‘Nothing blinds us to the true and living image of God except the false man-made idol, worldliness.’
AUSTIN FARRER
Warden of Keble College, Oxford, 1960–1968
Said or Sung
I
When I had the chance to observe him at close quarters I saw that he was merely a plain man in his early forties with a thickset figure which would have profited from regular exercise on a golf course. His nose was too large, his jaw too square and his mouth too thin for his features to be judged other than irregular. At a loss to understand why he should be planted in my hall when he had no appointment to see me, I gave him my chilliest stare and waited for Miss Peabody to rush from the office to my rescue.
But the priest was clearly not a man who let the grass grow under his feet. Moving forward he held out his hand and said warmly in a courteous voice: ‘Good morning, Bishop! My name’s Lewis Hall.’
Finally detaching my feet from the threshold I closed the front door and allowed my hand to be gripped. But before I could utter a word Miss Peabody erupted from the office. ‘Oh Bishop –’ I had seldom seen her so flustered ‘– this is the gentleman from Radbury whom we were discussing earlier. I did explain that it was quite impossible for you to see him, but when I mentioned that you’d gone to the hospital to visit Father Wilton he asked if he could wait for your return so that he could hear the latest news.’
This was a move which contrived to be both thoroughly Christian and immensely cunning. As Miss Peabody quivered vanquished before me and I found myself registering a reluctant admiration for the man who had outwitted her, the stranger saw the chance to build on his success by cornering me for conversation.
I clearly remember thinking to myself: this man shall not pass the threshold of my study.
Meanwhile the man was saying soberly: ‘I do hope Father Wilton’s progress is satisfactory. I was very struck by the way you spoke of him at matins.’
I could not recall saying anything in particular about Desmond himself; I had merely announced that he had been the victim of an attack. Confused by the discrepancy I became fatally hesitant. ‘Well,’ I began, but that was all I was allowed to say.
‘Since you referred to him as Father Wilton, I assume he’s an Anglo-Catholic,’ said my visitor, ‘and if you’re now looking for a locum, may I volunteer for the job? I’m an Anglo-Catholic myself, and Miss Peabody confirms that you have my reference from the Abbot-General of the Fordite monks.’ He gave Miss Peabody a radiant smile.
Miss Peabody turned pink, in the manner of a wallflower suddenly asked to dance by the beau of the ball, and babbled: ‘I did mention the reference to you, Bishop, and if you want me to fetch it –’
I held up my hand. She stopped. I opened my mouth to take control of the conversation. ‘I thank you for your kind offer, Mr Hall,’ I said. ‘I shall forward it to the Archdeacon. And now I have a train to catch shortly. If you’ll excuse me –’
‘Yes, of course, Bishop. I’ll be only too happy to come back at a more convenient time.’
This assurance was not what I wished to hear at all. In a moment of fury I repeated to myself: this man will never cross the threshold of my study.
‘Mr Hall,’ I said, ‘I’m aware that you feel called to establish a healing centre and certainly I wish you every success. However, I feel bound to say that in this diocese I have a policy of never licensing –’
‘I want to specialise in priests who have suffered a spiritual breakdown.’
Silence fell upon us all, but now I no longer saw the stranger, still as a statue, or Miss Peabody, fluttering in the background. As the memories of 1937 cascaded through my mind I saw only Loretta on that Surrey hillside and Alex Jardine removing the decanter from me when I had been so very drunk at his episcopal palace – although I never thought of those incidents nowadays, never, they were all buried so deep in my mind that I never had to think about them – indeed I never had to think about any incident from that spiritual breakdown, my first catastrophe, but now I was thinking, now I was remembering, and I could hear my younger self reciting the words of the General Confession to Jon, who had helped me survive.
‘… spare thou them that confess their faults … restore thou them that are penitent …’ I remembered how I had been spared and restored. I remembered how conscious I had been of the healing power of the Holy Spirit as it moved ceaselessly through the world to raise up and renew all that was broken and cast down. I remembered that I had not always been a strong, successful bishop, battling contra mundum to preach the absolute truths.
My worldliness and my sophistication, those two hallmarks of a civilised man at the top of his profession, abruptly dissolved; it was as if a curtain had been rent from top to bottom by an unseen hand so that light could pour into the darkened room beyond. Acting instinctively – because for one mysterious moment my entire intellect had been bypassed – I turned, gestured to the door of my study and said to the stranger: ‘Come in.’
Then I myself led the way over the threshold which seconds ago I had sworn he would never cross.
II
I should make it clear that I did not immediately think: ah, this is the Holy Spirit in action and I must give this man everything he asks for. I merely wish to explain why I let Hall cross the threshold of my study when I had resolved to refuse him admittance. In fact one has to be most cautious about detecting the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is all too easy to be driven, by mental stress or psychological peculiarities or faulty reasoning, to make a mistaken identification, and I knew as soon as I had recovered from my moment of impulsiveness that I would have to be very careful what I said next. It was more than possible that Hall’s invasion of the South Canonry had nothing to do with the will of God at all. Indeed one could just as easily argue that the Devil was pushing this man into my diocese to cause disruption, and that the memories of my spiritual breakdown had reduced me to a state of addleheaded incompetence.
Having thus flogged myself back within the boundaries of common sense, I said abruptly to Hall: ‘What’s so special about the Starbridge diocese that you should feel called to work here?’
‘You.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, my friends among the Fordite monks said you took a special interest in priests who had suffered breakdowns. They mentioned no names, but they told me about one priest who’d been kicked out of the London diocese after an incident in a public lavatory. No one else would touch him but you gave him a second chance.’
I found I was too overwhelmed by the irony of this latest twist of the conversation to reply. My decision to give Desmond a job – a decision which had just been proved disastrously unsound – was now being presented to me as a powerful Christian action which was still having important consequences. So confused did I feel at this point that I had to make a considerable effort to concentrate on what Hall said next.
‘I
