Note by DWM, June 2006: The following is taken from an e-mail sent to a long-standing friend

A Silent Dweller

Yet again I have spent an hour or so sitting in the hot Sun in the garden of this Farm, feeling and thinking many things, on a day before that day which marks a month since Fran's tragic death.

Something seems to have happened at, or because of, my brief stay at the monastery: something slowly grown, within me, as a result of being there, and I do not understand how or why this is so. Perhaps it was the time alone, in silence. Or the many attempts to pray, to believe. Or the knowledge of my failings, laid bare among such surroundings and among such people of genuine goodness. I do not know, and do not, really, even wish to work such things out. It just is what it is - a gentle, but wonderful, appreciation of the innate beauty and goodness of life, which I felt, and feel, is in some indefinable way a gift from Fran, something which gives her death some meaning, at least to me.

This feeling first suffused me a few days ago in the hills when, cycling along a quiet lane, I stopped on a warm and sunny morning to hear two Skylarks above a field of Poppy-filled wheat: life in all its quiet stillness was beautiful and good, then, and it was as if Fran, or something of her, was around, with her somehow and faintly smiling in that way she often smiled. So, on my return, I quickly wrote out my The Ineffable Goodness poem, as some attempt at a positive tribute for her.

Now, a few days further on, I am beginning to feel somewhat re-assured about life, again - remembering all the good times, the good days, Fran and I shared, and feeling that she may at last have found the peace that certainly eluded her for most of the last two troubled years of her life. Thus, there are for me moments of happiness, again - and moments of sadness because she cut short her life even though so many people, myself included, loved her, and even though she had such beauty, such talents, such promise of happiness had she only been able to appreciate herself as others appreciated her. So, both the happiness and the sadness merge to form something, in me - something new; something deep, and strange, so that I am beginning again to sense that warm glowing goodness and beauty which is and can be presenced in some numinous music, in some Art, in good, compassionate deeds, in prayer, and especially in a noble personal love.

Where does this leave me, now? With a certain knowing of how Fran changed me for the better, and with a desire to remember this discovery, this insight: to transform myself, my life, through a calm, compassionate, acceptance and use whatever causal time remains to me to gently do what is right, to cease to cause suffering, to accept the beauty of each moment, in a numinous way, and to remember Fran with the dawning and the ending of each day.

There remains, of course, the difficult, perplexing, sometimes still troubling question of belief, of prayer - but I feel this is resolving itself, as such things often do, in its own slow, inner way. Not a sudden moment of insight, but instead a gradual dawning, as when Sun slowly breaks through a thin but total covering of cloud in Spring and Autumn to bring that blue I, we, so admire and which seems to express something of the wonder of life, of Nature, of the Cosmos. Hence, there is an increasing awareness, for me, of Nature, of us as one connexion; an awareness of The Numinous Way, manifest in compassion, empathy, gentleness and honour. Above all manifest in gentleness, in letting-be; in an appreciation of how the numen is and can be presenced, in us, in our lives.

Thus, I am calm again, for the moment, gently remembering the beautiful Frances, and hoping that I can live up to my own words, as monk, or nun, hopes in silent, contemplative, prayer to live up to the Jesus within, and external, to them. Yet - there is still a vague, rather ill-defined yearning, to be part of something beyond me, which might aid me to remember, which might and which could and which should correct me, guide me. A yearning to surrender to the beauty, the presencing, that was and is manifest in early polyphony, in the Latin Opus Dei sung in some monastic Choir. A yearning to just be in such a place, without words, without thought - suffused with the centuries of being, with the goodness, the numinous silence, that pervades cloisters, a Choir, an Abbey. I did not find that at that monastery - at least outwardly - for there was the mostly English Office; the modern buildings. Perhaps it is the essence behind all such things that I feel, that I yearn for, that I seek - the essence beyond even the Latin Opus Dei; beyond the numinous office of Latin Compline, and beyond that beautiful silent, reverent prayer before a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The essence beyond the wheatfields where Skylarks sing; beyond the beauty of some women; beyond the sharing of exquisite moments with such a woman. Beyond all such worldly things, all such causal manifestations. How to live always in and with the Essence itself? With, within, the Numen? Always in the presence of The Numen? To be at peace, and in silence, at last? I do not know - and perhaps I never will know. What I do feel, what I do believe I now know, is that all such manifestations of the Numen are important; that they all have their place, and all perhaps may serve the same ultimate purpose - that of bringing us closer to the ineffable beauty, the ineffable goodness, of life; that of transforming us, reminding us; that of giving us as individuals the chance to be good, to presence the good, to be part of the Numen itself.

Hence, there is now a real gentle tolerance in me - a silent dweller, who dreams. I just hope - desire - that this will last, although given my past multitude of mistakes, there is perhaps little for me to be optimistic about in this respect...

David Myatt

June 25, 2006 CE