Janie and I have been friends since we met at boarding school in 1975 aged 12. She was hands down the coolest girl in the school; long legs, dewy-skinned, pale blue eyes, FU's jeans, thick wavy blonde hair that fell back into shape with the toss of her head. I was the dorky, spotty, frizzy-haired girl who got through school by trying to make people laugh. Janie had incredibly handsome, charismatic parents, the kind you were jealous of at the end of term prizegiving, and she went to really cool parties where people drank and smoked and got off with people and did french kissing when the rest of us were just dreaming of boys we didn't have a hope of knowing. She was the Lead Heather. Even the deputy headmistress had a crush on her, inviting her to her rooms on Sunday evenings for clandestine glasses of Tio Pepe. We weren't supposed to know, but we did. Poor Janie didn't really have a choice in the matter when tall, toothy, repressed Miss Torlane in her scratchy tweed skirts, pilled twin sets and her runcible jaw cornered her. Miranda and I were busy looking at the stars and thinking deep thoughts on the fire escape on summer nights, relieved Miss Torlane didn't like us. Janie smoked, and it was a great honor to be asked by her to join the hip girls that met after prep in the woods behind the lacrosse pitches to suck down Marlborough Reds and try not to cough in the presence of the Queen.
Life goes on and takes you on your journey. I went to Los Angeles and started my career in the film industry, and Janie married a handsome man in the west country, inheriting a ghost-filled but extremely beautiful country house. Years later we found each other, and realized we liked each other anew, that our older selves were kindred spirits. We're both woo-woo divorced grandmothers with crystal bracelets and voracious appetites for books. There is a gentleness, a forgiveness, a camaraderie.
Last night we went to see Lee Harris, an energy healer and channeler at his event at the Aldwych Theatre. Packed with 800 women and perhaps a few men, who may well have been burned at a stake a couple of hundred years ago. Honestly, we fit right in. I found Lee through my abiding love of Pam Gregory and the conversations they've had. He is full of kindness and is a light in the world, focused, I think, on reassuring everyone that it's going to be okay, that love abounds, and that the Z's feel optimistic about the state of Planet Earth. And we all need that don't we? One of the exercises was to spend three minutes channelling. We were given a pen and paper and three minutes to ask the question of our higher selves, of Spirit, God, Jesus, our Guardian Angeles, whoever resonated with us "Do you have a message for me?" It's a useful exercise because of course the question is, am I channeling my higher self, or am I just writing down my own answer to the question. And I think the answer is that it doesn't matter. Just to pose the question is to reach for something beyond the everyday. So I did of course roll my eyes, but then in the spirit of joining in, I closed them and asked the question. This is what I wrote (interestingly in handwriting I don't recognize as my own):
Relax and allow all that wants to come through and you will know what is for you. I trust you and I trust your discernment. You are on the right path and there is no need to question this. The earth is going through a liminal time and it is your job to hold on lightly and to allow the water to hold you. The water will always hold you if you relax.
I'm not going to question this. I'm just going to let it sit here and see what happens with it. I'm also going to do this exercise for a couple of weeks. I suppose it's not unlike auto writing? We will see what comes. Most of all, how lovely is it to find that you still have something in common with an old friend, that despite growing in completely different directions we are still connected.
Lee Harris does an energy course in London next weekend -October 30-31 at the Mermaid Theatre- if you are interested. And you can find his wonderful conversations with Pam Gregory on YouTube.
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