She shuffled in her chair. Having decided some days ago that he needed to be told, she had not quite made her mind up when she was going to do it and now it had just sort of fallen out.
" It was shortly after Andrew first claimed to have seen something. I always doubted that there was anything to it, and I was sitting there just rather like you were today. Trying to work out just where the image was. It seemed to shift all the time, like the clouds. Sometimes you could see it clear as anything, and then it would disappear.
Finally I decided enough was enough and I simply prayed to be allowed to see something if something as there. I needed to be free of it one way or the other."
He remained silent as she revealed to him what must have been a difficult disclosure. They had both liked each other the moment they had met, there was the rapport that you don't have with everyone in a parish. It is precious, and you are careful not to squander it.
She laughed nervously, wondering if he was thinking she was crazy.
"I suppose you will think that I'm lonely too, like Andrew."
Phillip hastened to reassure her. He had withdrawn from friendship mode and was now fully in pastoral mode. He did not need to judge what was being said, he rather had to pay attention and realise that this was holy ground. Not his holy ground by any means but the holy ground of a fellow traveller. It was not his place to trample or make light of other people's encounters of God, or what they believed to be God.
She sensed the change, and felt a little sad. It was as a friend that she wanted to share this with him, and not because he had a pastoral responsibility to her.
"Not at all,"Phillip tied to reassure her, "Andrew had his issues, but they are not yours."
He smiled to try and make sure he didn't blow what was potentially an important step in their relatonship with each other.
"Well anyway, I did almost immedately become aware that I was not alone. This is often the way I am in my prayers. I feel God powerfully close. I actually started to feel very warm. Very, very warm. It was almost stifling. I had to stand up and as I did I noticed something drop from my lap, and on the ground there was a handful of rose petals."
"Did you tell Andrew any of this?" He was careful not to mock his predecessor as he had done moments before.
"Oh No! I would never do that. He would have taken it over completely, and I didn't want that. I actually came to understand that there may have been a perefectly normal explanation. I did think that I had felt something drop in my lap, and I suppose it was a flower. A bird must have dropped it or something. And then when I stood up the petals fell on the ground."
"I suppose that is plausible," Phillp suggested, "but maybe you should just ask yourself what God might have been trying to say to you. Have you thought about that?"
"Indeed I have. I'm much more inclined to think that it was a natural occurrence which God used, than a magical one."
"Me too. But nevertheless obviously a special time. What do you think it was all about?"
" I vacillate some what, but I think that the image is about not realising what has landed in my lap and then finding that when I get going I stand up and it all falls apart."
She paused and gazed off into the river. He noticed she bit her lip as though she was trying to stop emotion welling up.
"It was George first. I don't think I realised until he died, just how much he meant to me, and then when he did go everything rather fell apart."
Phillip had never heard her talk about her husband, though he knew she was a widow. Nor did he know anything about her two children who had moved away long before George had died.
"Do you think this was about George?"
"Yes, it has to be. He was a lovely man, but we rather fell out love with each other. I've realised that since he died there is a great void which I can't seem to fill, and part of it at least is being sad that I didn't understand how much we actually loved each other."
Phillip knew this sort of admission was hard for her to make, but knew too that it was therapeutic and necessary.
"Of course," he ventured, "there is an inevitable grief process."
"Yes I know that, but this was more than that. As I've thought about it I realised that one of the strange things about the petals is that they were the reddest red I have ever seen. I have looked and looked for a rose that colour but never seen one. There certainly is no such rose around here, and I've walked the town looking for the bush a bird would have got them from. But to no avail. I'll show you one day."
"What do you mean?"
"I've still got the petals."
"What do you mean you've still got them?"
She was bemused to think she had stimulated his interest in a potential religious relic.
"Oh yes," she taunted him a little,"I kept them intact. Relics of my own personal holiness."
