Alan Jones, the rector of Grace Cathedral, retells the following story from the poet, W.H. Auden:"I was sitting on a lawn with three colleagues, two women and a man. We liked each other well enough, but we were certainly not intimate friends, nor had any of us a sexual interest in another. Incidentally, we had not drunk any alcohol. We were talking casually about everyday matters, when quite suddenly, and unexpectedly, something happened. I felt myself invaded by a power, which though I consented to it, was irrestible and certainly not mine. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly - because thanks to the power I was doing it - what it means, what it means, what it means, to love one's neighbor as oneself. I was also certain, though the conversation continued to be perfectly ordinary, that my three colleagues were having the same experience. My personal feelings towards them were unchanged. They were still colleagues, not intimate friends, but I felt their existence, as themselves, to be of infinite value, and rejoiced in it. And I recalled with shame, the many occassions in which I had been spiteful, snobbish, selfish. But the immediate job was greater than the shame. For I knoew that as long as I was possessed by this Spirit, it would be literally impossible for me to deliberately injure another human being. I also knew that the power would be withdrawn sooner or later and that when it did, my greed and self-regard would return. The experience lasted at its full intensity for about two hours. The memory of the experience has not prevented me from making use of others grossly and often, but it has made it much more difficult for me to decieve myself about what I am up to when I do."
Auden's experience speaks to the encounter with the spirit that inhabits us, as if our soul were a house, and suddenly, we discover that there is, in the house, a second floor, through finding the presence of stairs. All people are particularly unrepeatable. Each has a story to tell, holds a cup of wisdom to impart, a loaf of resiliency to offer anyone who wants to give up, something to teach, a light with which to shine.
