2000

At Port Austin, Michigan, USA

   3.09pm. Warwick & Yvonne have taken us for lunch to the Garfield Inn followed by a drive past the junction of Slate Street and Sand Lane and through the countryside, in the square that includes the College. It is a lovely sunny day, the temperature very warm again. Last night around 3am we had a spectacular thunderstorm, which lasted perhaps an hour.

   We got up at 7.30am while it was still dark, and before anyone else in the house; we were finishing breakfast when Warwick appeared. He had left for us an e-mail from Jim in response to the one Freda sent him on Wednesday night. He must have replied very soon after getting it as it was dated [timed] 9.46am, 4.46am here. Warwick phoned Arthur and told us that he was “docile” today: his losing $3 million has cast a shadow over all of us for the last couple of days.

   7.49pm. Freda has been doing the packing: we leave tomorrow for Detroit D.V. We went for a walk about 3.45pm, looking at some of the old buildings on the campus. By the time we returned the wind had stiffened and the weather is now very stormy. Earlier in the day Warwick gave me a copy of Stephen Jones’ Bible Law Index, an easy-reference manual to Bible Law under 304 headings, with the request that I write a glossary for each. This will be my contribution to the Law Project, D.V. I have this evening given him Rabbi I. Domb’s The Transformation — The Case of the Neturei Karta, which I brought to read but haven’t had time to.

   Yesterday, Thursday, I spent the morning teaching the girls arithmetic. It began over breakfast with the temperature outside, how [degrees] F and C were converted, and the graph I drew for them. I soon found they had no concept of mental arithmetic, nor did they know their tables, so I drew a large table allowing for 900 (30 × 30) figures to be put in, showing the pattern made by the digits; this led to a consideration of prime numbers. The girls were enthusiastic and we continued until after 12.30pm.

   Freda wrote letters to John & Joyce and to Do, and during the afternoon we walked on to the post office to post these, also a note to Victorian Homes requesting a copy of their August issue, which contains the article about the “cottage” at Mackinaw Island; I asked them to debit my Visa card. On our way there, the sun shining brightly on another very warm day, I came back for the camera and took a photograph of No. 360 Starboard Drive, the bungalow at the top of the drive which may be ours if, God willing, we return here regularly. We like Port Austin, we feel very “at home” here, the Law Project seems to me to be the most important thing happening in the world today, and Warwick is very keen that we should come. It is all in the Lord’s hands.

   After dinner in the evening, Warwick went out to hire a video and we watched For Richer For Poorer (1997), which we quite enjoyed. Over dinner Warwick gave me his watch. I have not worn one since 1997 or 98 when I went swimming and ruined the Gruen [which I had worn every day since being given it in Detroit in 1963]. It is so kind of Warwick. I used it for the first time when, a few hours later, I pressed the winder to illuminate the face during the storm: it was 3am.

   The day before yesterday, Wednesday, Freda went to two houses, one of them 360, to strip the beds with Yvonne, while I continued teaching the girls French. In the afternoon we went to have a look at 360 and felt it would suit us very well, with all the space and facilities we would need, even including a fenced back garden. As usual we walked into the town and went to the post office. In the evening I looked at a book Oneness and Trinity AD100–300 by David K. Barnard, which covers the same ground as my The Jesus-Only Controversy, but rather more fully. Warwick played us some music, including a CD of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds set to music. Freda was feeling very much better and when we went to bed we made love.

   I awoke on Wednesday morning with two vivid dreams, the first a quite tremendous experience of Helene [Helene W. Koppejan, who died on 27th February 1998] looking young and well and our recognising one another but unable to speak because she was in spirit. She was sitting at the end of a pew [front pew on the south side, where I usually sit] in St John’s [Glastonbury], with other people around. I was a few feet away [between her and the lectern] and signalled my delight and pleasure at seeing her; we both enjoyed the joke that she was invisible.

   In the second dream I was in a car being driven recklessly by Art. We breached the low wooden fence of someone’s property. He turned right instead of left, as though to avoid detection, and nearly ran down a couple walking arm-in-arm along the street. As I looked back I saw a gap where a section of the fence had been broken away, and pieces of debris.

Both dreams prove to be prophetic. Before his conversion Art had been reckless, afterwards he turned to the right — God’s Law. (Warwick phoned last week — Art is still in prison.)    Jim, my editor, had a big part in the fulfilment of the Helene dream. At 10.30pm, a few hours before we were to fly to Belgium to see Florrie, he put Helene’s autobiography through our letterbox. I dipped into it and learned that her late father had been head of the Dutch Resistance. I knew that it was on his instructions that Florrie’s husband had been murdered (on 6 June 1945, a month after the war ended), but had no idea of his identity.    I realised that after her death, Helene had met her father and that he was deeply penitent — he had met the man for whose death he was responsible and had been totally forgiven by him. This was the message Helene entrusted to me and that I was to pass on to Florrie.