Something Will Turn Up
Dear friend,
I’ve taken to writing from the kitchen. A light breeze sauntering in through the open door, the air feels pleasantly cold against my skin.
Zara is here for the day, she’s lounging in the sunlight, like a doggie timer, she’ll go off when she absolutely must have her morning walk. There’s a certain pressure to it, that makes me laugh inside.
With Chiara being away, I’m listening to more podcasts than I would when I have a real live person to talk with. There’s a series of conversations between the Irish poet Paul Muldoon and Paul McCartney about the second Paul’s approach to songwriting.
It’s called McCartney: A Life In Lyrics.
Paul told a story about the early days of the Beatles when they were driving home from a gig in the snow when the van skidded off the road into a ditch in the middle of night, in the middle of nowhere.
Sometimes we come to points in our lives when the situation could be an apt metaphor for the way we feel about the circumstances around us. Loss of control. Our lives upended.
Stranded and freezing one of the group said “What are we going to do?”
Someone else, Paul couldn’t remember who replied.
“I dunno, but something will turn up” or words to that effect.
It reminded me of when I first moved to London to live with Kevin, my brother and some of his college friends. At the time I was secretly practicing as a Sufi and had an enormous sense of being held by the divine. I was keeping it secret as I was kind of embarrassed about my new interest in faith. I was afraid of the ribbing I would take from my friends.
It wasn’t a sophisticated thing for me. I’d been initiated after a chance encounter with a Sufi teacher on a coach trip to Paris. We’d struck up a conversation after I turned to him and out of the blue found myself asking him if he was a teacher.
He went on to try and explain something about his faith, non of which I could grasp. At some point he asked me if I understood and I admitted that none of it had made any sense to me.
“Never mind,” he said “just keep moving towards the light.”
That floored me as it was the exact line I’d written in my poetry notebook that morning in a verse that I did not understand either.
In those days I had no background or insight into mystical or religious thought. All I knew was I felt better when I did the rudimentary practices I’d learned with the Sufi’s and there was a sense that I was being looked after by a power greater than my frightened and scheming false self, the little me.
I’d managed to get myself together after the implosion of my band, take some courses at Sheffield University’s adult education unit and secured a place as an undergraduate in London.
We were sitting outside the estate agent’s office in South London in a rental van with all of our pooled possessions, while my brother and one of our group went in to pick up the keys to the flat we’d arranged to rent together. I had a feeling that something was up, an inner knowing that we wouldn’t be moving into that particular place.
Kevin and his friend came out of the office looking visibly shaken. Exasperated. The landlady for the flat had changed her mind at the last moment and had pulled out of the agreement.
We had no place to go.
Kevin’s old flat had been given up, and none of us had much money, so we’re just sitting there, and inside of me was this feeling of certainty that something even better would turn up.
And it did.
One of the agents remembered that a new rental property had just become available that afternoon. It was a few minutes away. We moved in that day and lived there happily for the duration of my degree.
Something will turn up.
However you think of it, whatever name you give to it. There is a power that knows us and loves us and we can turn to. Not just when we’re going through tough times but also with appreciation for the good in our worlds.
Maybe a simple faith is more powerful.
With gratitude and trust that we are supported by life.
Like the faith of a child.
In a loving universe.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey