The Rest Is Silence

by Kevin Scully

  My vocation has been a quiet one. After the frenetic enjoyment—did I really enjoy it? or was I simply seeking to join in some generational mummery?—of Kombi life, driving through Europe, enjoying the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and feel of places and people (generally and intimately), I found myself, like Jonah vomited on a beach by the big fish, in a new land. St Candida’s seemed to be my Nineveh.

  I realise I have shifted the perspective of the prophet from subject to object. In all this I sensed a call to repentance. As in much of God’s work, this was not sudden—I have never been a great lover of road to Damascus conversion stories—but a slow, yet hardly smooth, yet still remarkably quiet journey.

  Each generation is accused of claiming the discovery of sex, and mine was no exception, apart from the noise we seemed to generate about it. And the recently won freedom to indulge in what some commentators mistakenly thought as condemnatory, as copulation without complications—clearly meant only in the physical sense of moving to conception. Emotions seemed just as complex, whatever we claimed. We also seemed to have made much about social confrontations—politics and values that allowed more ‘freedom’, justice (while, at the same time, fostering the rise of the mega-corporation) and meditation. It was a heady or even possibly toxic mix.

  Of course, any such discovery or invention is illusory: we are, as the hymn goes, pilgrims on a journey.1 How we take our steps is a dialogue in movement, of our own and God’s. My feet found security in a path that, in some ways, was a well worn one. It was, however, one that was fairly new to the Church of England, and had been part of the vision of The Founder, along with the proliferation of religious orders throughout the country that attended the Oxford Movement, one that had a life cycle. (As all things do.)

  The quiet of Saint Candida’s allowed me to grow and, in doing so with many priests, brothers and visitors, it opened up a vista of contemplation. I was never gifted with great insights. I could not teach like Fr Aidan; I did not have the handiwork skills of Fr Augustine; I lacked the musical prowess of successive Brothers Music; no healing touch essential to the Infirmarian had been laid on me.

  What I had was a chance to turn. There was a dawn of something beyond myself and my desires. I had been dumped after overindulging myself in ephemeral pastimes that had inflicted terrible damage on others. So many people were due—and are still, to my mind—repeated apologies because of my selfishness. Have I deluded myself in thinking confession to God would absolve me from any personal damage I inflicted on other people? I have quietly sought to fulfil my vocation: a quiet thank you to God in harmony with the quiet choirs in eternity.

  1. Columba is referring to Richard A. M. Gillard’s The Servant Song.

  Ringing The Changes

  Bells. At first they were an exotic irritant, calling me from slumber and an unrecognised withdrawal from alcohol and dope. They punctuated the day with meaning for the monks; with bewilderment for me.

  In time I came to discern them: the initial brisk alarum that rang out at five in the morning, rousing those who were not up already (to my astonishment, once I too could manage being upright at that hour, the number was small—many were already at their private devotions in the chapel, to which the remnant made their way); the prolonged peal calling the brothers to mass; the curt summons to meals; and, mother of all them, the Angelus.

  The day was spun on a web around the Angelus. At six in the morning, at noon and again six hours later, we stopped what we were doing when we heard the chimed pattern of three bells three times, followed by a conjoined nine—recalling in ring God’s plan to draw the Blessed Virgin Mary out of ordinariness to be the mother of Himself in Jesus.

  The pattern had a seasonal variation. From Easter to Ascension the bells rang out in a different pattern—the separated three sets of three becoming a single nine—at the same times to invoke a different observance, the Regina Coeli, joining in Mary’s joy at the fulfilment of her Son’s redemption of the world.

  As my understanding grew of what the various bells meant, so did a realisation that I was somehow becoming part of the common life at St Candida’s. I found myself drawn into the web of devotion that kept these men going in their dignified routine.

  Some time into my residence, after I had put myself forward as a possible recruit to their ranks, I was inducted into the code of sounds. When I moved from postulant to novice I was given the responsibility for ringing the Angelus. Such a simple task at first had a jangling effect on my nerves. You had to be in church, at the end of the rope before the chapel clock ticked to its chime of the hour. As soon as it started to ring, you pulled the rope. Missing this duty was unthinkable.

  When duties were reallocated by the abbot, the bell ringer is was always pivotal post. As we started to crumble in numbers, memory and vitality, I found myself again given the duty of alerting the diminishing number of brothers to the wonder of Christ’s salvation, and its honouring of His mother. It hurts to think that bell no longer rings, let alone echoes itself in prayer.

  The Rhythm Method

  So much of monastic life takes its power from the pattern of the day. For some people—at least, from what I have learned from conversations with some first-time retreatants in my role as Guestmaster—there is both allure and aversion in the monastery timetable.

  Visitors would sometimes tell me, with an urgency bordering on desperation, how they could never live to such a rule. They see a kind of tyranny in what appears to them as so much repetition.

  Each day, each office, each moment has something different to offer. Spiritual direction is not—never has been—one of my gifts, so I would arrange for guests to see other members of the order who had what I lacked.

  All I can point to, from my own experience, is the wonder that can be found in limiting oneself to a reduced range of experiences. This could, I suppose, reflect a lack of adventurousness.

  Visitors were the stuff of life for a Guestmaster. It was a quaintly formal job, receiving requests from Vicarages, Rectories and Parsonages on headed notepaper, the writer asking if space and time could be afforded them for a prayerful break. Securing a date at certain times of year was risky. Many clergymen—and it was only clergymen then—favoured early spring, as the countryside began to awaken. The exigencies of Easter expended, before the arrival of curates, seeking space to consider the future, they headed to St Candida’s to recuperate, reactivate and relax.

  Nearly all, in the early days, arrived by public transport and wearing cassocks. Over the years we had to extend our minimal car parking facilities, and the clergy daywear evaporated. I would enquire if they had been with us before. Sometimes I could recall or tell without asking, as many were repeat offenders. We could almost calculate to the day the dates for the following year’s stay as they left. For newcomers, and some who had not been for some time, I would give an orientation: Chapel here, quiet in the cloister, silence over meals, hours of the offices and the mass, Greater Silence, and my maps of walks.

  Regulars needed little reminding of the routine. New or old, we usually lost them for the first day or so. After the (re-)acquaintance tour, they would retire to their cell and sleep. The gentle, or far from it, snoring would ring out along the halls. A few—not many—would head out for a bracing first day yomp.

  After the initial activity—or lack of it—a new pattern would emerge. A few would spend their days scouring the shelves of the library taking notes, writing books, rejuvenating their intellects ignored or put aside because of the pressures of priestly duties. A couple would sit in the guests’ parlour reading what looked like trashy novels. Some would spend all day in the Chapel in prayer and meditation. Others would strap on their boots and go out for walks. They would not be seen except for meals. My predecessor said a retreat was a time when we could allow these men to be the kind of priest they really wanted to be.

  Whatever they did, these priests, for the most part, looked refreshed at the end of their stay. Eyes brightened, muscles strained or re
laxed, and they returned to the parish or chaplaincy with a renewed vigour and, occasionally, a reluctance to face the round of petty squabbles they had temporarily fled. In some was a discernible reluctance to immerse themselves back into that which had delivered them here in exhaustion. Some expressed the desire to stay. But they knew, as we did, that this was illusory. Being a monk was a burden in a different way.

  A guest to the Guestmaster (not me): ‘On the first day I am exhausted. On the second I am recovering. On the third day, I can enter into the swing of things. I always want to join you on the third day. I mean, permanently. As a monk. By the end I realise I would drive you—or you would drive me—crazy.’

  Guestmaster to guest: ‘Ah, yes. Discernment’.

  Ruins and Boundaries

  On that final journey with Donna, as I had in other parts of Britain and Ireland, we seemed to specialise in ruins: abbeys, priories, monasteries, convents. The more managed and promoted—Fountains, Riveaulx, Tintern, Whitby, Glastonbury—always got a steady stream of visitors. Some, particularly in Ireland, were off the usual tourist track. A hand painted sign would direct you to a house where you could get a key to the gate to allow admission.

  These places were ideal to pull up the Kombi. Quiet, relatively remote, a watchful though respectful neighbour, meant we could count on a good night’s sleep, or a secluded trysting spot. As a monk I sometimes wonder if what we enjoyed in those places was tantamount to blasphemy. I put it to Fr Aidan once.

  ‘Sadly, Brother, I don’t think so. I think blasphemy only counts in the heart and mind of a believer. For someone outside the community of faith the Lord’s name, for instance, is not being taken in vain. It is though our boundaries don’t exist.’

  Yet boundaries form so much of the cloistered life. Silences, rooms and wings of restricted access—none more than an individual’s cell—were various forms of delineation. Some were obvious—what else could the sign Community Only mean? So much of our routine, presaged by bells—prayer, meditation, work, recreation—was an embodiment of restriction, but with a higher purpose.

  These very definitions were captured in our titles: Brother, Father. CSC would have to have been the last community insisting on titles that differentiated between lay and ordained members.

  Fences. Around the boundary of the monastery’s property. And demarcation within. The gardens had fences. They were either open, or restricted to the community—though many a guest stumbled into both. There were barriers around the workshops, walls around the drying area.

  As the community’s numbers thinned I began to see my crumbling brothers as a kind of ruins. Those for whom forgetfulness was the only reminder of life; the abandonment of a lifetime’s profession.

  Fr Abbot once decided to introduce an aperitif before our Thursday supper. Lunch was the main meal which, in honour of the Last Supper, was already enhanced by a glass of wine. The idea was to exchange the feastly quality of the day by replacing the wine at lunch with a small drink in the evening.

  The festive element was not as celebratory as you might think. Poor Br Cecil particularly struggled with this. In a seeming gesture of largesse, he would give his lunchtime glass (or distribute its contents in parts) to other brothers at the Refectory table. This was not strictly within the spirit of the celebration: to each a joy, shared by commonality. But by doing this he managed to avoid putting alcohol to his lips.

  Fr Abbot, not long after his election, noticed this. He called Br Cecil in for a long chat. At the next meeting of Chapter I noticed the absence of Br Cecil. When the abbot called us to order, he explained that Cecil was a reformed alcoholic. The Thursday festal enhancement was an ongoing torture for him. He did not want to draw attention to himself in this, yet he felt he could not, indeed must not, partake of the wine. He suffered the discomfort, as we all must, for the sake of the community.

  Fr Abbot also explained that Br Cecil had taken to subterfuge at mass: while he appeared to drink our Lord’s blood from the chalice he was, in fact, doing his level best to avoid wine coming into contact with his lips, let alone take some into his mouth.

  Here, Fr Abbot, said, was a case of the ear and the toe.1 First, the community’s priests were reminded that reception of holy communion was sufficient in one kind, solid or liquid. Was it not the blessing of the cup a sharing in Christ’s blood?2 No-one, he said, should be forced to take both. (As Guestmaster I was later to advise Coeliacs that the Precious Blood alone was indeed a full partaking of Holy Communion. We had never heard of gluten-free wafers.)

  So, for an experimental period, wine would be served as an optional aperitif at supper. We would take our places in the Refectory and the lector would be replaced by a monk who delivered a short talk. The abbot reasoned that a concentrated bit of intellectual input should accompany the wine. Delivery of the talk would be done by rotation. Some members of the community seemed unnerved that this may fall to them. At the end we would proceed with the meal.

  The experiment was not a success. The easy taking of wine during a meal was superseded by a self-conscious slurping, some brothers gulping, others slowly savouring each sip. After about a month the project was abandoned. All meals, until the sudden death of Cecil a couple of years later—a heart attack while digging up potatoes in the garden—were dry. A cruel irony, perhaps, was that wine with meals was reintroduced on the day of his funeral.

  One aspect of the accompaniment of aperitif—the short talk—remains with me. Fr Aidan was speaking. Like his sermons, much learning seemed to be concentrated into a short space. In the allotted fifteen minutes Fr Aidan spoke of the movement from the eremitic life to the coenobitic. It was, he said, tantamount to a removal of a singular temptation. Pachomius had effectively overseen the bringing together of solitaries into a community. As communities emerged there came the need for regulation: what has come to be known as a Rule.

  Men and women had long been on a solo journey—a life of denial in which they sought to deepen their awareness of their need of God. Some, such as the stylites, went to extremes. The most famous of these was, of course, Simon. His journey was both spiritually and physically stretching. The platform he began on was a mere four feet above the ground. In time it grew—Lord knows how, nor did Fr Aidan enlighten us—to sixty.

  St Basil thought the solitary life was fraught with temptations. Initially seeking salvation by prayer and repentance in isolation, without the distraction of human company, these hermits single-handedly sought to earn God’s loving forgiveness.

  But, as Fr Aidan pointed out, Basil saw the pitfalls. The idiorhythmic life could easily become one of self-obsession. The path to God was replaced by absorption with one’s own body, mind or spirit. So Basil prescribed communities. They grew to huge numbers, walled cities of men and women, seeking a common life. Not all were successful. Nor were all that holy.

  So the Rule came to provide a framework for behaviour. By the time it got to Benedict, perhaps the guiding light of monastic regulation, nearly all aspects of life inside and beyond the chapel came to have guidelines and instructions. And the Abbot is the guardian of the Rule.

  What happens when Fr Aidan dies? I will be alone. Does that invalidate my membership of the brotherhood of CSC? Who will oversee me? Are the boundaries of my life destined to be replaced by ruins, if not of the monastery buildings, but the ghosts of my associates? I am sure the Robed Buddhists will care for the monastery, whatever adaptations they consider necessary, but what is a monk’s life without fellowship? I must ensure some new kind of community replaces the one crumbling here in Care Home.

  At times I imagine myself a living ruin—the only remaining moving habit of CSC in the world. (That is not fair, of course. Most days we do get Fr Abbot into his for at least part of the day.) I am like an animated robot, the kind favoured by museums and country houses in the 1980s—of limited movement, but with a short introductory commentary which sought to bring the artifice ‘alive’.

  I recall an early philosophical conundrum th
at the Novice Master once used to whet our intellectual appetites for Thomas Aquinas. I know now that even then it was well-worn. If a tree falls over in a forest and nobody witnesses it, would the event be real if it were unknown? I think we were supposed to explore the limits or otherwise of objectivity. Certainly, if things continue as they are, I will see the fall of the oak that is Fr Abbot, and along with him, the forest that was the Community of Saint Candida. But what about me?

  1. A reference, in a somewhat distorted rendering, to the body metaphor used in 1 Corinthians 12.

  2. 1 Corinthians 10:16

  Tick-Tock

  It is the ticking of the clock I miss. Or clocks. One in the chapel, in the entrance lobby, the Chapter House and one in the Refectory. They must have come as a job lot, each unique but of similar age and construction.

  The clock had a gentle click that reminded us that, whatever our own desires, time was passing. Some guests found it oppressive, a needless disturbance of otherwise peaceful surroundings. But for me it had a cadence of wisdom, not so much Marvell’s ‘time’s wingèd chariot’ as Qoheleth’s:

  I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.1