Where the Two Seas Meet
Reflections on walking the Way of St. Francis, meeting Al-Khidr and a year of spiritual exploration
Throughout my life, I’ve always tried to be as rational and as evidence-based as possible. If someone tells me something, I am naturally suspicious. I want to check out the sources, see where bias might lie, root out any inconsistencies in their argument.
It is an approach that, on the whole, has served me well. Scientific or rational thinking has a lot going for it and, generally speaking, it tends to lead to a better world. Sometimes, however, that is not always the case.
Two years ago, I read a tome entitled ‘The Book of Margery Kempe’. It was the biography of a 14th century English female pilgrim who travelled to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago, and countless other places and who made a name for herself by her public emotionality, often bursting loudly and dramatically into tears, usually in a church.
Margery had issues. These days we would call them mental health issues and she would be seeing a doctor and probably on some sort of medication. Back then, they saw God as being the cause and judged her as being either especially close to Him or somehow cursed. Scientifically, we are probably closer to the truth. Her behaviours and outlook do bear the signs of well-recognised mental illnesses and we have specialist support in place to help. Nonetheless, in many ways, it was good for Margery that she was born in the 14th century rather than the 21st, for whilst we can diagnose her, in our society she would be a problem, an issue, ill. Back then, with the framework of faith, she was accepted and, indeed, her illness was almost celebrated as being closeness to Christ. Then she had a status, now merely a sickness.
There are countless other examples of holy individuals whom the same could apply to, one perhaps being St. Francis of Assisi who is the focus of a 500km pilgrimage I am currently completing across Italy. He almost starved himself and died at a relatively young age from his privations. And his stigmata, seen then as a great gift and miracle, would now result in the mental health professionals being called in. Nonetheless, he changed the world, which is why I was setting out to walk in his footsteps.
I did it for many reasons, from fitness to faith. But one of them was because pilgrimage is a space, one of the few still available to us, where we can be irrational, make wild connections in our brain, seek out the supernatural and see coincidences as far more than just that. When I walked the Camino de Santiago I genuinely could believe that I met St. James in the form of fellow pilgrim Jacquie on the road to Orisson, whilst my friend on the path, Pierluigi, could imagine that the person who scrawled ‘Michael Jackson’ on walls across Galicia, was actually making a cryptic reference to St. Michael the Archangel. And in short, this was something that I — and others — desperately need: a space to be irrational, to delve into the Cloud of Unknowing.
A year before setting out for Italy, in Nicosia, Cyprus, I had met a strange lady in a chance encounter that, even at the time, I believed had a great significance to it even if I did not comprehend what that significance might be. That encounter inspired me to reach out to S, an enigmatic girl online whose essays about her life in a closed and conservative Muslim community, had touched me more than almost anything else I had read. We began a friendship, intense and stormy, that caused me to almost meltdown a la Margery Kempe, but which resulted in some of the greatest creative writing I have ever produced. Trying to understand it all, I reached out to a friend who is a fellow spiritual traveller and I told him about the Nicosia encounter. “Ahh, you have met Al-Khidr!” he replied, before explaining to me how, in Sufi tradition, Al-Khidr comes as a stranger on the road to give a message, to teach.
I recovered from my meltdown and deepened my friendship with S. We both manage it better now and, if anything, it is more intimate and intense than before. I have helped her in her life and vice versa and through the emotional opening up that she has provided, I have made other new friends who are a real blessing to me. But even though things are now on an even keel, I knew that I needed to reflect on it all properly, deeply, irrationally. In short, I needed a Camino.
My days in the mountains, those steep climbs and descents, the uneven ground, the long hours of solitary contemplation with only trees to look at pushed me further than even the Camino de Santiago had. I found it hard; each day ahead caused me to anticipate with dread. The hard climb to Consuma and an horrendous day of ascent and descent afterwards. Then another monster climb before more tortuous forest walking before then the biggest climb of them all. It was as if the three most challenging parts of the entire Camino de Santiago had been condensed into a week with no Jacquie (or indeed anyone) else for company.
And if the days were one struggle, the nights were another. Before every day of climb and descent, I had interrupted sleep. Chaotic dreams and messaging that I was going to fail. I’d be unable to complete it, fall injured or worse. Margery and Francis would have called them demons trying to deter me from the righteous path. Modern psychology would label it my own subconscious. Either way, the result is the same.
But when I reached Santuario della Verna, the place where St. Francis once dwelt and where he received his stigmata, something happened. I was racked with pain, yes. I was shattered physically, yes. But I also felt alive, high, intoxicated almost on spiritual attainment. In that Mass in the Chapel of the Stigmata and my wanderings around the monastery afterwards, I felt something. A presence. I didn’t know what it was but when I phoned a friend up afterwards, she commented that I sounded drunk despite having not touched a drop.
And that night the demons did not return.
And then, the following day, whilst relaxing in my AirBnB in the town of Pieve Santo Stefano, I started to read the book that I had brought along with me. It was called ‘Where the Two Seas Meet’ and it was all about Al-Khidr.
And several things struck me which I wish to share here.
The Sufis see Al-Khidr’s walk with Moses as being analogous of the master-disciple relationship in their tradition. I do not. Apart from the fact that I am wary of following a specific guru — if ever a practice is open to abuse, then that must be it — also the dynamics of Al-Khidr and Moses were quite different. Moses did not choose Al-Khidr and Al-Khidr was not a teacher. Instead, they were strangers on the road. And even though Moses was amongst the greatest of all the prophets, this stranger could still teach him. This stranger, sent by God, had a message for him, if only Moses was prepared to listen and be patient.
The book was full of things to make me think. It spoke of Al-Khidr being both an undertaker and a midwife, a door to the beyond. On the one hand he is a nourishing, merciful benefactor; on the other he is a ruthless, uncompromising demolisher of habits. In my relationship with S, I have been both to her, and vice versa. And more than anything, she teaches me to be patient, something I have always struggled with.
There’s also the significance of the fact that Moses encounters Al-Khidr “where the two seas meet”. This is not a physical place, but a concept: a spot where worlds collide. I met Al-Khidr in Nicosia, the only divided capital in the world, only metres away from the cruel border that slashes through its centre. But there is more than that: my relationship with S that it brought about has also been where the two seas meet: Islam and Christianity and, perhaps more importantly, female and male.
It was only through S that I realised that one of the most valuable lessons that my Camino de Santiago gave me, was that of opening up to women. In my youth I had been far more open to the opposite sex. I had more female friends than male when I was in my early twenties. But then I had fallen head over heels in love with a Bulgarian lady who broke my heart. After that, I struggled to trust. When my wife later left me for another guy, it merely cemented that. But on the Camino de Santiago, the sparkling intelligence of Karlijn, the steadfast loyalty and friendship of Satu, the quiet companionship of Sara and the helping hand of Jacquie had opened me up again. I was ready to travel to where the two seas meet once more and my friendship with S was the result.
That though, was not all. The book also talked about how one of the most recorded results of encounters with Al-Khidr was the bestowal of the gift of poetry (Hafiz is the most celebrated recipient). Now, I have written poetry for many years, but it has always been occasional and of a dubious quality. Only a week after the Nicosia encounter, I was sitting in the ruined abbey of Bellapais and I spontaneously wrote two poems, my first in a year. And they’ve been flowing from my pen ever since.
The bit though that really made me stop and shiver, came right at the end of the book. Aside from Elijah and St. George (who is often seen to be the same figure as Al-Khidr), only one Christian figure was mentioned in the whole work. And that was St. Francis of Assisi:
‘Meher Baba reported that on the night St. Francis received his stigmata at Alvernia, al-Khidr visited him and gave him the “touch of grace” that made him a perfect master.’
Now it made sense. Without me realising it beforehand, this pilgrimage had all been about one thing: reaching Mt. Verna, reaching the spot where St. Francis was visited by the same enigmatic stranger who came to me. No wonder I felt something there; no wonder the demons plagued me the night before, and no wonder I felt on such a high afterwards.
The question remained though, if that is what, then why. And the answer to that was also provided:
‘Khwāja Khizr [Al-Khidr] now and then takes on a physical body if there is some spiritual situation that absolutely demands it. The Realization of Francis was such a case, because he had no Perfect Master to give him Realization. So, on the night we read about on Mount La Verna, near Assisi, during which St. Francis also received the stigmata, Khwāja Khizr, in his temporary human form, gave this beloved Western saint the touch of grace which made him a Perfect Soul — a Qutub or Perfect Master.’
It was all clear. Al-Khidr had come to me because there was an absolute need. The absolute need was S, but not just her, but the baby which was being born to her family, being conceived in and around the day that I received my visitation. And Al-Khidr for me took the temporary human form of a woman, a woman who’d suffered a hard life, for that was the kind of person I was being directed towards, and he/she appeared in the city of Muslim-Christian division because that was what I was being tasked to bridge. Whether he made me a Perfect Soul I very much doubt; (perhaps it was the first step on the journey) but what is clear that when I needed to reflect, needed to understand it all, where should I be directed to, but the one place where Al-Khidr had paid a similar visit to a Perfect Soul of my own tradition, the lovable St. Francis.
What does it all mean? Many will say nothing. It is all just coincidence; you’re reading too much into things. The girl in Nicosia was just that; a random stranger who stopped to chat. You felt relieved in Santuario della Verna because, well, you’d just done the last climb and, as for your friendship with S, that was just chance. Those are the 21st century responses and, in all honesty, those are the pre-Camino, away from pilgrimage, thought patterns of the everyday me.
But in the dark forests and rolling fields of Tuscany, as well as in her prayer-soaked monasteries, the norms of the 21st century are far away, and a different reality takes over. The same reality that accepted Margery Kempe and St. Francis; the reality that sees God in the face of strangers and views a girl imprisoned in a strict lifestyle not of her choosing as a fellow pilgrim on the path.
I met St. James on the road to Santiago. I have not yet met St. Francis on the road to Assisi, but I do not mind.
Through the help of God’s servant Al-Khidr, Elijah, St. George, I have managed to meet and start to understand myself.
The Qur’anic account of Al-Khidr’s journey with Moses can be found at Surah 18:65–82.
The book that I read was ‘Where the Two Seas Meet — Al-Khidr and Moses? The Qur’anic Story of al-Khidr and Moses in Sufi Commentaries as a Model for Spiritual Guidance’ by H. Talat Halman
The Way of St. Francis starts in Florence and passes through Assisi to Rome. I walked the first eight days from Florence to Sansepolcro. The guidebook that I used was ‘The Way of St. Francis’ by Sandy Brown.
Written 07/05/2023, Smallthorne, UK
Adapted from part of my Way of St. Francis journal ‘Brother Sun, Sister Moon’
Copyright © 2023, Matthew E. Pointon