Except for electricity and indoor
plumbing, the Ardent Brothers have owned the old
mansion but never improved the place for almost 90 years. The dilapidated
Chapter House is about to fall down, but the land it sits on at the top of the
mountain is quite valuable and the monks’ superiors back in Ireland want to kick
the monks out and sell it for cash.
By the way, when each monk
professes his vows he chooses a patron saint.
It is the tradition of the order, and no one knows why, that the saint
is a woman. Brother Jesse is actually Brother Saint
Jessica of Galilee, one of the women who accompanied Mary
Magdelene to the tomb on Easter morning.
The monks often use male nicknames for each other, calling each other Kickstart or Bouncer or Harpo in their private conversations,
whispered outside the hearing of the abbot.
Oddly enough, they employ a “cloister”
of complete silence only in the daytime, from just after breakfast to before
supper. The opposite would be more
useful for working together during the day.
Less confusion would ensue if they could speak to each other normally,
rather than in grunts and sign language.
Jesse writes:
When I was elected Abbot, a role I
certainly did not want, I became the leader of our little band of eleven
monks. I’ve been Abbot here for only a
few months and I can’t say I like it.
Our superiors back in Ireland
want to sell the place to pay off their European debts. If they do,
I think they will disband us ... kick us out on the road. And even if that never happens, I worry about
our lack of food supplies and money. Now
more than ever I need faith.
As the abbot, I find myself
spending time with one brother or another who might be having what can be called a crisis in faith. I
have spent my entire life analyzing the various doctrines of my church and for
reasons I don't fully understand they have become far less important to me as I
grow older. I’m afraid I don’t have much
patience any more for those who agonize over their doubts. There are some
who are in constant turmoil about a) the existence of God, b)
God’s plans for the universe, and c) whether He’s going to send them to hell.
That’s an awful way to spend one’s time, let alone one's life. I
think we can assume that an entity who so loved the world that He gave his only
begotten Son could certainly be trusted to have your best interests at
heart. Do you think Christ hung on a cross angry over your impure
thoughts?
0
As I age, I worry less about
my soul. I think it will do what it is meant to do. I am more
afraid for my heart. By heart, I mean
that part of me that feels someone's agony other than my own. It’s the only part of me that stands a chance
of leaving this world in better condition than when it got here.
The person who may have taught me the most
about living a life of faith is Dolly Parton. She told an interviewer (Larry
King) who asked if she was a believer that she had decided she was, but didn't
feel like it every day. But she could
act like it, and base her decisions on it.
I could spend years in theology classes and not come up with a better
plan for how to live a life of faith. It's not always easy, of course. I’m
quite sure everyone who seeks the spiritual life runs into a brick wall now and
then. Brother Bilhilda, who we call
Bouncer, and who is the mad scientist
who fixes our toilets, laughingly says most of us have a deep and abiding faith
that .... comes and goes.
0
I have been mentoring Brother
Saint Winifred of Gwytherin in Denbigshire.
Since that would be quite a mouthful when cheering him on in softball
game, we just call him Kickstart.
Kick is the youngest of our brothers. He raced motorcycles after getting a degree
in Antiquities. Seven years in a library
will do that to a man.
I once asked him if he was a Hells Angel and
amphetamine distributor, but the 31 year old Brother only laughed at that
suggestion. Kick tells me he wasn't
given a choice of patron saints and doesn't care much for Saint Winifred, who
he says (from what he's read) reminds him of his fifth grade teacher. Instead ... behind her back, I guess ... he
prays to Saint Gunda of Sandeck. She was
a member of the Polish Royal Family a few hundred years ago. I've never heard of her, and for all I know she is the patron saint of
land taxes and public executions. But
Kick says she was also known for her patience.
Maybe I should pray to her, too.
Kickstart and
I took on the project of trying to keep
the porch from falling off the front of our Chapter House. We have no materials, but if we let it go any
longer , visitors will have to use a step ladder to come in our front door.
I do not at
all like outdoor chores after the first frost. It’s damned cold out there
and my arthritis is bound to flare up, as I told Kickstart. He wasn’t
listening. He worked in a light jacket while I bundled up in a ratty old
down coat.
“Jesse," he said, "I think we’re
doomed."
“You mean like we’re going to be
hit by a Protestant comet or find out
Fulton Sheen came back from the dead and became Pope?” I asked.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
“I do know what you mean, but I
have no answer.”
"They're going to throw us
out. I know it," he said.
I didn't tell Kick, but that's
exactly what I worry about.
“Where are you going to live,
Jesse?” he asked.
“Maybe I’ll apply for assistance
or maybe I’ll get a job in a store,”
I said, “and get a room down in the village … I don’t’ know. After all, I don’t have far to go. You have an entire life ahead of you, Kick.”
“My life is here on this mountain," he said. "I’m staying.”
I said, “and get a room down in the village … I don’t’ know. After all, I don’t have far to go. You have an entire life ahead of you, Kick.”
“My life is here on this mountain," he said. "I’m staying.”
“Well, you can’t," I told him.
“In the woods,” he said.
“I’ll stay in the woods.”
I sneered. “A real Desert Father,
huh?”
“Jesse,” he said , “everything I
learned about my life and myself and God is here on this mountain.”
“God isn't just on this mountain,” I said.
“What I know of him is,” said Kick.
I can easily make my experience of
God a head trip, purely and conveniently a construction of my mind. I forget that he is in his creation, which
includes me, my body, my heart, everything and everyone around me and even my
desires.. When I long for Grandma’s
special gravy and biscuits from sixty years ago on a Sunday afternoon, God is
in that somehow. I can’t tell you how. I only know it to be true after years of
trying meditate on what’s in my heart and coming up with chicken and dumplings.
0
Even though my creeds were unraveling, I had to have a faith
of some kind to become a monk, of course.
But we each get to where we’re going by a different route. So don’t think that during college all I did
was study my Bible. I also played in a
rock and roll band. Not very well, I
might add.
And I’d say I had an ordinary young adulthood. I dated girls, got drunk
on occasion and eventually became a contemplative monk. I’m not saying all my
brothers traveled the same route as me. Some of them never came closer to sex
than Playboy magazine, that staple of young manhood that taught us what women
really looked like with their clothes off. Really.
I lost my intense religiosity halfway through high school
and never regained it. To this day I am not religious in that sense, nor are my
brothers here at Our Lady of West Saugerties. Neither
are we necessarily zealots for any given set of finely constructed beliefs.
(Those are the folks we call “Jesuits.”)
We are simply men who have been chosen by a God with a sense of humor to
lead a life of prayer and contemplation. And in doing so we discover our
relationship with him … or her, if you want.
Many people have been given their beliefs. As a Catholic schoolboy, I received my faith as gift
with strings attached. I gave it back years ago and now I have to work
hard to discover my own faith, His plan for my understanding what he wants from me. It’s a job. That’s why I call it a vocation.
0
Here’s my latest heresy.
If God were a short order cook, we’d never be hungry.
If God were an accountant, everyone would get what they
deserved.
If God were a doctor, everyone would enjoy excellent
health.
If God were a teacher, we’d all be worried about Report
Cards. But from what I’ve seen in the
world, not many are worried about their Report Cards.
If God were a policeman everyone would be in a lot of
trouble and if God were a judge everyone would be damned.
But God is none of those.
He is bigger than the familiar. He’s larger than life. So I’m thinking He must be a cowboy. When you consider it, He almost has to be.
He’s extremely courteous and won’t push himself forward unless invited. He’s always mending fences. I see Him out on the range under a huge sky full of stars waiting for
his doggies to bed down while he sings them to sleep.
And only a cowboy would say, “There, there, little
darlin’” when with tears in our eyes we get down on our knees to pray. Or more often to complain
OK, you can laugh at my simple way of thinking about God,
but the Truth is I really don’t know what God is like to you. And my job in life is to find out what He is
to me.
0
I have a tendency to be dismissive of anyone's faith that
doesn't agree with my mental conception of God and how he operates. I was brought up with a modern mental
approach to what my contemporaries called religion. There were these basic rules of the road
concerning God and if your religion or practice didn't agree with them you were
a heathen or no better than one. I
haven't the slightest idea where I got the authority to be the judge and jury of
how the supreme ruler of the universe chose to witness himself to any one
individual. It was as if God had to
first check with me before revealing himself to my neighbor.
Given my capacity
to make mistakes, I can now admit such a balance of powers didn't make
any sense. If God had to always wait
upon my say-so, the creation of the world would still be a great plan that I'd
look into when I found the time on my next three day holiday weekend. Let There Be Light might get done, but not much
else. Mountains and oceans and elephants
would be still floating around the universe waiting to be attached to
something.
But the Truth is God told us a long
time ago He wasn’t planning on waiting around for us to catch up with Him as He
continued to reveal himself. Jesus told
Nicodemus. “7Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must
be born from above.’ And then Jesus told
him about the Wind. It blows where it
chooses. You can’t catch it. It catches
you.
0
You know, I've lived for 35 years up here on the
mountain the Indians called Onteora, The Land In The Sky. So it appeared to them as they gazed up from
the valley below. Tonight it may still
be pleasant down there. But up here on
the peak ... in cowboy land ... a white mantle of snow covers the blue-green
hemlocks. The moon has risen and the
bare maples glisten black in the cold damp air. Clouds scraped by the mountain top from the
bottom of the sky drift away like ships leaving without us. Tonight my
brothers and I lie shivering on our cots while sleet and snow pelt the windows,
and the wind has its way with our
creaking old house.
The spirit blows where it chooses
and you don’t know where it’s been or where it’s going.
But I know one thing. He is taking care of us as we bed down. And when the wind howls past the eaves and
moans down through the holes in the roof, I know that God is singing us to
sleep.
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet,
South Carolina
dave@windsweptpress.com
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