Entanglements: The story of a soul

By Danny Kinane

The mystery and glory of life hidden in a story, like a rainforest emerging in its seasonal growth and becoming a wonder of creation – of such is the wonder of life.

Creation deepens our lives like no other. We begin to realise we are more than the collection of molecules people use to frame our identities.

We are a living reality with a propensity for creation itself. Of such is the vastness of the mystery we are.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781925952858

Book preview

mushrooms.

Chapter One

Flight SQ235 banks to the left, a slow swallow swoop, straightens, then slowly begins its descent towards Brisbane Airport, the first rays of the November morning brushing the roof of the traffic control tower. He awakes from a deep sleep, his eyelids barely lifting then drooping closing again. For a moment, he has no idea where he is, his whole body utterly supine, his being a ton weight with a yawning sense of being lost in place and time and meaning. Through a specific force of will his eyelids open again, his left hand raising just enough to see that his watch says 4.10 A.M. But I’ve slept only 55 minutes, registers as another wisp of bewilderment, his long-left leg slowly stretching but coming to a halt before something or other. His eyelids open more widely, his body straightening a little, to look down and see the obstacle, the dishevelled bunch of typescript sheets at his feet. His eyelids want to close again, to take his being further and further back and away, to a time and feeling when a more objective meaning existed and life tingled with a promise.

Who am I? What am I anymore?- is a despairing niggle somewhere in his struggling awareness. His mind directs him back to yesterday, to a different place. He is the Most Reverend Dr John Noble, Bishop of North Queensland, walking slowly across the Plazza San Pietro, head bowed, the wan sun of the northern winter on his face.

You must stay on, Your Excellency, we want you to stay on at this vital time.

But, Your Eminence, our numbers are dropping...

No ‘buts’, Your Excellency...we want you to stay on...

His feet slowly come to a halt, the source of the imperative to do so escaping his weary mind.

Your Excellency, we complement you on your faithfulness, and that of your priests, to holy celibacy...

Bernini and Michelangelo are emerging thoughts from far away, magical words from the seminary podium, speaking of the very centre - of Christendom, life, meaning - conjuring up the very glitter of the beckoning light that he followed in the wonder years of late adolescence, drowning out the dizzying aches and ambitions of the flesh. He raises his right arm, almost involuntarily, and his extending fingers seem to search for something. Then raising his face, his eyes slowly circling round the ancient stones, in their magnificent symmetrical expression, seem to echo back the words of the silver-haired Prefect of the Congregation of the Episcopacy.

I have no other choice anymore, the sound of his own voice quickly intervenes, watching the eyes of his Vicar-General Halpin drop that evening three weeks ago as the hot Queensland spring sun fades below the western environs of Coral Quay. I cannot watch this portion of the universal church allotted to my care die before my very eyes, can I?

His eyes settle on the dome of St. Peters. For a slithering moment eternity and even infallibility seem possible again. Just a rare jewel whose brilliance ascends with the inward breath of a deep sigh and whose dissipation he follows in the outward breath, wondering when will it be for him again. The ancient stones quickly return him to history and its burden, the accumulation and compounding of original sin in the human heart spilling out over the face of the earth. It is here that basic human truth has been understood and grappled with, even if the rest of the world doesn’t want to know anymore. He is suddenly shocked at his own awareness of this. His whole being seems to freeze: no thoughts anymore; no more dreams; no more hopes; the huge human burden hovering over him. For a moment, he is Christ in Gethsemane, carrying the burden in his very spirit, staring at death, his own death ...There was a time in his ministry when his very existence carried that purpose, that profound awareness, that made sense and gave strength to his every-day, that survived all the slings and arrows of a media hell-bent on destroying the Church.

The stone that the builders rejected flashes on the inner monitor: the great scriptural text, his life’s motto, that he wanted as his official Episcopal motto six years ago but which his advisors at the time judged as ‘unwieldy’ for the Episcopal crest. For the last twenty years or so, like so many others after Vatican Council Two, he had presumed that the reality of that text was to be found on the edges of both society and theology; the great Liberation Theologians from South America had spelt it out for him. Like so many others he had also presumed that the ‘villains of the piece’ were here, crusty old Cardinals with successive Pontiffs in their slimy palms, refusing reform, the great monolithic barrier preventing the church at the coalface from reaching out in a meaningful way to the searching multitudes. But here it is: this, here, is the stone, the petrus, the rock, that his generation has rejected. A lump lays siege to his throat, the realisation growing like the crowd gathering for the papal blessing.

Then something stirs, like a tiny bubble at the bottom of a deep muddy pond, fighting its way up through the many layers of many years of darkness and struggle; a muscle or something twitches inside his tummy. With near total awareness he is now, at last, standing in the very centre, the old Egyptian obelisk within arms-reach; over to his left all God’s people are streaming out of the Vatican tourist office, laughing, hurrying by, venturing an opinion or remaining silent, all good people, faith people, servants of the servant. They do not look at him; if they did they would probably say: here is another priest crying with the burden of humanity, trying to bridge that yawning gap between the human heart and the great divine plan. For a moment, he feels small carrying it all; perhaps that is his proper size, he avers, beneath the heavenly gaze. Then the great colonnade, with its Doric pillars, an ellipse filling the circumference of his vision, transmogrifies in feeling, seeming to become a mantle that wraps itself round him; and all the saints of Christendom come down off their plinths and minister to him.

He presses the attendant’s button on the console of his Business Class seat. The response is almost instantaneous.

A cup of black coffee, please.

He tries to rub the sleep from his eyes, his hands moving up to massage his temple, to slowly entice his brain back to some sort of normality again. He opens his Vatican Diary to try to position himself in time and place. November 22nd, Feast day of St. Cecilia, Patron Saint of Music.

Would you like some more breakfast, Sir, with your coffee?

No, thank you.

Somehow there is no food that will give sustenance now, which his body can accept. He sips the strong black bitter liquid, his mind reluctantly responding to the caffeine assault.

Will you fasten your seat belts please in preparation for landing?

Slowly smoothly the big bird comes down, the landing no more than a soft brushing on the tarmacadam. It is 5.28; almost on the dot of time. He closes his eyes, waiting for the disembarkation proceedings to begin.

Doctor Noble?

Yes, opening his eyes into the soft brown Malayan face; somewhere his being cries in the loveliness and the softness and the yielding comfort it promises, it offers.

Doctor Noble I have a message for you: please contact the desk of the Ansett Golden Wings Club at the domestic terminal before making your connection for Coral Quay. Olivia, his secretary, no doubt. At that moment, some part of his brain seemed to direct him away from himself, the sense he had of himself as somebody he knew with a specific identity. The sweet tones of Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus jingle in his pocket. He let it ring. It was an invitation to a different world. When it stopped he began his text message: Olivia this is Bishop John. I have landed at Brisbane Airport but something urgent has occurred which demands my immediate attention. I suspect I may not be home for two weeks. Tell John Halpin I appoint him as interim Vicar-General. More news to follow, hopefully in a few days.

Chapter Two

A Turning Morning

He mopes through customs and immigration. Within an hour he is out on the Bruce Highway, turning his car north avoiding the south bound morning traffic. He tries to get some sense of where he might want to go. Will he stay on the coastline? But Coral Quay on the coastline is an ever-present awareness. At some stage, he will have to turn inland. Two and a half hours later with the southern suburbs of Rockhampton beckoning he turns left.

Life is westward now. He is tired. He wants to feel meaning in his every action, an inner directive that comprises most of his life, a consequence of his belief in God. In the cloudless sky that proceeds his every moment now there is nothing; he is nothing, deprived of any felt-identity. On the dashboard of his Toyota the swinging figurine of St Christopher given to him by a parishioner to protect him along the road of life seems like a ridiculous trinket. As the westward miles increase the foliage decreases. Is this the road to the desert clicked somewhere in his awareness – only to be banish by the emerging urban sight of Blackwater. He wants to keep going but a stop to replenish his water supply prevails. He tries to keep a low profile, searching the main street for a supermarket, only to find a bottle shop with a reasonable collection of single malt whiskeys. On the same street is a rather large size motel. Suddenly he is very tired. In ten minutes he is checked into room eleven…

Chapter Three

Music:

Fratres

    Ave Part

They had come in a fading Autumn evening from the four corners, some with a precocious piety, others not knowing why; some with a debilitating timidity had sought