Welcome again to Lent with Niggle. This is the sixth and last installment. Did you miss the first, second, third, fourth or fifth installment? No problem, here are the links:
As far as the story line goes, here is where we are at in this sixth week of Lent:
Niggle and Parish, who shows up in this beautiful landscape just after Niggle realizes that he needs his old neighbor, however annoying he used to be, set about developing the country around Niggle’s Tree together.
One day Niggle was busy planting a quickset hedge, and Parish was lying on the grass near by, looking attentively at a beautiful and shapely little yellow flower growing in the green turf. Niggle had put a lot of them among the roots of his Tree long ago. Suddenly Parish looked up: his face was glistening in the sun, and he was smiling. ‘This is grand!’ he said. ‘I oughtn’t to be here, really. Thank you for putting in a word for me,’ ‘Nonsense,’ said Niggle. ‘I don’t remember what I said, but anyway it was not nearly enough.’ ‘Oh yes, it was,’ said Parish. ‘It got me out a lot sooner. That Second Voice, you know: he had me sent here; he said you had asked to see me. I owe it to you.’ ‘No. You owe it to the Second Voice,’ said Niggle. We both do.’
(…)
The time came when the house in the hollow, the garden, the grass, the forest, the lake, and all the country was nearly complete, in its own proper fashion. The Great Tree was in full blossom. ‘We shall finish this evening,’ said Parish one day. ‘After that we will go for a really long walk.’ They set out the next day, and they walked until they came right through the distances to the Edge. (…) They saw a man, he looked like a shepherd; he was walking towards them, down the grass slopes that led up the Mountains. (…) ‘Are you a guide,’ Parish asked. ‘Could you tell me the name of this country?’ ‘Don’t you know?’ said the man. ‘It is Niggle Country. It is Niggle’s picture, or most of it: a little of it is now Parish’s Garden.’ ‘Niggle’s Picture!’ said Parish in astonishment. Did YOU think of all this, Niggle? I never knew you were so clever.’
(…)
‘It is proving very useful indeed,’ said the Second Voice. ‘As a holiday, and a refreshment. It is splendid for convalescence; and not only for that, for many it is the best introduction to the Mountains. It works wonders in some cases. I am sending more and more there. They seldom have to come back.’ ‘No, that is so,’ said the First Voice. ‘I think we shall have to give the region a name. What do you propose?’ ‘The Porter settled that some time ago,’ said the Second Voice. ‘TRAIN FOR NIGGLE’S PARISH IN THE BAY: He has shouted that for a long while now. Niggle’s Parish. I sent a message to both of them to tell them.’ ‘What did they say?’ ‘They both laughed. Laughed – the Mountains rang with it!’
All’s well that ends well. May it be thus for you.
Welcome again to Lent with Niggle. This is the fifth installment. Did you miss the first, second, third or fourth installment? No problem, here are the links:
As far as the story line goes, here is where we are at in this fifth week of Lent:
Niggle is, in fact, let out of the ‘Workhouse’ and ushered onto a train again – a pleasant little train, painted in cheerful colors. Upon asking where he is going to go, the Porter tells him that his destination does not have a name yet. Hint: You will learn the name in our sixth and last installment of “Lent with Niggle”, or can find it out earlier by reading the final paragraph of the short story Leaf by Niggle.
After a short ride through a pretty landscape under blue skies, Niggle arrives in said unnamed place. It has neither station nor town, only a green embankment and a wicket-gate with a yellow bicycle with Niggle’s name standing by it.
Niggle pushed open the gate, jumped on the bicycle, and went bowling downhill in the spring sunshine. Before long he found that the path on which he had started had disappeared, and the bicycle was rolling along over a marvellous turf. It was green and close; and yet he could see every blade distinctly. He seemed to remember having seen or dreamed of that sweep of grass somewhere or other. The curves of the land were familiar somehow. Yes: the ground was becoming level. as it should, and now, of course, it was beginning to rise again. A great green shadow came between him and the sun. Niggle looked up, and fell off his bicycle. Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. ‘It’s a gift!’ he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally. (…) Niggle walked about, but he was not merely pottering. He was looking round carefully. The Tree was finished, though not finished with – ‘Just the other way about to what it used to be,’ he thought.
It appears that Niggle arrived precisely where he had spent most of his life. The country now before him is the world he created, in his own head as well as on his canvas. While Niggle was wholly unprepared for his final journey, he had spent the greater part of his life shaping the world he would journey to. Niggle’s pursuit was artistic in nature. He craved Beauty (with a capital B) and strove to express this craving, however imperfectly he went about doing so. This is why, when all his life’s dross is burned off in the crucible of the Workhouse, the refined Niggle enters a country of such beauty.
O Sanctum Sacramentum, Corpus et Sanguis, Anima et Divinitas, adoramus Te.
Offerimus praeclarae majestati Tuae de Tuis donis ac datis Hostiam puram, Hostiam sanctam, Hostiam immaculatam, Panem sanctum vitae aeternae et Calicem salutis perpetua.
Alleluia Veni Sancte Spiritus Reple tuorum corda fidelium Et tui amoris In eis ignem accende.
