Hunting for Small and other Sacred Pathways

I hate closing doors – on the house, the classroom, the car – there’s always a tiny stab of panic just before the lip of the door hits the jamb. Sometimes I have to go back and check things – the oven, heater, brake. I don’t quite know why. Call me O.C.D. but I suppose it’s the finality of it, the end or beginning, or the potential forgetting. Like the time we lived in Turkey and I went out leaving figs on to boil, then locked my keys in the car, rushing back when I realised. But that’s years ago now (and a blog post in itself).

I feel it when we leave the hotel. Not because I particularly like it – the windows are too small and there are illuminated colour changing banisters (unnecessary). But at least my husband enjoys arranging the refreshments. He gets bored easily.

When I close our hotel room door, there’s the familiar lurch – what have I left, where is my phone charger, Kindle charger, camera charger? – but there’s also another closing. We came up north to visit our son and his lovely fiancée which was excitement enough for me. The day out in the Peaks was a bonus. It was like opening a door and instantly forgetting everything behind you, like Narnia without the snow.

What is it about English moorland – wet, brown – that’s so deeply soothing? After our crowded cities, is it the space and the sky? Is it the pastel colours layered fatly in quiet light? Is it glimpses of things? Water? Trees? Is it because I live in London and the dizzying sight of a green field and a cow, is enough to make my day? But in the Peak District there no cows, or fields. Just the dun coloured moor and trees in sepia.

We walk, drifting together and apart, as families do when they’re not together much. And somehow, the wideness of the sky and the ringing water makes us laugh more, and share secrets, as if tranquility seeps from the earth into our very bones.

And all the while the water plunges on – determined, carefree – flinging itself with abandon at anything in its wake – stones, trees, the bank – bouncing into obstacles, then immediately flowing round them, carrying on. Not worrying, readjusting its path when it needs to. Trusting that, in time, it will reach the sea.

And God, who whispers small in quiet places, begins to work his magic.

I’m reading a book called “Sacred Pathways” in which Gary Thomas refers to creation as God’s cathedral. The book outlines different ways in which people relax, re-energise, feel close to God. I am apparently a naturalist. Fortunately for the world, this has nothing to do with removing my clothes but is being filled with energy by nature. Other pathways, according to Thomas include the sensate, the ascetic, the activist and the intellectual. Obviously most people are more than one, but what I love about his writing is the idea of spiritual nutrition – we are all fed in different ways. So it kind of matters to find which is yours.

I’m thinking about this later, at home, crashing around all moody at being back in the suburbs with concrete and cars and the faint screech of sirens. And the cat appears and taps on the French doors. I yell, “Use the flap!” He taps again and that little black and white face, all pert and hopeful makes me weaken, as usual. A clutch of miniature daffs on the patio catches my eye and I feel the familiar stirring. And it occurs to me quite suddenly, that in reality cathedrals are not in the country, but in cities…

The light is fading and I have work to do, but I grab my phone and go.

So here we are again, I think. The park, the houses, the roads. It’s February so it’s mostly daffodils and blossom but there is a different kind of pleasure in hunting them out. They’re not just there, embracing you, like in the Peaks when it’s all vast beauty and you’re almost drunk with it. You have to search.

Behind houses and in front gardens. But the same things are there – just smaller – pastels and trees and glimpses of windows. And there’s that smoky, winter-Sunday smell that’s kind of city-comfort, as if God, who shouts loud in noisy places, is beginning to work magic again. I’m still here – don’t you see me?

It’s dusk so people put lights on. I try to take a photo cos I love other people’s lives, but a front door opens so I have to pretend to be waving around for a mobile signal. (Note to self – You can get sued for this kind of thing.)

So I get home, all flushed and cathedral-quiet. The key clicks in the lock and I realise with a jolt that when I left, I slammed the door and strode off to hunt for small, without a single backward glance.

In time, perhaps even I will reach the sea.