Letting in the Strange
Seeking a Liturgy of the Wild, (Part 20)
Hey friends – just before I begin, I wanted to let you know about this freshly baked travelogue & interview offered up by the writer Tad Hargrave. If you want a sense of what it was like over those three weeks in Canada and an in-depth interview on my take on storytelling and myth, you may want to have a read. I’ll archive it soon, but the link to his Substack article is here:
Ok, onwards.
In the muddle and jetlag of my return to England I have elected to believe in angels.
It’s not that I didn’t so much before, but I’ve sifted the notion to the forefront of my mind. Especially in these long, strange hours between two and five a.m. when I would most ordinarily be sleeping. As the mood of the night-house deepens – almost unbearably sometimes – I think about a soul companion in the dark. Someone doing the night shift with me.
There’s a cat of mine that’s gone missing in my absence. She’s done this before, so I am hopeful she’s not in any great peril, but that doesn’t mean I don’t pray for her safety, somewhere out in the late spring grasses. I’d like some proof of life one morning; a whisk of tail as she bounces out the cat flap or swipes her brother. She comes to mind as sleep evades me again.
Of course, actually viewing an angel would – according to accounts – be pretty hair-raising. Beings of fire some say, or many eyed, or vast, terrible and winged, not at all what I would have in mind to clink the cocoa with. I’d hope for something a wee bit more manageable.
But still, I believe in them, in the way that I do. And in a way that comes to me eccentrically and prayerfully, not via book-smarts or cheap sentiment. They say it’s angels that are the ones that prompt you to check on a friend out of the blue, to give money to someone that needs it (even when you’ve already walked past four other requests). Angels curate synchronicity, pummel on our heartstrings at just the right moment, speed our steps when danger is near. That’s some of their antique folklore and being one of those signs-and-wonders characters, I’m happy to entertain possibility. In truth I’d put the above down to holy-spirit-moving, an element of God, but on this deep Dickensian night, it’s angels I’m thinking of, leaning into.
I have drastically different thoughts at night. I change political allegiances, negotiate cease-fires, punish the wicked, all between midnight and six. Then I shuffle off to breakfast, milder and more reasoned.
Christianity is a slow-opening flower for me. All at once and it would wipe me out. Too much reality. I have to chew on one breadcrumb at a time. There’s announcements of the heart so prestigious I am floored, and then lots that feels nutty and restrictive. Then a year later that in turn feels like absolute wisdom. I’m learning not make too many pronouncements too early. One simply doesn’t know till you’ve tried, and tried for a while at that.
And something is happening on getting home.
Hard to explain.