Freshly Laundered & Hanging Out to Dry: Chapter2

Chapter 2
Return to England

There is a general lack of faith among people that transformation is possible.
If we have no faith, we have no force, and therefore we have to recognize that we have to begin without force, because faith only comes in the course of the process of transformation._JG Bennett

It is 1972, a couple of years after my seven-month trip to Europe and a little over a year since I’d traveled with my mother and aunt. I’m on my way back to England. In the States, civil unrest has the air sizzling with a sense that a momentous revolution is about to occur. Once again I’m on a venture my parents don’t approve of. The best they can do to handle their fears for me is to distance themselves.
The curriculum of Bennett’s school promises practical methods for achieving the inner change that must occur in individuals before expecting outer change in our society. It sounds like the perfect place for people like me. I am so driven and hungry for the school’s promise of a meaningful material and spiritual life, I couldn’t have been kept away.
As my plane leaves New York, I stare anxiously out the window; images of the friends I’m leaving behind and questions I have about how we will create a more just society consume me. Although most of the flight is during the night, it doesn’t look as if I’m going to be getting much sleep. I’m too excited and have begun worrying about finding my way to the school. Is the train station near the airport? Will a cab driver be willing to drive to a school far into the countryside? In addition, flashes of sheet lightning in the night sky cause me to brace my body against expected turbulence. Maybe we’ll never make it to England. The ride remains smooth, however, and, finally overhearing some passengers talking, I learn that the ominous green flickerings are the northern lights.

I manage to catch a few naps and, shortly after daybreak, revive with a second wind. At London’s Heathrow Airport, signs lead me right to the train for the next part of my journey. Liberation from that worry, however, reinstates my sleepiness. Now I am required to put any remaining energy into fighting the hypnotic rhythm of the railway. I don’t want to miss the station where I have to change trains. At Reading, I strain my back lugging the oversize yellow leather suitcase down the stairs from one platform and up the stairs to another. Only stewardesses have those new suitcases on wheels. Full of regret for having foolishly packed a load of books, did I really think there’d be time to read or that they didn’t sell books in England? I must have felt they’d be comforting.
At Cheltenham, I take a taxi the last seventeen miles, exhausted and sore by the time I arrive at Sherborne House. After wistfully watching the cab drive off, I turn my attention to the building . . . and shudder. It has a looming presence—stone, three stories high, half a city block long, squat in a bulldog-ish way I identify only with English architecture. Coarse gravel scattered on the ground spreads in disarray from the driveway to the front entrance—a crude contrast to the surrounding immaculate green hills, punctuated with perfectly grouped trees as seen from the manor house.
Although it is mid-September, a drop of temperature inside the building sets a chill rattling up my spine, raising the hairs on my bare arms that I watch in dismay. Standing just inside the doorway, I hesitate, wondering whether to call out or to start searching for someone. Then I hear a rising crescendo of echoing footsteps that eventually produces a young man. He happened to be walking through that part of the house; yet despite my unexpected appearance, he greets me with concern. Learning I’m a new student, he runs off to fetch someone named Mick. A moment later, a handsome pale skinned Englishman in his early thirties, just a couple of years older than I, arrives. He has almost black hair and sparkling dark eyes. A navy sports coat combined with Levis and a silk cravat at the neck of his white shirt gives him a casual yet elegant air. Talking and smiling, Mick leads me through the cavernous room nearest the entrance. A tall vase of freshly cut flowers stands on the floor next to the fireplace. The architectural details include cream-colored pillars, fireplace, moldings, and a polished Cotswold marble floor.
“In this room, on visitors’ weekends we sometimes perform Movements,” he explains, “and serve tea up on the landing.” There, too, is a vase of fresh flowers on a table. Then, turning to me, he asks, “How are you doing—tired?”
“Yeah, I’m so cold. I need to get another layer of clothing on.”
Mick smiles. “Have you been in England long?”
“I just flew in overnight from Chicago where I’m from. Before visiting my parents, I’d been in Virginia Beach doing a six-week meditation course at the Edgar Cayce Foundation.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of them. I think you’ll find this a bit different—more intense, I suspect. Would you like to rest?”
Instead of saying, ‘Oh, god, would I ever!’ I tell him, “I’d rather do something in order to get acclimated to the time change.”
Mick smiles, again. “Well, there’s always plenty of work. Why don’t we get you settled in, first? You’ll soon enough be sick and tired of tasks, so before sweeping the upstairs hall, let me show you to your room.” Animated and jolly as he is, I keep feeling he’s laughing at my answers to his friendly questions.
I breathe a sigh of gratitude when without hesitation he grabs my bag and carries it up two floors for me. “The daily schedule of assignments is posted here,” he says, pointing to the bulletin board we pass at the top of the grand staircase. “Of course, you won’t be on today’s list.
“The day begins with a Morning Exercise—a meditation—at 6:45 and ends with Movements from 8:30-10 p.m. You won’t be expected to attend Movements until the course begins. Right now, they’re just for the first year students who stayed on to help during the two-month transition between courses. You can attend Morning Exercise, though, and just sit without doing an inner exercise.”
My dorm is on the third floor, the second floor (up) as the English would say, once maids’ quarters—with low ceilings and no form of heat but a barren fireplace. Two shards of tile are all that remain from what must have been a decorative ceramic lining. Mick escorts me into the austere room and suggests I come find him near the kitchen when I’ve gotten settled in.
“It’s on the ground floor. Just follow the sound of voices and clanking pans,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves.
I sit down on one of the beds Mick said was available, perhaps attracted to the warm glow of its orange blanket, glad to finally catch my breath and take in the new surroundings. The walls are devoid of decoration. No curtains or rugs. A half dozen narrow cots are placed square to the walls and each other throughout the room, thin mattresses on a mesh spring, the unoccupied ones having a neat stack of their appointed sheets, wool blankets, pillows, and down afghans. A couple of suitcases and made-up beds indicate that at least two other occupants are somewhere around.
It feels good to stow away my clothing into a deep drawer chosen from among the unmatched chests. The books remain in my suitcase under the bed. After making up the spare-looking cot, I lay down, sinking into exhaustion. The thought of remaining motionless in the cold, however, is too crushing. Even if I manage to bundle up enough, I’d probably sleep only into the middle of the night. Then what would I do? Now that I’m finally here, I can’t allow myself to rest; my inner motor is revving.
There are two months between each of the intended five ten-month courses. First course students were invited to stay after theirs and second course students offered the opportunity to arrive early at no extra cost to ease the school’s transition between student bodies. I have arrived a month early, thinking to ease myself into the foreign environment where I know no one. Students run the house and care for the property along with staff, so if we don’t know how to cook, clean, garden, or repair things, we will learn through doing. We are to take turns with every role—even house supervisor, the student who makes the work assignments for the day and will oversee all practical activity.
Mick and I hadn’t passed a soul in the halls and the starkness of the dorm hints at desolation. Every now and then, I hear voices coming from far away. I need to find them and push away the gnawing emptiness that has nothing to do with food.

There are many ways of going forward,
but only one way of standing still._Franklin D. Roosevelt