Phoenix Fire

I watched, I prayed, I stood silently in the rain, that shining January night. I bowed my head as Churchill's coffin glided solemnly by, passing beyond in sacramental mystery, an uncanny, ungraspable symbol of change - this slippage of time, epochs, empires and lives.

I took my stance with the crowd, the past floating up to face us in the mist. And life felt good again. We were taking part again - high national drama surrounding us, archetypal struggle enfolding us, grappling until dawn 'against powers, against principalities, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,'

I thought of my childhood in France - then war, defeat and miserable occupation. That was when I fell in love with Churchill, in July 1940, when things were at their worst and resistance seemed so futile, so absurd. I fell in love with De Gaulle too. How could I not? He made me proud, that wretched summer, to be French. Emmanuel was the only other who gave me pride. And I never told him. I thought there would always be time.

But Churchill and De Gaulle! Such a pair of arrogant and pretentious individuals, though that counts for nothing, surely, compared to what they incarnated and articulated - the deepest, most sacred aspects of their country's history and soul. They were legends. They were Kings.



We met for the last time, our little cell, the night the Wermacht brought fire to the Unoccupied Zone. We knew our world was at an end - the great round table, the upper room; our chapel by the river, between the trees. On the wall, behind Emmanuel's head, was a tapestry I had not seen before, a mighty Phoenix rising in gold and silver from the ashes and flames.

Emmanuel stood before us in the candlelight, Tricolore in one hand, knife in the other. And the flag was cut - solemnly and sacramentally - into seven shining pieces.

"Keep these fragments close to your hearts. One day we will meet again, here or elsewhere. The flag will be made whole. France will be restored."

At midnight, when the soldiers came, we dispersed in seven different directions. I ran and ran, light sparkling my eyes, wind streaming my hair. I had only one aim. To arrive in England. To take my stand alongside Churchill and De Gaulle. Against physical. moral amd spiritual wickedness.

I heard the gunfire. I heard Emmanuel fall. I stopped running. I had ran out of time.

It took me all night, crawling back to where he lay. But I came too late. He had passed. And all those things I wanted to tell him, needed to tell him ...

I slid my hand into his jacket pocket, dragging out his fragment of flag, red and white on one side, a drawing in gold and silver crayon on the other, a Phoenix rising from the ashes and flames ...

And the face of the Phoenix was my own.

A shock of spray and street-light dazzle dragged me back to 1965. Returning slowly to our hotel, the Edward the Elder, I meditated on those days and about the better world we hoped to conjure from the flames, a world where individuals shine like stars at the heart of our communities, a world of creativity and high imaginative aspiration.

It feels like it's slipping through our fingers now. We live today in a world of infinite choice, but one that more and more feels emptied of meaning - hollowed out and stripped down - denuded and divested of mystery ...

A world without Kings.

I flicked on the tablelamp and took a pencil and paper from the drawer. And I sat in silence, wondering how I might continue the fight, take it onto a higher level, convey just a little of what we stood for, what we believed in, what we fought for - the only things that really matter - honour, justice, unity and love - la Voie, la Verite, la Vie.

For those already fallen, for those living now, for those yet to come ...

Sweet Lily Rose Art

 

Romana de Crecy, Cri de Coeur (1991)





Pyramids, Circles and Rainbows

Julie’s Letter to the Pope

Dear Pope Francis,

Now that I’m back in Liverpool and Drama School’s done for the summer, I pop down to the Cathedral quite a bit. I was in the cafe last Tuesday, when I read your quote in the Catholic Herald: “We are not expressions of a structure or an organisational need,” you said. “The spirit of the world turns us into functionaries, clerics more worried about themselves than about the true good of the People of God.”

Your words brought back memories. Once, at Sixth Form, we went on a trip to Loyola Hall, a big old retreat house at Rainhill, with miles and miles of mysterious corridors, and grounds choc-a-bloc with roses, chrysanthemums and bluebells. The priest – a wizened Scottish fella – said that when Christ died and rose He dismantled the old structures and pyramids of power once and for all. Christ came among us as an equal and a brother, he said, to show us a new way of living and being – the way of the circle.

That word, ‘circle.’ That’s what got me into acting in the first place, you know. At college again. Mister Daly used to sit us down in a circle on the floor. “The circle’s what it’s all about,” he’d tell us. “It doesn’t matter who you are – a cat, a child, a magician – the circle stills the mind and brings us together. You can live inside it. You can play with it. Either way, it gives us everything we need, as actors and as human beings.”

That’s why I like this Cathedral, you see. Because it’s a circle. You wouldn’t think so from outside, mind. It’s more like a sky rocket – springing, bursting, erupting, thrusting, coming at you from the top of Hope Street – a crowned and spiky pyramid.

Inside it’s different. The roof slopes gently up all the way round, but at the bottom, where I’m sat, it’s a circle. Long benches fan out and around from the High Altar. It’s cool and dark, but shimmering with light. Slim blue vertical stained-glass strips line the circle, as blue as the sparkling sea in my old storybooks.

I stand up, and tiny flashes of red spring to life on the blue, like glow-worms or Hebrew letters. High on the walls, the tapestries flow and stream around the concrete bowl – Our Lady of Liverpool, Christ and the Magic Book, flakes of fire falling on the Apostles’ heads. I close my eyes and the wheel of my mind stops whirring. I’m free, for a moment, from the daily whirl of mad thoughts and impossible desires.

I open my eyes and look up. At the top of the cone, the bit that looks like a crown from outside, the colours rotate and revolve in the sun – red with flashes of white to the right, shading to purple and red, then violet and blue, blending to a soft and summery green. Like pebbles on Southport beach.

I remember the Narnia book where they sail to the end of the world. There’s a tall wave, like a curtain, at the point where this world ends and the next one begins. Lucy and Edmund see mountains through the wave, on the other side of the sun, rainbow colours bouncing off the rocks and grass – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet – spinning around in an open, fluid circle, on and on, forever and ever …

photo credit

Now I’m on the boulevard – Princes Street – leaning on an old-fashioned lamp-post, with sunlight warming my face through the green leaves. I don’t know how I got here. Sometimes the Cathedral has a funny effect on me. The grass at my feet is tufty, the path dusty. On either side are houses of wondrous beauty, with big red doors, chipped white columns and two bay windows each. Like the big hotels in Llandudno.

I spin around. At the end of the road, I can see the Anglican Cathedral tower, with the domes of the Greek Church in front. I look at the tower carefully. It doesn’t seem itself somehow, not as firm and solid as usual. I can see through it, in fact. It's gone all transparent. Oh wow!

Because there, on the other side, is the spiky crown of the Catholic Cathedral – rainbow lights spiralling around the top – changing, melting, transforming into something else, something I can’t make out, something too bright, too dazzling, to see. I shield my eyes, lose my balance and hit the deck. A car horn beeps. Someone shouts something rude. I rub my head, look up, and the tower’s just like it used be, as impressive and impassive as ever. A second Mount Fuji.

I smile. It’s reassuring in a way. I don’t think I’m ready to go to the end of the world just yet :-)



photo credit

Well, there you go. Mister Daly was right, I suppose. This is what it’s all about. For yourself as Pope and me (in my own way) as a punter: water into wine, pyramids into circles, circles into rainbows, forever and ever…

So, long may the Cathedral calm our minds and bring us peace. Long may rainbow Catherine Wheels glitter and glow around the top. May both the silence and the lights set our hearts and minds and souls on fire.

Thank you for your time,

All the very best,

Julie Caroline Carlton,

L8.

Julie Carlton is the central protagonist in my novel in progress, All Saints.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

by C.S. Lewis

And he was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

(Matthew 17:1)

There is a genre, in Old Irsih literature, known as the Immran or 'Wonder Voyage'. A mythological hero or, in later variants, a Christian saint, sets sail for the West, often in a tiny coracle without oars, seeking out the Otherworld and undergoing a radical one-on-one encounter with the Divine. The controlling ego is abandoned. The saint says 'Goodbye to All That' and relaxes, with faith and trust, into the arms of God.

Lewis's story resonates strongly with this tradition, though this is a voyage to the East as opposed to the West, into the rising sun rather than the sunset more usually associated with the Celtic imagination. Though not without dramatic punch, the narrative lacks the clear-cut tussles with evil that marked earlier Narnian forays, such as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. There is no sign either, as yet, of the existential clash of worldviews - spiritual versus material - that will dominate The Silver Chair, nor the socio-political tensions played out to such combustible effect in The Last Battle. The essential exists on a more intangible level here - an indefinable, yet utterly compelling quality that propels the ship onwards. The reader becomes a co-participant in the voyage, en route to a richer, fuller experience of life, and an expansive, transfigured sense of what reality could, should and maybe one day will feel like:

They could see more light than they had ever seen before. And the deck and the sail and their own faces and bodies became brighter and brighter. And every rope shone ... And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.

*******

The 'ropes' shine for us too. Sometimes. When we meet and recognise the one we love. When a great tune hits us and makes us want to live. When a stranger smiles at us on a bustling boulevard.

What's happening here? What's making our heart sing? Turning us on? Deep down. At the still point of our turning worlds.

Which way lies the sun? What or whom or where do we seek?

I've come to Paris to find out. I'm at the Bouffes du Nord theatre, watching Peter Brook's Hamlet. The play is over. The prince is dead. So is everyone else. Save Horatio. He surveys the scene. Waste and void.

The audience starts to stir. Light arrows in from somewhere, stealing a march on the theatre - spreading, deepening - like the sun at the end of Dawn Treader, five or six times its normal size, so bright we can barely look. The dead - Hamlet, Laertes, Ophelia and the rest - shake off their sleep and stand, washed and renewed in the communal glow, eyes focused on the East. Horatio steps forward, pointing behind our heads. 'But look,' he implores. 'But look. The morn in russet manle clad walks o'er the dew of yon high Eastern hill.'

He walks on, into the light, throwing open his arms - gazing at, through and beyond us. We turn our heads and look. Then he speaks:

'Who's there?'