People are tense over the abbatial election. Br. Clement ruptured his ulcer. Fr. Anastasius down with a heavy cold, Fr. Baldwin looking anxious, drawn and thin. Fr. Flavian looks best of the candidates—happy and confident—and the community is full of wild indefinite ideas of dark horses and strange possibilities—all the obvious choices having become half credible at best: from too much speculation.
I tried to correct this by a word or two in my Sunday conference—the last unless the new abbot reappoint me for it.
Meanwhile there has been a last-minute political flurry to make sure the community votes for an English choral office before someone cool to the idea becomes abbot (I don’t think any of the candidates would be against it really). But just to make sure. And Cardinal Antoniutti’s letter remains of course unheard of here. Amusing.
I wonder if Dom James will be capable of settling down in his hermitage and keeping his fingers entirely out of community politics. I doubt it. I think he will make things a bit uncomfortable for the new abbot. Certainly I wouldn’t want the job with him hovering around in the background and with his little clique still active in the business end of the monastery. I am sure people will be running to him and using him against this new abbot.
The huge icicle on the SW corner of my porch is a good five feet long—it reaches almost ½ way to the ground!
Evening.
Cold all day—never stopped freezing, even in the sun. That long icicle seems to be several inches longer. Tonight the cold is bitter. Last night the thermometer at the monastery said 8 below and at Gannons’ 15 below. I can’t tell by my sheltered thermometer on the porch. It was probably well below zero here. Felt like it.
Down at the monastery it seems, surprisingly, as if there were quite a few people going to vote for Fr. Anastasius. Certainly not the smartest people in the community. Many of the former brothers—who were reputed to be against him—turn out to be for him. They might end up by swinging it for him, which would really be a disaster for the monastery. At least it would mean the end of any real hope of openness and development (except such development as he would be talked into by the liturgy people, because he might listen to them). He is a closed, unimaginative, opinionated, emotional man, and moreover has a temper. God preserve us!
January 10, 1968
Days of gloomy and sunless cold. In the dusk of evening, walking out on the edge of my hill, with all the hard outlines of this world lost in white snow, it is like walking in space. Woods hang like clouds over the invisible fields and bottoms.
Yesterday I would have gone to town but it snowed, the roads were bad. I came back up and finished Nat Turner and wrote my article—after lunch with Fr. Charles, ill and alone (the two abbots out to the Little Sisters of the Poor and to a hospital where two of our professed are—to get them to renounce their votes).
Bonhoeffer says, “It is only when one sees the anger and wrath of God hanging like grim realities over the heads of one’s enemies that one can know something of what it means to love and forgive them.”
This is the key to the dishonesty of Styron’s treatment of Nat Turner. Styron “enjoys” wrath as an indulgence which is not seen as having anything serious to do with religion whatever. Religion suddenly appears on the last page as a suggested preposterous reconciliation (in purely sentimental terms). To treat a prophet of wrath while having no idea of the meaning of wrath, and reduce that wrath to the same level as masturbation fantasies! The whole thing is an affront to the Negro—though it is well-meant, even “sympathetic.”
It reduced me finally to desperation!
How can white people do anything but cheat and delude the Negro, when that is only part of their own crass self-delusion and bad faith!
January 11, 1968
The abbatial election is the day after tomorrow.
Yesterday I went down to the monastery on an errand to Fr. Charles and Dom Colomban in the Guest House, and in the corridor ran into Fr. Callistus and Br. Frederic, who had just arrived by plane from Chile, sunburned by the Chilean summer. Fr. Anastasius was talking to them. He looks tired and worn.
It really does seem, incredibly, that he has a very good chance of being elected, and of course I see why now. He is first of all a conservative, and then he is the candidate of all those inarticulate, unimaginative people who have passively accepted the new changes without really wanting them and who in their hearts want only security and no more change—or only slow change. For these people, monastic life means chiefly a secure routine. They like law. They want obedience and rule, because it simplifies their existence. It reassures them. It makes life safe and predictable. It guarantees that they will not be confronted with more than they can cope with. They have bent their wills to that. They want it confirmed.
Fr. Anastasius is the one man who will do that: he represents the status quo more than anyone else. And suddenly I realize that this is what most of the community probably want—just a secure routine, dignified by a certain continuity with the past and a general atmosphere of worship and obedient endurance (up to a very safe point!). Also it can be made to look like courage. He is a virile, aggressive, hard-working character, and I admit this is good. The cenobitic types who vote for him will represent a genuine reaction against the femininity of Fr. Baldwin, his flexibility, his openness, his unpredictability.
The election will be decided on what way they go who vote first for Dom Augustine and Fr. Baldwin (assuming Fr. B. does not get it and I much doubt he will though he is still favorite). If they swing to Fr. Flavian—who represents a high and genuinely monastic ideal (but openness too) then he’ll get it. If they fear Fr. Flavian as too lofty and incomprehensible and as a “hermit,” they will swing to Fr. Anastasius. For too many Fr. Flavian is a “threat” because they don’t understand him and don’t know what to expect of him.
If it turns out to be between Fr. Flavian and Fr. Baldwin, then I think it is hard to predict how the voters for Fr. A. will divide between them.
My own position: obviously for me Fr. Anastasius would be a very difficult superior—harder even than Dom James. He would be very obstructive and negative in everything that regards my writing, correspondence, other contacts. At best he would tolerate my present situation insofar as it has been passed on by Dom James. But he would also be looking for trouble and glad when he could find it. Though he is strongly anti-hermit, he might prefer to have me out of the community and in the hermitage and just do his best to isolate me here completely—as Dom James wanted to. If in doubt about any of my affairs he will consult Dom James and Dom J. will give out a harder line for me through another than he would dare to do directly. But it will certainly guarantee my solitude.
However, the real issue is not how easy or how hard it may be to get on with the next abbot—but the honesty and faith of my own comminnent. Hence the need to concentrate on the main thing.
This still needs clarifying.
It is not simply a matter of saying I have vows here and that’s that. Certainly I mean to keep my vows and stay within the Order—also to live up as far as possible to my hermit commitment.
How far my writing and my contacts imply a further comminnent is another question.
For instance if I am completely silenced here, and if the Chile foundation wants me very badly, should I pull up stakes and go there? Of course if I am sent—no problem!
Should I regard my situation as that of Pasternak under Zhdanor and Co. and go on working as best I can with a certain vital protest inside of my silence? There is no doubt that it was right and best for Pasternak to stay in Russia, even and especially after the Nobel Prize affair.
Bonhoeffer:
“Who stands his ground? Only the man for whom the ultimate criterion is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all these things when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and exclusive allegiance to God—the responsible man seeks to make his whole life a response to the quest
ion and call of God. Where are these responsible men?”
January 13, 1968
The day of the election. In a few minutes I start down to early concelebration. It is still night (4:30). When I got up snow was falling and now it turns to rain.
Yesterday it took a long time just to vote for the scrutators, and what will it be today? I don’t expect it to become much before evening. However—yesterday we also voted on whether any legislation of the General Chapter, making the abbatial term temporary, should be retroactive. In other words if this new man’s term should automatically be limited if that becomes law—(otherwise he would be for life anyway).
A surprisingly large majority voted against a life-abbot—and for a temporary abbotship. In the circumstances that was a very good sign: everyone was relieved by it because it is a sign that the community is sick of the kind of authority represented by Dom James (though well disposed to him personally). They don’t want a power-type who wants to be on for life and have a completely free hand.
Obviously a temporary abbotship has other disadvantages. But the reaction against power-establishment is hopeful. I feel more optimistic about today’s election.
I happened to glance through some old notes of mine—novitiate conferences on the vows—dating back ten years. Incredible and quite embarrassing. I was astonished to find them so legalistic, so rigid, so narrow. Yet in those days I thought myself quite broad and many regarded me as a dangerous radical. I was only doing what I thought I had to do—teaching what all the authorities held! That it now seems completely unrealistic and false is a sign that there has really been something of a revolution. Felt the same about the Bishops’ Pastoral.11 It is in some sense an advance, but it seems to lack a real inner sense of the Church: they are still talking of a Church of Law, and they are in a bind they can’t really get out of.
Bonhoefferis right—people “in the world” who may seem to be “criminal types—small people with small aims” etc. turn out sometimes to be “much more under grace than under wrath, but the Christian world in particular stands much more under wrath than undergrace.” I think of my notes on the vows in this light! And I pray that today in our election it may be grace and not wrath we stand under.
January 15, 1967. St. Paul the Hermit
Two momentous days, heavy with snow and heavier with happenings. Fr. Flavian was elected abbot by a large majority and surprisingly fast (third ballot). Fr. Anastasius was nowhere—I got as many votes as he did, although I had made it doubly and triply clear that I could never accept. Everyone is very pleased and everyone also is quite clear about what the election means: a definite option for the new and an expression of final dissatisfaction with all represented by Dom James, since Fr. Flavian is first of all clearly a man with a mind and ideas of his own, and one who definitely stood up against Dom James’s ideas. His going to the hermitage was largely a protest against the futile job of running a foundation under Dom J., and Dom J. has not really forgiven this.
So therefore it is clear that this was one of the candidates who would be completely independent of Dom J. and of his policies.
Result—a real sense of liberation. Almost a shock to realize that the secrecy, the suppression and the manipulation exercised by Dom James no longer dominate us. That we have a man we can talk to, work with frankly, exchange ideas with, propose real experiments to (not just tinkering with the liturgy!).
The election was peaceful, even happy. Of course with all the preliminaries it took time to get moving and we were in there forty-five minutes before starting to vote on the first ballot. Then after that it was about an hour before the result was announced. Fr. Flavian was already an obvious winner with over thirty votes and he doubled them in the next two ballots. Dom Augustine of Georgia got a few votes, Fr. Baldwin was second in the running throughout, the only other significant competitor.
Between ballots, the cloister full of people reading, I read long chunks of David Jones’s Anathemata, somehow very moving and sonorous in that charged silence, and one felt a blessing over it all even before having any idea how it would tum out.
It was all over by about 9:30.
By that time it was snowing again.
I stayed at the monastery most of the day, as I had a talk with Dom Augustine and Dom Eusebius [Wagner, of New Clairvaux, California]. Then after dinner an interview in the gatehouse with an ex-nun—rather an unusual little person, going through a period of trial and rejection but I think quite holy and with perhaps a real call to sanctity (though she is thought by some to be crazy). A very simple, innocent little being with great aspirations, who seems to get around in an extraordinary way. (Was at the Council, i.e., on the fringes of it and met a lot of people.)
Sunday—yesterday—the confirmation had still not come through from the Abbot General at La Oliva in Spain. I helped Dom Colomban put through a phone call to this monastery lost in the hills of Navarre. Some talk with the operator in Madrid. The cable sent the day before about the election had not yet reached the General. The election was confirmed and after None and a great fuss of a community photograph in the Chapter Room, Dom Flavian was installed and I made my promise of obedience with a great sense of meaning—i.e. a sense of authentic human possibilities in a context of real friendship among all those who are F.’s generation and who will collaborate with him now.
A real sense of community with all the other men who will really do most of the work—ehoir and brothers. Dom James’s policy was to keep everyone separated and play them all against each other, trying to keep them uninformed or only partially informed.
This morning-a special conceJebration and a proper Mass composed by Fr. Chrysogonus. Very free one too. As a “farewell” to Dom James. However, Dom J. has not even moved out of his office. Dom Flavian has a room in the guesthouse and it does not look as if Dom J. will be out of there for a couple of weeks yet.
At Communion, as I approached the altar, I suddenly realized that the bond of understanding that really does exist among the men here now, among themselves and with Dom Flavian, is really strong enough to do something—and to do much—with the institutional structure, or in spite of it. That if Dom F. himself is for change, the blocks set up by an authoritarian system cannot be completely decisive—though they can still be a nuisance.
I realize how seriously I misjudged the community the other day—saying they were all conservatives and wanted security above all. They voted with courage and imagination and their option was for openness, growth, greater freedom, real progress. Also, as I realized at my conference yesterday afternoon, they have summed up the situation pretty well and can express what their real hopes are—a man who is open, whom you can talk to, who will admit his mistakes and not push them off on to someone else (one of the brothers said this!), who will listen to new ideas, who has definite principles but is willing to tolerate different ideas, etc.
The result of this eJection has been a real sense of a bond between us all, and already at this morning’s Mass Dom J. seemed suddenly remote from all this, a stranger to it, and the farewell really meant farewell. Certainly he is honored and remembered for the good he has done, but also the isolation in which he has always really lived now appears for what it is. He has lived in the midst of the community deeply isolated from it, yet manipulating its inmost heart, alienating it, and at the same time soothing it with cliches and with a dramatic “presence” and influence. Certainly he has sacrificed himself very much, but one feels it was for the institution rather than for the people in it and he expected them to let him sacrifice them in the same way. To some extent they did, some more, some less. But now they are done with that: they want to build a real community, not a corporation.
January 19, 1968
I have been sick with flu for several days—and badly.
It began Tuesday (I caught it of course in the community where it has been going around. The election was a good way to catch it!). After dinner I went for a walk in the woods and could hardly drag myself
back to the hermitage. Went to bed early. The next day I probably would have pulled out of it quickly if I could have stayed in bed, but I had to go down to the monastery—once again I would hardly get back to the hermitage, and went straight to bed. Thursday I had to go down again (to take my laundry bag and to tell Fr. Charles Dumont that I would not be able to spend the afternoon with him) and that really fixed me. So I fell into bed without dinner and lay there for sixteen hours or more hot under the blankets, aching, smashed in stupid sleep, with my head like a music box playing over and over and over “The Shadow of Your Smile” (version of Ives Montgomery). I am up with a dry cough, gut in a shambles, high fever, nauseated by everything, unable to say Office or do anything whatever except occasionally get up to make tea and take a pill.
Yesterday afternoon was pretty horrible. I haven’t felt so sick in a long time.
Today, after a deep, sweaty sleep, I felt much better, said Lauds and Mass and had a light breakfast, went back to bed, but the sun was up bright and I felt alive again. Only problem—I couldn’t move around without sweating profusely.
Had some soup and eggs at noon and began to feel myself again. Went back to lie down, and everything began to be seen more sharply and clearly experienced: sound of a truck on the road ¼ mile away. Sense of where I am, where the road is, of the woods around, sense of having a world to be part of, not just to be a hump of matter.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 6
