said good-bye and I
drove back home soon thereafter.
The
next day (Whit Monday, which in some countries is a public holiday) I caught up
with an unfinished, online creative group process I was part of, which involved
drawing rainbow labyrinths while connecting specific colours with specific
sounds. The colour the group had reached that Sunday happened to have been red,
and the associated sound was ‘ê’ (as in red). I selected my red oil pastel and
drew the outer paths of my labyrinths while chanting ‘ê’. Then, without any forewarning
from my Self, I took a paintbrush, loaded it with acrylic paint labelled ‘Vermillion’
and pulled paths up and down and across between my labyrinths, going in all
four directions, and, again, a wind animated my body and I knew: this is my
blood.
I
became excited, inspired, and squeezed thick red paint from the tube onto my
finger and drew my blood thickly over the paths the brush had made. As I did
so, I was inhabited increasingly by lightness and joy, as if I were purifying
my own soul, my blood and my bloodline. My memories clarified as I sang and I
felt the weightless Christ, my own liberated Self, and a joy my body could not
have before this. Because I had never been able to stop thinking of Mary,
feeling sick at heart all my life about what she had had to endure. Because,
you know, Jesus too was covered in vernix at birth, and Mary had to brush her
nipple on his cheek beside his mouth so it would open for him to suck her milk.
He was born to live with friends and food and go on nice long walks and plant
almond trees and trellis vines and give her and Joseph grandchildren, not be crucified
by envious men and lies!
I felt that Ruach had broken through historic deeps in my body, she had breathed me, leaped me over a bridge higher than that gruesome consecrated murder on the red and speechless earth. Oh Mary, Mary, is it you or I who’s quite contrary?
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| Rainbow labyrinths, process art by the author |
So there you are. This is my Pentecostal record, personal, simple, a single simple woman’s tiny crystal of truth, dictating nothing, prescribing nothing. I will say this, though: we women don’t give birth so you can kill bodies, hopes, trust, dreams, aspirations, natural complexities, and simple, ordinary joys. If you want blood, serve wombs and birth, become a midwife. If you want redemption, then grow the balls to serve the Mysteries of Life.
I thank my friends; Pastor Barry Wittstock and the
St Patrick’s Chapel community in Hogsback; and Chantell Dysel, each for your part in this
story.
