Chapter 1
How does a Trans-Atlantic woman appear in this world? What circumstances of ancestry, upbringing, and experience create her? Why does hurtling herself between continents in a large metal container seem as normal to her as crossing the village street seemed to Jane Austen? In answering these questions I may find some clues to the riddle that is my life.
Where, then, should this story begin? At my birth? Or long before it? I have already answered the question of why the story will be told; as a way of knowing my own mysteries and perhaps allowing others techniques to unravel their own.
I will begin in the era of Jane Austen: the eighteenth century. I have a vision of my ancestors–rural British villages–agricultural pursuits which they later carved in their DNA across the Atlantic. That DNA would wait 200 years before having the resources to freely return to its source: England.
A war would reunite British DNA carried in American bodies to its sources just as war had initially separated it. Prosperity would bind the wounds of ancient feuds. I would have the resources to live a life between two continents as effortlessly as an Eighteenth-century lady would between her home in London and her place in the country.
I would, however, endure a burden that most Eighteenth-century women never had an option to bear: that of isolation. To be so wealthy, so unencumbered, so alone seems a relatively new state of being.
Virginia Woolf’s room of one’s own is my perpetual habitation, despite the thousands of people I pass in cities and the miles I travel between countries. Because I can pay my debts, I am left alone. Because I obey the laws of politeness and society, I am allowed to quietly walk through all doors. Because I can dress appropriately for all occasions, I am allowed to decorate most any gathering. However, my heart has been ripped out of me. And the country of endless options seems a desert when one has lost one’s most private history: that of youthful romantic intimacy.
It is the dreadfulness of this loss that has led me back to the eighteenth century. For what was dearest to me in this century is lost forever. I find my greatest comfort in imagining the lives of those who came before me. My own is so painful to contemplate that I medicate myself with the history of others’ withstanding DNA of immense sensitivity.
George Whitefield is the ancestor I focus upon. He is my kindred spirit. He sat in this library in Oxford in the eighteenth century. I sit here 200 years later remembering him and all that he stood for. He was the icon of the Trans-Atlantic man in the eighteenth century. This goes very far toward explaining the mystery of myself to me. Why I am forever crossing the Atlantic and feeling it supremely natural to do so. George Whitefield did so in the service of God. I try to follow in his footsteps. To serve God in the ways that are provided. In small kindnesses, in prayers, in not seeking vengeance.
Why do people wish to serve God? I think George and I both felt that having a creator of the universe guide our lives would be the most successful way of conducting life upon this planet. And in order to receive this wisdom, we would need to obey a set of divine commands. To love rather than hate. And yet our natures are magnetized toward evil as surely as moral gravity will lead our souls naturally downward. If we leave the body unfed it will deteriorate and cease to exist. If we leave the spirit unfed, a far worse fate will befall it: it will increase the amount of evil in the world. If the world held no evil, there would have been no cause to send Christ to us. His spirit of sacrifice is the food of our spirits. We feed on it in prayer and faith. In trusting that His ways are foolish to the world but absolutely right in the eyes of God.
George Whitefield slashed through the hypocrisy of “churchism” in the eighteenth century to reveal a route of passionate intimacy with our creator. He cried a great deal, and his listeners followed him into these intense emotions.
Where does a woman of intense emotion, sensitivity, and faith belong in the twenty-first century? Everywhere. Where is such a woman welcomed? That is the journey I am on. To find where I am welcomed. To find where I feel safe. I have known such welcome and safety in the arms of a loving husband. But he was taken from me brutally and tragically. I have wandered alone and suffering for ten years. God and George Whitefield have been my dearest companions. And it is in my companionship with these beings that I sense the purpose of my suffering. To understand what they too suffered when abandoned by those they loved most dearly.