Saturday 29 May 2021

175

 "I can't really describe the experience, except that the Spirit of the Living God had descended upon me, and I was caught up in a rapture and so full of peace and bliss and joy.  I had truly entered his presence, I had truly reached the high places with Jesus Christ.  And I was loath to leave this beautiful sacred place that I had just entered into.  But leave I must, in order to return to the lower places, and the everyday duties of life, and to that tiresome and sorry waste of DNA, Jeff Sutherland.  

"But I descended the mountain, knowing that I was not going to leave that place, but that I would be living there, that this would be the reality I would be carrying with me for the rest of my life.  I wanted to share with Jeff this joy I had just discovered, to share it with the entire world.

"I returned to our shared hotel room.  It must have been around two in the afternoon.  There was Jeff, watching TV, and looking very miserable and pathetic, as always.  Then he demanded from me money, I think one hundred pounds, or perhaps five hundred.  I cannot remember, but it was a lot.  I was no longer giving him money, except for what he would really need to survive on, and nothing more.  I offered him ten.  He said a hundred.  I replied no.  He threatened to leave.  I said, go ahead and leave.   I felt calm and joyful.  I left him at the hotel and walked back to the church Old St. Paul's, which was open to the public.  I spent a half hour in the chapel, alone, and in quiet prayer.

"When I returned to the hotel, Jeff and all his possessions were gone.  Given the dreadful clutter he tended to accumulate, the place did feel now clean, pure and liberated.  I knew now, that here in Edinburgh, and for the rest of my time in Europe, that I was going to be entirely alone..."


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