The Rest Is Silence

by Kevin Scully

  I know my arrival at St Candida’s was dramatic—in some people’s eyes, at least—but it should be viewed a bit like death. (How pompous my writing can be when I try to make a serious point!) But, having stretched the simile, I shall continue. One of the important things to remember about someone when they die, be they monks or no, is that there is always much more to their lives than the circumstances leading up to their demise.

  Father Abbot once said this of Brother Alphege, one of the community, who, in his advancing years, had become spectacularly foul-mouthed and aggressive. In this he eclipsed forty earlier years of gentle, reflective service, especially in the garden and kitchen. His meals, said Father Abbot, were a delight to the eye and the palate. They reflected a deep appreciation of God’s gifts to us in nature, and how they can be combined and transformed into food. Alphege celebrated God in horticulture and cuisine. The brothers loved coming to his meals, perhaps too much so. But what was clear in Alphege’s cooking was not just skill, which was outstanding, but the love that accompanied it. How could we have known that he had bottled up so much anger and frustration with his brethren? In his active days contemplation provided the counterpoint to work and an outlet for hostility.

  Once a guest quizzed me about the seeming placidity of a monk at prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. He was concerned that the stillness was unnatural. I explained that it was the place where reassurance was neither necessarily sought nor extended: it was a place of oneness. Getting to that point was a challenge. Alphege had once built contemplation into all he did, active or passive. When he was unable to do things, a deep reservoir of resentments lavaed to the surface.

  I am not really in a place to judge this. Father Abbot used to say that while it was appropriate we spend time daily in self-examination—indeed, it was a vital part of the contemplative vocation—auto-prescription was unhelpful. A spiritual director, or soul friend for those who did not like such hierarchical terms, was necessary. Someone who had an outside view. We learned to make an examen at the end of the day. Its aim is to allow us to understand the events of our lives, to see how close to, or far from, God they have been.1 By doing this on a daily basis, there is less room for an accumulation of the unmediated good or bad. It is always placed in context. But in the ongoing life of a monk, it was not so much his relationship to himself that matters. It must be tested by his confessor, or in the daily life he has with his brothers. Relying on one’s own resources could be deceptive, if not dangerous.

  In my own case I moved from an almost rabid need for self-gratification to the discovery of satisfaction within the communal life of the monastery. It was a gradual journey for me, despite the jolting first step. Being found asleep—and hung-over on waking—in the community grounds was a turning point. The cider, the dope, the abusive sex—a thrilling shame always attached itself to the memory of the grunts of pain from Donna as I tried to take her for the last time—culminated in my accompanying a demented monk (no, that should be a monk with dementia) to a home in a puzzlingly busy part of London.

  Herein lies—if I may ruminate for a bit—the dilemma: the Christian life is one of living in the now, ‘in the moment’ as the spiritual directors’ fashion had it in the 1980s. To see our spiritual paths in retrospect, or to seek to project them into the future, is to leave the track. Walking is about one step at a time. And the prayerful way is to seek to be in that action. When Jesus warned us that we do not know the hour, he is warning of so much more.2

  Our lives are really a progression of immediate moments. It is the call of the contemplative to live in that time, while acknowledging its place in eternity. But while we have an awareness of eternity, we cannot be eternally aware. Thus we celebrate being in the present. The challenge of living in Care Home, I have come to realise, is bringing that awareness to a different, fractured context. So many of my co-residents are living in a different time and place—or so it would seem—to the one I am present in.

  The centre of the monastery is the chapel. It is both the heart and pacemaker of the community. It is where the brothers come together to regulate their common heartbeat. Prayers, devotions, corporate silence allow the routine busy-ness of our shared life to flourish.

  The care home does not have that intentionality, nor does it have a common place to exercise it. Even the room where the Eucharist is celebrated is used for a variety of purposes—staff training, film afternoons, funeral teas and our mass. What surrounds us is a focus on frailty. The reclusive call for the monastic becomes internal, personal and individual. We daily move from the brethren to the singular. But it is always a journey that has a return ticket. No wonder it is permanently unsettling.

  We are all, of course, in need of God’s love. But a monastery is a place where that need is openly acknowledged and seeks to build a communal life around it. Here it is inability, rather than need, that takes the upper hand. Some residents cannot wash themselves, move about independently, exercise proper thoughtfulness—not all of us, of course (there are some, like me, who are here for other reasons)—and that creates something of a falsely fragile world. I have no doubt that many residents would not be here if they possessed independence of faculty in mind or body.

  One of the local churches, St Matthew’s, is often open during the day. I sometimes pop over there for quiet prayer. I have learned to do so at times when I am least likely to encounter anyone there. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved and, because of its setting in a green expanse that is a disused graveyard, the church has a certain charm. The 1960s interior, which contrasts with the Georgian shell, is commanding with an enhanced brutalism—there is a lot of visual art—and shafts of angular light from clear windows that come together to give the space a reflection of the wideness of God’s mercy. It is blissfully free of stained glass in the nave. For all that, I can find it difficult to meditate there.

  It is not the building that is the problem. It is the journey—and Father Aidan being left alone, the attendant worry about him—along the colourful, smelly, littered, seemingly ever-changing streets with the young professionals, tourists and the fashionable amid the older white and newer Asian residents as they go about their businesses. It all reminds me of how far I have travelled: from my past; from the cloister; from community—to a singular life. The past and present somehow disturb the sought-for now.

  I tend to fare better when I am there for Sunday worship. But there are two problems: once again, my concern for Father Aidan, who becomes restive when I leave him for long and, no reflection on them for this, the noise involved in the gathering of St Matthew’s parishioners. It would be churlish in the extreme to expect these people who, by and large, seem a mixed, friendly and welcoming lot, to provide a monastic environment. But the chat, the rattling of plastic bags, the children running and calling out seems so foreign to me. What is attractive is the buoyant music and the oases of calm in a lively gathering. It is great to be part of a community, however diffuse, but it remains a long way from the quiet, reflective staple of my spiritual diet. So I tend to arrive as close as possible to the ringing of the bell which signals the commencement of the first hymn.

  Many people, priests among them, would admit on retreat that they felt either confronted or comforted by the monastic style of worship. For some it allows an essence, a kind of homeopathic release in miniature, of the spiritual quest. For others, for whom emotion and sensation are the leading stimuli—such people often refer to themselves as ‘charismatic’ but they are, God forgive me, often seemingly self-obsessed and dull—St Candida’s presented a dry monotony, lacking excitement. That is probably unfair to all our visitors.

  So I find myself on the receiving end of parochial religion. The parish model is obviously absorbing for the clergy and many members of the church but the constant running about, trying to alternately enthuse or placate, seemed to give little time for prolonged adoration. Watching the priests spread themselves about over coffee was deeply affecting. I have taken to leaving pretty sharply aft
er the end of the service.

  I never really get a chance to speak to Father Scully about this. He is efficient, breezing into Care Home, bring energy and (false?) cheer, says the mass with a combination of focus and vigour, but has an air of needing to rush on, if not to something better, to something else. He combines two parts of the law of inertia—he does not strike me as a body that tends to remain at rest.

  So much of monastic life, I have come to realise now that I have left the cloister, was about settlement. For me, and I suppose for many of my brothers, that was physical, captured in the grounds and buildings of St Candida’s. Yet the buildings, like we who lived in them, are transitory. Successive abbots would stress that in Chapter. Work was prayer and the maintenance of the gifts of the monastery we held in trust had only one end—to praise God.

  I suppose parish life is another form of that vocation. The faithful of St Matthew’s gather joyfully and noisily, even if sometimes painfully so to me. At the core is a beautiful building that tells a fascinating history. For me its pleasures unfold in solitary visits—its expanse, the light cascading on the parquet floors, the verdancy of the surrounding grounds which are home to the remains of eighty thousand people.

  Yet such visits are necessarily brief and rare. I do not like to leave Father Aidan for too long. If the surroundings of Care Home disorient me, a relatively resilient and aware individual, they can overwhelm Father Abbot. He has not only lost the beating heart of the chapel, the torso of the monastery, the limbs of the gardens and grounds, he has, it has to be admitted, slipped from possession of his mind. Watching his distress has been the biggest cross I have had to bear.

  1. The Examen is a spiritual practice, much as Columba describes it, first formulated by St Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

  2. ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.’ (Mark 13:32-33)

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  It is a startling, and not always a comforting, awareness that flows from an assessment of one’s work and style. I have often expressed the opinion that priests could benefit from the equivalent of a schools’ inspector, someone who can provide a form of external assessment. Brother Columba’s comments certainly provided that. I wonder what grade he would have given me?

  I have also often told colleagues that I draw delight from my visits to Care Home. Watching people reconnect, a momentary repair of damaged memories, providing some line to a world beyond the home, being with the residents as Christ makes himself present in our midst in the sacrament—these I have always counted as great stimuli for maintaining such work.

  Some of Br Columba’s comments draw me up. The bouncy jollity, the seeming rushing in and out—‘I know you’re busy, Father’—‘energy’, ‘(false?) cheer’, and ‘vigour’. Seeing the assessment in Columba’s own hand poses many questions: am I playing to the gallery? Is the liturgy some kind of armour I put on to avoid deeper engagement with people? Is ministry bluff, a mere delivery of set pieces delivered at regular times, avoiding a deeper connection with those I am called to serve?

  I do draw some solace from his comments not about me, but the church. Striving to keep it open, with the inevitable drawbacks of anti-social activity, is worth it. The number of people who take refuge, finding a quiet space, lighting candles, or even just sitting, are a testament to the value of taking the risk. As I get older myself, I find time alone in prayer before God more enlivening than much of the wider church’s agenda.

  The spectre of growth has stalked me for over twenty years. It seems, listening to bishops’ rattling their sabres on the subject from time to time, that some may think we relish failure. Failure, perhaps congenitally, has been with me for much of my life. But with God there is no failure. We grow in grace toward acceptance, as I have seen people grow in grace as they move towards the grave.

  Watching communities shrink is painful. But the risk is to dismiss or devalue, as Columba is on the verge of doing in relation to his own brotherhood, the faithful but now unfashionable witness of those who have gone before us. So much of the fruitfulness agenda is marked by sociology rather than theology, a drum I seem to bang at the risk of breaking its skin.

  Bethnal Green is ample evidence of the importance of marketing and change. When I arrived here all the pubs were pitching for the same diminishing market with the same tired strategies—football, karaoke, tribute acts. The transformation of pubs here has recognised incomers as their lifeblood and they have adapted, offering good food, a hip ambiance, craft beers. It is one of the few parts of the country where pubs are reopening.

  No doubt the moves at new-style churches are the same. They seem to plug into the zeitgeist (even if the music is retroschmaltz) and they do the job. The challenge is for people like me, who have moved from being the bright eyed boy to boring old fart, is where to go? The sad realisation is that St Matthew’s is like St Candida’s, and I am Brother Columba.

  Office Work—1

  One morning, sitting with Father Aidan, he broke from his usual distracted silence.

  ‘Have we done the morning office, Brother?’

  I had done mine privily in his room earlier. I usually join him in case he wants to pray but most mornings he is content to sit in his chair, office book unopened. At first I would recite the office for him but he did not seem to take notice, so I had taken to reading it quietly, hoping the silence in which I read it would suffice for the prayers on the page. Words read aloud had sometimes led to an assembly of distracting thoughts as Aidan made connections that had coherence for himself alone.

  ‘It is the feast of Saint Bartholomew, is it not?’

  ‘It is, Father.’

  ‘I do not recall our having said the Quicunque Vult at Morning Prayer.’

  I looked at him blankly.

  ‘The Quicunque Vult, more popularly, though incorrectly, known as the Athanasian Creed. It is recited on the majority of the Apostles’ feast days. I don’t recall this happening.’

  Father Abbot then set out to right whatever liturgical oversight he had determined by launching into the prayer or lecture, ‘Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled: without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.’ One, three, Almighty, incomprehensible, as is aforesaid—the entire list of qualities rightly to be held. He then sat in contented silence until:

  ‘Oh, no. That was before the monastery wasn’t it? The BCP. Ah, yes. Still, I am sure Saint Bartholomew wouldn’t mind.’

  What led to this connection? Living in a building where many of the residents have dementia is properly unnerving. Their mysterious thought processes can often derail one’s own. The shouted patronisation of some of the staff and visitors—is it some kind of defence mechanism?—can make it worse. Sometimes, when a new member of staff joins, I find myself among the ranks of the receiving end of these raised voices. Or maybe it is just an assumption that the would-be hearer is deaf.

  Sometimes I choose to play along, assuming the incapacities being projected on me. I regret doing so almost immediately. Being of sound mind cuts little grass here. The really clear headed people, I have found, tend not to socialise, even with each other. They (we?) tend to retreat into their rooms. One has no television or radio, as I do. (Father Aidan has a radio, sometimes tuned, no doubt through the best motives of one of the staff, to a Christian radio station. It is gall to me, so I turn it off.) Yet cutting oneself off only leads to a deeper isolation.

  Prayer is the cornerstone.1

  1. It would appear Columba left off his thoughts here. I find this enticing. Was he interrupted? Did the potentially vast subject daunt him? Had he nothing to say? I doubt it; he must have had so much experience to draw on. Or is it, as St Teresa of Avila tells us, pure gift in a depth of quiet. As Hamlet, said, ‘The rest is silence’. Maybe that is what Columba was pointing to. Though another jotting, which I have placed to follow this one, may give us an insig
ht into his reticence.

  Office Work—2

  There is perhaps an understandable assumption that monks, by virtue of their lifestyle and spiritual practices, are models of perfection. I suppose there are examples of that. Reading the greats like Teresa of Avila1 or Bernard of Clairvaux points in that direction. But accounts of their lives—at least, those that do not tilt towards hagiography—show these luminaries were, for the most part, very earthen vessels indeed.

  In CSC there were certainly some luminaries: Alphonse, whose learning was masked by a deep simplicity: never flustered, never put out by the menial or the manual tasks, but a man of profound wisdom; someone whose time in the chapel seemed to be pure repose. If one ventured in there for personal meditation and Alphonse was in his stall, prayer always seemed assured and calm. His death provoked outbursts of pettiness and squabbles—such was the corporate placidity that flowed from his presence.

  It should not—indeed, it did not—rely on individuals. The corporate discipline existed to allow, if not immediately, but in time, disruption. A renewed sense of identity would emerge: changed, seeking to reflect the new now of community life. That was, as successive abbots would remind us, the purpose of monastic life—to live in the present.

  So many of these reflections, penned as I fill in time here in Care Home, seem to drift off—dwelling on or recollecting lost time. Though no time is really ‘lost’; it passes. Drifting off, our Novice Master would warn us neophytes, was a way of avoiding the present. So much of present life for my fellow residents—I cannot call it a community—seems to be spending, filling (dare I say wasting?) time until the call that is both universal and unique in its circumstances.