So, I finished The Chosen last night and decided to walk down the valley to St. Godric's after breakfast. (St. Godric's is the monastery at the bottom of the valley, the monastery the two Seekers who stopped by a couple days ago are from. It sits on the lake into which my little stream eventually meanders.)
Breakfast was beans, toast, and a fried egg - a combination I picked up while traveling in England. After I cleaned up and took care of my plants (the tomatoes will be ready to go in the ground soon!) I packed my knapsack and headed down the valley. It's about a two hour hike at a leisurely pace and I made it in two and a half. The clouds were incredible this morning, so I brought my camera. But though excellent clouds can make or break a landscape, they're not terribly interesting in and of themselves. And this morning, for some reason or another, I just couldn't find a compelling vantage for a true landscape.
When I arrived the monks had finished prayer, breakfast, and their early chores. They were in the midst of their mid-morning classes (usually the more rigorous of their two formal sessions), but I suspected they were holding off the discussion of The Chosen till the less formal afternoon seminar. I strolled the grounds till lunchtime and then joined them in the dining hall.
Lunch with them is always a vegetable dish with bread and their own home brewed beer. Their specialty is a Belgian ale (very nice!) but they also brew seasonal and experimental beers. They bottle their own wine as well, but it's not quite on par with their obvious first love.
After lunch I helped with another round of chores and then joined them for their seminar on The Chosen. Father Joseph usually leads the seminars, but he was absent on business and one of the older monks was leading (they range in age from a very precocious 13 year old to a bright-eyed if no longer as sharp witted 87 year old) .
The discussion was very good. They are honest Seekers, these monks. They wouldn't be here if they weren't. Perhaps even couldn't be here. Our two hour session centered on the following statement by Danny Saunders:
"You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it."
It was a very good discussion.
Though I almost always stay for dinner (the dinners are incredible - not what you would expect in a monastery at all), the conversation had made me feel 'lonely in a crowd', so I left as soon after the discussion as I politely could.
Night is coming on.
The conversation from the afternoon lingers in my mind.
And the silence of the evening echoes more loudly than I have ever heard it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Ah,silence. I agree it can be a powerful communicator, but how do you make time for it amidst the responsibilities of wife, children, work, life...?
In my experience, silence is not chiefly a temporal phenomenon, something that could ever be put into a daytimer. Silence a way of being in the midst of any chaos. Silence is transtemporal.
Of course, cultivating this way of being is also a discipline. Any way of being requires discipline, but especially one so counter cultural. I think you would be amazed, however, at the overall impact of even five minutes of disciplined silence - silence of the mind as well as the body.
You'll need ten minutes overall, five minutes of preparation and five minutes of disciplined silence. Get out of bed ten minutes before you usually do. Arrive at work ten minutes early. Shut off the VCR, DVD, or TV for ten more minutes of the day. Find the minutes, they're there waiting for you.
Use five minutes to clear your mind, persistently chasing out any lingering thoughts. Then listen. Breathe it in. Encounter it. Live with it for only five minutes. Let it question you. Let it judge you. Accept its judgments.
Start tonight. Start tommorrow at th latest. The day after tommorrow is always too late.
Post a Comment