The Vision
Regalia
I had a dream, a dream more real than a dream should be I slept but knew I was dreaming and that I was asleep. In my dream I had a vision. I experienced an intoxicating sensation of flying… free of all restraint I soared wherever my consciousness took me, above the clouds, the lowering sky, I looked down upon herds of cows and sheep, I watched the falling leaves… the babbling of steam and rivers all running like molten metal, and there below me was a place I knew … the Tor, rising form the Somerset levels, with its broken tower, the last remnant of St Michael’s raing its head above the rest.
My eye, as sharp as an eagles now, pierced the clouds, the evening gloom and I hung from the sky like a puppet with no stings to hold him there.
I surveyed … … … The Abbey!!
From my aerial promontory, floating on ethereal breezes I looked upon the Abbey. This was not the ruin that I was familiar with. This was not the remnant , the relic, of what once had been. .. below me was the Abbey, a new Abbey complete and in its glory rising in glory and majesty from amidst the surrounding buildings, the orchard and the town which huddled around it like chicks around their mother.
It glowed, golden in the dusk as the throbbing red sun lit its very majesty.
The great central tower rose above everything. The cream stone now gold and bronze in the reddening suns evening gloaming. It was or seemed far larger than I have believed it would be. It dwarfed everything around it. The cloisters, the chapter house, the dormitory, refectory and the under croft below. All snuggled toward each-other but nestled in miniature like dolls houses set bedside the great abbey whose shadow they were not worthy to lie in.
The abbots kitchen lay like some discarded remnant shrugged off and cast aside.
The Abbey dominated all. It rose magnificent and ennobled, sacred and sublime.
The Abbey was what the ruins had merely hinted at and the last vestige of what had been had merely referenced itself like a note or two might remind you of a symphony but not describe the masterpiece that rose before you.
I was transfixed, I was in awe.
In a few moments my life had changed and would never be the same for however magnificent and awe inspiring was the vision of the abbey. What overcame and overwhelmed me was the overriding sense of the spiritual majesty that I could only define as was the presence within of Our God, the saviour of the world . made manifest not in stone or in beauty but in the essence of all things . The spirit rose and radiated from the Abbey like an invisible fire that could hardly be seen but which was palpable. It gave forth a spiritual heat that was annealing, enriching, transforming. It was as if the entire scene were transubstantiated , like the host, for though all was revealed in the form we had made it, the essence of our saviour was in all.
Then as if all that I had experienced were not sufficient and as dusk began to fall and as the encroachment of a warm evening crept from the west to envelop the Abbey I noticed below that a door at the near the oldest part of the Abbey near St Joseph’s chapel had opened and a glow of illumination shone through the doorway from within. At once I saw that the windows were now lit and it was as if the spirit of the place shone forth from within in shafts of glory . I drifted down from my vantage point above , floating like a leaf in the warm breeze until I stood before the door way and then slipped through and within.
If I had been changed and moved beyond measure by what I had seen and sensed from above. The vision that now overwhelmed my every sense transcended all that had gone before.
The lighting was not brilliant but subtle and sufficient to illumine all. And I knew I had walked into a dream. The long isle and vaulted arches that created it were as I might have found in any Cathedral church or Abbey, but any similarity to any other such edifice ended there.
As I slowly stirred into movement and almost floated down the central aisle I drifted through a forest made of stone,. A woodland brought into the interior as life invading the space around me.
The building lived , creation was encapsulated, birth, and all life, even death was ennobled and captured in every stone and in every inch of all I saw.
Before me as I entered was a fountain. A large bowl perhaps twenty feet wide out of which rose what I could only assume was representing in stone the tree of life, The tree which Adam and eve forsook after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The branches of the tree caught the water that tumbled from the centre of the petrified wood and let it fall as rain from its leaves and tremble as they fell into the waters below. It was a baptismal font but it was not only this. It was the symbol of new life and the water of life, the living water that Christ had promised as he sat by the well at Sychar . Like Jacobs well where angels came to drink.
Looking past the font of all life and knowledge, my attention was drawn to the great pillars that rose from the floor like great trees, living manifestations of the great green beard that had always encompassed our sacred land. The pillars were carved and shaped like the trunks of great trees rising in majesty from floor to ceiling. Here and there a hint of the roots that bore the great tress strength slipped and short way across the fool until they slipped beneath the tile that formed the floor. Gnarled trunks with here and there the residue of branches cleft from the stem. The trunks were grooved with the lines of vast age reaching upward and drawing the eye to the limits of their breadth where they spread outward to support everything above. And what did the branches that wove entwined across the vault like ceiling that was blue as the dark sky studded with stars of gold.
The windows .. ahh the windows .. these were no stained glass picture no representation of the biblical story that we all already knew. Here emblazoned in glass was the very sap and life blood of the natural world. Panes of glass like green leaves, the leaded lines between them representing the twigs and branches to which they clung. The essence of life captures in glass with here and there amongst the leaves a small reminder of the life that moved amongst the leaves and branches and slipped her amidst the root and bowl beneath. Here a bird, perhaps a sparrow there a tit and a robin the face of the deer glance from the corner of one window a glimpse of a hedgehog snuffling in the brush brought colour to another.
There was green and greenery everywhere. Hanging plants like ivy, pothos, spider plants , and begonias There were large potted plants near the abbey wall and between the pillars, hydrangers, Hollyhocks, lavender and delphiniums some in flower others budding with promise. Some of the plants were climbing lattice or the wall itself. Wisteria and Bougainvillea, Ivy and honeysuckle.
It was enchanting. The outside world had been brought within, the sacred woodland cathedral where Druids and Celtic Christian had worshiped, the green space where they found God in nature, in His creations were now here, within, both worlds in one. Here we could seek and find Him in His creations. Here we could see his hand at work. Here was the miracle of nature and through this appreciation and the realisation of his presence in the natural world. Here we could worship him in gratitude and awe. Here we could worship the Creator and him though His creation. Here were our forests and woodland enraptured within. It was like as if it were a greenhouse but one made of stone not glass.
As I drifted down the nave, then as I approached the centre crossing my attention was drawn to the transept on either side separating the nave from the choir. On either side of me grew a living tree. On my right a living thorn tree, a Glastonbury thorn, the tree that blossomed both at Easter and at Christmas time each and every year, The tree of whose fructed branches a sample was given each year to our monarch. A symbol of our fruitful and enduring faith even in the cold and dark of winter, and a reminder of the life that came from death when Christ surrendered his life for all of us at Calvary. The trees bore their fruit now and I assumed therefor that it was Eastertide in my dream or close to that time. On my left in a I felt was a really large granite raised garden was an English Oak, it was perhaps 10 feet high and I wondered if it were being treated as if it were a bonsai, that it did not overwhelm the space and the abbey itself in time. Her was the father of all English Trees, the living symbol of all our trees and I knew that the spirit of the trees was here within the Abbey.
My attention turned at last as I approached the High Alter, passing the shrine of those Kings and peers who were remembered here. At last the Great Altar was before me I stopped in deference to what was before me though I did not pretend to understand all the symbolism.
The Altar was a great slab of stone supported by intricately woven branches of stone . It reminded me of wisteria but it was not so, there were four petaled flowers cared, chiselled into the stone and edge of the altar stone itself. What was this … ?
A voice came to my mind then, “Dogwood,” it whispered “and the Slab that rests upon it is bluestone.”
“But,” I hesitated. Could I ask? Would I , did I deserve an answer? “Why?” I whispered in my turn.
“Dogwood, is the wood from which the cross upon which Christ was crucified was made. Dogwood, recognized by the rare four petalled flower like a cross. It is said that the Dogwood trees in ancient times were mighty like oaks rising to great height and with great majesty, It is said that since its branches were used whereunto to impale the saviour that Dogwood is a tree ashamed of its part in this deed and now grows but little a semblance of its former glory. Dogwood. …
“And the slab…?” I asked.
“Bluestone,” the voice came quietly now and I had to strain to hear the words, “from the welsh hills above Prescelli. This is the birthstone of all Britain. It carried healing in its grain and crystal. Nothing broken or torn will not but be healed and mended when placed here. Here in this place you will find the Saviour of the world. Healed and in healing He heals us and heals all things.
All that was broken is mended. All that was torn and tattered is knitted and healed. Here on the high Altar lies the greater magic, the power beyond all power that transcends life and death and where all is made whole. This is the deeper magic.
“The deeper Magic..” I whispered it to myself
I stood, trying to .. breathless … unbreathing .. and slowly the image of all that was before me melted like a cloud in the sunshine and was gone …
And the voice came one last time; “You have seen what was, what is, but is not seen, and what will be once again”