“A Thundering Good Conversation, Full of Meaning”

On page 99 I use this phrase about one of the books I’ve enjoyed. A good conversation about the deep things is what makes my heart sing, what gives meaning to my existence. In pursuing this I have often been intense, even passionate, and here I had confirmation from an unexpected source. Late in the writing I happened upon Bertrand Russell’s 1903 essay ‘The Free Man’s Worship’, in which he exhorts us to ‘burn with passion for eternal things’. Yes, Lord Russell, I profoundly agree with you: this is what I do, increasingly now as I age. My mother disapproved of ‘Bertie Russell’ because he didn’t subscribe to her Western God. Well, after eighty years I don’t either; instead I have found what Russell calls the ‘free man’s worship’: the freedom to choose what it is you revere, the freedom to discard the inhuman gods that so many follow. What I choose is of another order to what has prevailed so often throughout human history: something to be found neither on the mountain nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth. In the process I have rejected much of the religion of my youth.  

            What I call the ‘immanent divine’ is that sacred core to be discerned in so much that is warmly and passionately human. It is there also in nature, particularly in the everlasting seascapes I have used in the book as a metaphor for life. And it has not been a solitary journey: in researching this book I found many writers who spoke to me at the deepest level. It was like a having a conversation with good friends. This is what has kept me going in the last few years as an ageing woman living alone.

            If I have achieved anything over a lifetime it is to write this book. Next to bringing up four splendid humans as my children, I see Seascapes as the best thing I have made: the summation of a life lived to the full. In it, amid the throng of those who live by the spirit, I have aligned myself with some of the most poignant experiences of humankind, both the light and the dark. The mistakes I made I do not take as offences against some imagined God but as boulders in the road that I have had to climb over. My story is about trusting my sense of self and working towards wholeness.

            This is what I present to you, my reader. I hope it will find an echo in you.

 

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