Let Truth be my daughter, the one that Life bore when her labours were ended with a cry at my door. Let Sanctuary call her, “My sister, my friend!” … and may honest men find them at their journey’s end. The moment I saw her in the open door’s light labour-cries faded into silence and night. The moon hung above us like a ghost of my doubt but the child had no mother and she barred the way out. I walked to the threshold, knelt down to the child; her infant eyes opened, they were tender and wild. I picked up the baby, I turned from the light and hid from the moon for the rest of the night. This child never cried as she clung to my chest; no song at my lips, no food at my breast. No lullaby soothed her, no bird graced the sky but the cold eye of darkness never saw this child cry. “Is she really my daughter or am I but her child?” - this question grew in me, both tender and wild. The milk of my kindness seemed scarce in my heart but the warmth of my skin wrapped the child in the dark. When the first birdsong sounded and dawn lit this scene my child was still sleeping as I remembered a dream. And the dream was this life - all it’s beauty and sham - it answered no question, it left me no calm. But birdsong had broken the dream and the night as I looked at her eyes in the beams of first light. Still the question grew in me but me heart was now wide for my daughter to enter, both tender and wild.

There’s a man in the shape of me and I’m in the form of a man. Sometimes, though clothed, I’m free and sometimes I just can’t stand the weight, the shape and the form of the clothes over skin and bone and the darkly dressed thoughts that come and slowly make the shape their home. But reaching in … reaching out … like hands beginning to undress robes of dreams, cloaks of doubt something moves with slow caress to the heart of nakedness.

My heart is now a gap between spirit and what’s known, between silence and a voice supposedly my own. May Life become a bridge for the feet of God to come and go that in our hearts we come to know the weight and tred of Love.

Gwin walks with a white stick. See her walking as if the day will never grow old. She wears the day like the grey cloak on her bent back. She feels the day as if it will never grow cold. Gwin seals the sunlight in her closed eyes. See her move her stick while she talks, the tip forming a slow figure-of-eight in the air. She’s standing alone at the horizoned hill, silhouetted with the oak. And will return through the field home, when night marries her grey cloak to the dark sky. Gwin’s so close to blindness she can see it, painting patterns of the past into her sunlight. She knows the spirits of the oak and field and their birds sing for her stillness. Gwin is never alone. I don’t know if she talks to the oak but she listens to the wind, and the wind talks to the oak. Wisdom walks on with her white stick. See her walking as if the world will never grow old. She wears the world like the grey clouds on her curved back. She feels the world as if it will never grow cold.

My plans were on hold on the second from last day of a journey I made down the coast, by chance near a friend who was gladly my host and welcomed me in as if a day hadn’t passed since Jonas and I sat together in class. He’d worked there for years doing climate research at the edge of an airfield reclaimed from the sea. How the waves touched the runway was something to see. And later, looking out as the plane left that earth surrounded by ocean, what strange feelings took birth! * The main control tower was made to withstand storms like the one that was obviously near. But Jonas had told me that the weather was clear for just enough time for the walk I had planned through pine woods that ran down one side of their land. And when I returned some new faces were there: all men except two, and a small boy alone. The scene was relaxed, a dog chewed a bone, but a busy dynamic somehow thrilled through the air and, though the language was lost on me, this I could share. And so the morning passed with the sky blackening-grey. I stood by a pilot who leaned on the wall and would, without prompting, have said nothing at all. But he translated the jargon in a clear enough way when I asked of his role in the course of the day. It seemed he had come there because of the storm and would fly out to meet it, (eye-to-eye so to speak). I struggled to imagine such an ominous feat as our brief conversation cast a shadow forlorn. We walked out and I watched him lean into the storm. * Then I thought, “What a fool!” as he took to the air. “What an arrogant fool who thinks he can steer through these bone-shaking winds and his own human fear.” Then another thought came as the wind shook my hair, “The world’s full of fools, why the hell should I care?” * I came back inside and watched his plane go. The radio contact crackled and hissed with the tilting plane fading in dark cloud and mist. My heartbeat grew faster, and then seemed to slow, as the man’s image filled what my eyes failed to show. For all we could see now was a black, turning sky and even the sea seemed a shadow of death. Silence stood with us. We could all feel his breath. Then the face of the pilot held my mind’s eye and the strangest of feelings just wouldn’t die. And the emotion matured as sure as the sun will follow the worst night of starless, black hew and light-up like stars the drops of dawn dew, and that feeling was knowing that the man would return from whatever was waiting at the eye of this storm. Everything else fell away from me then. Even the image of the man in that plane lost in the dark winds and waves of the rain: a silence engulfed me … and engulfed me again until I learned something of the stillness in men. * I felt no relief when the plane re-appeared. Nor when it touched down, or stopped on the track. The way he walked going was the way he walked back. We were motionless watching, not a sound could be heard but their absence was welcomed in the moments we shared. The door-handle turning – only this broke the spell. We mumbled some greetings, the dog left his bone, someone put on the kettle, someone answered the phone. And it wasn’t a hero I saw lean on the wall but neither a fool, just one of us all. * Later we gathered in a room with a fire. The storm passed above us and the winds died away. Jonas told stories with the guitar he can’t play. And time slowly melted to the wee, smallest hour, that drew us and held us in its own subtle power. The airman sat staring into the flames. Someone asked how he felt on the flight and return. His answer was brief, for with little to learn of this type of journey each one seemed the same in its pattern of actions and the feelings that came. He said, “When I go out to the eye of a storm and emerge into calmness, only calmness is real. It’s hard to describe but on each trip I feel something strange yet familiar within my own form come like a memory of before I was born.” * And when I reflect on that long day and night, the words of the airman, (this glimpse of his soul,) one memory captures and carries the whole: the room full of people in warm fire-light, their voices and silences merged with the night.

This is the voice that God gave me watered in sorrows that save me, shining with joys that confound me, echoing soul that surrounds me. Once (like a leaf on a wind-storm) I blew out to sea as a fog horn sounded with thunder, while forked-light scattered in shards star and moon light. Years lined the eye of that tempest. Fears maligned dreams of the harvest. The future and past still confine me but shadow the voice that defines me.

There’s only ever the Moment bringing us into Being, unmysterious like this clear, winter sky. Once, in the woods near Birk Hill, a Roe deer appeared – she stood, still: stiller than the stars; ears up. We could see each other’s eyes, as we stood, stiller than the stars. Then, time-returned, she turned into sheer movement – gone into the green. But only like the stars were gone, blended into the sky’s bright brilliant blueness. Never really absent. There’s only ever the Moment bringing us into Being.