The Edge

The Tale of Father John

I was born in a small hamlet not far from this very village. My father was a miner, as was his father, and my mother was the daughter and granddaughter of miners. My parents married young and have eight children, three girls and five boys. The first two children died in infancy. The third, my sister Mary, lived and set the pattern for the following five. We all survived our babyhood and this became a problem. My father had seven mouths to feed and four of those were boys. Boys eat more than girls but are more useful as they can do heavier work. I was the third son, and expected to follow my father and two brothers into the mines. My two sisters helped my mother and took in sewing to help put food on the table.

I was seven when I started working as a trapper boy in the mines. My duty was to open and close the trap doors for the carts of coal and stone. To you know much about mining? Well, then you should know that little wheeled carts run on tracks about the mine to carry coal and stones up to the top. The miners fill these, boys push or pull them about with chains and smaller boys guard the traps to let them through. In a mine, air must be carefully allotted and so the doors are kept closed until a truck needs to pass through. Trapper boys sit still in the dark, still because they are next to the tracks and must mind they don’t lose a foot, dark because no candles can be permitted lest a fire start and candles are expensive besides.

I did not mind the work until an accident killed my older brother. He was helping on one of the mining teams which were trying to hollow out a new seam and it collapsed on top of them all. Five good men and three boys lost their lives. The mine paid out an allowance to my family for the loss of my brother and life went on. I grew a year older and was too big to be a trapper any more. I moved on to helping fill the trucks and my younger brother Tom took my place as trapper. He fell asleep after three weeks of work, fell asleep and fell across the tracks. A cart came past and killed him. Another allowance was paid by the mine for his death but my mother refused to allow me to continue working there. She would not lose another son!

She went to the priest of this very church and asked him if he would take me as an alter boy. That good man agreed and when I was not assisting in the church, I was digging his garden, looking after his horse and helping him in his parish work. It was cleaner than the mine and I had fresh air and better food. I also had access to education and I learned to read, to write and to look after the poor and sick. I wanted to get away, I had the child's vision of being a solider and yet I always wished to help others. My benefactor, Father David, suggested to my family that I go into the priesthood. He offered to sponsor me to be trained, an offer my father accepted. My oldest sister was married, my younger sister was only a child and my two remaining brothers worked for a local farmer. It was great thing to be sent away to the priesthood, I escaped the lush green hills and mountains of this district and found spires and streets and cobblestones.

In the seminary I was inspired to be a missionary and work with people abroad. Once I was priested, I left my ship to travel through Europe and down into Africa. I wandered with two fellow priests and we taught the word of God to tribes and peoples whose traditions were incomprehensible to us, as incomprehensible as we were to them.

We were led by an older priest, Father Anthony, who lectured us nightly on remembering the true God and in praying for blindness to the faults of others. The main fault in his eyes was that these tribal people wore little or no clothing, in the great heat of that climate. We had all been shocked at first but we all made efforts not to notice, especially with the women. We all prayed diligently but we were men after all and we covertly looked at these strange beings, these coloured women with skins as black as teak and smooth as marble. They stood without shame in front of us, nursing their young, talking or working or eating and we noticed their shapes and their forms. I was a young man and was filled with lust. I had been training for priesthood my whole life and never thought of taking a wife. The women I knew were all village women, dressed in wool and with their hair covered, they were modestly dressed and behaved modestly too, for the most part. Those that did not were what I was taught to preach against, sinners and whores to tempt virtuous people away from the Light. I was true to God until I saw those African women, with their fine bodies and bright eyes and their necklaces or bright fibres and stones.

We stopped to help a party of our Brothers in Christ who were building a small church in a large settlement. They had been accepted there and were teaching the young about God, amongst other things, so they wanted a proper church built. Out there in the wide landscape of Africa, I finally found peace as I laboured under that hot sun, I felt as thought I were finally doing good.

We did not keep ourselves apart from the tribe there, who were friendly to us, and we took food with them, grew to know their family’s and their young, their ways and their small farms. We taught them about Western medicine and they taught us about their natural remedies for things like the sun stroke and how to harvest herbs and plants which would save us from scorpion venom and snakes or spiders. We helped them build a proper well and irrigate their crops, they worked us a beautiful cross in bronze for our alter, their women helped to feed us and their children ran by us to try their few words of English.

In the seventh week there I began to watch a young girl who I thought more beautiful than any other. It was not that she were prettier but something about her manner, her essence, it was sublime to me. She had a wide mouth and bright eyes like her sisters, with dark hair cropped short to her skull. She wore bracelets and a neck lace of metal rings, a tunic of bright woven threads and when she passed near me I could smell her body, a musky scent that seemed as much a part of the land as the scent of the food or the plants or the earth beneath us. I covertly observed her when she was near, I watched her when she served us food or sat to listen to us preach. I thought my attention was noticed until one day when I went to rest from the heat in my hut.

My brother priests were not inside and I welcomed the quiet and the shade. I removed my clothes to my under garments and prepared to lie down and rest when a hand touched my shoulder.

The girl had followed me into the hut and was standing before me. I had never before been alone with any woman excepting my mother or sisters and this was enough to shock me dreadfully. That both of us were nearly naked was also a shock. That she touched me was a third. It was just my bare shoulder but it felt as though I were being burned by her warm fingers. I tried to stay calm, to ask what she wanted but my voice failed me and my knowledge of the language was gone. I just looked at her. She looked at me fearlessly and gently touched my face, then took my hands and examined them. Roughened by heavy work, they were, but she seemed to approve the,. She examined the lines on my palms and the muscles in my arms. She looked up at my face and smiled, showing white teeth in the dark of her face.

When one of my fellow priests came in, she quickly ran out. Nothing had happened but to my brothers and myself that did not matter. There was a solemn meeting that evening and it was decided to send me to work with another party of missioners further north. The next day I set out at dawn carrying a letter to the man in charge there. I never knew what it said but he welcomed me kindly, heard my confession and placed me to work with others teaching young boys about the gospel. After a month of this I was sent to a new country to the East, a mountain region which was cold and so everyone was well wrapped up. I taught the word of God there diligently, I never returned to Africa or did I ever see that woman again. After my indiscretion I redoubled my efforts to trust in the Lord and do his work. I pressed the memory of her deep down inside myself and thought I had forgotten. That is, until one winter, years later, when I was travelling through a rocky pass to reach a strong hold and I was caught by a blizzard. I was one of a party of travellers, the others were villagers and we were forced to take refuge from the storm in a cave. We stayed there for a full day and a night. I moved among the other, praying with them and assisting those that were frightened. I came at last to one man who sat by himself from the group, seemingly deep in silent prayer. I sat near him and looked about the cave, watching for anyone who might need my guidance when the man spoke.

This man was apparently a seasoned traveller, who had taken this road many times and he was not frightened by the storm. He was an Italian by birth but he spoke English to me. He asked me why I was so restless. I was surprised, I explained I was simply watching for distress in any of the others but the Italian shook his head and said that I was just trying to escape my own thoughts. I was a priest, did I believe in divine providence? Well, then this break in my journey was providence. God wanted me to sit a while and think.

I considered this and asked his meaning. He explained that he had observed me and that I was always moving, always looking after others but that there was something in me which he recognised from his own experience as a young man. He saw that I was running from something. I denied this, I told him I was a missionary but he shook his head again and insisted that I was surely running from something if I could not sit and use a few hours for quiet meditation. He did mean I should pray but that I should use this God given moment, this time away from the world, to meditate on all that occurred to me.

I was silent. I had been so careful to be busy, to not think of that woman or of my shame at being sent away from Africa that I had constantly worked, day and night. I had not let myself sleep more than four hours a night, I had prayed early and late, I had fasted at times to make myself obedient. I finally allowed my mind to go blank and let my thoughts travel across my mind. I allowed myself to think of that woman, in her beauty. I let myself feel the shame of disgrace and the sadness at leaving my family and the distance I had gone from home. In that little cave in the middle of nowhere, with the wind and snow whirling around outside while we puny creatures cowered inside, in that cave I finally shed my petty ways and my shame. I let myself feel and then asked what harm had it done. In each category except one, I had done no harm so I offered a prayer to God and gave up my sins.

When we left the cave and got to our destination I asked the Italian who he was and how he had known me. His response was that I should learn a little from the natives, as well as giving our my own religion. He turned me to face the mountains. There you see what your God has made. It can unmake a man with ease. It will not be unmade because you take a little time for yourself, if you eat a good supper or take a woman. The mountains and the skies will not fall if you commit a sin. It is your own perception of what you have done that makes it seem as if the world is undone. You look upon the world and want to change it. I say, look upon the world and try to work with it and understand it. Only then can you see what truly needs changing and what truly is a sin.

As he walked away, his last words told me to always remember to take a little time to think. I took time over the next weeks. I took time to watch and learn from the natives as well as teaching them the gospel. I noticed how they looked after animals and crops even high in the mountains. I noticed how they worked together and helped each other. I grew to love their rough rocky land as they did and in doing so, I became home sick.

I travelled back across the continent until I entered Europe. I travelled across Europe and boarded a boat that took me home to England. I had written to the diocese of my home parish and they had offered me to take the role of Deacon in this church. I had been working for the Lord for so long that my service would be useful, my reputation was good and my home land welcomed me. I travelled to this place and went to the little house where my family had lived.

My father had been killed in a cave in, my mother was dead of tuberculosis. My older sister had five children, my younger had two. My brother had left many years before to work as a farmer and he still lives down near the coast. I had missed so much while I was away but I was resolved not to feel sad. I told tales of Africa and India, of my travels but all the while I delighted in green grass and mountains, in rain and in the quiet parish work. I worked with the resident priest and used my knowledge of other mountain dwellers to help the people here to better themselves. Now I am the priest, I enjoy a good dinner, I enjoy a cup of tea and a welsh cake by the fireside. I enjoy my garden and my vegetable patch and my church. I am comfortable and at home. I enjoy life. I do not judge others harshly, I caution them rarely. Mistakes are how you find the true desire of your heart and how you temper your soul to be pure.

Not a day has gone by that I do not remember that beautiful woman, that emblem of Africa that still I see in my dreams. I am sure I shall see her in my mind every day until I die. Yet I do not regret meeting her. I do not feel torment in not kissing her or for not taking her to wife. I thank God for her, for she showed me the path to true knowledge. She was no demon sent to tempt me, she was a beacon on my road to light. She was a girl and I am a man. I have had tender feelings for her, yes, very tender. My feelings for my work are more so and my feelings for the people here are infinitely greater. I love my countrymen best, my country of green and stone. She belongs in Africa, the wide hot sands. So she stands in my mind, my private treasure. In my Welsh parlour by the fire side I remember her and say a quiet prayer to God, of thanks for showing me the way.

The priest paused and looked back at me, while he told his story he had been staring at the fire.

“What I think I am trying to tell you is, see things for the good in them rather than the bad. If you are here it is because this is what you have to do in order to find your peace. I know that for a priest to say that sin is a good thing may sound strange but we cannot learn, unless we sin, what we should really do with our lives.”

I was silent. For all my life I had tried to do good yet when I did wrong, I had started a chain of events which had taken me away from my old stagnation and brought me away from my torpor. I was wounded but alive. I had my child inside me and I was alive. I was no longer trapped in a beautiful cage.

Father John took my hand kindly and then placed his other hand on my head.

“Do you truly repent of any harm you may have caused to others? Do you understand what you have done wrong and vow to learn from these mistakes? Then I forgive you and absolve you of these sins. Now, sleep. Your mind is weary and your body needs its rest. I shall come again tomorrow. Bless you, daughter.” And so he rose and left me.