Bits of Yarn, Calico and Velvet Scraps                                                            Page 10

Books of science, philosophy and psychology were

available in a way they had never been before.

Darwin, Marx, Freud came into my life as prophets.

I heard, though still at a distance, the voices of

Heidegger, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

Germaine Greer and Betty Friedan planted seeds

that changed my life forever! The 'women's

movement' gradually became for me the single

most important vehicle of justice in our world.

Feminist writers remain a major source of light.

The doors that opened onto both Quantum Physics

and the sciences of outer space led me into worlds

that began to speak back to all my other worlds.

This was a time of liberation and joy. Paul Ricoeur's

'Lyric God of John' was still alive for me. I didn't

realise that following paths that led to life and gave

so much energy, hope and understanding, required

a death, such a death. Funny I didn't realise. I knew

about seeds having to die to bear fruit and about

losing life in order to find it. Did I really believe I

already understood the limits of these images of

death? Shocking personal tragedy, 'the tragic god

of Job', had to shake me to the depths of my soul

and lead me on a journey through the underworld.

I went unwillingly, fighting and struggling.

When the time came, it was long drawn-out agony.

The death of God the Father and me spun worlds

into chaos.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

William Butler Yeats, 'The Second Coming'