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| Tapu* |
The best humble brag I made in the school yard was - my grandfather’s got some of Jesus’s poo. He was the local Anglican vicar so it was likely he kept sacred organic ornaments beside letter-knife and pipe and paper-weight. How my sister and I came to be in narrow canvas stretchers (supposedly sleeping) in the museum of his study that weekend remains a mystery. My parents were in a guest room, there must have been more than one in that rambling, veranda trimmed vicarage in Puketapu. But a theologian’s study is a place of wonder and chance, and raising my sleepy head in the dim morning light those consecrated stools were the first thing I spied. I can still picture the three of them now on the sage leather inlay of the huge oak desk – soft brown, finger-sized, dry and odourless. The only smell in the room was time. Spice and books, linen and tobacco, honey and ash, wisdom and charm. And wonder, because I, Jane Frances Newcome Waymouth had witnessed Jesus’s blessed stools. I skipped to church on Sunday morning down through the willow treed garden. The congregation loved my grandfather they gave him the moniker – Tapu | Sacred. Giving his weekly sermon, Tapu certainly looked celestial to me, his pale neck rising from his white dog collar, his dark pleated robes elongating him a stained-glass saint at the lectern. Word angels swirling around the little wooden church over beams and under pews. A knowing smile on his lips as he caught my stare in the front row - we’d both communed with the sacred manure. None of my school mates believed me for longer than a week but I held our communication close. Tapu also had a law degree had I challenged him I would have uncovered the truth. Instead over time, I composted it into the sweetest human-humus. Tapu stepped back into my life five years ago. I was prostrate on a thin towel covered gurney – a human portal in a crystal healing session – I’d been asked to channel my male spirit guide. I didn’t know I had one but no sooner had I asked and Tapu’s face, the one above that Sunday lectern, hovered above me in a dark endless universe. A silent presence in my Divine Pathway, my 12th chakra. How he'd silently guided me over the previous fifty-five years I do not know, he died when I was still touting the holy stool story. Consecrated scat mystery aside, Tapu my grandfather, man of the cloth, continues to appear if I will him to. I’ve kept our secret safe.
I bet you haven’t seen Jesus’s poo.
*Stephen Francis Newcome Waymouth, Venerable Archdeacon of Hawkes Bay, my grandfather
