Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

There was an earthquake in England last month. It was a small one, but our biggest in a quarter century, so it caused due commotion. It woke my friend in town, and in her half-sleep she thought the wind had got up and was buffeting her house.

It woke me too, I remembered later. “It’s just a train,” I told myself, but was troubled by how long it was, and how very silent. My semi-conscious decided it must be a ghost train, and (most disturbingly of all) I went back to sleep. Funny how the mind takes pains to account for unusual things, but only in familiar terms, however implausible.

I almost didn’t arrange a viewing for my current home when I was house hunting; on the map it’s practically on the railway. I think it was always meant to be mine though, and the trains have become my fond neighbours.

Rusted bunkers of coal squeak and trundle by, fringed with graffiti, open to all weather. InterCities slither past in festival colours. They all grind on the railway seam, and some send the houses shivering.

This time of year, like a migrant bird, a different visitor returns, chased by a plume of steam. Its breathing makes me smile and stop my work. Huff, huff, huff, more like a giant dog at play. The plume, bright white, tumbles by the window, and I must get up to watch. No one can remain uncharmed by a steam train.

All seem solemn in electric trains, whatever the class of their carriage. Heads are usually down in a book or paper, rarely peering through the window’s grime to wonder where they are. The trains hoot like they’ve heard a bawdy joke: high-looooow-high. They are hot inside. There’s lots of plastic, coloured grey so you can’t tell if it’s clean or not. The air is full of stale coffee and fragments of loud discussions on the phone. Thoughts are always fixed on the destination: What’s for supper? Where shall I meet you? I’ll be late, can you feed the cat?

Not so with steam trains, though they use the same tracks. The windows, invariably open, are full of faces, and madly waving hands. The carriages shine with dignity. The tables have lamps and lace. The driver sends their arrival ahead with a sweet sound, much longer than necessary, like one huge panpipe in the sky. I dare say he has a smile like his cargo, strong coaly hands and a blue cloth cap, but I never reach the window in time to see.

Dads and windswept youngsters, pensioners in walking gear, all beam alike. Where do they go? It seems they don’t much mind; the journey is the thing to them. Will they hide their faces in a paper come Monday morning, sprinting between cities on electric trains? Or are they an entirely different breed?

• More on the steam trains of North Yorkshire Moors Railway at nymr.co.uk. (Image from the same source)

I was brought up as an atheist, so it may count as rebellion that I went to church today: a Sunday… perhaps… until you hear I went as a tourist.

I am not an atheist, far from it. I must get that straight. Straight away. I never have been. I am not a Christian either. My path is the path of meditation. My spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy believes in embracing all sincere religions and other spiritual paths as paths to one God. This is something I have always felt in my heart as true.

I know surprisingly little about Christianity for someone who was born and brought up in a Christian country. It is as if I tried to read Christ’s Words but they are in a language I do not know… yet I feel them in my heart as good and true.

So I entered my local church today, overwhelmed like a foreigner, yet somehow at home. York Minster is very big, and very old; too big and old for my mind to comprehend, thus to express or even appreciate. For a thousand years York has been a site of pilgrimage as spiritual capital of the north of England; her Minster at once the reason for and the result of her wealth.

Many times I wanted to stand back and take some perspective, but it seems the architects made sure I could not, almost as if to remind me that God cannot be captured in the span of my eyes. Caught in the cross-fire of flash photography, I wanted to be there alone so as to grasp it all in silence, but that would almost be more daunting a task.

I decide to start at the top, perhaps thinking the vigorous exercise of climbing 275 steps will bring me some focus. On the contrary, dizzy from turning in a spiral and testing my lungs beyond their usual scope, I take my eyes from the steps to note that carving graffiti is not only a modern sport. I try to find the earliest date. Lost somewhere in the 1600s I return my full attention to the task of placing my feet on ever-narrowing stairs, since a tumble in such a place could be quite inconvenient.

There is something in the human instinct which makes one look for familiar places when reaching a height. Perhaps the thought of seeing my house was embedded in my desire to climb in the first place. Some Italians seem to be hoping for a glimpse of their hotel, while I follow the city walls out of comfortable sight to wonder which brown dot is my own.

Someone is practising the pipe organ as we descend, and I want so much to hear it closely. One can only go so fast on such a precarious route though, especially with legs still jellified from the upward climb. I am disappointed when I find the instrument; not by its commendable beauty, and not by the player, even though he makes and polishes many mistakes, but the sound is damped, so I cannot drown in it as I had hoped, even when standing directly underneath.

I try to avoid treading on the worn names of many distinguished gentlemen long-deceased, but there are so many set into the ground. I imagine them shifting uneasily beneath and tutting under their breath through hundreds of years. I am looking for a happy face in stone, but all are solemnly in prayer, unless they are one of a hundred gargoyles, whose job is not to smile.

St Peter stands forever on a little plinth holding outsized keys. He looks weary from the responsibility of his job. The face is so endearing I think to comfort him, but remember I am nobody to do so, and the image of him only stone. One has no face at all, a boy in grey marble, the body a likeness of one who fell too early some time in the 1300s. Was there a face? Was it worn away by the weight of a mother’s grieving caress, or did the mason fall early too? Some seem at the unflattering mercy of unskilled craftsmen, but I suppose tools were brutish in those days, so could bring only vague refinement in any hands.

Glass painting was clearly easier. I stare long at many windows, great beauteous works of art. Circa 1260? Such devoted intricacy, all in greys and greens, a murky yet mesmeric light gazing back at me through time. 1422? Such delicate lines, yet such strange faces have endured so long the same expression.

But where is God? He is not on the coloured map in 6 folds that the ticket man gave me at the entrance so I’m not sure where to look. I thought I saw a lady talking to Him as she sat alone, until I saw her bluetooth headset. I used to come here in my youth when something troubled me, hoping God would hear out my grievances. I always felt better for sitting in this majesty. It made my problems seem smaller. I sit and listen for Him this time, assuming He must have grown tired of listening to me here. It is too big for me though, too grand, too old, too daunting. I open a book of hymns but there the foreign language speaks again. I follow the pattern of the notes for a while and head for home.

For me God is in my little white room at home. We listen to each other there. I am sad at my failing to truly appreciate the grand and ancient place of pilgrimage on my doorstep, but then remember it is just not my path to tread. I crane my head through the window and smile at her from afar, picking out one face of the tower that I climbed. I can love her all the same, even though I cannot understand her language. I am glad and grateful she is there.

I wonder whether to be sad that an entrance fee is necessary these days; that wealth comes to the city through tourism rather than worship. I decide not to see that as a sign of declining spirituality in our time, as that is too dreadful a thought, but instead that people are choosing to look for God inside themselves at home. I hope it’s true.

“God has an easy access
To every place,
Specially to our heart-temple.”

—Sri Chinmoy
(Seventy-Seven Thousand Service Trees, part 7)

(Related article: God In A Nutshell)

After eleven years alive, I had lost all thoughts of calling somewhere home. Like a dry leaf on the wind of life, I went where it went, ever poised for the transport of its next gust. It pointed to Yorkshire, so we went north. I was determined not to like it there.

My cat spoke my thoughts that day, so I stayed silent. Her metal-lined box sounded more full of banshee than cat, and after an hour of teeth and claws it succumbed to her wrath. She flew about, heedless of windows or steering wheel, finally to settle groaning for hours under the passenger seat. She and I felt the same way about long journeys, and seemed equally pleased to move house.

The house seemed to have narrowly survived a brunt of exceptional hatred from its last owners. The woodwork had paint thrown at it in a spite of bright violet or pink, the walls asphyxial yellow from nicotine. Names were carved into windowsills, carpets more thrashed than trodden. Without human umpire, plants and trees were left to throttle one another in the grounds outside. The adjoining shop—the reason for our purchase—had been forced to close for failing to meet the basic rules of health. Be glad that my memory forbids a description, but for the weevil holes in every packet. The hungry creatures invited themselves to join us in the house, but I suppose they left or starved eventually, as things were kept in tins from then on.

Secondary school began for me soon after our arrival. My mother—through kindness, to avoid my standing out from other pupils any more than my southern accent betrayed—followed the school uniform guidelines to a T. I did not hint until a year later that I was peculiarly distinctive in my Clarks shoes, A-line skirt two inches below the knee, and shirt with a top button that fastened down to neatly accommodate a tie.

Choice of seat on the school bus said everything about social rank, thus the clamour at 7.30 each morning; thirty or forty gnashing teenagers vying for the back seat, or as far back as they dared. I, vying with a few for the front, so desperate to avoid confrontation, was heaved upward with the mass, often leaving a Clarks shoe behind as my feet quitted the ground.

I have forgotten what was taught to me at school, but I learned many new words and customs. I learned new skills too, such as dodging knives and staying the correct distance from brick fights. I quickly discovered that hair-style and respect had an uncanny, almost perfect, correlation. I longed to study Latin, but would have won the wrong sort of attention, so took a sudden interest in metalwork instead. “Is this it?” I wondered as I finished my first wrought iron candlestick.

Our first was the hardest winter the north had felt in decades. It was hardened still by the boiler—beaten to within an inch of its life—breathing its last at Christmas when nothing could be done to help it. To quell our festive eagerness, and perhaps to stay warm, we took long walks. Drifts of snow towered far above us, drilled with hailstone tunnels like giant weevil-holes. We scraped tracks in the ice to receive shop deliveries. Fizzy drinks froze on the lorry and gushed out of their bottles as they thawed.

I assumed this was what living “up north” would be forever more: cold, leaky, weevil-holed and shaded with nicotine. Of course it was not. Our little shop soon flourished, and I grew some social standing on the back of it, as our forecourt became a fashionable teenage hang-out. Like any 80s tween, life was all about riding horses or bicycles, eating sweets, and waiting for games to load from a tape recorder to a ZX Spectrum. “Is this it?” I sometimes wondered when I lost at Manic Miner. When will life begin? Or does it not? Does one just gradually look older but feel the same?

By thirteen I had grown the right sort of hair style and grown out of my Clarks shoes. Life was all about baby-sitting enough during the week to buy enough Pernod in bars at weekends to obliterate dull memories of evenings spent baby-sitting in the week. “Is this it?” I wondered, waking bruised and confused, but doing it again for want of a better idea. “Must laughter and relief be so quick to perish?”

At sixteen I moved on, alone, packing all my unanswered questions in some part of my memory labeled “York”.

* * *

The leaf, twenty-one years on, has settled in York again. Only twenty-one years? Is this the same life even? These city walls stood for a millennium, but now in the space of my life are they so changed? Through my open window, breezes bring the bells of the Minster, surging like a tide. This is it. Strangers smile at me in the road, one, two, three, before I realise I was already smiling, and they perhaps politely returning. Was that old cherry tree there in those days too, hurling confetti into a brilliant sky like the mother of some cherished bride? Is that the river inn where once I turned sixteen in a frenzy of loud friends, a cheap euphoria of sunny cider, my feet lolling in the green of the water? There are other loud frenzies now, and some look my current age. Is their joy as hollow as my own once was? As fickle as a draught? Are they still wondering “Is this it?”

It was not this place that was bleak then; it was these eyes that saw it so, and these same eyes that see it beautiful now. Many times I have thought and said that only since learning meditation do I really see; before I merely looked, and even then reluctantly. Again it shows itself to me as true, revisiting the same place on the long circular journey of life. I thank Sri Chinmoy for teaching me to see and to walk gladly in the world. He has travelled so much further in his life journey but lives on to encourage those, like me, who are only just setting out.

Journey
Onward, upward my heart proceeds.
I, the finite, perceive the One.
His soulful boundless Heart of Love
Awakes my bosom’s inner Sun.
Impossible deeds of yore to-day
Have reached their lofty wonder-goals.
My heart is changed, my world is changed,
I love all souls and own all souls.
I inspire the world to forget its woe,
I long for its inner cry to increase,
The far no more remains afar;
Now fast approaches my mind’s release.
—Sri Chinmoy

Excerpt from My First Friendship With The Muse by Sri Chinmoy

After moving to York, spending 2 months taking apart a squalid apartment and putting it back together in a more habitable state, I am glad to get back to the cleaner, calmer and somewhat safer sport of blogging.

The best way to get one’s bearings in York is to walk along the city walls. I hadn’t done this since I was about 12, but the wonderment was the same, if not more profound, after 25 years.

York’s are said to be the most complete city or town walls in Britain. Their foundations are Roman, built around 1900 years ago, with the most visible parts, such as the ornate gates, or bars dating back to Medieval times.

It’s tempting to get caught up with the fascinating facts about the city’s history. The walls and the spectacular Minster (deserving of its own post), draw tourists all year round, and the plaques dotted about are full of bizarre information for the curious to feast upon.

It is not so much the historical facts that fascinate me, as a lot of them are brutal and gruesome, but the sense of connecting with a structure that has weathered so many centuries.

York seems mollycoddled like a favourite child, adored by its proud inhabitants, and admired by its many visitors. The fact that such a robust fortification seemed necessary implies that York itself was a jewel well worth protecting, and that adds to its mystique.

The main attraction for me is having somewhere peaceful but central to take a walk. There is also something very satisfying about making a tour of a city’s circumference, even if it does only span 2 miles and is not an absolutely complete route.

Walking the walls is a way to see the new in the context of the ancient, away from the bustle, jostle and urgency of modernity. Finally the peaceful space they were built for, for which many fought and died grizzly deaths, has been born within these walls. Long may it live.