In Tuesday’s post, the package came, heavy and bulky and delivered by courier. It sat on Tom’s bed until late afternoon, untouched, well taped shut. He'd have liked to leave it that way until Saturday at least, but common-sense warnings from all sides drove him on, a couple of hours before dinner, to start picking at the tape. Yet another reminder of what was coming, as though the silence were not enough.
He took the crozier out first, mostly out of curiosity. Took the pieces out of the case and screwed them together, practised holding it the bishop’s way around and walking a few steps just to find out what it would feel like. Reluctantly, he leant it against the wall. A little more practise would probably be wise.
And then the bit he didn’t want to do. Check all the shirts were the same, and then try one on. Yes, it was just the same as his black ones, although new and in need of a wash to soften it up before the service. He turned his back on the mirror to avoid it and dug, teeth gritted, for the largest package. Cassocks? Fine. But purple?
It was, funnily, less hard to put on the rest. Perhaps because the shirt and cassock had been so much already, had overwhelmed all instincts and reluctance. Just a fiddle working out how to sort out the cuffs of the rochet, and then trying to make the chimere lie comfortably. Finally, a deep breath and then turn around to look in the mirror. And see himself looking back, a bishop. Almost a bishop.
It would perhaps have made sense to practise walking with the crozier in vestments, but in one day, this was enough. Everything fitted. He hadn’t forgotten anything important. Now he could just hang it all up in the wardrobe to let the creases drop out, iron later in the week if necessary. He'd throw a couple of the shirts in the wash to soften them up, and otherwise try to forget the whole thing.
He replaced the shirt with a t-shirt, and then after a moment’s hesitation he scooped up the teddy which Megan had snuck in for him. A bar of chocolate, too, kept cool in the fridge, and then he took the blankets from his bed and made a nest from them in a corner of the room. He’d earned it.
This was happening. It was really happening. He broke off a piece of chocolate. At the end of this week, he was going to leave here and go to York Minster and be ordained. What if he refused to leave? What if he hid until the tide had come back in? Or turned his car North instead of South and disappeared into Scotland? Come back once it was too late for them to force him into it.
What would it be like, being a bishop? He tried to remember becoming a deacon, becoming a priest. Would he feel different? Being a deacon, everyone had looked at him differently, and of course the same would happen here. Their expectations would grow, and perhaps their respect. It was strange enough being set slightly apart, now to be one of such a small number…
And then… within. Just as in becoming a priest he had suddenly felt himself a leader, a representative. When he’d straightened up so aware of the presence of God within him, weighing down on him, driving him forward. When he’d known that something had changed within him, that he was the same and yet different, a strength and an authority within him that wasn’t his own. When he’d been so filled with emotion that all he’d lain awake most of the night overflowing with awe and wonder and love. Oh, and then standing behind the altar the next day, his hands still although he was shaking inside… would it be anything like that? He hugged the teddy to his chest. It couldn’t happen to him, really. It just couldn’t.
Had he really changed, since those early years, with mam and Mick in a council house on the outskirts of Manchester? Had he really grown beyond the child he’d been then? Was he really grown up enough to be a bishop, had he really changed from the small boy crying in his room, his knee grazed from being pushed over by bullies at school? Hiding from mam, because she would be upset and he didn’t want that, although what he wanted most was a hug from her.
A hug from her. That’s what he wanted now, most of all – he hadn’t changed, had he? Except that now he couldn’t have that hug. Now he was bigger, and older, and people expected more, and she wasn’t there.
He pulled the blankets up tighter around him, cold despite the summer heat. Or perhaps not cold, not physically cold, but… cold inside, somehow. Chilled by the ice of death.
Death had lost its sting? Not for him, it seemed. Not for him, haunted by deaths across years, by the memories and the longing for those lost. Not for him, despite experience still torn apart by each new loss. Followed by ghosts, reaching out to them in longing, seeing them fade away at his fingertips.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them. How much easier it would be, if he could see them there, if he could know the truth of those promises. Rather than relying on the faintest hope, on a promise never seen, passed on by those he’d never met. A promise he was expected to repeat, blindly, as though it were the most certain joy.
He said evening prayer alone, silently – because while the silence weighed around him, it was all he had. Occasional voices outside the window, gone in a moment. And the ever-present sound of the sea, waves pounding day and night, year after year, relentless as time itself. As the time which marched on and would not turn back, which insisted on carrying him with it into the depths of a future unknown, moulding him just as the waves moulded the land until he became something new, unrecognisable, retaining only a name.
He went out after dinner, to walk along roads now empty of the day’s tourists, first to gaze up at the jagged ruins of the priory, and then to walk back along to the end of the causeway where it led into the sea. On the other side of that, cut off by the water, reality, its street lights glittering off crests of waves. It was above that reality that the last purple clouds drifted, colour fading even as he watched, as the sun fled west and darkness took its place. The long twilight of summer was here, the ripple of wind across sand dunes causing dry grass to whisper, each blade passing its secrets to the next. He returned to the beach, finding a place to put his bag down. Wrapping his towel round himself he changed into swimming trunks then waded into the sea. The water was icy at first, a stark contrast to the thick evening air, to the sand still radiating a remnant of the sun. But after a couple of minutes, it became warm, calling him deeper, drawing him out into its endless expanse. How wonderful it would be to swim out there, to swim and to keep swimming until the world lay far behind.
Instead, he dried himself off and replaced his t-shirt then walked on round, sand moulding up around his toes with each step. Out here, not a house, not a streetlamp, and he lay on his back to look up at the stars, not a few constellations but a numberless expanse. So numerous your descendants will be… as many as the stars in the sky… as the sand in the desert…
He took a handful of dry sand and let it run through his fingers. Some promise, to a barren woman and her husband, a couple far beyond the age for children, and according to that promise nations had come into being.
Come on, Tom. You already have children. Why ask God for more, when you've already been given so much? God doesn’t work like that, doesn’t give you what you want, or at least not what you think you want. God gives you something else, something for which you never asked. Why be angry about Grace when you have so much for which to be thankful? When you have so many children for whom you never asked, a blessing so easily taken for granted?
But then he could be both.
So, God, you’re asking me to be a bishop. Are you? Go on then, I guess I’ll do it, but I need something back. I need you to help me, because I don’t know how to do this, and I’d do a terrible job on my own. And I need you to protect me, because it’s far too much for me, and you know that. So… yeah. Is that how things are going to be?
So many stars. He was almost tempted to count, just for the sake of it, but where to start? That bright one there, count circles around it? Or the big ones first, and then the smaller, and so on to countless infinities? How would he keep track? If he could reach up and pluck each one from the sky once it was counted, put it in a bag until he was done… more practically, take a photo and count them there, mark them off one after another. But what about those too small for the camera to see? And that one there, was it one star or two? Oh and even if he managed it, the Earth would roll on, and there would be more stars to see, more to count.
He could perhaps lie here all night. A bed of sand, sheltered by dunes, lulled by waves and watched over by the memories of saints. And look! New stars dawning, rising from the sea. It was nicer out here than in the house, and anyway he’d spent enough of the afternoon bundled in blankets. It was past midnight already, might as well do it properly, make the most of the cool and the quiet, before day returned again with its hordes of tourists and blazing heat.
He stood up, though, and wandered on round, replacing his shoes as the ground grew rougher. A little further, before he crouched and began to sift through stones, gathering beads in the palm of his hand. He should have brought thread, to string them on, but that would have to wait until he got home. Perhaps Mika and Mars would do it, if he found enough, an easy little something to take back for each of them.
When his hand became too full, he tipped them into his pocket and carried on. It was starting to get easier, the sky above brighter. Had it been so many hours? He’d done so little, and yet so much, and time had drifted by without him noticing. The first touch of pink across the sea, and then a glistening road across the water, a path which led all the way to the rising sun. Though no need to follow, as unseen birds began to stir, heralds of a new day.
Another night over. Five to go.
He sat on a rock to watch the sunrise, and then rose to walk back, around the coastline and then back up an empty road. Dawn, that treasured unseen time, clear and clean and new, the time when most of the world seemed most alive. Perhaps that was because one could hear it, God’s own world without human interference. Oh how he would love to stay out, perhaps to wander around the ruins and sit on the grass and build the walls again in his mind. But heavy eyes called him back, to tiptoe up the stairs and change into pyjamas and lay his head down on the pillow. He was too old for this, really, and when he had to get up again the mistake would be clear, but oh was it worth it!
Was it worth it? That was more questionable when his alarm went and he had to drag himself out of bed for breakfast. He yawned through morning prayer, and then burrowed back under the duvet, face towards the wall away from the light which now peered around the curtains. He’d sleep for a couple more hours, and then pray, and then read one of those books which Ruth had given him. Practise walking with the crozier, so that he could unscrew it and return it to the case and put it away out of sight. Oh, before any of that, meet with Mother Andrea, as though the silence were not already directing him without need for words. That silence, so dreaded, which seemed now to have formed a protective cocoon around him.
Though the greatest comfort of all, each day, was to walk to the end of the causeway and see the road cut off. Here was safe, here was easy. Here, the future was far away, way out across that barrier of water. Here he could rest, at last, in God’s embrace, concerns whisked away by the wind. Afternoons were hardest, lying sweating on top of his duvet as fear crowded in. As the sun pounded down, crushing through calm tranquillity, and thoughts rose unbidden to torment him. Sunday, getting closer, tightening his chest, a hood over his head. What if he couldn’t do it? What if it was too much for him? What hope did he have?
If only he could stay here forever. Or at least for a month, perhaps a year. How long would it take, before he was ready to go back? One week wasn’t enough, he thought, even as he polished his shoes and zipped his vestments into their bag and packed everything else back into his case. Saturday had come too fast.
Tomorrow, you will be a bishop.
And there it was, the reminder so explicit echoing in his mind. An entire week to process, and he still hadn’t processed, had spent most of it drifting around in a daze and hunting for tiny stones. But then a year wouldn’t have been enough. It was just going to happen, and maybe one day he would get his head around it but he wouldn’t pretend that to be likely. He’d be a bishop. He, Tom, would be a bishop.
And he couldn’t hide from it any longer. Only two questions to worry about, Ruth had told him, and he clung to that like a lifeline. Is your heart on fire with love for God? Well, buried a little beneath the weight of anxiety, but at his core… at his core he was. And it was his core that mattered.
He sat down on the floor, eyes closed, and attempted to push away the thoughts. Real silence, so hard to find, even in a week without words. God, are you there? Help me to trust you, I really need to trust you… He caught himself drifting, admiring his freshly polished shoes. No, Tom, focus. Or… don’t focus. Silence. Just be. No, don’t panic. Just be.
Was he called to this? Well, other people were certain. He’d have to trust them. Did he believe it himself? Well, there were moments, he supposed, times when it seemed so right and so certain and so inevitable. Then others where it was unimaginable and terrifying, where he remembered how ridiculous the whole idea was, how impossible it would be, how he didn’t have a hope...
He put his sandals on and went outside, to walk through the ruined priory and then scramble up a bank, to sit beside a weather-beaten cross and stare out across the sea. Here, in this place, the shadows of the past all around, the Church’s great story in which he was asked to play such a small part. To be a bishop in the Church today, a successor of all of this, of those who had made this place holy, of those who had between them carried one faith around the entire globe. Of those who had built the Church, without whom he would not have been here today.
Will you be their successor? Will you build up the Church for those who come after?
He looked behind him again, at the ragged walls and pillars, at the shadows stretching out from them. Who was he, to follow that? To follow so many others who had devoted their entire lives to God and Christ and the gospel? To attempt to be like so many saints, who had done this job before him?
But apparently he was going to. Because it was time to leave this island. Leave silence and return to reality, and make the long drive down. A night and a morning at Ruth's, listening to her wisdom and trying to hide his fear. Then a rehearsal, then wait. And then the service. And then he would be a bishop.
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