Jesus of Gower

In the spring of 2016, I turned fifty. So, naturally, a mid-life crisis seemed in order.

Mine was pretty spectacular. It came to a head a week before Easter. Never mind the hows, or whys: but my faith was in tatters, I was seriously depressed and filled with self-loathing, I wasn’t eating or sleeping, I had lost a stone and a half in a week, and I was unable to concentrate on work (or anything else for that matter). I was a mental wreck, well on course to becoming a physical one too.

Much of the two or three months that followed is now a blur. But I know I received tremendous support from my family, and a few trusted close friends. I was signed off work, and forced to rest. I started to find some new outlets for my troubled mind that were therapeutic. I found time to read, properly, as I had not done for several years. And I began writing.

Perhaps the most helpful thing, though, was that I started to receive counselling. When my GP suggested this to me, I was sceptical. I had had counselling some years previously, and on that occasion the experience had not been at all beneficial. Why would it be any different this time? But then I reasoned, somewhat reluctantly, that there was nothing to be lost by trying again.

I think it helped that on this occasion my counsellor was male, and almost exactly the same age - in fact, he was just a few weeks younger than me. His name was Jesse. We met every month over the course of the next year. During our first three sessions together, he hardly spoke. He scarcely moved, even. There was a stillness about him that was immensely comforting. Yet his kind eyes - warm, gentle, reassuring eyes - never seemed to leave me, as I found myself pouring out to him a life’s story that I had never shared in its entirety with any physically-present person.

There was so much to articulate, and such a tangled web to unweave. There were tears, and not a few blushes, along the way: mine, of course - not his. Had he heard it all before? Was he unshockable, this serene Buddha-like figure, with the gentle half-smile, and quiet voice that spoke rarely, and barely louder than a whisper - yet, when it did, spoke words that soothed my vulnerable psyche as if anointing me with some fragrant, cooling balm?

It was only when we got to the fourth session, it seemed, that we truly began to explore, together: wandering through the flotsam and jetsam, scattered along the messy shoreline of the inner life that I’d laid bare before him. Moving from place to place, like beachcombers, considering one item after another, along that shoreline; clambering over the rocks, picking up the shells, poking through the seaweed, and letting the varied patterns form and reform along that impermanent mental shore. In every session that followed, my hidden cove looked a little different, and a little less cluttered and storm-tossed. My terror of the deep, the unfathomable deep, that roaring, threatening Tiamat of primordial chaos, so near and so frightening, slowly began to receed. And as each new aspect within my mindscape came into view, as each slightly altered state was acknowledged, I relaxed more and more in his company.

Our sessions always lasted longer than our allotted time. He didn’t seem to mind. He gave me the time and space I needed, to talk, to ruminate, or just to be.

The months, and the seasons, passed. I read, and I wrote more, and opened up to new friends online. Learning of their struggles, though different from mine, helped me face down my own demons. We helped each other, I think. They certainly helped me. My physical health returned, and my mental resilience grew stronger. There were dark days still, of course. Days on which I struggled to rise from my bed, to face the world. Medication helped, for a long time; and, in time, I learnt to manage without it.

I returned to work - slowly, by stages - and was amazed at how exhausting it all was. And already, I think, I knew that the return to my former workplace would be temporary. Things had moved on, and I wasn’t the man I had once been. Soon I would need to look for a career change: to strike out in a new direction.

But that could wait, for a little while yet.

I was feeling better. Winter passed, spring returned, and I knew my time with Jesse was drawing to a close. Just one more session remained, and Easter was approaching, once again: this time, without the existential dread that had almost overwhelmed me twelve months before.

***

For ten successive years, at dawn on Easter Day, my wife and I had celebrated the Day of Resurrection alongside members of various churches across Gower and Swansea, as we assembled for a sunrise service at one of Gower’s most picturesque viewpoints. Our numbers varied from year to year, according to whether or not it was an early or late Easter, the timing of the sunrise, and the weather conditions on the day. In 2016, in the dark hour of my soul, there could be no Easter hope - and so I absented myself from that accustomed gathering. But a year on, I felt ready to return, to welcome the rising sun, and to acknowledge the risen Son.

In 2017, the wind was less bitter than in many previous years; the dawn sky was a dazzling blue, and the edge of the resplendent solar disc pierced the thin, wispy clouds without a moment’s hesitation. Arthur’s Stone - Maen Ceti - was not far away from where we stood. Legend had it that the Once and Future King had been bothered by a sharp stone in his shoe, and had tossed it away - all the way from distant Carmarthenshire, over there on the north-west horizon. If only I had found it so easy to be rid of the things that troubled me! Arthur’s castoff had landed on Gower, and had wondrously, magically, grown in size.

Magic. And miracles.

Did the stone table of Narnia split in half for me that morning, and did Aslan’s roar resound around the uplands of Gower? Perhaps not. But my dormant faith - small as a mustard seed though it be - had been rekindled. Perhaps it could grow, sufficient yet to move mountains - or cast stones, at least, across great distances. And as the dawn service neared its end, and our final hymn of praise concluded, I rejoiced at hearing the sweet song of the solitary ascendant lark, calling out his adoration to the Creator of all things. Not even Vaughan Williams could match the pure, peerless beauty of that moment.

As up he wings the spiral stair,

A song of light, and pierces air

With fountain ardor, fountain play,

To reach the shining tops of day.

(George Meredith - The Lark Ascending)

Many of the faces around us in the crowd that morning - a good turnout, that year - were familiar: individuals who had joined us on previous occasions, some whom we knew well, others whom we recognised only from past Easter dawns. As with most years, there were one or two we’d never noted there before. It’s hard to recognise people you barely know when they’re wearing thick winter coats, hats and scarves, shrouded in layers almost as completely as the dead; gathered in the receding gloom, waiting for the promise of morning. It was only at the end that I realised, with a start, who one of this year’s newcomers was. Standing there before me - acknowledging me with a twinkle in his eye, and a knowing half-smile - was my counsellor, Jesse.

I felt miraculously touched, just like the Magdalene. Mary, in the garden of Gethsemane, had asked the stranger: ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’

But as he simply spoke her name: ‘Mary’－

So then she knew who was standing before her.

Not the gardener: but her Lord.

In that instant, that Easter morning, I looked into those eyes - the warm, gentle, reassuring eyes of Jesse - and I realised that for me:

Jesse was Jesus.

***

If you’ve ever watched the penultimate episode of the wonderful BBC television comedy Rev., about an Anglican priest in a struggling urban parish, you may recall how the protagonist, Rev Adam Smallbone (played by Tom Hollander), having been suspended by the Bishop of London (Ralph Fiennes) following an accusation of unprofessional conduct, is in the midst of a breakdown. He has been wandering the streets of his parish all night, carrying an enormous wooden cross. The next morning, on Good Friday, he encounters a derelict (Liam Neeson) on a hilltop. The drifter engages him with some offbeat humour, before turning to the haggard priest, and saying:

‘Adam, Adam, we all have our crosses to bear.’

Looking puzzled, the priest replies: ‘Yes…yes, we do.’

The tramp places a consoling hand on the priest’s shoulder, and assures him: ‘I understand Adam. I’ll always be here.’

Adam laughs, bewildered, but with a look of what might be understanding creeping across his face. His companion smiles, and gets up to go. The camera cuts away, focuses on the astonished face of the priest, then pulls back. The vagrant has simply vanished. In the next scene, Adam returns home, to his concerned wife, Alex (Olivia Colman), and tells her:

‘Alex, I’ve just met God.’

A deity looking remarkably like Liam Neeson, at that.

***

Of course, unlike God with Adam, Jesse didn’t pull a vanishing trick on me. And we still had one final counselling session together, a few weeks later. Tying up the loose ends, perhaps - like Jesus with his apostles, after the Resurrection, before the Ascension. After all the long, overrunning meetings of the past, this final one was actually shorter than our allotted time. We had said everything that needed to be said. Our journey together was at an end. I gave him - as a parting gift - a small booklet, containing some of the poems I’d written over the previous year. He was probably humouring me: but nevertheless he accepted them, graciously.

We met one another just once more - a few years later, on the Gower shoreline - a real beach, this time, not one cluttered by the detritus of a disordered mind. On that occasion, we greeted one another, as acquaintances, and politely asked after the health of each other’s families. I’d learnt, by then, from others what I had never learnt from him during our sessions (consummate professional as he was). I’d discovered that he was the son of a pastor. Not so surprising, I suppose. The son of a carpenter might have been even more impressive.

***

And now, Easter is approaching once more. The world has not stood still. In the half-dozen years since my mid-life crisis hit, the United States has had to endure the presidency of Donald Trump, Britain has had a double dose of Boris and BREXIT, Australia has suffered fire and flood, the light of democracy has been all but extinguished in Hong Kong, the Taliban have returned to power in Afghanistan, and war has revisited Europe. Oh - we’ve had a global pandemic too.

I won’t be meeting with others for a service on Easter dawn this year. Our outdoor Paschal service was a casualty of the pandemic these past two years; and, this year, the nearby car park has been blocked off by the landowner, rendering a dawn assembly impractical anyway. We move on. Times change. We can find other ways to mark the yearly cycle of life, death and rebirth.

But for whatever remains of my earthly life, I will always remember those past gatherings, and, in particular, the Easter morning when the lark hovered above the uplands of Gower; and, in the most unexpected of ways, I met with Jesus.

The End

***

Note: I’ve changed the name of my one-time counsellor. Suffice to say that in ‘real’ life it is sufficiently close to both Jesse, and Jesus, for the conceit at the heart of this story to still work.