A Day and a Life

by Penelope Wilcock

  Not a young man, he was in middle age already when Theo entered the novitiate. He has poured all the ardour of his faith and his passion into creating work of excellence and artistry. He has given his life to this vocation. Knowing this, sometimes in his private prayers and when he makes his confession, he humbly asks for forgiveness that it means so much to him. He understands about the balance to be maintained – the difficult tightrope walk of monastic life – to care enough but not too much. He knows that to receive the gifts of God a man must stretch forth the empty hands of a supplicant; he understands that is what it means to be poor in spirit.

  From the outset, from his first days as a postulant, it has been spelled out to him that all he is promised here is Christ and the community. To learn this way of love will ask renunciation of him every single day. He must own nothing, demand nothing, set aside his personal preferences, be content with what he is given. Making peace with disappointment is as familiar to him now as his black wool habit, as his belt supple with use, as his sandals accommodated to the particular shape of Father Clement’s feet. Coming here meant giving up any aspirations to making his mark in the world. What mark? When he took his simple vows, he gave up his name. Since then he has been Clement – after that scholar of hungry intellect scented out the trail of learning by here and by there until he finally, under Pantaenus in Alexandria, found rest. And this Clement’s abbot in his novitiate days – Father Gregory of the Resurrection – prayed that this talented, eager, passionate young man might also find rest.

  Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee. So it says on the very first page of St Augustine’s Confessiones. This, like so many other texts of holy wisdom, has entered deep into Clement’s heart and lodged there. He knows the words of the Office by heart – the psalms, the prayers, the responsories. His feet know the paths of the abbey without prompting. His hand finds the rail going down the night stairs for Matins with no fumbling or groping. He is part of everything this life is. He no longer knows the difference between himself and his vocation, so faithfully has he lived it, and for so long.

  And even so, the relinquishment of his sight feels unbearable. In the solitude of his cell he goes down on his knees before the crucifix, begging not for special treatment or a miracle but just for a little longer, and for someone to step into his shoes. Until recently there has been nobody. Sometimes the fine lines dance and duplicate on the page; he has to wait and tilt his head, get the angle right. On a good day and in the right light he can manage, but he is no fool. He does not delude himself. It will not be long before he cannot see. But he has this small springtime of hope in his heart that at last there is someone – only a novice still, but showing such promise. Brother Cedd, he thinks, has all the necessary qualities to step into this work. Father Theodore has seen it too, and will advise Abbot John. Clement has never been so presumptuous as to mention this dream he is nurturing; but surely, this time, they will let him have this young man, let him train up this skill. Surely. If he’s going to be blind.

  The abbot’s swaybacked grey mare, a draught horse in truth, is bred for strength and steady temperament rather than speed, so Brother Thomas doesn’t delude himself he’ll be reaching Caldbeck in any tearing hurry, but he’s happy with that. It’s a beautiful day, the grey is ambling along contentedly, her substantial frame more than capable of carrying a beefy Yorkshireman and a couple of sacks of grain ten miles down the road.

  He looks about him cheerfully as they go, enjoying the change of scene. The year is turning. The lady’s bedstraw and the hawkweed are finished, and the abundant salad burnet has gone too. But the birdsfoot trefoil, that the lads call eggs-and-bacon for the red and yellow of the flowers, is still colourfully scattering the way, the tiny blue eyebright flowers still peep out from among the grass, the purging flax with its delicate starry blooms, and the witches’ thimbles – harebells as they call them, blue as the dress of Our Lady. He keeps his eyes peeled for the brave purple flashes of the autumn gentians – but they don’t grow everywhere, though it is their time of year.

  He reflects that if he’d had more notice of this visit he might have gone up to see if there were any bilberries left on the moor. He thinks the conditions won’t be right for them down in the valley at Caldbeck. He could have picked them some blackberries too – but then they doubtless have their own. Everyone has blackberries. That sets him off thinking about blackberry and apple dumplings with an abundance of cream poured on, and he starts to feel hungry. He wishes he’d brought a hunk of bread and cheese, or even an apple – lovely they are, just now, all juicy and crisp. He’s been helping with the harvesting, as he always does, and relishing the liberty to eat as many as he wants – the red-blushed green or yellow; some skins waxy, some rough, the indescribably tart cold sweetness that releases a shock of flavour with the first bite.

  He must be half way there. He hopes Madeleine’s baked a loaf of bread today. They will have cheese for certain, now they have a cow as well as a goat – and butter. He thinks about snowy goat’s butter, such a contrast to the rich yellow of the cow’s.

  Butter with a sprinkling of salt crystals mixed in, spread thick, melting into torn bread still warm from the oven, with a goodly hunk of that soft cheese Brother Conradus makes – the one wrapped in nettle leaves, and the one rolled in cracked pepper. Or the sharp, tangy hard cheese that takes forever to ripen but is worth the waiting. With plums, maybe. Or what about a cold pigeon leg? Or some stuffed chicken? All washed down with a mug of nice, cold ale.

  Maybe Madeleine will have made some pease pottage – it’s good at this time of year; it has that delicate flavour while the peas and beans are yet green; before they have been dried for the winter. Now his mouth is watering.

  To distract himself from the sense of desolate vacancy developing in his belly, Brother Thomas shunts his thoughts to one remove, reflecting on men he has known who don’t seem too fussed about their victuals. Thin, abstemious, fasting men, who skimp on the butter and prefer their porridge with no honey and no cream. Men who shake their head and raise a refusing hand at the offer of a second helping. Men who don’t trouble to scrape out the bowl. Such attitudes are, to him, a perpetual source of wonder. But look, now he’s back thinking about food again, which he hadn’t meant to do.

  He’s glad that Brother Conradus took over from Brother Cormac in the kitchen. Life improved sharply at St Alcuin’s from that moment on. He thinks about the difference it makes who is chosen to fill which obedience. Theodore, for example, leaves Father Matthew standing when it comes to the work of a novice master. He has the knack – or better put, the graces and gifts. And Francis! Tom reflects with interest on the ready smile and irrepressible wit that were forever getting Francis into trouble – too jaunty, too blithe, too chatty, and too charming by half – right up to the point he was made prior. And suddenly, overnight, he began to look like a Godsend – so cheerful, so hospitable, so relaxed in conversation, so likeable. Find the right work for the right man, and suddenly it all makes sense.

  This calls to mind a thing Father John said in a recent abbot’s Chapter – how vocation is to be worked out in community; “us”, not “me”. That no man holds all the pieces to the puzzle. That finding and affirming the gifts of each one is what is meant by St Paul’s talk of the people of God as living stones, together built into a vital, dynamic, sentient temple of praise. Tom smiles. “Wick” was the word the abbot used – the old Yorkshire term for something ardently, joyously alive. Like the wick green shoots of the first plants of spring, thrusting through the covering of snow. “Wick”. Much as Tom loved Abbot John’s predecessor, Father Peregrine, he acknowledges the pleasure and surprise in hearing the simple Yorkshire vernacular in his new abbot’s homilies. And he realizes that his instinct to qualify that, with the insistence that nothing could come anywhere near equalling Father Peregrine’s teaching or example, is acquiring the slightly faded look of an obstinate response that has had t
oo long a time in the sun.

  A curious thing, the loyalties and loves among the brethren, the ties of community. Most essential that they should exercise restraint in this intimate, shoulder-to-shoulder pilgrimage of simplicity. That they lift each other up, bear one another’s burdens – to the extent that seems realistically possible – but that each man takes responsibility for a degree of reticence. A living soul has about it a certain solitude. The way of a monk – however vulnerable, however gentle, however loving the man might be – accepts no other conjoining than with the risen Christ. No easy discipline, this. So tempting, at times, to take refuge in something less.

  Then he thinks: bearing one another’s burdens? Is that even possible? How could you? Give a man a hug when he’s feeling wretched, maybe, but bear his burden? What does that mean?

  As he rides over the turf cropped short by rabbits and sheep, between these massy outcrops of rocks sprouting thorn trees and little, hard-leaved shrubs, it occurs to Brother Tom that maybe bearing one another’s burdens is something to do with being willing to live with the consequences of their ordinary human frailty – the dim-wittedness, the awful table manners, the frightful singing out of tune. And making space for them; overlooking it with kindness. Because everybody needs to be accepted. Even the clumsiest idiot needs to belong.

  Chapter

  Four

  The day stairs take you to the angle between the south and west ranges. Along the whole upper floor of the south range stretches the dorter – the community’s cells – those of the novices are at this end, in effect next to the day rooms of the novitiate. There’s also a door leading to a narrow stone stairway on the outer wall. Convenient to the dorter, it goes down to the reredorter and the lavatorium. Each man has an item of cell furniture for his use in the night, but this easy access to the reredorter is obvious common sense. Beneath the cells in the south range the abbey’s store rooms – massive, deep, cavernous – keep their supplies well stocked. Ideally, a food store should be situated at the north end of a house, on the cold side of the building. But here the walls are so thick, the rooms set in so deep, the windows so high in the wall, that everything stays cool enough. The store rooms are situated on the south side to give close access to the river. The cells on the upper floor, each with its tall, narrow window, get the best of the passive solar heat; the men sleep as warm as may be. Not exactly cosy, even so; in the winter some cannot sleep for the shivering cold – “starving”, as they say hereabouts, in Yorkshire.

  Just now, though, the cells are deserted. In the afternoon, those who need to may take a short rest and many a man will be reading and praying quietly in his cell; but if the afternoon gives opportunity for study and contemplation, the morning is the time to get active things done.

  Climbing that stone stairway up from the cloister, instead of turning to the right along the dorter in the south range, Father James, coming straight from Chapter, turns left past the novitiate rooms and the scriptorium to the robing room in the east range.

  A massive table fills the centre space. Here he cuts out the black woollen cloth for habits and scapulars and cloaks, and the fine linen for undershirts and drawers.

  The abbey walls are of such depth that the windowsills make excellent work surfaces of themselves. Thread, needles, shears, awls, leather, bolts of cloth and everything else he needs, Father James has stacked in orderly manner on the capacious shelves occupying all one wall. A lot of it is black. In another wall is the door through to the scriptorium, where he helps out on days when he has nothing to make or mend here in the robing room. Either side of that door, a run of low cupboards creates a useful countertop. On it, among other odds and ends, is the book where Father James records the measurements for every brother in the community. And in the corner, where the cupboards join the outer wall, stands poised as if she has just landed there an exceptionally beautiful statue of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, masterfully executed, her robes intricately painted in colours rich but soft. She is wearing a most complicated, elegantly contrived golden crown. Her kind eyes, gently glowing complexion, and slightly parted, almost smiling rosy lips grace the daily work of the robing room. She has not always stood here. She was a gift from Lady Agnes d’Ebassier – as was Our Lady of Sorrows down in the chapel. A valuable piece, of considerable artistry, of good size but not immense, the previous abbot’s first thought when his benefactress presented her was that if he put that in the church she’d be stolen within the month. Too big for a cell, too pretty for the novitiate, it occurred to him Father James might like her up in the robing room. And he does. Before he came to St Alcuin’s, James worked with his father as a silversmith. Almost nothing is too gorgeous for his taste. In this environment of spare simplicity – a place of stone walls, bare wood, humble stools and benches of plain and practical construction, pewter ware and rather basic pottery – Our Lady Queen of Heaven ascended to his work room sweet and enchanting as an exceptionally colourful sunrise. Yes. He loves her. Of course, she has stood there now so long he doesn’t always notice her; but still she makes him happy, with her colours, her femininity, and all that glorious gold. And he usually murmurs, “Good morrow, my Lady,” as he crosses the room to the window near the corner where she stands, to spread out on the windowsill in the good light his needle-roll or his order list or anything else he needs to examine.

  They’ve had two postulants so far in Abbot John’s time, two young men from Escrick, Bernard and Colin. One left after not so very long. What Bernard imagined as a quiet, contemplative, frankly quite easy life, turned out to be tougher than he envisaged. For one thing he was expected to work hard. He was not gently born, but still, scrubbing floors and digging out horse muck had not been on his list of aspirations. And the praying went on so long and happened so often it got beyond boring. Then there were the constant interruptions – doing what he was asked when it was asked of him, without delay, setting any project aside (however interesting, regardless of how crucial a stage he might have reached) when the Office bell began to ring. He hadn’t anticipated he’d be required to be that available.

  “But… that’s what the simplicity of our life is all about,” explained the abbot, slightly surprised. “It’s not just an end in itself. Living simply, owning nothing – it sets us free. Not to be idle, but to serve, to work, to love. It’s the simplicity that gives us to one another. And we give up everything, Brother – everything to which we cling. That’s why we move men from one occupation to another. There’s a risk of becoming precious and possessive about the work we undertake. The art of freedom and peace is all in the willingness to let go. And that’s what makes us available to learn to love – when we no longer have anything to cling to, or defend.”

  All of which meant precisely nothing to Bernard, and he didn’t last long. But Colin stayed. His request to enter as a postulant coincided with a period of some turbulence. Abbot John went through an experience of personal tragedy that knocked him sideways for some while; then the community came to the brink of financial ruin. For men leading disciplined lives of prayer in a quiet place, there seemed to be a lot going on. But eventually the time came that the abbot judged right to accept the two young men from Escrick into their midst. And Bernard left, but now Colin is about to be clothed, and receive his name in religion. He will soon no longer be Colin but Brother Christopher.

  “It’s a special name,” the abbot said to him. “A strong name. You know the story of St Christopher? That the Christ Child asked if he would carry him across the river, and he readily said yes. But he almost didn’t make it, because the little lad on his shoulders grew so unexpectedly, unbelievably heavy. It was because – he couldn’t see this of course – Christ is carrying the weight of the whole world. He almost dropped him; but he made it through.”

  And Colin sat in silence, taking this in. After a while, somewhat unnerved, he asked the abbot: “So… why have you chosen that name for me?”

  Abbot John laughed. This is something else Colin has noticed �
� these men have a natural instinct to puncture the bubble of solemnity before it grows too enormous. Just when you are filled with the gravity of the occasion, the importance and consequence of whatever’s going down – someone generally cuts it to size by finding it funny. “Don’t take yourself so seriously, Colin,” the novice master has said to him on a number of occasions: and once (he remembers, now), “Whatever’s the matter? By the Mass, you look as though you’re carrying the whole world on your shoulders!”

  So he hopes – he really hopes – the abbot has not chosen this name for him because he makes too much of an issue out of everything. But that’s not the reason.

  “What we learn from St Christopher,” according to the abbot, “is the necessity to carry no baggage if we want to make it through. He had the bare minimum, the staff in his hand. If we undertake to be Christ-bearers – as Our Lady was, as St Christopher was – we have to really get to grips with understanding that this will cost everything. There is simply no room for extra baggage. There’s no room for anything else. That’s why we are celibate. That’s why we own nothing, why we always look for the humblest and the least. If we try to carry anything else – anything – we won’t make it through. And Christopher didn’t – take anything extra, I mean; he did make it through. When he stepped out to cross the river, his staff in his hand, wearing only his simple tunic, he took no pack of possessions; he only carried Jesus. And you’ll notice, the master asks nothing of the man he’s not willing to undertake himself; Jesus wasn’t carrying anything either. Well – apart from the whole world.