One door closes and another opens...

This is likely to be the final entry from England. Had hoped to put in some more photographs but am having trouble (as usual!). I left Iona on Friday morning with a heavy heart, feeling there was a lot of unfinished business there, and arrived back in Chislehurst yesterday afternoon - the total travelling time in the end being not dissimilar to the flight from Australia to London. On Thursday evening, there was a beautiful service in the House of Prayer where two women, Pauline and Sue, who have a healing ministry, played the guitar and sang 'On Eagles' Wings' as we watched white horse waves racing across the sea under heavy gale winds. After dinner, I went down to the gathering at the Abbey. The walk there was in almost complete darkness (no street lights on the island) with the wind blowing strongly enough to knock me off balance several times. At the Abbey, a set of tables was arranged down the centre of the nave, lit only by groupings of candles, and John Bell was rehearsing the choir for the 'agape' service. The Abbey was filled with people who had been completing a retreat at the Abbey or a course at the MacLeod Centre, and others staying elsewhere on the Island. The reading was from Luke's Gospel - the Sermon on the Plain - 'judge not, and you will not be judged...give and you will receive...' etc, so much of what I had been thinking about on the Camino. The music was very special. At the end, we processed out of the Abbey singing 'Prepare the Way of the Lord' - a song that was maintained (in parts) until every person was in the cloisters. 

Friday morning was an out of sorts morning, I don't know why. Except that it was the day before Mark's birthday. We met in the Oratory for morning prayer, looking out at the water lit by a beautiful sunrise. There was a fishing boat on the water and the whole scene reminded me of the photograph on the back of Mark's memorial card. Pauline and Sue were there again and Sister Jean concluded a beautiful morning prayer service, which began with the song 'The Lone, Wild Bird', by playing 'The Deer's Cry' - the song which Mark chose for the entry to our wedding, and which was then the entrance song for his funeral a month later. I haven't cried for so long but that was a moment when it was unavoidable - just looking out at that boat on the water. And then Pauline gave me a book of reflections which she told me had helped her following the death of her sister at the age of 24. An act of unbelievable generosity and kindness.

I can't believe how often there have been people like Pauline and Sue who have been genuine angels (messengers of God) on this road. On the ferry, I opened the book and found a page turned down at the following reflection by Eileen Caddy:"When one door closes, another opens. Expect that new door to reveal even greater wonders and glories and surprises. Feel yourself grow with every experience. And look for the reason for it." Anyone who was at our wedding or Mark's funeral will remember the section I put in the booklets about what Mark said at a Year 12 retreat (the same retreat, incidentally, where I remember we looked into each others' eyes and there was a moment when time stood still and I knew that we would always be connected - which seemed really daft at the time) - he told the students how much he had loved scuba diving but a hearing problem meant that he was not permitted to be an instructor so as a result he had taken up kayaking - and this had turned out to be such a gift in his life, the message being that 'when one door closes, another opens'. Throughout his illness, he would repeat that phrase to me - when he wasn't able to work, when walking was limited, when he wasn't allowed to do any gardening because of the risk of fungal infections, when we were told that he had relapsed and the illness was terminal. 

Another angel left a message waiting for me when I returned from the Camino - there was a package from the company with whom I went to Lourdes. Yvonne had sent me a picture of Our Lady of Lourdes and a prayer, with an assurance of her prayers while I was walking. I had talked with Yvonne and her husband on that first night in Lourdes, telling them about Mark - and they then told me that Yvonne's husband, a doctor, had also had acute myeloid leukaemia but had had a successful transplant, one of the first in Australia. He had almost died but there was one night when he had felt conscious of someone - the presence of Jesus - sitting with him, after which he had regained strength. 

Well, it's not finished - and I'll keep writing for a while yet. My prayer at the moment is that I learn to be attentive - as I wrote the other day, I increasingly feel that life is always like this, full of the Word - but so often I'm deaf and blind to it. On Mark's birthday last year, accompanied by Brother John Marks, I pushed his wheelchair from the hospital to the National Wine Centre and he ate his first full meal for weeks - salt and pepper squid. It was a really happy day.