Museo Nacional du Azuleju- Lisboa; Portugal.
The cool coolness of a sacred place in Iberia. I remember this from long ago. This one is full of Arabic images; maybe it was once a mosque, one of those places that changed from mosque to church and back again all those centuries ago.
What I take from it, at the moment, is the memory of walking from the bright, white, arid heat of the summer into a building where everything is cool. It is pretty much silent apart from the faint sound of the street and its busyness. I see there is a basin into which fresh cold water will be pouring. I can somehow remember that place, though I have never been there. That sudden calm, the vastness of the peace in the building and the quiet, quiet, voices somewhere in the distance.
I have been in such places but cannot picture them accurately. They bring a longing to me; a yearning for silence and contemplation and sometimes I have found that for myself, paused in the screech of the day to find calm and peace and respite. Even those of us who have no faith can find safety in such emotions and places.
Last lockdown when I fell into a reality I prefer to avoid and spoke openly in ways I shouldn’t do and though I was treasured and looked after; I felt that yearning for sanctuary and, not being fully sensible, emailed our local church, asked for refuge there and room to sit and be silent, while also mentioning I was an atheist and would only bring suffering to the church because, despite being an atheist, I was also a devil.
Almost immediately I regretted it, but the email went and they replied, I think with some relief, to say that, due to covid, no one at all was allowed in the church so, unfortunately, I couldn’t go there.
Instead I continued my walks with the dog, amongst a different form of peace; where the oyster catchers flew low on the water, the curlews tumbled in the gales, the herons stood awkwardly in the shallows and here I found some of the freedom I yearned for from that empty church.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if, now I am free to, I walked through the church doors and sat there, whenever I felt like it and became lost in the quiet. I still have a hankering to. I would like to sit among the silence; maybe with the lingering smell of incense. I would like to see the light coming in from the windows and smell the wooden pews around me. I would like to find peace from whatever it is I still torture myself with.
But more often and this is in a fit of contrariness! I know I get more peace and more respite when Wendy is being as silly as can be and James is demanding crisps and Charlotte is drawing Japanese pictures on her note pad, Dash is barking at cats from his lookout tower and the rabbits are nibbling at their cages frames . The lightness of a busy family!
Or at least I hope that is the case: to learn not to search, to find explanation or salvation but instead to recognise the wonder of the everyday.
Once it wasn’t like this; escaping the everyday would have been my main ambition. In those days the peace and stillness of places, that are sacred even to people like me, would have made me gasp with such relief.
Maybe one day, after covid, if there is such a thing as and ‘After Covid’! I will return to Portugal or Spain and find these buildings and pause as I step from the bright white to the blessed stillness.
(Photo :postcard of : Museo Nacional du Azuleju- Lisboa; Portugal. From my first attendance at a face to face session of the Jean’s Bothy Creative writing Group.)
First Published in The Bothy Blethers – August 2021
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