Is This A Spiritual Experience?

May 24, 2024

Caravaggio almost killed me but in case you didn’t know, his name wasn’t actually Caravaggio. He was called Michelangelo Merisi, and like a Madonna or an Adele or a Bouncer, one of the most controversial Italian artists of the Baroque period was mononymously1 known as Caravaggio because that was where he came from. He was also a killer but then as Wikipedia says, he lived a violent life in violent times so these things happen. During an argument over either a tennis match or a woman, the facts are a bit hazy, it escalated into a swordfight. He stabbed his rival to death and went on the run. We were on speech #5036 on the opening night of the ‘Caravaggio in Belfast’2 exhibition when I leaned over to my husband and said, “I think I’m going to die”. Having done the childbirth thing four times, three minus an epidural, I can confirm there is no pain like the pain of shoes that are gradually crushing your feet as they expand in the heat.

I don’t often get invited anywhere. It’s one of the consequences of not belonging to anything like an organisation or a network or a society or the Masons and having no social or professional standing and so I had taken some time to consider what I might wear to this illustrious occasion where two national treasures which rarely travel would be reunited for the first time since the 17^th century. Having, due to the sudden and unexpected arrival of the sunshine, abandoned pairing some comfy denim sock boots with a leopard print smock so I might blend into the artistic community, I had chosen some sandals which I had not as yet broken in. When the Jesuits had been repeatedly thanked for lending The Taking of Christ from their dining room and various First Ministers had described how honoured they were and there had been musings on how AI could never replace human creativity and the painting duo was being credited with bringing the North and South together and peace-building and reconciliation and implementing the Windsor Framework or something like that, I was starting to do breathing exercises. “Should I get you a chair?” said my husband and I looked at the two frail people patiently sitting on them, and I decided I couldn’t evict them and so I leaned heavily onto him and when we were eventually released and attendees started running up the stairs, he semi-carried me to the lift because I could no longer walk. “How far is it?” I said, when I realised we had another exhibition to get through first and he headed off like an advance party to count steps and when he came back, I said, “I need to rest before I attempt it” and he said, “Why don’t you just take your shoes off?”. But I was with the great and the good, clerics and civil servants and CEOs and I decided I could not walk barefoot through a gallery and arrive in front of The Supper at Emmaus like a pilgrim on a journey, battered and bleeding. It was too public. And I wondered if this was meant to be a spiritual experience because it had been quite hyped but I had welts across my ankles and I wanted to get home so I could bathe my wounds, so I just gave the pictures a cursory glance and took a tokenistic photo, and I didn’t dwell on their content or ponder their meaning. But I thought I’d like to come back when it was quiet and the conditions were right and it was just me and there was no one to impress and no extraneous chatter and I’d close the doors and stand there with my naked soles, and I’d look up and I’d take it all in and then I’d have my spiritual experience.

It was Pentecost last Sunday and I believe this annual event commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on to the apostles and followers of Jesus while they were in Jerusalem. They were in a house when they heard a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire landed on them and they began to communicate in different languages and there was no awarding of the Holy Spirit based on hierarchy or gender and there was unity in the midst of diversity and I reckoned we were supposed to get really excited about this in that something spiritually similar could happen to us if we were open to it, but no one seemed any more moved at church than usual. And we celebrated it by singing lots of songs about breath and breathe and breathing and then at the end, the minister said, “how many tongues do we need to sing God’s praise? Well we’ve got one, let’s join together” and I kind of had this moment when I realised my tongue wasn’t enough and this needed a thousand tongues and men and women to play their different parts and harmonise and lift their voices in unison and there were trumpets and drums and loud cymbals and I told my friend the next day that it was like a flash of God passing through. And she said does that often happen to you at church and I said not really and never during the sermon but there was one time when a shaft of light hit a stained glass window and another when I looked down and saw an elderly man jigging to There Is Power In The Blood and then another when there was a group effort to clean vomit off the carpet and she said she wasn’t getting many moments like that at church anymore because it was the same structure every week and it was all quite dull and formulaic and controlled. And we agreed it’s quite hard to have a spiritual experience within set boundaries when the focus is on the intellectual rather than the emotional and on the rules rather than the responses and where faith can’t be too mystical because it has to be interpreted within a theological framework and that if we’d behaved too spiritually and been overcome on Pentecost Sunday, people would have looked away in embarrassment or ushered us into a hall out the back because we were crazy or menopausal or drunk and sometimes church is the place where you are least likely to have a spiritual experience.

And my friend said she was going to try a sound bath and there was a long waiting list for it because it was so popular and I talked to another friend who was trying a cathedral every afternoon at 5pm after work for evening prayer and it only lasted fifteen minutes but it was wonderful and I remembered I had another friend who hadn’t been to drills classes for weeks because she is doing the whole Camino and then there is me who is having a spiritual experience every day in May because my wisteria is in full bloom.

And then I read this3:

And I thought this is the kind of person many of us want to meet and we are drawn to them because we are searching for a spiritual experience just like this where we come out the other side changed and then we understand this is what life is all about and we forgive ourselves for not being as perfect as we’d like to be. Or maybe I’m just thinking this because I’m meeting a lot of people who are middle-aged and disillusioned and tired and who have discovered that what they thought they wanted isn’t what they wanted and they have questions and they find religion heavy and restrictive and they no longer want to sit in the container of comfort and conforming and they want to climb up the sides and get out and find deeper connection with the universe and sense the presence of something bigger than themselves and be grateful and amazed and enjoy things that burst their soul and let go and simply feel alive inside. And I thought wouldn’t it be great if we could meet these kinds of people at church.

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