That Most Secret Place ~ II

Whoever

That Most Secret Place ~ II

The Arc

Invitation ~ Predicament ~ Encounter ~ Transformation

September 2025

Act One

Scene One

Invitation

‘Go into that most secret place …’

Because I stand slightly outside the Nave my faith is occasionally questioned. I tend not to toe the line, not because I’m rebellious. I’m not. But faith is very personal and intimate.

There is joy in fellowship, of course. Peace is found also in the wilderness. In the Wilderness I meet my true self, and more importantly, am able to converse with G-D. I’m at a loss to define this Being, so I settle upon WHOEVER.

Theism or atheism, or agnosticism, all of us need a place of quietude.

This is my way of finding that place. It might be in the garden, on the hill, down a back street, outside the office in the smoking area; it might be on the deck of the ship in the mind’s eye, or upon the canvas of a painting.

It might be within a congregation in the Chancel or a much greater congregation in the Nave of my own Church, Tewkesbury Abbey for I live within the ancient Diocese of the Abbey when I’m not in Liverpool. When I am, I enjoy spending time in the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. I equally enjoy visits with a friend to my Cathedral’s compatriot, the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.

We all have our place where we can go alone.

Whatever our religion, whatever our faith, this last point is fundamental to my wellbeing.

For me, the greatest Cathedral is Nature herself. In Nature I have my being. There is an internal resonance that a guarantee to me that life continues, that in death I will return to life.

Scene Two

Predicament

I WAS ASKED today where one can find ‘that most secret place’, [i] I refer to in That Most Secret Place ~ Part I.

In part, Scene One has replied to that very good question. So let me open up a little more. Before I do so, I hasten that I’ve no agenda. I have no desire to preach, and to proselytise is anathema. That’s just me.

Because the root of my faith is Judeo-Christian then this obviously is my personal foundation stone.

I am an Anglican and I have no desire nor need to move to another denomination. But I am also very ecumenical. Very!

I think Matthew had a similar quandary when he asked Him to elucidate. I’m talking of the tax collector in Jerusalem at around 30 A.D (C.E). Not exactly popular with the people; he was strict in collecting Romans taxes. It seems he had a lifestyle beyond the reach of most and that this might be because he exceeded the taxes required by the Romans, then pocketed the excess and enriched himself. Nothing changes. I’ll come back to Matthew later.

Are we not told to pray in public? Are we not expected to make a great show of this weekly exhibition? To both questions, millions will answer ‘most definitely’ and also, while one’s at it, make something of a spectacle of oneself. Sadly, I’ve seen this and I find it abhorrent. I speak of radical Christian fundamentalism. I have only to look at the Reformation in the 1500s and Puritanism in the 1600s and a cold shiver travels my spine.

How do you mean?

You’ve got to get into the spirit. Release all your feelings. Chant and wave your arms in the air, and sway your hips too, if you can. You’ll feel SO good.

Fine for millions, but not for me.

Yes, but okay, you have somewhere to go, a quiet room, you can close the door. But such luxury is not always possible. And what about if you’re bedridden?

Good point.

I’ve been in that predicament a few times in this often totally upside-down-life, and I cracked that quite a while back. There is a place. I’m not going to tell you precisely where mine is, but you’ll get the idea and a whole new dimension will open up…

…a whole new dimension…

What an irony. How obvious it now is in the winter of life.

Theatrics - because that is what, for me, all that empty waving and chanting meant and left me always at war with myself - masking emptiness.

And yet the silence of the wilderness reveals everything.

Scene Three

A Portal in a Painting

I have a painting. Within, is just one particular spot beneath a tree. The sun catches the flowers around the base of its grand four-centuries-old trunk. The grass is soft here. I like the moss too. In the distance is a very long fence that the artist captured in the full summer sun, conveying that scene to his canvas in the late 1700s. Perfect in detail, the equal to any similar view I happen to capture with the lens of my phone.

No one else comes here ~ except Whoever.

It is in a very private place in my home that even the family are not aware of; and whether I am at home, or up north, or down south, or across the sea, that most secret place in all its detail is within the vast storehouse of my memory.

And that’s where I go.

Here, in my mind’s eye, can converse with Whoever. All the injustices of this world, - IF I take those sixty-six books [i] literally - and the mess that the Most High reckons we’ve made.

As I say, Whoever, or The Higher.

Scene Four

Encounter

That person has a point, for sure, but the bar is raised too high.

Bar? Raised too high? Not me! Remember! You’re labouring under a lifetime’s teaching multiplied by two, three, and four millennia of self-will, not free will, self-will!

That which people exercise when they want to get their way and insist that everyone else goes along with their way; otherwise it’s curtains, bars, a machete, a gun, or even poison.

WHOEVER gave some direct advice to Matthew [ii] as he laboured under centuries of rules, regulations, and teaching that now apparently added up to being nothing less than the Voice of God. Anything less was apparently not the voice of God.

Which is something else humans are good at … deciding what and, more importantly, who can recognize this Voice!

As I mentioned in the last Scene, Matthew found himself in a dilemma . So I ponder to myself again…

Something else we humans are good at …
deciding what,
and who
can recognize this Voice!

This moss is really soft and warm today. A sense of Presence.

And when I imagine that conversation and see Matthew’s friend sticking a pin in the wineskin hanging close by it had quite an effect on Matthew.

We talk of the scales falling from another man’s eyes after an incident on Damascus Road; well, I suspect Matthew had a similar experience quite a long time before.

We all,

without exception,

have our

‘most secret place’.

Matthew’s clever, and when I read Luke's account, it seems Matthew is trying to obtain clarity. Maybe I feel inadequate and misunderstood and Matthew may have been feeling the same things.

Do I find any parallels today with this man from 2,000 years ago?

Does Matthew’s social shame clash with today's alienation? Does his hunger for authenticity and acceptance clash with my own suspicion of religious performance?

Scene Five

Universal Dimension

 

What I find myself considering is what I would term the universal dimension.

I emphasise again…

All of us have a secret place, everywhere.

The garden, the back street, the smoking area, the darkened alley between the nightclubs, the very special places in buildings that we like to pop into, the library, the church, the cathedral, the abbey, the synagogue, the mosque, the Hindu temple, even the basement.

Can I push this point further?

What if I refuse to go inward?

Do I wither?

Do I find a counterfeit secret place?

How would I even know that something is counterfeit?

If I think of screens, distraction, addiction, then I begin to see the counterfeit secret place and thereby – and with irony - truly finding that most secret place.

Scene Six

The Map

I write for myself and therefore without anyone else in mind. To do otherwise means that I am falling into that dangerous trap we often call preaching or proselytising. That is not for me. This is my own private journey.

I also like to look at the way that I write things. I find, for example, that I enjoy repetitions because these become the drum beat of the work which in another age might have been called unintentional liturgical refrain. And I admit that I do enjoy listening to liturgical refrains.

I like the Ellipsis. A favoured tool in my writing repertoire.

I use it in all my creative work, and not without criticism. That does not matter.

It is my way of showing myself that there is a trailing thought, a doorway even, into the next dimension akin to a passage into the next chamber. This allows me to reflect. Thus…

Inception,

Predicament,

Audience

may be moving toward

Encounter,

Reckoning,

Release

I also enjoy weaving back into That Most Secret Place Part 1 because these, for me, are “callbacks”, an echo phrase, a reminder of the First “dimension” that I addressed.

In this way I feel the continuity of this journey without having to re-read Part 1.

Notes and Citations

[i] The Bible

[ii] Luke 5

20 September 2025
All Rights Reserved


Liverpool

© 2022 Kenneth Thomas Webb

First written 26 August 2022

First written 31 January 2021

Autumn | Der Herbst in Koblenz Deutschland von R.S. Beobachtung der Natur | A Study of Nature September 18. 2020

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