Christ at the Maenllwyd

Hebe Welbourne, who died a few months ago at the age of 100, was one of the first people to attend John Crook’s retreats at the Maenllwyd and continued to sit with the Bristol Chan group until just before the Covid lockdown. Even then she went on meditating alone with the group in her room every Thursday evening until her death, and we always lit an extra candle to symbolise her ‘presence’ with us. She often described herself as ‘an Anglican-Quaker-Buddhist’ and we are reprinting this article, which she wrote for issue 5 of New Chan Forum, published in September 1992, as a memorial to a dearly loved seeker after wisdom and compassion.

A few years back, I was very busy and very tired. I was, in my odd moments dipping into an exciting book, God in Creation, by the German Theologian Jurgan Moltmann. I was working as a community child health doctor and nursing my husband who was completely disabled with Parkinson’s/Alzheimer's diseases. I was crying out to God but there wasn’t anyone out there, only my own projections. Then one day, as I was straightening my back after easing Fred into the bath, the world suddenly settled down. There wasn’t anyone out there. There was me, the Environment, the Universe, Infinity, all interacting, dancing, resounding. All contained in God making himself. I don't have to worry about God any more, I just interact with whatever is there at each moment in me.

I’m still a Christian. It’s what I have been born into and I have no desire to change. I find my law, wisdom, symbols, tradition etc. within a Christian world view. My active spiritual inspiration is based on meditating the Bible in all its richness of myth, poetry and wonderful ambiguity. Not just memorizing like an instruction manual, but engaging, questioning, translating, visualizing, studying, ruminating. The image of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, God incarnate in Creation. It is then infinitely restful to let go of all the images and, with Eckhart and other great Christian mystics, rest in the nothing – or in the unity of God, however you express it. You come back to needing the images. Like babies, we make “transitional objects” – a teddy bear or a comfort cloth – to represent the loved one for whom we yearn. Then we become disillusioned, and the search goes on, Christians and Buddhists together search for what is beyond all tradition. We make images of God/Buddha, Christ, the Church. We disagree about images, kill ourselves trying to get them “right” and finally become disillusioned. Yet the visible world of images is where we are. It is the body of Christ. As inseparable as my body is from my spirit. When I sit in silence, following my breath and repeating the name of Jesus (the Jesus prayer of Eastern Orthodox tradition) the spirit moves behind the stillness. I return to a transformed visible world with renewed power for compassion and creativity. Compassion and creativity are given and received by means of images, but the spirit moves behind them.

Another aspect of my experience in the bathroom was a realization of the solidarity with the environment. The environment where I am a unique species: if I am prevented from fulfilling my function, the whole environment suffers. On the other hand, my function is not individual, it is for the sake of the whole. Like a vine being pruned for the sake of the whole harvest - a meaning for the Christian image of sacrifice. The whole harvest is ultimately the fruition of the environment: God. The perfect community is utterly inclusive, non-competitive, shares everything, including praise and blame. We have images of such a community but its actuality is impossible: it is God. Solidarity with the environment/community involves yearning for peace and justice – “hungering for righteousness” as the Bible says. Compassion for the poor might lead me into political action or involvement in violent revolution. The images are divisive, but the reality is God, the perfect community which is found by involvement in the images. Profound contemplation leads into activity which can be profoundly subversive.

Then there is the experience of time. When my husband was left with a healthy body which was paralysed in muscles and mind, I found I was forgetting what sort of person he really was. I asked all his friends and family to send me reminiscences. Who was he, then? The baby his mother had nursed? The bright schoolboy? The young man before he met me? The lover? The honorary member of a Ugandan tribe? Father to our children? Teacher of hundreds of students? You don’t necessarily get better as you get older; one stage must die before another is born. The fruition of the whole person is somehow outside of time. The quality of a life is not necessarily dependent on how long it lasts and, as people involved in hospice work know, the last few days may be full of promise. It is the same with our terminally sick planet where so many good people and things seem to be coming to an end: its fulfilment lies outside time, in the heart of God. We lose our anxiety as we receive as a gift each moment of time as it comes. As the kindly Jesuit pastor, Jean-Pierre de Caussade puts it, “God… the author and object of our faith… is like the right side of a tapestry being worked stitch by stitch on the wrong side”.

In summer, 1991 I became “resident hermit” in a house of prayer. The house, situated next door to Westbury-on-Trym Parish Church, was bequeathed by its previous owner to be used as an ecumenical house of prayer. The idea of living in a house of prayer had been with me since the time as a child, when I was taken to see the shrine of Julian of Norwich. My only obligation in this house is to be here, and to pray. I’m also responsible for making the peaceful atmosphere of the house available to groups or individuals who come to spend time there. It is available to all: Christians, all who seek the One True God, people of all ages. People come to meditate, pray, paint or participate in various “workshops”. They also come to help me with the work of the house. There have been magic moments with children, still and silent for the life span of a birthday cake candle. The house with its various rooms and garden is full of symbolism and very quiet. I feel a bit like the one who was chosen to be in the centre of a round game. To be contemplative is not just to be private: it is to be a centre around which things happen.

In the coldest week of January 1992, I was at a Western Zen Retreat at Maenllwyd. I don’t think I’ve ever previously not taken my clothes off for a week. It was like being in a chrysalis. Mountains, sheep, buzzards and grouse, intense brightness alternating with mist, especially mist, are nature to me. I found my body accommodated itself unexpectedly well to everything and was at ease. At first I felt uncomfortable with the Buddhas. My Christian tradition forbids me from worshipping images. And, although John's images were all quite peaceful, they reminded me of others I had seen elsewhere which were really scary. I had some nightmares, which I needed to share with John. By the next day, I was prepared to be polite to the images out of respect to the tradition and to look for Christ in the Buddha. By “Looking for Christ”, I don’t mean looking for a particular conceptual image because you don't know who/what you are looking for. “Looking” implies the same “chicken and egg” koan, from whichever tradition you start. The Bible, particularly the Gospels, is rich in paradox and shadow imagery. This is not appreciated by ordinary Christians who retain a dualistic world view. It is refreshing to be with Buddhists who appreciate the potential depths of the Christian tradition. Helpful, also, to be involved with a discipline of meditation which is not often available within the Christian Church, certainly not in Bristol.

There was an encounter with Christ at Maenllwyd. Out there, by myself, singing in the mountains. And encountering others: sometimes just sitting and looking at each other peacefully, other times sharing a kind of death and resurrection experience. Hearing others murmur “Christ in me” or “Christ have mercy” or (to quote from an Alice Meynell poem) “He rose alone behind the stone”. I returned to my house with much that is still working within me, looking forward to returning for another retreat next year.