Freshly Laundered & Hanging Out to Dry: Chapter5

Chapter 5
Anticipation or Trepidation

The way to come to true sanity is just to see things as they are. _JG Bennett

One morning I am assigned to do house cleaning chores with a tall husky Irish American named Patrick, who looks to be in his forties, a little more than ten years older than I. The majority of students are in their early twenties; a few are a good deal older, and a few are in their late thirties or forties. It doesn’t seem as if many are my age—twenty-nine. Patrick, speaking in a gentle voice, looks directly at me with bright blue eyes that sparkle with intelligence.
Only when he speaks about the Work and finds me unresponsive is there a lapse in his sympathetic manner. Is he offended by my lack of familiarity with the philosophical teachings? But that will be taken care of when school begins.
“Would you like to come with us to Beshara?” he asks, explaining that he, Wade, and a few students who know each other from California are going to spend two days at the nearby Sufi community. Because the course is not yet in session we can leave our work assignments to go sightseeing as long as we let someone know that we aren’t going be around. Patrick’s ex-girlfriend, Janie, is living at Beshara.
“She’s a natural healer and I’ve been teaching her how to combine energy work with massage therapy.”
“That sounds interesting.” And the fact that she was an ex was also appealing. I may have come to Sherborne for enlightenment but it wouldn’t hurt to find the love of my life either. So many of the students are here with old friends and I’m lonely for people I know better.
Patrick says that Janie had been contemplating coming to Sherborne, too, but decided she preferred the gentleness of Beshara. Maybe they had visited the school during the previous year’s course. I don’t wonder what Patrick means by Beshara’s gentleness since, even without the course having begun, an air of rigidity pervades Sherborne’s environment. On one hand it makes me pull away, planting little doubts; on the other, I take it to mean that people have a positive conviction about something they value.
I’ve been at Sherborne House for just three weeks, yet, a day at Beshara is enough to make me miss Ivo, Toby, and Lucas and a few others who already provide me with a sense of personal friendship. At Beshara, the surrounding landscape isn’t so tidy as it is around Sherborne village. A wild feeling of centuries-old England produces both an inexplicable familiarity and a distance of time I feel reluctant to cross. When I ask to pray in the sanctuary, I am told that as a visitor I’m not allowed. Instead, I sit alone on a hilltop overlooking unkempt brush and deserted hills watching the sun go down.
Once back at Sherborne, I again feel forsaken as more first year students leave, already so attached to the comfort of their familiar presence. More newcomers arriving daily with their anxieties increase the jangling vibes. Coming to Sherborne House early to familiarize myself with the environment had been an attempt to calm my apprehension but it doesn’t stop the empathetic vibrations.

In the month before the course begins, we are introduced to only one meditative exercise. It is called the ‘I AM’ exercise and is performed on an occasion while we are doing practical work. Every hour throughout the day a bell is rung. At that moment, we stop our work and inhale “I”, taking in spirit, prana, the surrounding universe, feeling one’s being within the torso, then exhale “AM”, feeling one’s being moving outward, flowing over, becoming part of the earth, unified with all of creation. The sense of flow brings to mind the tarot image of a cup floating in a blue sky among the clouds—water pouring into it and out of it at the same time.
Sometimes the sound of the bell is intrusive, imposing its reminding presence into whatever my mind is busy chewing on, bringing me back to the exercise. I resent having to leave my thoughts. By contrast, at another time when I am in the garden, the reminder of the bell is a balm, quieting my frenzied digging with its suggestion to breathe deeply, to see with clarity what is around me and what I’ve lost contact with during my preoccupation.

Life is like a path…and we all have to walk the path…
As we walk… we’ll find experiences like
little scraps of paper in front of us along the way.
We must pick up those pieces of scrap paper
and put them in our pocket…
Then, one day, we will have enough scraps of papers
to put together and see what they say…
Read the information and take it to heart.
_Uncle Frank Davis (quoting his mother), PAWNEE

Mr. Bennett’s arrival, several days before the course is to begin, raises the atmospheric clangor to new heights. He is one of those people whose entrance into a room can be felt even when you aren’t looking. I catch my first glimpse of him from across the dining hall. He stands heads above everybody, about six foot five, bony, 71 years old, with a shock of white hair, bright blue eyes, and a gaze that bores through anyone caught in it. Can he read minds?
He makes me think of Carl Jung or Albert Schweitzer. It’s that mustached older gentleman look. Wearing an aged brown and camel hounds tooth sports coat with brown leather patches at the elbows, he looks a classic model of the imposing English gentleman. Here is the person I’m putting all my hopes on. Will he bring lucidity to my search for meaning?
With him are Elizabeth, his wife who must be about thirty years younger than he, two sons a couple of years apart, the younger in his late teens, and two pre-teen daughters. The children aren’t on the course but participate occasionally in various activities and, of course, live in the Bennett’s apartment when they aren’t at school.
Each day the increase of crackling energy and anticipation make the air buzz and my stomach clench. I can see Mr. Bennett across the room at meals, talking with people who seem to know him. What do they talk with him about? Feeling out of place, I have to keep reminding myself of the numinous dream of England—how the feeling of promise had played a role in drawing me here. Aren’t I looking forward to communal living and shared spiritual practices? Our activities promise to reveal how ordinary daily life can be an expression of a spiritual one.
Already overwrought, I am so animated by the energy that I often have trouble falling asleep at night. I long for a feeling of union, though it isn’t clear with what. One night, tired of tossing and turning, I creep down two flights of stairs in the dark to pray in the church that can be entered from the rough stone hall near the Bennett’s apartment staircase. After sitting a short time, just as I’m about to leave, the sound of approaching footsteps in the hall make me freeze in place, holding my breath as the door gradually opens. It is Morgan, my kitchen-singing partner.
“Cheez, Morgan, you scared the hell out of me.”
The church bell pealing twelve times drowns out his greeting. We decide to have our own little midnight mass. Morgan prays aloud.
“Please, Lord, create in us a stronger bond to the spiritual life.”
I’m surprised he’s expressing my wish as well. His prayer segues into our singing a folksong and then waltzing to our own music. The tightness in my throat loosens tears reminding me of a dream I’d awakened from in a sweat a couple of nights before.

I am leaping down the street and with each longer-than-possible leap I scream, Help!… Help!… Help!

After I tell Morgan about it, we sit next to each other for a few mute minutes. I am praying silently, too self-conscious to speak aloud. Is he praying, too? Then, we bid each other goodnight and depart to our respective rooms.

I am, for the first time in my life, preoccupied with prayer, an activity perhaps provoked by my disorientation. One of my classmates has placed in my hands a thin volume by Brother Lawrence, The Practice of The Presence of God. Brother Lawrence was a lay brother of the Carmelite order in Paris. He died at the age of eighty in 1691. The monk’s simple description of turning every ordinary occupation into a reminder of God’s presence suits my increased need for solace. Why am I finding it so hard to be here?
Prayer and meditation entered my life only a couple of years before in a less consuming way. Charmed by newsletter photos of the mix of people attending Edgar Cayce Foundation conferences, I decided to take my next vacation at a Cayce summer camp retreat for two weeks. As nervous as I was about going to a place with no one I knew, the four fifteen-minute meditations each day lent to an atmosphere of friendly support. Meditation there revealed things I didn’t necessarily like seeing about myself such as how disparaging I felt toward people I didn’t even know. But meditation showed these failings from a more generous point of view—as if a voice were saying at the same time, Well, you’ll get over it. You’re just afraid of people because you hadn’t been treated very kindly yourself.
Camp fed my hunger for a compassionate spiritual life and started me on a new path. In just a few days it established a regular pattern of meditation and prayer and expanded my attitude toward everyone I met. But here at Sherborne I don’t feel support. Instead, I feel a need for vigilance.

The world is my lobster. _Henry J. Tillman