Inner Life

BY DAVID TORKINGTON
Trading in human for divine
I WAS HAVING a totally normal conversation with a complete Stranger at a Christmas party until he' asked me what 1 did for a living. When I told him he suddenly changed, stared Squirming and smiling in a most odd way and said, "Have you been saved, brother?"
Without a moment's hesitation I said, "Yes".
"And when did it happen?" he asked.
"In 1956", I said, "thanks to Bill Hayley and the Comets!"
1 wasn't trying to be funny, Or put him down, the words just came out of my mouth without thinking about it. But it was true.
I had been saved by Bill Hayley and the Comets saved from the social isolation that I thought was threatening to turn me into a permanent bachelor.
You see, I simply couldn't master ballroom dancing apart from the waltz, and I could only do that in straight lines, so I didn't bother to do anything at all.
It was embarrassing enough for a pimply beanpole like me to say to a beautiful young woman, "May I have the pleasure of this dance", knowing full well it would be no pleasure at all for her, so 1 just sat the evening out hoping they'd play the "Gay Gordons".
Bill Hayley and the rock revolution that followed in his wake changed all that. Now I could get up with anyone, and make a ridiculous exhibition of myself throwing my body all over the place and end up applauded as the "belle of the ball".
If it wasn't for rock 'n roll 1 would never have met Petrina, never have fallen head over heels in love with her, never known what heaven on earth really felt like.
In those days heaven on earth cost little by today's standards.
It didn't even cost me the bus fare to take her home. We walked there hand in hand, one hour and 20 minutes of unalloyed bliss, and I didn't even have a kiss at the end of it.
I hated going back to boarding school with only letters to fan the flames. It took me several weeks before I could drag myself back to the Monday Meditation group and even then, my mind was elsewhere. But when Fr Handley said that God is love and all human love is nothing compared with the Divine, I sat up and began to take notice.
If I couldn't have the human until the summer holidays I decided to seek the Divine, and try to find out whether what he said was true or not.
I remember coming across
a quotation from William of St Thierry that said, "You can't love someone unless you know them, but you'll never know them unless you love them." My brief "love affair" with Petrina enabled me to see the truth of what he said, and so I began to try out a method of prayer that promised to lead me through knowledge to the fullness of love that filled Jesus Christ.
It was a modern presentation of the method of prayer used by the Desert Fathers called the Four R's. Firstly you had to read the sacred texts and then re-read them slowly and prayerfully.
Then reflect on what you had read, ruminate, as St Augustine would say, on the inner meaning of every word, to let those words seep deep down into the very marrow of your being. Then react in your own way, in your own words, Then real prayer began as you began to raise your heart and mind to God. When everything had been said that needed to be said, then the whole being would enter into a state of deep repose.
This is no longer a time for reading, or reflecting or even for responding to what had been read, but for being still, for being at rest.
It took me a long time to get going, but the love I'd already experienced made roe hunger for more and more of
the same, and so I was spurred on to give as much time as I could each day to the practice of the Four R's. Gradually I was touched and moved to react in the language of love to what I had read.
Sure enough, when all had been said that I wanted to say, it became easy to pause and gaze with the eyes of faith at the One whose Presence I felt I experienced enveloping my whole being.
If pressed I'd have to admit it was only second best to holding hands with Petrina, but it was much more than I had ever imagined possible. I've no dOubt I would have believed I'd been "saved" if I'd been brought up in another tradition. As it was I merely believed I'd arrived at the heights of mystic union
I thought l'd reached the top of Mount Tabor when I'd hardly penetrated the foothills. I had a long, long way to go and' truth to tell, I still have.
If I am finally saved, though I won't know 'till I get there, I'm going to seek out Bill Hayley and his Comets and say "thank you".
If it wasn't for them I may well have spent my whole life skulking around in those dreaded ballrooms waiting for the "Gay Gordons". I may never have known what heaven on earth was really like, and may never have desired the real thing. t