Sister Mary Phillida, anchoress at Walsingham Sarah Law

Sister Mary Phillida, anchoress at Walsingham d. 1985

"If God has achieved anything in this place it is because Sister Mary Phillida has been and is a silent centre of the ongoing miracle." (Fr Hope Patten)

i In 1920 she is twenty-four: a Lady, and a pianist, who played to the wealthy at the Wigmore Hall –Beethoven, perhaps some Mendelssohn; she poses, with a folded fan, at Bassano's on Bond Street, her arms bare, throat exposed, her hair up and her face at once sensitive and stubborn in the way young women are. What draws her to Norfolk, to pour her whole life into its pool of silence, only she and God know; and perhaps Hope Patten, receiving her confession –does she hear, even now, the light between the chords the keys unlock?

ii Pure silence, pure light –did she find it?

Hours falling like old leaves; years sliding like a coast eroding –

herhidden life blanched in prayer, deep night, wing-white

iii I only saw her once, descending the stairs from the Sue Ryder chalet on Walsingham High Street –her grey habit blended into the flintstone; her eyes were kind, though, and her smile; it was mild high summer. Later I found she had long since left us –light flared through a shiver of birds –I wondered who I'd seen, then, and how I somehow knew.

Sarah Law

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