A Prison, A Paradise: Time Travel

Finishing up our selection from Gay Taylor’s pseudonymous memoir. Not long after the previous events, she and a friend visit the ruins of an Abbey and have one of the most astonishing experiences anyone has ever had.

January 5th, 1948. The highlight of my visit, and one of the occasions of our lives, came on New year’s Eve. Alison and I went by a variety of buses to Ripon, and set off on a cloudy winter afternoon, in a taxi to the gates of Fountains Abbey. I had clamoured for years to revisit it, for I had loved it as a child and had never seen it since. We dismissed the taxi at the gates, walked by frost-whitened paths between silvery evergreens, then down towards the roar of the Skell [river] and the dim lovely ruins.

Repair-work was going on and scaffolding towered above the Chapel of the Nine Altars. As dusk fell, we stood together on the south side of the cloister-garth, looking north, towards the cedar and the great grass-grown walls and the tower. As as we stood silently watching, they began to change.

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A soft, silvery-amber and quite unearthly light like warm moonlight lay over them. But there was no moon; it was not due to rise for hours yet. In utter silence—where was the roar of the Skell?—the whole ruin changed, rebuilt itself: the walls were intact, the church and the Chapel of the Nine Altars became roofed and perfect. The pinnacled tower stood out newly finished, a deeper amber than the rest. The entire structure was silver-gilt in colour, and this colour seemed to be struck out of it by the silvery light in which it was bathed. We both stood awestruck, wordless, not moving, for what seemed a long time. “There’s no scaffolding,” breathed Alison at last in a soft amazed tone. I didn’t answer, for I thought, “Why should there by scaffolding? We’re seeing it as it was about 1520, when Huby’s tower was finished, and they’ve only just removed the scaffolding.” But then I realized that we were both seeing the same thing. She said later that she had meant the scaffolding that showed above the Chapel of the Nine Altars, where (certainly from the time and place in which we now were) there was no scaffolding.

We saw no Cistercian monks, brought back no useful information whatever, we merely stood for a timeless moment, for eternities or for ten minutes, seeing Fountains as it was a few years before the Reformation.

Last night, as usual, I sat and composed myself. It was about a quarter to eleven by my very wrong clock. And almost at once, something akin to the “sun flower” came back—that indescribably sense of the inflooding, enfolding, brimful-filling of God’s burning love, and the knowledge that the material universe, the atmosphere, world, body are screens of mercy, which in our fallen state are there as a protection. That God’s love meeting only foulness would destroy and disintegrate it; that the screen is our shelter and our opportunity. But it is no more than a screen; there is no least corner of the universe where God’s love is not.

And for the first time I began to understand this strange idea: the spatial location of the Heavenly Heart. It was like “the fifth month, when the child moves.”

“It is all that is made.”

It may be the most well-known mystical vision in the western world: the entire universe, round as a ball and the size of a hazelnut, being held in the palm of the hand. Julian of Norwich was born in 1342 and lived as an anchoress–sort of like an extreme nun. On what seemed to be her deathbed she had a series of 16 visions. She was miraculously healed and spent the years afterward reflecting upon the meaning of the visions. She eventually composed them into a book, Revelations of Divine Love, written in the simple English of the day, not Latin.

That was Middle English, the language of Chaucer. I have used the public domain translation by Grace Warrack and updated the language for modern ears, with the help of Clifton Wolters’ 1966 translation.

When I was thirty-one, God sent me a bodily sickness, in which I lay three days and three nights. On the fourth night the priest gave me the Last Rites, because those with me were certain that I would not to live till day. But after this I lingered for two more days and nights, and on the third night I was sure I was dying, and those with me were certain too…

My parish priest was sent for to be at my death. By the time he arrived, my eyes were fixed and could not move. I could not speak. He held the Cross before my face and said “I have brought thee the Image of thy Maker and Saviour: look upon it and be strengthened.”….

After this my sight began to fail, and room became dark about me, as if it were night, except in the Image of the Cross which somehow was giving off light; and I could not understand how that was happening. Except for the Cross everything else in the room was horror, as if it were filled with demons. After this the upper part of my body began to die, and I could hardly feel anything, and my breath became shorter and shorter. I was certain I was dying. And in this moment suddenly all my pain was taken from me, and I felt as fit and strong as ever…..

[The visions begin. She has a vision of Jesus dying on the cross, and she receives insight about the Trinity and then Mary, the mother of Jesus. Then this.]

….At this moment our Lord showed me a spiritual sight of how intimately he loves us. I saw that He is everything that we know to be good and helpful. In his love he clothes us, hugs us, holds us tight, because of his tender love, never to leave us. As I saw it he is everything that is good.

And He showed me more, a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, on the palm of my hand; it was as round as a ball. I looked thoughtfully and wondered, “What could this be?” And the answer came: “It is all that is made.” I marveled that it continued to exist and did not disintegrate, because it was so small. And I was answered in my understanding: “It exists, both now and forever, because God loves it.” That is, everything owes its very existence to the love of God.

Through Mine Own Eyes, part 3

Concluding installment from Katharine Trevelyan’s remarkable experience in the garden at Coombe. Previous installments tell more about Ms. Trevelyan.

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Every prayer was fulfilled, every possible desire for the whole world consummated; for His Kingdom had come and I had beheld it with my very eyes. Never again the need to meditate for He was here, to be stood in, sat in, as a child might play on the edges of a great sunny river. And, indeed, I found myself only a child, playing in Him, laughing with Him at the way He was visiting His world. When I stood within Him, He gave and was everything. The years to come, which He showed me as easily as a father shows his child a curious shell beside the great river, held in them no surprise; only wonder and joy.

The Inspiration Begins

This is a place for inspiration–bold, naked, and unashamed. Thanks for joining me! In some lives at some times God has broken through. Your heart is pierced. Your mind is lifted to unforeseen heights. For those weighed down with baggage about the word “God,” then we can say someone or some things from a higher dimension have entered our third. Miraculous intervention, divine love, profundity made visible: All these have somehow been experienced on our planet by people of all races.

I hope to upload a new item daily, but my schedule and the length of some passages may intervene. You are welcome to submit your own, from your own experience or others’.

All these accounts are true, or at least alleged to be true by their authors. I do not write them. I copy and paste them. This is a service.

Most of these accounts are joyful. But some are terrifying. For God is holy, absolute and infinite goodness, and we are not. Since “inspire” originally meant “infused with Spirit,” and if the Spirit can motivate us to abandon the worst part of ourselves, then these readings are inspiring too. One thing you will find here is what the word “awesome” originally meant.

The site will eventually include wisdom about the nature of these experiences; I have a master’s degree in spiritual theology from a major, accredited Canadian institution of higher learning. Don’t make me string cliches like that together again or I will find you. But seriously, guidance can be useful. The wisest guidance of all is that we do not seek these experiences for themselves. That makes for a destiny of disappointment. We seek the One who makes them, who gives us a glimpse of reality more real than the everydayness we must live in here.

The experiences are like telescopes in this way. We use them to see beyond. We are not going to learn about the stars by admiring, collecting, and stroking the brass of the telescopes. And to keep perspective on the moral importance of mystical experience we might apply the mysticism of the poet William Blake:

God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

So: Many things on our journey are more important than ecstasy and mystical experience: Seeing the image of God in your neighbor, loving her or him as yourself. Just keeping faith when you have to slog through another day of what seems like winter with no Christmas or a desert sans oases. But sometimes we need a cup of hot chocolate or a cool cup of water to keep on going. Sometimes we need what medieval writers called consolations. If we cannot have it ourselves at least we can be glad that others have, and we can be reminded that we live in a world of possibilities not impossibilities. Ask your nearest quantum mechanic.

That’s enough spiritual theology. For now, enjoy.

Mystical experiences are rare things, but we will begin with one of the most widely read, from a man who–many years later– had as large a spiritual impact on our modern age as any writer.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

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