Betwixt And Between
Notes from the Liminal
The Merrie in Walsingham!
With Marcus
As you read the below I will be wending the long road from Walsingham and the wedding of my fine nephew Fin back to the Summer School I lead annually (begins tomorrow – Monday). I was delighted to spend time with Marcus and Mariamni Plested who are currently in residence and imaginatively reviving the St Seraphim Station Chapel in Walsingham. You can read a little of their adventure here: St Seraphim’s Trust. Mariamni is a properly gifted painter and Iconographer, Marcus a probing Orthodox writer and thinker. Both have a particular interest in British saints and rural customs, and we found ourselves bonding over ouzo and a delicious fish lunch. Effortless hosts. I will certainly put my shoulder to helping any way I can, and – bearing in mind half my family live in Walsingham – I think collaborations will certainly be in order. The Merrie is bubbling. I’d urge subscribing to their lovely Substack, Orthodox Station.
Mariamni
Onwards: I’m often asked if I write in a journal as I travel, and the answer is yes. How I write is another matter. Today is an example – a curio maybe – of how I actually do it. What follows is the kind of terrain my mind rummages through. It’s not exactly a straight line, but people have asked, so here we have it. From this kind of safari comes the combing through that usually provides our Sunday Stacks. This is how I talk to myself.
Flann There
Useful bits of advice applicable at different times
Answers do not matter so much as questions, said the Good Fairy. A good question is very hard to answer. The better the question the harder the answer. There is no answer at all to a very good question.
Flann O’Brien
Do not acquire the habit of talking a lot… you will greatly tire your soul and without fail will harm many others.
Elder Joseph the Hesychast
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As you will know, it’s been quite a few weeks of travelling for me. And I’ve been thinking about the places we briefly abide in that are not where we set out from or our final destination. The ferries, taxis, buses, trains, planes and hotels. Odd little transient spots. I often find them strangely creative, so tend to write as I go. Later I will sift through my wandering piles of associations and see if there’s anything really talking back to me.
Today is an example of what that looks like. I write in a jumbled, poetic form that crashes about like sea waves. If the writerly weave is too tight, too shopping-list, I find it hard to re-enter in memory and really abide there. These are what in oral storytelling we call mnemonic triggers. They are to provoke, to remind, to leap from. This is how I converse with myself. If you catch me muttering, this is what’s going on. I’m quite a fair stretch of the time these days.
I wonder, how do you spend your time when betwixt and between?
What does that phrase mean to you?
Some news: I’ve been offered a visiting position at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University. From October this year to September 2026 I’ll be back and forth to this old town in the misty fens of East Anglia. There’s friends there, libraries, churches, taverns, the River Cam to walk by, students to meet. Family close by. I’m glad to be doing it. I’ve also accepted a fellowship at the Temenos Academy in London.
Towards the end of these rather liminal notes I find myself chewing over how I would best serve both places and myself. And bigger again, how do I serve God? A companion through my notes are various mischievous lines by the great Flann O’Brien.
Remaining Deliberate
What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.
Flann O’Brien
I am asleep in one hotel or another. Asleep in my own mind.
Man overboard. Me and my potatoes filled with blood. When a man is overboard in Inis Oírr they find blood in their potatoes the next morning. In the eyes of the world I am overboard, but actually I am in my little boat tucked in behind Jesus. I come to a small beach and a large wall of antique rock. Maybe all rock is antique.
The sea is hissing nicely, lurching green. The gannets circle, the dream-boy of Torquay climbing hopefully into the crack of a cliff. Red rope round his hips and the old men happily goading him on.
Oh cliff you are the grand yellow skull of a cow. That’s your unruly look. Your cattle-teeth are myth shapes: cuneiform or vellum or some mad-bad-bit-of-bark spun thick with creation words. Every night the Kirk collapses and we send dream-girls and dream-boys back into the gob of cow with their red-roped-culture-function. Wiggle deeper you little buggers, deeper. Keep going till you bang your nut on the forehead of God. The air is damp and curled up with tang of seaweed.
Round and round the cliffs we spin like hawks as Tristan vaunts into the air. Fortunate Zephyr wind are ye there? He jumped once, from Tintagel cliffs and the air took shape and helped him out. He’s a fella of the sea, Tristan, not the land. Be careful.
Always is the Mount Olived Teacher turning his finger in my dust and delivering the audit. Like Gawain squirming with his spell belt under the Green Knight’s thoughtful gaze. Deliver thee the hypoChristasee. Oh tuck me in Jesus, tuck me out of sight. Knackered is me, my Silk-Roaded captain, you know knackered don’t you captain? There’s no sweets in my pocket, not none at all. There’s no scratched-in-pencil love note in my breast pocket.
Bronze-Age me, Cú Chulainn. I will lime white what’s left of my hair, but I’m not sure how I can leather into the full Warp-Spasm.
Bronze-age me
Bronze-age me
Bronze-age me
So many of the stories I love – from Jacob’s journey to the Red Branch of ancient Tara – come from those days.
Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me.
Flann O’Brien