Chapter 31

    It has been said that a man should read a classic three times during his life span, and if he does so, spreading out the exercise through youth, middle age, and then the years of wisdom, he will experience three different books. But this must have been something said by a humanist, not by a mystic. There is, of course, a certain degree of common sense in the statement, for, plainly, no youngster can possibly know everything, and a long life that did not permit of becoming at least a little wiser each day would not only be tedious, but neglectful of God's infinity, which by its very nature, if truly perceived, must habitually unfold itself to the beholder. But the beginnings of a genuine mystical life contain so much that is sheer, simple, stunning activity on the part of God that no amount of rereading of a merely humanistic text, even as profound as Shakespeare or Cervantes - to name only two - will get him or her to the state that the least flicker of God's extraordinary attention bestows the most wonderful graces on any youngster the moment he experiences it.

    This main problem, I think, with writing a book of this sort, especially when you try to do it in the style of a novel. Novels usually have climaxes, somewhere after the middle and somewhere before the actual end, which is usually wrapped up in a denouement.  They unfold within the story. But the spiritual life has already unfolded before the story can begin, and the events within it are much more significant than most things that belong to the ordinary narrative. Ordinary narratives rely so much on romance, for example. And often some degree of physical violence, including death. The man who wrote that lovely yuletide fairy tale, A Christmas Carol, was, in his other works, habitually bumping people off, often with good deal of violence. And a tragedy requires that we pity somebody. But none of these events can measure up to the spiritual life, wherein everything that is most useful has to do with an action that can take place only if God shows his hand in a more than ordinary way.
 
    Now God had already introduced the extraordinary into the life of Tobias Skinner, at an awfully young age, and thereby guaranteed that all those ordinary events must suffer second billing, no matter how dramatic or romantic or otherwise interesting they might otherwise seem. And yet there was another aspect of this situation that is equally possible to escape, for the constant company of the extraordinary, even in its least forms, added a blessing and special flavour to the most ordinary events. Just as God made nothing, no matter how small or apparently insignificant, without reason and purpose, so his grace seemed to follow Toby wherever he went, through whatever he did. Thus it was habitual for him to look for the light, and feel for the spirit, of such companionship, especially when he had to bounce back from making mistakes, the sins of youth and stupidity remaining also as companions for someone unbaptized and only partially instructed in the rudiments of the catechism, until, of course, they were dealt with by the aid of grace. Of that, as we have seen, Toby was getting more than his ordinary share.

     It was dark when the bus stopped for a few minutes at Lac La Hache. Dark, but with a moon shining on the lake. With the mental ravages gone, Toby was back to being at ease with Nature, along with now being tutored somewhat in the significance of the moon as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. By the luck of the draw, he had drawn a starboard seat, right against the window, and according to the movements of the heavens on this day in the unfolding of the universe, the moon was in plain view. He remembered that so too, very early in the morning of his last night in the camp below Homathko Canyon, the moon had been visible, but no comfort for some time, thanks to the steady pain more or less in his head. Not a pain like that of the last few days, but a pain nonetheless, that left him utterly unconsoled and somewhat frightened. But he was consoled now, and able to recollect a lot of different times when the moon had seemed as beautiful and full of as much grace as he could then handle, and yet not so completely full as at this most restful moment. Most of his moments in that glorious country to the west had been restful, when they were not so busily being exhilarating, and yet they had been sandwiched between a pair of frightening mental experiences.
 
    Now at this point, poor, uninstructed Toby had by no means any accurate theological name for these extremely valuable events. Such matters for him came under the heading of psychological, even though none of his readings in psychology had ventured anywhere near that long list of the mystics of the Catholic Church that can be found in a volume such as Tanqueray's Spiritual Life. He could not even have told you what the spiritual life was about, let alone rendered any instruction on the subject of mysticism. Such is the paradox of being genuinely led about by the Holy Spirit. There are souls who study the texts regarding the loftiest methods of prayer and meditation, and get nothing but active knowledge, or take years to advance to the marvellous simplicities of contemplation, and there are those - only God knows why - who are whipped into shape without even asking for any such special consideration. They must, of course, be able to take the whipping, which is rather more real than symbolic, and they must recognize, even in an uninstructed way, from whence it comes. No one can grow up in Western society without certain knowledge of the Cross, and thus a minimal imaginal and intellectual basis on which a determined Trinity can launch an experiential programme, even in the absence of the ordinary scientific vocabulary.

     And while the scientific vocabulary does eventually become a matter obligation, there are still texts not quite so technical, which do a very good job of laying down the ground rules for excellence. For example, consider this from the beginning of the eighth chapter of The Cloud of Unknowing:
"But where shall we find a person so wholeheartedly committed and firmly rooted in the faith, so sincerely gentle and true, having made self, as it were, nothing and so delightfully nourished and guided by our Lord's love? Where shall we find a loving person, rich with a transcendent experience and understanding of the Lord's omnipotence, his unfathomable wisdom and radiant goodness; one who understands so well the unity of his essential presence in all things and the oneness of all things that he surrenders his entire being to him, in him, and by his grace, certain that unless he does he will never be perfectly gentle and sincere in his effort to make self as nothing? Where is a man of sincerity, who by his noble  resolve to make self as nothing, and high desire that God be all in the perfection of love, deserves to experience the mighty wisdom of God, succoring, sheltering, and guarding him from his foes within and without? Surely such a man will be deeply drenched in God's love and in the full and final loss of self as nothing, or less than nothing, if less were possible, and thus he will rest untroubled by feverish activity, labour, and concern for his own well- being."
    This is not to say that Toby at that point fulfilled such a description to the T. Neither the whole description or any individual part of it. Right at the beginning, where it reads "firmly committed in the faith" we are brought immediately to reflect, most wholeheartedly, that he then hardly knew any doctrine, of which Catholicism of course, to the dismay of reluctant students, provides a great deal to absorb. But on the other hand, he was most anxious to get on with that absorption, and he could claim a certain advantage of his personal motivation from his long experience of the original authors of that doctrine coaching him toward it in their own unique and somewhat hidden way. It is to be understood, of course, that they would continue to play their own special, extraordinary, part in his education, thereby making his next stage in his life, that of a catechumen, not a little adventurous. It is not all that common for a layman to be trained as a spiritual critic of clergy and religious, especially of those in the highest offices in the Mystical Body.
 
    And yet this was not the most important of the assignments he was to be prepared for. What the world - and the Church - needs more than hectoring is prayer, especially passive prayer, the God-given immolation of the contemplative, the very best of his hours utterly useless for any active work, no matter how useful otherwise to God and man. The needs of the Church require such contemplation; the conversion of sinners cannot be without it; for the relief of the souls in purgatory it is absolutely necessary because they have no way of helping themselves once they are in their place of purgation.
But one does not live this prayer life in a theoretical vacuum, working through the personal problems and failures of other souls as if they numbers in a mathematics question. The contemplative feels the weight of the afflicted soul's distance from God's preferred will, and feels it over and over again, until, perhaps, the person changes, or until he or she dies, at which point the contemplative may continue to feel some of the burden, but this time from purgatory.

     All this makes for a very interesting life. For all that he enjoyed movies, and always would, Toby had not yet seen a film which was its equal, and so, in part, he had come back to the city and its many art forms, especially as they were to present themselves that summer, to start to learn why.