tomorrow and tomorrow and .. ..

Today I stand on the eve of my 83rd birthday. I never expected to live so long. When I was a little boy I wondered if I could possibly live to see the new century in the year 2000. I was well aware of the biblical imperative ‘the days of man are but threescore years and ten’. We had been educated to take that literally. Come the end of 1999 I would be seventy-two. Was it possible I could last so long?

Yes it was and I did. And maybe I’ll go on for a bit longer. Provided there’s something interesting to keep me occupied.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reorganising the photographs on my computer’s hard drive. There are more than 7000 frames there – and probably at least an equal number waiting to be transferred to electronic form. The digital images of the past ten years are encouraging. I had thought but little had been accomplished but when I came to  examine the visual record I was touched by the great number of those who have befriended me. I drove my car far and wide; have spoken at a more than satisfactory number of meetings; written a fair number of articles and reviews; enjoyed to the full the phenomena of Pagan camps. Life has been good.

In term time I am often to be found on the premises of the Oxford Union Society where, inter alia, I serve as a senior member of the library committee. In the Members’ bar I have been known to read the Tarot cards now and again. I feel free to quote from Leviticus ‘Thou shalt not cut thy hair nor trim thy beard’ though I really need no such injunction and my flourishing of the text dates from years after I ceased attending my hairdresser in the Turl. Nor do my feet wear ought but sandals – save when thoughts of ice underfoot prompt me to venture out more protectively shod.

I am going to try to write a book about my life. I am all too aware of what I came back to do this time and why I was born where I was and into that particular family.

From my infant years onward I was involved with music until I retired from the profession in 1995. And for most of my life I was a church organist and choirmaster. I’m tempted to wax lyrical about a double helix of music and religion. But I won’t.

I must write about my experiencing the certainties of Spiritualism. How I put that firmly aside when I enrolled into the comfort of the Latin-speaking catholic church. How my completely unexpected exit Road to Damascus was a narrow winding track through the volcanic jungle of an island in the South Pacific. And how the visitor from the house next door, one evening in the suburb of Rozelle (the year was 1974) pointed me to a shining pathway back to the world between the worlds where we are at one with our goddesses and our gods.

vita scribenda est

francis cameron, oxford, 4 december 2010

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