by Kevin Scully
I sought out the Novice Master and laid it out before him. He smiled. ‘Spending a lot of time in chapel?’
‘Yes.’
‘And reading? Both spiritual and theological?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mmm. Novels? Poetry?’ I told him there was not a lot of time left for that sort of thing. He nodded. ‘Get your jacket and your hat. Put on some boots. Meet me at the vegetable garden gate in ten minutes.’ I tried to protest. The Office was in fifteen minutes. ‘You leave that to me.’
I went back to my cell, threw on my jacket, stuffed my cap into a pocket and was making my way downstairs when I heard the bell for None sounding. I paused, torn between the discipline of making my way to chapel as I should have, or the choice to do as the Novice Master had advised. Here was a clash of obediences. I rushed to the boot rack, hoping (successfully as it turned out) that I would not encounter any of the brethren, slid off my sandals, took the pair of socks from the neck of one of the boots, put them and the boots on, tied up the laces and made my way like a thief to the garden gate.
The Novice Master arrived. Just before we opened the gate, he began to lead me in the Angelus. Rather than question his timing—it was not one of the appointed hours for its recitation—I gave the responses. When we had finished he said, ‘I know it is the wrong time, but I assured Fr Abbot that we would pray. That will do for our Office. Now, let’s go.’
He led me off on the path, through the copse of oaks some distance from the garden. The first signs of spring were evident: buds on the end of the boughs; a soft chirruping from birds as we strolled, sometimes abreast, sometimes one following the other. We walked in silence for at least twenty minutes. Every now and then the Novice Master would stop, point to a feature that may have passed me by: a rabbit scampering from the path; the nascent shoots from a bulb; a dash of colour from a bird as it flitted into or out of a tree; a strip of cloth torn from a scarf in a hedgerow. As we continued the exchange became reciprocal, not taking turns, but each of us drawing the other’s attention to something of note, animate or inanimate. We made our way to a clearing atop a small hill about a mile from the House.
‘Now look up.’ The Novice Master’s command was the first utterance made since our passing through the gate. ‘Can you name them?’
There was an extensive vista of clouds. It constituted the natural equivalent of a wall map. I did my best to identify what was stretched before me. I grabbed at terms that I later learned were the life’s work of Luke Howard, the ‘Namer of Clouds’.
‘Cumulus?’
‘Big, fluffy and sparking our imagination,’ came the commentary of the Novice Master. My responses followed the arc from his finger.
‘Stratus.’
‘Stretching across the sky like a taut rubber band.’
‘Nimbus.’
‘A threat of rain to come despite the sun. But not yet. We should still be dry on our return.’
‘Cirrus.’
‘Angels’ tails. I have always wanted a painter to use a cloud like that for Gabriel.’ The Novice Master’s finger moved to a patch of stratus. I looked at him. ‘Just to the side.’
‘The moon?’
‘Do you know what phase it is in?’ I ran through the cycle: full, half, crescent, waxing, and plumped for waning. ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘See how faint it is? That is not the moon’s fault. There is, what? three quarters of it, ever so faintly visible, but that doesn’t mean it is not all there. It’s just we can’t see it. Nothing wrong with the moon. There is nothing wrong with your eyes, either. It is about conditions. Normal, natural conditions that change with the movement of the earth, the moon and the planets. The orbit, the rotation, how the light from the sun is interrupted by clouds and the atmosphere. Other factors all contribute to what we can see. But the sun is still there in its entirety.’
‘You brought me out here to give me a lesson in cosmology?’ I said.
‘Not at all, Brother. Everything we know, everything we teach—though please don’t tell Father Aidan I said so—is through metaphor and analogy. The gospels are full of them. Like Jesus and Parable of the Sower.’1
‘That always bothers me. They must have been pretty thick, the disciples. Because the explanation…well, it is little more than stating the bleeding obvious.’
‘And to think Father Bartholomew wrote a whole book on that!’ The Novice Master chuckled. ‘The bleeding obvious. Is that what I am saying?’
It was my turn for silence. I had overstretched myself, I knew. One thing I did notice, though, was my mood had lifted. The pointlessness of monasticism was the last thing on my mind. ‘I’m sorry, no.’
‘All right. Cheer up,’ he said. ‘Now it is my turn to state the bleeding obvious. The sun is God. He is present, burning, hot, light-giving and wonderful all the time. Never stops being all those things. Yet here on earth we can miss His presence, not because He has left us, He is not there, but simply because the order of the world, our world and our part in it, can somehow hide that from us. We can’t see Him. In fact, the night is a time when He gives us relief from His appearance so we can ponder in the depths of our being, in our rest, in our sleep, so we can long for His return when awake. We can glimpse His wonder in the dawn.
‘All these…’ He made a gesture towards the clouds, ‘are different ways of being in His presence. Some give us rain. Some take our breath away. Some amuse us. Look at that.’ He pointed. ‘An elephant turning into a horse made from cotton wool.’ Silly as it sounded, the clouds somehow did fit the Novice Master’s description.
‘Another reading of the same thing: the different callings of people—lay, religious, parish priests, people going about their daily business, even people of other faiths and maybe even none. Now, for God’s sake, don’t tell Father Augustine. He is very big on only Christians going to heaven.’
I nodded.
‘Okay, I’m stretching this a bit,’ he said. ‘But in for a penny, in for a pound. Try this. The clouds are the religious orders. Some tending, some active—teaching, nursing, stuff like that. Others are just playful and beautiful. Contemplatives. On one level not appearing to do very much at all. People with no reason but to ponder the brightness of God in the Son.’
‘And CSC?’
‘I should have seen that coming. Well we, like all the people of God, are like the moon. The Founder had a vision, if you like, of our being a satellite. We are not the earth, we do not sustain life. That’s the work of the Church. We are not apart from that either. But we are caught up in this interplay of rotation, orbit and light. But any light we shine, if we are lucky enough to shine at all, is always going to be a pale reflection of that coming from a long way away, and of an intensity that we could never survive in.’
‘So we are all doomed to fail?’ I asked.
‘Not at all. But like the phases of the moon allow an array of shapes of light because of multiple causes, clouds being only one of them, we can still show the light.’
‘Let your light shine.’2
‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘Now, about our pointlessness?’
I shook my head. We walked back, neither speaking nor gesturing, to the monastery where, a few months later in the chapel, I made my profession.
1. The Parable of the Sower appears in different forms in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew 13, Mark 4 and Luke 8. They each go on to give variant explanations of the story.
2. Columba is quoting Matthew 5:16.
Two guests were waiting for the kettle to boil.
Guest One: ‘Even contemplative monks pick their noses.’
A pause.
Guest Two: ‘And fart. In chapel, too.’
Guest One: ‘It broke my meditation. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.’
Guest Two: ‘I heard one old boy let one go at the quietest part of the mass.’
Despite the snickering, these observations seemed to shock them.
I Nothing Am
My most public monastic moment w
as, like much of my life at St Candida’s, relatively private. Friends and guests ‘from the world’ used to tell me of grand events—weddings, ordinations, even consecrations.
One brother, Fr Benedict, much to the opprobrium of some of the community—indeed, the few who knew the monk in question were still at odds over it years after his death—accepted the invitation to serve as a suffragan bishop. Chapter, no doubt under the influence of Fr Abbot, eventually voted to allow him to do this. The community insisted he take with him two brothers, so CSC would live as a missionary cell in the life of a diocese. There was an ongoing battle—so it was reported years later—as to who this couple of brothers should be and to whom—the Bishop or the Abbot—they were responsible. After about ten years Fr Benedict returned to Saint Candida’s. Accustomed to being in authority, it is said he was peeved at not being elected Abbot. He did, however, serve as Prior to the man who was.
Some professions filled the chapel. Family, friends, colleagues from the world, would come to support, or puzzle at, the life-choice of one of their number. At these times there was always an element of tension—trying to involve those sitting in the guests’ stalls, of seeking to explain the ritual, our life together, and what the neophyte’s role in this would be.
No such crowd augmented the congregation when I found myself the last—and only one—of my group of novices making my vows. The others had either quit the cloister or had already made the grade. Cyril had taken this step some months before me—the Novice Master considered him cut from a better spiritual cloth. I don’t think anyone at the time would have considered mine to be harder wearing.
Fr Abbot stood before me in with his pastoral staff. The Visitor, robed in a chasuble, bemitred and holding his crosier, stood at his side.
‘What do you seek?’ Fr Abbot said.
The Novice Master had drilled me in the responses.
‘Life in Christ.’
‘With whom and where do you seek to live this life?’
‘By the grace of God, I would walk this path with my brethren here.’
There followed CSC’s rite of admission, in which I received the belt and cross of the order and the scapular of a professed brother. Novices wore one of a lighter shade. The belt has had to be replaced a couple of times, but, by the grace of God, I still have the crucifix. After a short litany, prayers, and the joint laying on of hands by the Bishop and Fr Abbot, a blessing from the episcopal Visitor, the leader of our community gave the address, a typed copy of which he later presented to me.1
‘The Christian life is one of celebration and sadness. Celebration because it so often presents new beginnings. Indeed, the basis of our faith is one of repeated beginnings from a particular one: the new life shown to us in the resurrection of Jesus. And yet, there would be no resurrection if Our Lord had not truly died. And his death is rightly to be mourned. But for that he must have been truly born.
‘All Christians dare to see the world in a new light. We dare to see growth in decay. We dare to see life in death. And we dare to see joy in pain.
‘Every brother, no matter how long he is with us, is a gift. And for that we must thank God for His grace and thank each other for choosing to be with us, as we thank Columba today. Each is a seed that is sown in our midst. And, like the seed Jesus speaks of in the gospels, he must die so he, and we with him, can live.2
‘Setting out on the monastic life is often portrayed in romantic terms. That is usually because those who portray it that way have never lived it.3 Committing oneself to life in a community, one that some consider is divorced, or even a refuge, from the world, is a risk. In fact, it is a risk for all involved. Life in the cloister has its own challenges. As the sixth century abbot Columba set out on his journey with his brothers from Ireland to Iona in his coracle, so our Brother Columba is being asked to set out on a journey for which there are no reliable maps.
‘Like all journeys, it will have its odd turns, its surprises and disappointments, its joys and pains. Being born again into the life of a community does not mean the troubles and anxieties of life go away. They just change. Change into new and sometimes startling forms. The quiet of the cloister4… the quiet of the cloister is no refuge for those who cannot get on with the world. Because the world will be right here with you.
‘Jesus told his followers to carry the cross. Not his cross. Not another’s cross. But each his own individual cross.5 We ourselves are the greatest cross we have to bear. We carry our cross, our selves, individually and, in the community we commit ourselves to, we carry it together. Brother Columba, Barry, welcome to this cross. And welcome from those who will seek to share its load with you.’
Father Abbot turned to the brethren. ‘Brothers, I ask you to pray for Columba. He has been tested on the way. And the testing will continue. As it continues for us all every day. Thanks be to God, without whom we should always be found lacking. Amen.’
The service continued with holy communion. And so I found myself committed to a quiet collection of men who took to the routine of life, punctuated by bells, prayer and work. And each other. It was where I thought I would spend all my days.
After the service there was a party, with wine and cake. Fr Abbot was right. We did not know where the journey would take us. I never imagined Bethnal Green or Care Home as part of it. Or how it would end. And, by the grace of God, I still don’t.
1. I found a copy of the address from Columba’s profession among the papers in the envelope he had left for me. I have taken a liberty by inserting here to assist his narrative.
2. The Abbot was recalling John 12:24—‘Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’
3. ‘This got a titter from the choir stalls’, Columba had annotated in the margin.
4. ‘Another laugh from the choir stalls’, according to Columba’s marginal notes.
5. Matthew 10:38—‘… whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.’
Today in chapel we sang, ‘One Church, One Faith, One Lord.’ If only.
A Row of Books
Books are essential to, if not the stuff of, a monastery. We were a far way from the Scriptorium, though some of us (like Matthew) could have been stars in the firmament of illustrated manuscripts. His wit would have enlivened many a dull chapter detailing the slaughter, conquests, rapes and seizing of property that make up the Histories in the Old Testament.
I had, probably unfairly, a reputation for being a non-reader at school and beyond. But such a calling was impossible at St Candida’s. I read voraciously but it has to be admitted that my sustenance was not of the academic bent. Even in the Novitiate I found much of the set texts of intellectual stuff on the Christian faith more impenetrable than edifying. It was gratifying to hear one novice, fresh from his studies in Oxford, telling the Novice Master that Systematics was ‘at worst failed, at best second rate, philosophy.’ Matthew captured the NM’s reaction perfectly in a cartoon that was lost as quickly as it appeared.
I suppose my sustenance was secondary. Of course, our days are drenched in the Bible: the Offices, the mass, private and public reading. But it was to ‘the lesser literature’, as Fr Aidan once called it (with the odd exception) that I took recourse to. Simpler spirituality—Thérèse of Lisieux, the easier bits of Julian of Norwich and, to Father Abbot’s surprise, The Book of Privy Counsel. And biographies of saints and leading lights of the church. Some were couched in difficult prose. These were cast aside for those of a more popular appeal. Why should the life of an interesting man or woman be made dull by turgid writing? A few of these were particularly entertaining, even ridiculous. How a personality like Christina the Astonishing was tolerated, let alone venerated, is beyond me.1
And novels. (I wonder if this was my mother’s influence coming out? All those stories she wrote for the Women’s Weekly.) I found so much more to understand about the world through fiction than I did f
rom many of the works recommended by the Novice Master. Though we found common ground in C. S. Lewis. Him I could read all day. Especially the Aslan books. It was probably for that that I was never apportioned the duty of community Librarian.
It did fall to me, however, during my time as Guestmaster, to oversee the Guesthouse library. This expanded as many retreatants would often leave a novel they had brought with them. These ranged from the high- to the low-brow. I expected to manage something like a book exchange, but we gained more than we lost by the exercise. Some of the books, it has to be admitted, were a bit ‘out there’. Every now and then one would have to be binned or go into the recycling. I didn’t think it was the kind of thing we should have on our shelves. I sometimes made this decision only after I had read it.
Some retreatants would seek religion in and through fiction—novels about saints, sagas looking at a religious order through different decades of the twentieth century, ethical dilemmas worked out in imaginary (or thinly disguised autobiographical) settings. I read—and read them still—again and again. There was a particularly rich seam from the mine of murder mysteries, from the pulp to the well crafted, set in monasteries and convents, usually with a professed member of the community acting as the equivalent of the DCI.
Care Home has a similar set of shelves. There is always an alarming number of non-returned items from the local library—I wonder if St Peter at the Pearly Gates presents borrowers with a statement of overdue fines?—which sit among books that I initially found startling. But, as I came to reflect, why should the reading of a range of adults, one of whom is the former brilliant academic I know as Father Abbot, who share a residence only by virtue of need of oversight or care, be restricted to pap? There was precious little romantic fiction to be found on the shelves after my first foray. I happily scour this treasure trove from the classical to the contemporary.
