by Kevin Scully
The Guests’ Parlour also housed a library. The nature of the literature there ran the range from the pious, through the pompous to the populist. The simple summation was this: it takes all kinds.2
Such parallels were not immediate at Care Home, particularly given that I have arrived at a latter part of its evolution. I suppose that, like a monastery, there had originally been one television around which all residents would gather to receive news or entertainment in common. I imagine the inevitable disagreements about who wants to watch what when would spark, simmer and sometimes erupt. To avoid controversies, different parlours in different wings of the home were given over to different stations. But if someone had been wheeled and abandoned in the wrong room, who could correct the oversight? Then, of course, most residents were not liable to the television licence, so proliferation was inevitable. Indeed, when I insisted that no such provision be made in my room—Fr Aidan’s was a different issue—I was looked on with a mixture of bewilderment and alarm. It was beyond the experience of the manager.
From time to time I attempted to recreate monastic recreation in Care Home. But it was never a success. Sitting with a book, or in quiet companionship with Father Aidan, if he was capable of it, I would relish the relative quiet. There was always a buzz of television, the room alarms, shouts or other sounds to ensure silence was never allowed to establish itself. This was also a lure. Some of the wandering confused would see us together and seek help, reassurance or direction—sometimes all three—as they found themselves adrift in the constrained freedom of the home. Or those clear of mind would come in looking for company with someone of a common state, someone with whom conversation was possible. But finding contemporary common substance was difficult. Often talk would be led by the past—nostalgia, memories, recollections, reminiscences—so that apart from the latest news items or sports events, or more likely the weather, the now was abandoned.
The pattern witnessed at CSC was repeated—at least within and by me—of moving from the social to the solitary. The parlour was a place of distraction. Sometimes I would seek to experience the larger space. But Fr Abbot was often uncomfortable in such a setting, unless a religious service was being conducted. For him, I suppose, this was not a parlour, but the chapel. A place where the community, such as it was, experienced some collective spiritual solace. But even during the weekly mass he would sometimes drift off to sleep, or be entranced by another resident’s sleeping, clothing, posture. Or he would look out the window with concentration on events outside our confines. This, ironically, only heightened a sense of imprisonment in me.
In the monastery, at least in the Abbot’s, Prior’s, Novices’, Guests’ parlours were places that blurred work and refreshment. What we have here are offices—places of administration rather than those of prayer. They are where the manager, the administrator, the Care Co-ordinator are to be found. Parlours have vanished, another casualty of a world set on keeping up to date, however illusory or ephemeral that may be.
1. Columba is making a play on the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Come Into The Garden, Maude, and the subsequent song, with music by Michael William Balfe.
2. Columba has written more fully about the Guests’ library, and literature in the life of the monastery, in A Row of Books, Spines Displayed and tangentially in A Closer Walk.
Spines Displayed
Books in the monastery library, such was the view aired a few times at Chapter, should be more than a reflection of the interests of Brother Librarian. That may have been the view of those of us not schooled, as of some of the brethren were, in academic theology.
The Novice Master warned us quite early in our novitiate. ‘Brothers, never fall into the trap of saying you are not theologians. It is true that among our number here are some big thinkers, men who could happily take their place at a college high table. But they have chosen—or have they been chosen?—to take on our common life as their burden. Whatever you do—study, pray, clean, cook, work in the garden—whatever you do is done in the presence of and with thought of God. That is theology. Every monk, every Christian, is a theologian.’
For all that, most of the library’s books seemed to be there for my dusting rather than reading. It was a cornucopia of knowledge and I noticed that most members of the community, new and old, sought the classics—writings of the Desert Fathers, the mystics, the simple saints—over the latest considerations or controversies from the universities.
Yet we had new books regularly. There were the works of Fr Aidan, which some brothers adopted as required reading. Fr Cuthbert, who for a while became something of a star in popular religious literature, had several on the shelves. This was just before the major papers abandoned reviewing books of a religious nature.1 His timing was with the zeitgeist: a breadth of experience, encounters with Eastern mysticism—mainly Zen Buddhism, but some from India—that had an enthusiast’s vigour and a natural educator’s clarity. Cuthbert was repeatedly asked to speak at events and conferences, both church-based and secular—and even appeared on television a few times. These appearances proved popular. Here was a ‘with it’ monk in a habit.
He churned out (that is possibly a needlessly derisory classification of his working methods) a number of books that had three effects. One was more touring given over to reading, speaking and conference engagements. The second was a significant contribution to CSC’s income through royalties. The third was a mixed blessing—an influx of people expecting to find a monk along the lines of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, only to be disappointed when they encountered a member of a traditional western monastic house. Cuthbert struggled to get people who had read his books to understand that his movement was an inner one, of how to adapt within the tradition of the Church, rather than aping Eastern mores.
There was some grumbling among the ranks and it was thought Fr Cuthbert had become somewhat big-headed. It was said—gossip is poisonous in the cloister, try as we do to avoid it—that Fr Abbot had called him in and threatened to curtail his engagements if he did not walk a little more humbly. Whether it was the result of this rumoured encounter, or that some other cleric was found to be the next media darling, Fr Cuthbert seemed a little subdued as a consequence.
Some years later he was seconded to a theological college where his brief was Prayer and Spirituality. He oversaw a raft of ordinands and priests who were exposed to, if not skilled in, meditation as a practice to support ministry.
‘I thought,’ said one wag, ‘that was the lot of every cleric.’
Cuthbert returned to us, spent a number of years writing a large tome which sought to collate, distil and popularise his thought. So many things, though, had moved on. His publishers, hoping his earlier popularity would outweigh the negative reviews of the hardback mainly in the Church press—only one broadsheet gave space to a lukewarm assessment—gave it prominence but it failed to draw the kind of sales his earlier, more popular paperbacks had.
Some even thought that this would lead to Fr Cuthbert’s quitting Saint Candida’s. It did not. The whole enterprise appeared to settle him. Once he told me, ‘Well, acceptance and resignation is the lot of a monk, whatever the ups and downs,’ and Fr Abbot made him Guestmaster. He enjoyed the work. It was something of a surprise when he started to complain of aches and pains—monks are discouraged from making their own organ recital the subject of conversation—which were the overture to a short, but particularly torturous, illness when cancer was detected in various parts of his anatomy. Such were the complexities of his treatment, and our inability to cope with it—despite having a medical doctor at that time serving as Infirmarian—Fr Abbot reluctantly sent Fr Cuthbert first to a hospital and, at the end, to a hospice.
Which has taken me a long way from the books at Care Home. That was the stimulus to my sitting down and taking up my pen. The shelves in what would have been called the Guests’ Library have been a great source of meditative activity for me. (We would have simply called it work at CSC.)
After a discussi
on with the Activities Co-ordinator (please, not another singalong of war-time songs—most of us here now are too young to remember) I was given permission to oversee the collection. There were some great conundra. The first was the number of unreturned local library books. Despite being clearly marked as such, and lacking the formerly used slips of paper that had the borrowing history on them, you could always tell how overdue a book was. I guessed these dated from the time when the mobile library would call. This service had been phased out some time before Fr Aidan and I arrived.
I questioned the Activities Co-ordinator a number of times about the matter but it became apparent the only resolution to the situation was the one I adopted. I collected all the library books, put them in a shopping trolley and set out to the library by Bethnal Green tube. The desk clerk displayed a mixture of surprise, annoyance and aggravation. Some books were no longer on the database; others had been ‘withdrawn from circulation’; and one or two were welcomed as a return of something rare.
A similar mixture of emotions came over me in the following weeks and months as other errant stock somehow came to rest on the shelves to which I had sought to put in order. I did this by establishing three sections: Fiction, Non-Fiction and Large. There was another set of shelves in the area by the lift. These took what I considered my rejects—a vast collection of Mills and Boon and other Romantica—which bubbled up like a mysterious water source after I had begun work.
The library was not catalogued, though I became well acquainted with its contents and any disturbances to them. Alphabetically aligned within the three sections, the stock displayed a startling breadth of interest from highbrow literary fiction, rare editions of classics, to obscurities from all manner of authors. It was a testament, if one were needed, to the amazing dormancy of faded memory of the home’s residents.
Those residents—the clichéd little old ladies and dotty old men to some—had delved into the vast complexity of human thought and imagination. Collected short stories of Vladimir Nabokov, obscure New Zealand poetry, arcane scientific musings, history, sociology, philosophy, along with numbers of texts more popular and predictable. I felt a humbling pride, as I used to at the monastery, to be among people whose gifts were either ignored or camouflaged in their residential environment. I only wish I had not acquiesced to the Trustees’ advice to leave all of Fr Aidan’s oeuvre behind.
‘But don’t you see, Brother,’ the Chair had said, ‘to take any or all of the works creates a problem of selection. Best to follow my earlier advice. Set forth with vigour and confidence. Think of it as taking only the one tunic!’2
So I left with Fr Aidan, like Lot and his family, fighting the urge not to succumb to the temptation to look back and, like his wife, become a pillar of salt.3
1. I think Columba is referring to works of an explicit Christian nature rather than religion in general.
2. An oblique reference to Luke 9:3 and the other synoptic gospels.
3. Genesis 19:26
Wash Me Throughly—2
I enjoyed being a Guestmaster for its routines: the welcoming, the orientation walk or, if I recognised a returnee, bringing them up to speed with changes in architecture or practice of the House. Some were inevitably interested in the membership of the community—comings and goings since their last visit. I liked marshalling them into chapel for the first time, and showing what followed what in the Offices.
Most guests looked after themselves. Some clergy were so easy the Guestmaster was almost redundant. They attended what they wanted. They slept. They made their way into and out of Refectory and Chapel and followed the unspoken rules of both. They brought a book to read or could be found browsing in the Guests’ Library. They would embody the maxim of the retreat having two compass points of retreat—to and from. What those were was brought with them.
Some came for spiritual direction, to renew their acquaintance with a priest or brother. (I never sought to act in this capacity.) A few came for academic supervision, especially when Fr Aidan was still sought after by some universities.
Many came exhausted. Many left refreshed. Some came burdened and left, if not lightened, resolved to find a way to ease the load they bore. None, as far as I know, were broken. Crashes tended to happen elsewhere.
A common request, at least in the early days, was for a priest to hear a confession. Some needed this almost on arrival, as though rest and recuperation were impossible without it, while others used the time to sleep, walk, to reflect before they felt ready to be shriven.
My task was to get the right fit with little or no information about the penitent and the priest to listen to a Confession. Some would have formed a habit of seeing one priest in particular and request a session with him. For others, it was up to me. Fortunately, as I have learned myself over the years, most priests are more than ready to exercise this aspect of their ministry. It is, as Fr Augustine once told me, where the essence of priestly vocation is exercised outside the mass.
That is not to say it always went smoothly. Only once did the dissatisfaction of the sacramental encounter ever splash back on me. The retreatant, a layman in a demanding City job, came from the chapel muttering. I looked at him.
‘You could have warned me that he was an unforgiving sod.’
I was truly surprised. I had arranged for him to see the monk to whom I made my own confession, a man I had always found open-hearted, generous and, some might say, something of a soft touch. But not in this instance. Life in a monastery has a certain rhythm and the sin of a monk is often one that merely disturbs the pattern of life. And those in the world perhaps want to be let off the hook for doing what they do. Or just being who they are. I can’t really say in the case of the guest. What happened, apart from his comment, is still kept within the confines of the sacramental seal.
On other occasions the relief was palpable. The atmosphere of the Guest Wing would lift as someone emerged from the grey wash of disappointment to a climate of clear air. Being the midwife to such a holy encounter was a wonder.
We were reciting Psalm 40 at the Office. We got to verse 131 and I spotted Fr Augustine’s bald head in front of me. It was all I could do not to laugh. Fr Abbot would certainly not have been amused.
1. For innumerable troubles have come about me;
my sins have overtaken me so that I cannot look up;
they are more in number than the hairs of my head,
and my heart fails me.—from the Common Worship Psalter.
The Day
the Music Died
It was an acknowledgement that things had already fallen apart, rather than herald that they were about to, when Fr Abbot ruled in Chapter one morning that singing in Choir was to be halted.
Dwindling numbers and age had compromised the once famed sound from the stalls. A number of brothers had been singers: in church choirs, choral scholars at university, a couple had even earned their living in the world by their voices—one as a member of the chorus of the Royal Opera House (though he had more trouble blending than most of us, even the untutored, by virtue of the power of his gift)—and the capacity of these acted as an incentive to those of us not so vocally blessed.
Performance of, and the attendant rehearsals for, chanting and singing formed a significant part of our life together. The routine preparation for chanting of the Offices would be held in the place of their recitation, the choir stalls. Brother Music would ensure we knew what was down to be sung in the week ahead and any slippage that had been noted in the past seven days would be corrected with humour or admonishment. Preparation, maintenance and repair were the watchwords in chapel as much as anywhere else in the monastery.
Many guests said they came on retreat at St Candida’s because of the singing. One told me during my time as Guestmaster, ‘It is how I always imagined prayer should sound. The monks make the noise I hear in my head when I pray alone.’ Fr Abbot had once even turned down the offer of a commercial recording of some of our Offices. Such ventures, he said, disr
upted the rhythm and nature of community.
The glory of timbre, the listening to each other, the blending of voices, the subtlety of cadences, enhanced by the chapel’s acoustic—all were fractured as the numbers diminished and the voices cracked and creaked. It was no-one’s fault, Fr Abbot assured us; it was just part of life. He pointed out, perhaps wisely but certainly not diplomatically, to the book of Ecclesiastes:
Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; on the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.1
