“Quare lacero carnes meas dentibus meis, et animam meam porto in manibus meis?” [“Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hand?” Job 13:14]
This morning read the awful article of Dom [Odon] Lottin in RTAM [Revue de théologie ancienne et médiévale], 1959. That the vow of conversatio morum [conversion of manners] cannot be anything else but a vow to remain a cenobite and never to go into solitude–“exclusion” of eremitism. Arbitrary and iron-bound logic based on a quasi-mathematical analysis of Chapter 1 of the Rule in the light of the three vows. Repeated insistence “no other interpretation is possible.” But indeed many others are not only possible, but far more likely in the light of history!
September 15, 1964
Hotter. Very bright. My hands are still skinned. I have medicines which Dan Walsh got from town. Father Eudes promised Rhulicream ten days ago but nothing happened.
Mother Luke [Tobin] from Loretto was here for a talk before going to Rome. The Third Session of the Council opened yesterday. She will consult with Cardinal Suenens and he is trying to arrange some way in which Nuns can be represented on the Sacred Congregations.
Writing some notes on Flannery O’Connor.
September 19, 1964
Yesterday, in rain (the first since August) I went to town to see old Dr. Simon the allergist, who said something about “fungus infection.” Surely that cannot account for the state my hands were in for three weeks (they are somewhat better, but being in the woods affects them). Perhaps, however, I am mistaken about the poison ivy. Maybe I am affected by something that goes along with the oak wilt! Maybe I have the disease of some tree? It was pleasant driving to town in the rain, and getting there in rain, and sitting in the doctor’s office stripped to the waist with the tests itching on my back, watching the rain on the bus station and the Courier Journal Building and the Post Office. I was there ten years ago, when I had worse sinus and more colds. He seemed old and prim and the room I was in was full of faded manila folders, shelves of them, records of patients probably going back thirty years or more. He gave me a good ointment and some wild hexagonal pills and a serum for shots.
It was fine driving back through Lyons and Younger’s Creek, with the trees already beginning to turn yellow and red, and tobacco cut in the fields and hanging in the barns. An old rickety house was full of hay bales. Through the open door of the school room you could see the children sitting at their desks in the little hillside school outside Lyons.
September 22, 1964
More rain today and semi-tropical heat, dampness, haze, the kind of mist that sours and rasps in your throat. But a good day at the hermitage. Reading some notes Father Tarcisius [James Conner] brought back from Rome, etc. Father Prior wrote me a note yesterday with some ideas on the eremitical life. There is no question that this remains a live and urgent issue and no amount of official stifling will ever smother it. There are too many genuine vocations coming here, and ones who cannot be fully content merely with the formal and official pattern. And there is no question, once again, that I am only fully “normal” and human when I have plenty of solitude. Not that I “think” but that I “live” according to a different and more real tempo, live with the tempo of the sun and of the day, in harmony with what is around me. It would be infidelity to deny or evade the obvious truth that such a life is fully and completely right, and I cannot doubt it is the life I was meant for. Most of my troubles have come from tendencies to half believe those who may doubt it. But I have got to the point where I can no longer take them seriously. Though obviously I am still limited by my obedience. Certainly the “problem” tends to resolve itself, and I am more and more alone, so that solitude just ceases to be a problem and becomes a fact. Whether it is a fact everyone likes or approves of really does not concern me much anymore–from the moment I have the permissions and approvals that are required–I have these and more besides.
On the opening (work) day of the Council, said the news report read today with incredible unction in the refectory, the Fathers “got off to a fast start.” This resolved itself into a long school-marmish warning by Pericle Felici (the “Dean of Discipline”) that the Fathers must not try to go to the coffee bar before eleven a.m. And if they go they will find it closed and it will be no good knocking on the door either! He then darkly threatened the theologians and others (Bishops) who might feel tempted to pass out handbills, etc. in the neighborhood of St. Peter’s. There was a row about this last year and Felici was photographed snatching handbills from a Bishop on the steps of St. Peter’s.
Brother Ephrem has fitted me out with a camera (Kodak Instamatic) to help take pictures for a picture book Dom James wants done. So far I have been photographing a fascinating old cedar root I have on the porch. I am not sure I know what this baby can do. The lens does not look like much–but it changes the film by itself and sets the aperture, etc. Very nice.
September 24, 1964
Our Lady of Ransom (but not here). Prayed at Mass for prisoners. Yesterday at the end of the morning work it cooled off and dried up and the afternoon was brilliant, fresh, distracted, active, seemed lost, yet great gain perhaps. After dinner I was distracted by the dream camera, and instead of seriously reading the Zen anthology I got from the Louisville Library, kept seeing curious things to shoot, especially a mad window in the old tool room of the woodshed. The whole place is full of fantastic and strange subjects–a mine of Zen photography. After that the dream camera suddenly misbehaved. This marvel of technology and design would not close. The back would not lock shut. Hardly a twentieth-century problem. Or is it? Rather typical to have a camera that calculates for you and corrects your mistakes, but then will not lock shut–and fogs the film. Even the number two Brownie used to close.
After None drove with Brother Nicholas into the hills behind New Hope, where Edelin has land he may leave to the monastery. A perfect, remote, silent, enclosed valley about two miles deep, wooded, watered by a spring and a creek, no roads; perfect solitude, where there were once two cabins for freed slaves a hundred years ago. Now it is all cattle, a herd of these hundred Herefords and Angus roaming loose in the pasture and the woods and at least two full grown thoroughbred Black Angus bulls, not to mention scores of bull calves. They were quiet though. The silence, the woods, the hills, were perfect. This would be an ideal place for a “desert” (I think it has been mentioned by someone before). One could run a road up through the woods bypassing New Hope and free from the county road, and have a house and chapel for people coming up for a few days. Then scatter five or six hermitages on the hillsides for permanent occupants. It would be marvelous. I am anxious to get this project studied, if Dom James will let his suspicion be allayed and his inertia be moved.
September 25, 1964
This ember week has been fantastic, alive, full of unexpected things, brilliant days, and surprises, and absurd hopes that yet seem astonishingly firm. It is suddenly seen to be a week of Kairos.
Yesterday I spoke to Reverend Father (after doubting whether I ought to) about the project of the “Desert” in Edelin’s valley and found him remarkably interested and open. I was astonished. He seemed to take the project very seriously. He listened to everything I said, raised good questions, had constructive comments to offer and was thoroughly ready to get “in” it. This was marvelous. I actually think there is a very real possibility that this will go through. It is certainly something to work for. Now I look with astonishment across the valley at those hills. Trees hide the ridge behind which “the desert” is hidden. But I am aware of those silences with a new awareness. When will I get over there again?
Then yesterday morning I went to the mailbox and there was a letter from Father [Heinrich] Dumoulin saying I ought to come to Japan for a few months to get a first-hand knowledge of Zen. He thought it was very important and had spoken about it to the Bishop of Hokkaido and to the Trappist Superior [Our Lady of Pharo]–or at any rate a Trappist who was positive about it. Nothing else to do but propose
this to Dom James, who was shocked. He does not seem at all disposed to let me go, but I asked only that he study the question objectively with the Abbot General. He agreed that was reasonable, but I can see he retains all his objections. Yet he seemed interested in what I said about Zen discipline, and I think even here there is some hope. It would be very worth while–the suggestion was surely providential. I will see what comes of it.
Camera had to go to town to get fixed. Marvelous sun today.
September 26, 1964
Camera back. Love affair with camera. Darling camera, so glad to have you back! Monarch! XXX. It will I think be a bright day again today.
Mother Luke (as I rather expected) is one of the women observers at the Council–the only American. Wonderful! This has great implications for the nuns, and it may lead to an opening and to considerable progress. Anyway I can hardly think of a better person for this. Cardinal Cushing’s (first) speech the other day at the Council in favor of “Freedom of Conscience” must have been very stirring. This session is lively after all.
September 27, 1964
Slowly plugging at Von Balthasar’s Herrlichkeit. Certainly this one central thing: all theology is a scientific doctrine and originates at the point where the act of faith (in God acting and revealing Himself in history) becomes understanding. This sounds trivial, but is extremely important. Here our theology actually contacts all the primitive revelations including Zen, though the contrary might seem true. (Wonderful article of Cardinal Suenens was read in refectory based on a principle laid down by John XXIII in Candlemas talk, 1963–that in all religions there is trace of a “primitive revelation”). The true beauty of Theology is then in the wisdom and grace that apprehend salvation in the act of belief in an anticipation of the eschatological fulfillment promised by God–i.e., in Augustinian fructio [fruition].
September 28, 1964
Continuous rain, yesterday and today. Box scores of Council voting in the refectory. Collegiality of Bishops got through by an immense majority. The debating on whether Mary ought to be called Mother of the Church did not seem to be too relevant, at least from the news reports. Hostile editorials from papers in Israel, about the revised Jewish chapter, were quoted in a new article. The Jewish issue is not at all understood.
A good letter from Dan Berrigan, who is back in New York, came today.
I have not yet written out notes for the talk I am to give to the Abbots next Monday. I must also try to draw up a list of observances that seem to have become somewhat irrelevant. I wonder if this makes sense, however. One loses a sane perspective focusing on one little observance after another and saying “this is meaningful” (e.g., touching the floor when you make a mistake in choir). From a certain viewpoint it may retain a meaning. The end of the brothers is, monastically speaking, the most important. The brothers have an authentic and simple monastic life, one of the best forms in the Church. They are left pretty much on their own, with a lot of responsibility and good work to do. People want to take this from them and herd them into choir. Actually, as long as it is only question of “one category” of monks, there is no problem.
Other questions–concelebration, should priests say private masses or go to communion at High Mass? (Violent opposition to this on part of Dom James.) Personally I think it would be foolish to rush into these things here when people are not really prepared for them and perhaps have barely thought about them. On the other hand I have misgivings about a “preparation” that would be nothing but a propaganda barrage of special readings selected by zealots and imposed on the community. For one thing this would simply create a hard core of suspicion and indifference.
Looking through the Usages for things that might be dropped as “artificial”-noticed with alarm that they are all built into the very structure of the life. To take away these observances would be in fact to take away what practically constitutes the “Trappist Life” for many monks! This is very serious. It seems that there is no real “adaptation” possible?? That all that can be expected is to preserve what we have in a fairly reasonable and alert spirit–in community: and be at peace away from all this when one is free. It is a problem–probably more easily accepted in French monasteries.
October 2, 1964
Dark, wet, warm: continuous throbbing of guns at Fort Knox. Guardian Angels today, guides of hermits.
The last three days I have been working hard on material for the talk to the Abbots next Monday. (I dread that week of talking!) I must have written over 7000 words and set them aside, too long, too complex, and attacked it over again from another angle–about 2500 words perhaps, and all notes and not yet saying all I have to say. And perhaps it is not yet what ought to be said. Perhaps too my own feelings and frustrations are involved. I will try to be objective and peaceful in giving it all out. Meanwhile there is an inner tension, a deep and frantic and immobile anguish of helplessness, in the center of me somewhere, as if it were all futile.
Yesterday Dom James was very positive and very eager talking about the hermitage plan (I gave him a long memorandum on it Wednesday morning). He has been over to see the Valley, wants the plan to go through, says he is convinced it is “from God” and wants to talk of practical details. In fact we had a very good conversation. This is very encouraging and consoling, from a certain point of view, and yet there is anxiety in this also for me, as I don’t relish being too closely associated with him. There is so much in him that I can’t abide and accept peacefully–not in his reticences and suspicions so much as in his sweeping and at times almost inhuman bursts of idealism–that which he keeps most to himself, but he seems in a way to live by it. Yet it seems unreal, forced, according to the books, rather than according to reality. Actually the life he envisages would be extremely strict on some points. No contact with anyone, and so on. Absolutely sweeping. No letters. No visits. No talking. To do any kind of productive work “would spoil the purity of intention.” No benefactors (“They would have a hold on you”). This is wise enough. I don’t know to what extent he means all this.
He wants to keep the whole thing passionately and jealously secret even to the point of not consulting people who, I think, should be consulted (Dom Leclercq, Dom [Jacques] Winandy). The secrecy, however, is prudent, witness the Achel affair and how that was ruined by publicity. Actually any publicity would be really fatal. Nevertheless I do feel a bit insecure with Dom James taking everything completely into his own hands and consulting no one but the General. There may be some arbitrariness in his approach, but I think he is willing to be reasonable too. I will certainly go along with him, because this is the practical way to get a genuine hermitage going and one which will make the Carthusians and Camaldolese look silly, if only we are prudent and faithful, and follow grace! One thing is sure: When he gets his mind set on something like this–a foundation, a new project–he has his way. He knows how to handle the politics of it better than anyone.
Five big flickers playing and feeding beautifully on the lawn.
October 3, 1964
“It is not right that these eyes that belong to others should see in my own interest; it is not fitting that these hands that belong to others should move in my own interest. Being solely preoccupied with the self you cannot escape suffering. The unhappy are so because they have sought their own happiness; the happy are so because they have sought the happiness of others.” Shantideva
Without this “Franciscanism” of Shantideva, no religious solitude makes sense. What would be the use of being a hermit merely for self-affirmation, even if one affirmed oneself in praise of God? What self?
October 8, 1964
We are in the middle of the meeting of Abbots and novice masters and I am exhausted. Have had to talk too much. It goes on all day. Yesterday I got to no office except None. Sessions began at 7 a.m. Went on practically until dinner; talking all during dinner; after dinner I got away and sat in the sun and tried to read but could hardly get my mind on it. The weather is beautiful. How nice it would be at t
he hermitage! Today I imagine we ought to propose that the Novice Masters have further meetings, but if I never go to any more it won’t worry me!
Yesterday’s meeting, about the future of the Brothers, was important and lively, and in spite of Dom Columban’s crusading approach, it seems to be an earnest effort in the right direction. It is really wrong to speak of “abolishing the brothers” though the nature of their life will be to some extent changed, but so will the life of the choir monks be changed. Certainly it would be preposterous merely to move the Brothers bodily into the choir. At Spencer, as here, a great number of professed brothers are opposed to changes, not quite knowing what to expect.
The meetings of novice masters (we are apart from the Abbots after the coffee break) are more peaceful and more academic. Sessions on conversatio morum, stability–work–studies, etc.
Father Basil [Pennington], the canonist from Spencer, is a good mind and well trained. His ideas are the most valuable. Dom Thomas of Spencer seems the most articulate of the abbots. It is good to know Dom Emmanuel of Utah better, he is very capable. Dom Anthony of Mepkin is much aged, quiet, good to talk to him again. I like the little Abbot and Novice Master of Calvaire, but they are from a different world–an old-style small monastery of Acadian Trappists!
October 12, 1964
The meeting ended three days ago and I am still working with the trauma of it. Continual talk. I kept myself keyed up with black coffee, and kept having things to say and in the end talked too much. The worst days were the last. As to what was accomplished, I don’t know. Certainly there were some “gains” of a sort. At least it was in some sense useful to get to know the various abbots, from the two amiable and open Canadians (Dom Alfonse of Calvaire, Dom Fulgence of the Prairies–who was here before) to the complex, aged, self-assured Dom Columban of Guadalupe who seems to have a “mission” and is causing all the trouble. (If there was antagonism it was between Guadalupe and Spencer.) Very friendly and open–Dom Augustine (Conyers), Dom Eusebius (Vina), Dom Joachim (Snowmass). Dom Emmanuel of Utah was capably “in charge” of the meetings. Dom James said little while we were there, and gave a general impression of rather frenzied politicking–for evidently to him this is a great and serious political event. But it is even more to Dom Columban. Dom Anthony (of Mepkin) and Dom Jerome (of Genesee) said practically nothing. In fact Dom Anthony said absolutely nothing in the meetings where we were but was benign and friendly outside, looks old, frail, holy. Dom Matthias, the new Abbot of New Melleray, had nothing to say. But when I had defended Latin in the liturgy he came up afterwards and said, “We ought to get some of these writers of hit-tunes” to do something. “That will get the young people back into the Church.” He was serious.
Dancing in the Water of Life Page 20
