Toward the central radiance

Sometimes you come across a quote that condenses everything you’ve been holding, half-knowing, and struggling with on your own. The relief, to know that someone else understands, and can guide you through the impasse, is immense. 

The decisive step to maturity is risking the break away from spiritual infancy with its protective traditions and guiding authorities. Without ‘no’ to authority, there is no maturity. This ‘no’ need not be rebellious, arrogant or destructive. As long as it is so, it indicates immaturity by this very attitude. The ‘no’ that leads to maturity can be, and basically always is, experienced in feelings of anxiety, in discouragement, in guilt feelings and despairing inner struggles… Much must be left behind: early dreams, poetic imaginations, cherished legends, favoured doctrines, accustomed laws and ritual traditions. Some of them must be restored on a deeper level, some of them must be given up. (1)

There’s a video on YouTube that I keep watching, from time to time, over the past year of spiritual travail. It is hand-cam, amateur footage of the annual Anglican Glastonbury pilgrimage (click here to watch).

In it, we follow the pilgrims, in their floral blouses, checked jackets, football shirts, ribbed woollen jerseys, padded sleeveless vests, tunics, etc., on foot, with the assistance of walking sticks or scooters, processing through the cobbled streets of old Glastonbury town. We see the clerics, mainly men, marching with them, too, singing the same rousing Anglican hymns. We see the bishops, all men, in their embroidered robes - one holding the sacrament in front of his face - with attendants holding their robe flaps open (so that the lustrous gold within shines forth). One of the bishops is Rowan Williams, or Baron Williams of Oystermouth. Another is Paul Thomas, a “flying bishop” who serves “Traditional Catholics” in the Church of England - i.e. Anglicans who refuse to accept women’s ordination. 

We see the acolytes swinging their censers, and others holding long candlesticks and banners. The central character, whom we keep returning to, is a smiling Indian woman, “Kani Trehorn”, gowned in white, holding the banner of St Stephen’s, Bournemouth. The pilgrims walk past some Wiccan shops at one point. No one is hurt. Tolerance prevails. 

To the sound of hymns piping forth, from a black van at the tail of the procession, the crowd winds its way up to old Glastonbury Abbey. A service is held, with plastic chairs. A statue of Mary, holding the baby Jesus, the focus of Glastonbury shrine and pilgrimage, is wafted with incense and venerated. The sacrament is venerated. 

As I’ve journeyed inward, I sometimes return to this video for a quick litmus test: do the old forms still call me? Do the ‘poetic imaginations’ of childhood, ‘early dreams’, ‘cherished legends’, and ‘favoured doctrines’ still glow with lively presence? Can I really give them up and become a Quaker?

Initially, on the video, it was the music and gilded banners that seemed most alive - the actual ceremony at the abbey seemed rather distant and cold. Then somewhere, along the way, the hymns lost some of their charm and became more musty (though I still love their familiar heart-curves, and quite like it when they’re sung a bit badly, at full volume, and are all the more real for this). But the banner, the one that the woman holds and waves, still sparkled and called: Beauty, I will never give you up!

Now the banner doesn’t call, either. At least, not the last two times I’ve watched. I can see that it is beautiful and that it touches my heart, but it doesn't say to me: you can’t give me up! Or I say: that is so beautiful, and that’s not it.  I can receive it as itself, then let go, with a little bump of grief at times, without needing to get entangled in the old loyalties and attachments. 

I look at these forms - bishops, the Eucharist, the words of the service, hymns, the procession, old abbey walls, ancient gates, the embroidered banners and colours - and say: that’s not it, that’s not it, you’re not it, not this. None of these forms is truly true, or especially uniquely true - or the essence of Christianity - and most of them, a thousand miles from the carpenter’s son. 

Or, in a more nuanced way:

All truth is a shadow except the last, except the utmost; yet every truth is true in its kind. (2)

Some days, I think: these forms are cultural and spiritual treasures - precious, ancient bridges between form and the formless, given, or at least allowed, to safely structure and call us to the gradual ascent. Other days, I think: it’s ok, if people want to worship ‘in this kind’ - have the grounding of set, predictable forms, venerate something outward, have fun, be moved in this way - it’s kind of true. 

But other days, and these seem to be increasing, I think: I can’t do this anymore. They’re distractions from the central radiance, which is within, without, and all around, not in the trained hands of a select few, nor on the altars of this or that ‘sacred space’, nor in the compass of these or those words. (3). They make everyone face forward and away from themselves and each other - look up, above, and out. They make us stiff, closed over.  

Practising this way, we can become more tense, obsessed, inflexible, cluttered, or zone out and go through the motions. Or worse, believe our practice is “it”, the best. Or worse still (and this one’s mostly unconscious), that we can control God and the universe itself (himself, herself, their-selves), and can feel personally accepted and ok, existentially safe, and merged with a figure/experience of great wisdom, power, and calmness by performing this or that ritual, saying these or those words, surrendering to this or that authority, really well!

But we still need a focus, surely? We can’t just wander about in a vague, Everything-is-the-Presence sort of way. 

The procession ends up on a vivid green lawn, just below the abbey ruins, studded with white daisies. 

Perhaps the experience of singing in a group of pilgrims, singing songs that I know ‘by heart’, with no drum kits in sight, is deathless for me. Watching, of course, on YouTube, we don’t get the full sensory and human immersion. Ritual is embodiment, is incarnation. Christ is incarnation. If I was at Glastonbury (I’ve never been to Glastonbury) and the pilgrimage was happening tomorrow, I’d probably join in, at least up until the abbey, then nip away, if I had the courage, into nearby trees and ruins while the bishops, looking like colourful emperor’s penguins, processed around the altar and did their thing. 

Perhaps I’d find a place to be still and quiet, eyes open or closed.

If my friend Stephen were there, too, perhaps we’d climb to the top of Glastonbury Tor, sing an old Waterboys’s song, find a local pub, sharing silence and presence together.

And the Spirit would be there, moving within and amongst us, rarely in front of us, in my experience, where our attention is being directed, very rarely where we expect it to be moving and turning up right on time. Much more likely off to the side, with this or that sparrow, daisy, or particular pilgrim. Always already in our hearts. 

Aside from the white daisies, and the combined sense of everyone moving and singing together, with their fluid and flawed gaits and voices, the most moving scene for me, at least at the time of writing this post, is where Rowan Williams simply asks Kani Trehorn where she’s from.

References:

(1) Paul Tillich, The Boundaries of Our Being (1973), p.127.

(2) Isaac Penington, 1653, in Quaker Faith and Practice (fifth edition, 2013), 27:22. 

(3) ‘The central radiance’ is Caroline Stephen’s phrase for the light of Christ within (John 1:1-9); Caroline Stephen, Light Arising: Thoughts on the Central Radiance (1908).