Adding Things Up

I had an uncle whose name I cannot recall – he was actually my mom’s uncle and he lived in New Orleans. I can ask my sister Mary and am sure she would remember his name. What I do remember about him is a gift that he had and I heard stories about him when I was growing up.
The gift had to do with counting numbers and doing so in a flash. He would sit in a bar in New Orleans and not far from the bar were railroad tracks. He would gather patrons around him and boast that he could walk to the tracks and as a freight train passed, he would be able to look at all the freight car numbers as the train moved by and count them without need of pen and paper. The bets were on and off marched the group to the tracks, where they waited for the next train. When the train came, everyone looked at my uncle as he stared at the passing numbers. When the caboose faded into the distance, they all marched to an area where the train always stopped and several counted the numbers, which must have been a painstaking task. They jotted down the sum on a piece of paper and asked my uncle the final number he came up with. He told them and they reportedly gasped as the number matched the one they had. The bets were collected and off they went back to the bar, perhaps waiting for the next train in the hope of recovering their losses. I do not think that train ever came.
My uncle could apparently “read” numbers and as the numbers lumbered by he “read” them up without the need to “carry over numbers” and the like. His brain worked like a calculator – it seemed to have a chip that most of us do not have or perhaps do not know how to access.
I like the story because it brings to mind the fact that we all have gifts. Some may be admittedly unusual and can be quite profitable if we know how to summon the wagers. But, for the most part, our gifts tend to be of the ordinary kind. Some folks have a gift for putting people at ease. They are simply accepting people, and others sense this and feel comfortable in their presence. Intimacies are more readily shared. I once know a bartender named Owen who worked at a place called “Jimmy’s” in Manhattan. His nickname was Father Owen the Confessor.
Others are gifted with a positive nature. You simply feel better in their presence. A positive nature can be like sunshine on a wet road. It dries what we can so easily slip on – making the walk a lot easier.
Mechanical know-how is another gift. I remember a man named Claude Zarang, from New Orleans, who had an uncanny gift for locating the problem in a malfunctioning car engine and fixing it with a smile and a very reasonable fee. He was known all over the city.
People write songs, or poetry, or a novel. Words come easy, at times with a catchy melody. Some folks can prepare a meal fit for a King. Others can make a dress fit for a Queen.
I recently read of a woman who spent most of her life in an iron lung. She was so loved by all who knew her. Her gift was her ability to move into the hearts of many people. She deeply missed when she died. Her gift was one of making inroads of love into the hearts of people even though her body was confined to a machine. The iron lung enabled her to breathe air. Her heart inhaled people and their stories.
Everyone has a gift. If you have trouble seeing the gift of someone, seek out one who loves him or her. They will tell you. And I will bet that you will make some wondrous discoveries. We can go near the tracks of life and do our addition. The sum of the gifted will always be the same.

Pentecost 2009
On Sunday, we will celebrate the feast of Pentecost. It is the feast of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and, by extension, us. As the story goes, tongues of fire appeared above the heads of the disciples and they were able to understand all the different languages that were being spoken in their midst and, by extension, all the languages of the world. The fire of God spoke. The fire spoke a Word of love, a Word of understanding, a Word of living with and through the differences of language and custom and time and place and seeing the heart of all of these through the fire of love.
Pentecost, this year, also happens to be my sixty-first birthday. Another step toward or perhaps into geezerhood.
Pentecost is a very heady theme, especially when there is a flame burning on top of it.
Tradition celebrates Pentecost as the birth of the church. Happy Birthday Church, Happy Birthday James. Light the candles. Let the flames burn and let them speak.
Hopefully, I can share with you what I hear.
I was born into the Catholic Church and have seen a lot of changes over the years. I was born into a loving family and have seen a lot of changes there, too. It has been an interesting ride. A Catholic ride with a wonderful family. My grandmother, Julia Rose Preto Behrens, was a Lutheran and she was with us all the years that I was home. Her husband, Henry, died when I was a baby. Gram lived in New Orleans and when Grandpa died she asked my dad if she could stay with us up in Brooklyn for a few weeks and he said sure and drove down to pick her up and she ended up staying with us for more than forty years. What a bright flame she was – I learned more about ecumenism from her than from all the books I ever read on that theme.
I guess I have looked for God all my life. In one way or another, that is nothing special. We all do. Everyone does it. And we do it every day. Even a hard boiled atheist is looking for something that makes sense and has lasting value. The search for God is like looking for the right door, in all its existential variations. A door to goodness, sense, salvation, happiness, freedom from pain and sorrow and, for some of us, the attempt to ease human life of whatever hurts.
I have come to learn, and to try and understand, that there are tongues of fire all over the place. Lots of extensions. The Spirit descended, and, like my grandmother, stayed for good. And, also like my grandmother, there are lasting and wondrously revealed blessings from so long a residence above us, within us, all around us. Everything has something lasting and everything is on fire with God’s love, God’s presence.
Recently, a friend of mine was telling me about one of the basic insights of physics. He was telling me that no matter is ever lost, no matter what its form. Matter and energy have a wondrous relationship. As they interplay with each other, things may look different, even seemingly lost – but in truth there is only a change in form or appearance. Nothing you see or are can be lost – it can only be transformed into something else. Creation was made for and is in the process of transformation. Admittedly, we love to hold onto things as best, as lasting as we can. But the fire at the heart of things has the last word, and that word is change.
When we were kids, we used to wait in the backyard till dusk, when the fireflies or lightning bugs would appear. The fading light of an August day would soon give rise to the night flights of hundreds of lightning bugs, their phosphorescent lights twinkling off and on, making the whole yard look like a big Christmas tree. And we would chase the bugs, catch a few, and place them in Mason jars and watch as tiny creatures glowed with light. Little did I know that I would be chasing after light my whole life, trying to capture its beauty.
I am older now and in this 61st year of my life on this Pentecost day, I am grateful for the life of the church and the life of my years. There have been so many lights, all along the way. I look back and see them, twinkling in the past – lights given off by people of different religious beliefs, people old and young, people soft and hard hearted, people who gave me reason to love, to have faith, and to catch something of the light that they were and are. For I believe that it all still burns in this night of life, for nothing is lost. It just shines in a different yet alive way.
And I wanted to catch so much of that light, and keep it in the jar of my heart, and tighten the lid and keep it. But that was not to be. I moved on and so did those who taught me love by how they lived. On this Pentecost day, I am grateful for each of them, these wondrous lights of my life. And they are in your life, too.
We celebrate the birthday of the church, when the Spirit came and decided to stay. Whether the Spirit resides in a jar, a human heart, a smile or a kind word, the light is the same and it is forever. I may have run to catch it in my youth. I am older now, and will perhaps blow out the candles of the cake, let the lights go, and know that they must, to make room for all that is yet to come.

Sacre Coeur

On Friday we celebrated the Feast of the Sacred Heart. It is a beautiful feast, celebrating as it does the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The affinity between the heart of God and the heart of the human is one that is known all over the world in many cultures and religious traditions. The heart has a language everyone knows. Variations in age, culture, or intelligence do not impede the directness of the heart’s meaning and what it holds for each of us. It is kind of like God’s Valentine. Everyone can open it.
Many years ago I went on a trip with Bill, friend of mine. We first went to Paris and spent a few days and then flew on to London. It was my first trip to Europe and I took a lot of photographs that I still have and occasionally linger over.
Paris was and is beautiful. We did the customary tours of the great sights. One tour was to a large church called Sacre Coeur. It is high above the city and there are a lot of steps leading from a lower area up to the church itself. I remember looking out over Paris at the many buildings, the Eiffel Tower, the thousands of rooftops. Sacre Coeur is a
“must see” place for tourists and I was glad I went. Yet I was thinking earlier this morning that I cannot remember in detail any conversations or people related things that took place while I was in Paris. Perhaps the reason was that it was a whirlwind stay and we were anxious to see the sights. There was not much time to get into the lives of other people.
London would prove to be quite different. We stayed with a family in the Muswell Hill area of London. Later I was to find out that Muswell Hill is where the Kinks grew up. Little bit if trivia there. Anyway, we stayed with a couple and their three teenage children. Mick and Susan Swift were a delightful couple. Their children – Heather, Michael and Martin, took off from their normal routines and showed us around London. We usually spent the evenings at their home, sitting and chatting about many things over a drink or two and countless cups of tea. I took photographs those evenings, using black and white high speed film and available light. I look at the pictures now and there is Heather pouring a cup of tea, smiling as she looked at me. Mick and Susan are sitting comfortably on a couch, listening intently to someone who must have been speaking. There is photo of Mick which I like a lot – sitting in a chair with such a beautiful, pensive look. And Michael and Martin I photographed as we rode horses one morning at a stable not far from where they lived.
It was many years later that my friend Bill, my traveling companion, told me that it must not have been easy for Mick and Susan to host us. They did not have much money and so the goodness they showed us was not easily affordable to them. Food was expensive and so was “petrol” or gasoline.
I remember going to bed one night and from my window I could see a lot of the rooftops of the nearby row houses. I was more at peace staying with a family and, looking back, cannot help but think about the places we saw and what I remember most of all while in London. I remember the voices of the Swift family and can even recall snatches of conversations. I suppose the photographs that I have help my memory but I tend to think that the evenings, when there was nowhere to go but into the lives of each other made some kind of lasting impression. I know for sure that we did not speak of the Sacred Heart, though we may have said a few things about the great shrine in Paris. But chances are the conversation would have moved on to other things, to family and human interests, to warm sincere hopes for goodness and life and, at the end of our stay, words of a safe trip home.
We all see many places in life and some are near. Some are far, and we need save for such trips. But no matter where we go, what will last from our journeys are those with whom we stayed and who shared their hearts with us. Andre Dubus has a delightful title of one of his short story collections and it is “Voices from the Moon.” Is it about love that seems far away? I cannot remember. What I remember this morning are the voices over drinks and tea in Muswell Hill, voices that are clear as if they were spoken yesterday. And I like to think that in God’s heart, maybe that is really true. The language of love is always clear, always near, no matter how long ago words of love were spoken.
I took pictures to make something last.
Mick and Susan gave much from the little they had, and that has lasted longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evening Barbecue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Carnival

 

 

 

 

At the Circus

Greg and Chris

A large tree on our property was struck by lightning a while back and the bolt was fatal. The tree died, perhaps instantly, I am not sure. I do not know much if anything about lightning bolts and mortal strikes to trees. The tree was enormous and was the last one on the right as you approach the main building on the long monastery entrance off Highway 212. Augustine told me this morning that two men would be coming today to remove the tree. He knew I would want to take pictures.
I met Greg first. He was standing with Augustine and they were gazing upward at Chris, who was slowly inching up to the upper level of the tree. He was fastened to the trunk with ropes and had managed to toss high above him some kind of roped device that hooked on a high limb which left another length of rope dangling within reach near Chris. Later I would see how he used these ropes to attach limbs before he cut them off the tree. When the limbs fell, the ropes would control where and how they fell. I suppose that the same would have been true if Chris slipped and fell, but he looked quite secure and sure footed up there. Chris called down for some something to drink and Greg ran over to their truck and retrieved a bottle of some kind of cold juice from a cooler, fastened it to a rope which was lowered by Chris, and up went the plastic bottle. Chris yelled down thanks. Greg kept an eye on him all the time as we chatted. Augustine smiled with admiration at the obviously expert maneuvers executed by Chris – how he swung and climbed, measured and cut, tied and let go of the severed limb, and then moved a bit and started all over again on another limb. “There must be experts for anything you can think of,” said Augustine.
Greg offered us something to drink and I was not thirsty right then. Later, Augustine went off and came back with some bottles of water. By then Greg was starting to cut the freshly downed limbs and placing the pieces into his truck. All the while, Chris swayed high above, sawing away at the limbs.
Several people passed by. Alex, our jack of all trades, came by in his truck and stopped and chatted. And Wayne, a policeman who used to work for us, also stopped as he drove through the gates and it was good to see him. Several retreatants walked by and they, too, paused to look up at the tree operation and talked a bit. Jackie is originally from the Buffalo, New York area and she lit up with glee when Augustine asked her if she was of Polish descent. He then noticed the look of wonder on my face and told me that a lot, like, a whole lot, of Polish people live in Buffalo. I never knew that. Then came Jim, our business manager, and Rick, our landscape man, and Beverly and another Beverly, and Johnny who works down at bonsai, and Eutropius, who is a brother monk and a plumber. And a guy whose name I cannot remember but who does something with our hay fields here paused, too, in his truck and I made a mental not as to how classic his face is and that I hope to take some pictures of him. Brother Mark stopped, too, as did Mike and Brother Laurin. All the while, Chris was busy above, putting his expertise to work.
Greg popped in and out of proximity through all of this. He had his camera and was taking pictures. He pointed his camera high at Chris and then low at us. He smiled as he took each picture and I told him we could easily exchange our photographs. He offered something to drink again.
Chris finished his “up there” work and shimmied down the tree. I walked over to him and introduced myself. He was friendly as can be. We chatted about the tree and lightning and he said that this area is especially prone to lightning bolts because there is a lot of granite in the ground and lightning is attracted to granite. I thought to myself that now I know why this is named Rockdale County. Now I know about the rocks. I have no idea as to the dales. I knew I was in the presence of lightning and tree experts this morning – maybe some day I will meet an expert of dales. Such things can happen. Especially here – it never ceases to amaze me as to the wealth of knowledge that passes through our gates and, in many instances, stays for a while in our retreat house. Jackie, mentioned above, is an artistic designer and offered to volunteer her time and talent in any way she could. She knows that we plan a major renovation of our barn and the surrounding buildings. She also mentioned how special this monastery has been for her, that she finds something here that she knows she won’t find anyplace else.
This Sunday is the feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Those words have, I suppose, several coordinates in terms of their placement in the mysteries of this life. The Eucharist is, of course, a main one. But then there is the Body if Christ as the church itself, and the living body and blood that is the people of God – you and me. We do not usually think of ourselves in such terms, especially in the ordinary moments of our lives when we are chatting with each other, maybe even looking heavenward at an expert woodsman and his swaying in the limbs of a tree. But to my way of thinking, and I take heart in knowing that it is the faith inspired thinking of the church as well, we as Christians encounter the Body and Blood of Jesus in its sacramental or ecclesial manifestations and then, upon leaving the church, we as well enter the living Body and Blood of Jesus as he is and truly lives in all that we are and do and see.
Augustine was right. Experts abound and come along when you need them or look for them. Some people are experts in writing some well thought through texts on the Eucharist and the presence of Jesus in and through that form. And there are those who are most at home in the encounter with Jesus in his liturgical context. It may be a stretch for them to ponder his presence in the high and low places of life. But I heard a man call to his friend for water, and the water soon rose high and quenched his thirst. And Augustine and Jackie delighted in finding a common ground in Polish kinship and ancestry. God’s presence is his common ground shared within us all. All the others who stopped by and gazed upward this morning did so with a kind of awe at Chris as he moved so high with a well learned grace.
I thought of God swaying through the at times seemingly futile limbs of our lives, putting his expertise into high gear. We look to the highest of places for a sign of God’s presence and he is here, in us, among us, moving with his uniquely expertise grace.
We take unto ourselves the Body and Blood of Jesus and he becomes us. That is an eternally bonding kinship. It is growing all the time, too. Growing more than our words can ever describe. It transcends our words even as we try our best to describe the mystery we share at such an intimate level that we are of the very mystery we are trying to say.
How friendly it all was this morning, and how so very ordinary.
I took pictures of everyone. Augustine smiled, said that he seems to be best captured in a lens when he is caught off-guard. Maybe God is something like that, as we attempt to wonder and word just how he is in life outside the sanctuaries of our lives. I think he swings high, pruning and trimming life, and offers water for those who thirst and is an expert at finding a way to get it there. He delivers as best he can in high and low places, but needs our bodies to make good the tangible presence of grace. Holiness is ordinary, high and low, off to the side.
People come here because they thirst for something. It is a place where kindness is like water, and gentleness is like rain. It is a place where all can hopefully find something good to drink, and learn to look and listen in this river of life, and offer living water to others. God can make of any human heart a place of refreshment. He is an expert at it. We go about our lives, be they high or low, and he is at work, fashioning our hearts, making them like his own.

The Horse Loggers

The Horse Loggers

Some months back when a severe storm hit the Conyers area, we lost a lot of large trees on our property, across Highway 212. We hired a team of horse loggers who came down from southwestern Virginia The horses were housed in our large hay barn and the team stayed here in our retreat house. The horses were magnificent animals – majestic in size and beauty. And the men and one woman who made up the logging team were such warm, friendly people. They were a pleasure to have here and to get to know.
I spent a lot of time at the work area, watching the horses drag out enormous pieces of fallen timber. They know just four or five commands and when, with a single, softly spoken word, the rider prompted the two-horse team, the response of the horses was immediate. They would stop, or turn, or back up at the prompting of one appropriate word. I was amazed at the strength of those horses. They dragged with seeming ease hundreds of pounds of fallen timber. When they reached their destination, which was a good distance from the site of the fallen trees, the timber was cut into large, perfectly formed pieces and neatly arranged in piles. I brought my camera along with me and took a lot of pictures and am happy with the way they came out. I know I will look at those photos often and remember with fondness how genuinely good those men and women were.
Brother Augustine drove me down on one visit to the work site and on the way back I mentioned to him that watching the team made me think a lot about God and life. He asked what I meant and I told him it was not clear to me yet but I have had a few days now to think about it. God made us and we are stewards of this vast earth. Theologians have written enough books about them that could fill millions of shelves. A lot of prayer and thought went into such writing. And a lot of trees went into the making of those books and the shelves that might hold them. In our leisurely moments during life, we give thought to divine mysteries like God and may wonder what he and we are all about.
As I watched the loggers at work, their concentration was obvious. Any thought of a pious nature was far from their minds. Their attention was absorbed by the clearing of wood, the handling of the horses, the cutting and arranging of the timber. Of course God was there, but we were about other things, and it was not the time or place to discuss Him. But I did later, with Augustine, and am doing so now, with you. Like stewards, we work in terms of service to this earth and, if such is our bent, we may find time to rest and talk of God.
Storms come through life. These are brought by the winds, or through the many inclement sorrows that tear at the human heart. We have no control over these painful events other than to wait, to possibly clear the damage, to speak a kind word or to hold someone close when death breaks a heart. I believe these activities and more are God’s being with us – clearing the damage we suffer through because we are human and nothing is perfect in this life. But if nothing is perfect, human kindness and our lived practice of it come quite close.
The loggers have left and we all miss them. If a storm comes through here again, the silver lining will be the return of some wonderful people and their magnificent horses.
There is a huge pile of freshly cut wood. I asked Augustine what we are going to do with all that wood and he told me that the plans are to build a chapel. The wood will rise and point heavenward and house human gatherings who will worship God in times of joy and sorrow. The chapel will shelter them from the heat or the sun and the buffeting of the winds. We will make a place for God there, the God I saw pass through a few days ago, though He did not say much as the loggers went about their work in service to Him. He spoke so softly as the loggers smiled and told me about their lives, their hopes, their work.

Salvation and the Tuna Fish Sandwich

Salvation and the Tuna Fish Sandwich

I have heard that roughly seventy-thousand people pass through our monastery every year. We are on the tourist maps and in religious sights-to-see brochures. I am the Guest Master of the retreat house, so I have an opportunity to meet many of those who grace our lives with their presence. I give orientations several times a week and am often called upon to give talks to groups who visit us. I enjoy my “job.” I am always meeting new people, people from all walks of life and from many varied places on the religious “map.” People, of course, are the living embodiment of the church. There are people who are liberal in their thinking and there are those who feel more comfortable in the conservative realm of devotion.
Last Saturday I was asked to give a brief talk to a group of visitors. It was a group of mentally and physically challenged adults. They were accompanied by their parents and chaperones. I met them in a large room beneath our church. Chairs were arranged in a large circle and when I walked into the room, I saw a chair which was reserved for me. Well, not everyone was able to use a chair. Several of the people were wheeled into place on their small motorized vehicles. And there was a man who wore a blue helmet and who leaned against a pillar. I noticed later that when he walked, he did so in fits and starts, shaking a lot before he was able to steady himself, and then took one small step at a time, and then began to shake again until he steadied himself and the shaking stopped. Then he would move forward again.
I sat down and began to speak, telling them about the life here, about what we are about. I shared with them a few things about myself – where I grew up, how it was that I came here, and then invited the group to ask questions. To my right there sat a young man who was wearing a baseball cap. He tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to him and he smiled and said “I want to live here. Wanna be a monk, maybe a priest. Gonna do it. Gonna, gonna do it do it do it” He stuttered, trying to get the words out. He smiled. I told him it just might work, that it would take some time. “Time, time, time,” he said, seeming to like the cadence or the sound of the words. Or maybe it was a way that he let things sink in, by a need to repeat important words over and over. He had a wonderful smile – I could feel him listening to me, taking in every word.
I had brought my camera and wanted to take some pictures, but the light in the room was poor. I thought to myself that I would meet the group later, when they went outside for lunch.
Later, I came back and it was raining, so the group was in the same room, having their lunch. The tables were rearranged so as to easily accommodate the movement and placement of those who had the wheelchairs and motorized vehicles. I let go of the idea about taking photographs. I sat near a couple and later found out that they were the parents of one of the older men. We chatted a bit – they were interesting, easy to chat with. We spoke about the church with its present challenges, opportunities and problems. They were well informed and extremely articulate in terms of church related – human related – issues. I was listening intently to what they were telling me about their journey re church and their son when suddenly I noticed movement before me, on the table. I looked down and a sandwich wrapped in cellophane paper glided across the table and stopped in front of me, guided by a hand. I looked up and their son beamed at me. He did not say anything, and nodded. “It’s for you,” his mom said.
The son moved off, back to his table. I let the sandwich be for the time being. Several minutes later, I spotted him across the hall, standing at his place, looking at me and smiling, his arm raised high and his hand making a pointing motion down. He wanted to make sure I had noticed the sandwich. I lifted it off the table, showed it to him, and he beamed and sat back down.
I went back later in the afternoon, hoping to see them again, but they had left earlier than had been originally planned. I suspect that the stormy weather had something to do with it. I hope that they come back again someday.
The monastery attracts as many questions as there are the people who ask them. Many of the questions hover around the presence of God – how to find him, how best to order one’s life so as to allow a space for God to make an appearance. I suppose it is assumed by many that we monks have some sort of a knowing edge when it comes to divine matters, to the revelation of the holy in this life. And so it is that for most of us, language strains to situate in a fairly convincing way the parameters of God in this life. We have monks here who speak about such things very well. And we have a lot of books, CDs and videos, audio tapes and the like which offer a huge array of God related topics.
Yet how well aware I am at this writing that there are other conversations, other ways of being in this world that are no less striking in their offerings of what God and salvation are all about. I sat with that group on Saturday, crafting as best I could some words about the holy and this life, well aware that I was speaking to many levels of comprehension and experience. And in the midst of some high flying words about whatever – grace or peace or the psalms, a tuna fish sandwich made its way, unbidden, right before me. And there it sat as I spoke. And then I saw the giver out of the corner of my eye, waving and hoping that I saw what he had given to me. He was a man who will never get things really “right” but who does what is of deepest “right.”
And the teetering man, the man in the blue helmet, who needs to take life a very careful step at a time lest he fall. All around him were those who would pick him up and help him get to where he needs to go. But it is best that he tries each step alone, for now. Yet he is never really alone. He is watched, loved, and will be helped to his feet when the time calls for it. As a gathering of believers, no matter where our place on the religious map, we fall. Being human is to risk each step, each teeter and shake that goes with it, trusting in the move forward, and being lifted up when we go down.
“Gonna, gonna, gonna be a priest.” I wanted to photograph him, to remember him. The light in the room was not bright enough, the light above. Yet how a different kind of light shown from below, through everyone in that room, people looking for God yet bearing him with such beauty. A priesthood we all are and share, as real as the priesthood that young man wants and is already. A priesthood of smiles from wounded bodies, a priesthood of a tuna fish sandwich and a reminder from afar that it is there in front of you and, of course, that there is more to come if you need it.
God may seem far, but he is near, kind of across the room, where he needs to be, yet giving us what we need and ready to come again and give more. He is waving.
All of life, all its beauty, sadness, teetering joy and stammering – God comes slowly, through it all. “It’s for you,” I was told. Words that say it all.
We are of God to each other. And what is revealed through human weakness is the most powerful of God’s many manifestations. It was just that way in the dimly lit room, where the light was brightest from below.

Faith and Writing

Faith and Writing

We recently hosted a retreat here on faith and writing. There were about thirty people who registered for the retreat. Carl McColman, who manages our Abbey Store and who has written several books, carried the weekend with gusto. On Saturday morning, I asked several of the monks and Linda Mitchell to serve on a panel discussion on their love for writing and spirituality. Linda serves with us as a spiritual director. Father Anthony, Brothers Elias and Mark, me and Carl rounded out the panel. It would turn out to be the part of the weekend most liked by the retreatants. Many of them spoke of how much they enjoyed hearing about how and why we write. As the panelists each took turns talking about their writing journeys, I watched the expressions on the faces of the retreatants. I was delighted to see smiles of interest, delight, curiosity. I am very happy with the way the weekend “worked.” In addition to the retreat, many other events were taking place in the retreat house, especially on Sunday. Our Lay Cistercians were here as well as a group from a parish being given a tour of the monastery. And, to cap it all off, a friend of mine came and gave a concert in our Crypt Chapel. His name is Chuck Henderson and he is a folk singer and a recording artist. He came down from South Carolina with his guitar and harmonica and played and sang for an hour. He is good. Like, really good. He has composed songs about such beautiful experiences in his life, people and events that have come his way and which he put to words and music – a wondrously rich transformation. I did regret that there were not more people at the concert – but Chuck had called earlier in the week and I spread the word as best I could but it turned out fine. He seemed genuinely pleased to sing and play and it was easy to tell that those there realized that they were listening to a gifted musician as well as a sensitively attuned heart to the ways of God in this life. He sang of his grandma and his love for her. He shared a beautiful song about two homeless and wandering people, and a song about salvation and a stone. He finds his inspiration in what touches his heart and the melodies and lyrics pour out from that place.
All this took place last weekend. And, this weekend, we celebrated the Body and Blood of the Lord. There will be a Serenity retreat, which will as well be a full house, but there will be no troubadour and no panel discussions. But it will “work” just as well.
The sound of Chuck’s voice is still fresh in my mind, as are his words, and what he has seen in life and put to music. And I can still see the faces of those on the writing retreat – some letters have already come in from those who were here, letters that brim with words of gratitude and avowals to put pens to paper and fingers to keyboards. And, there may be a person or two who may have been inspired to sing and play guitar. I watched Anne Sullivan, who works in our retreat house and who sat in front of me as Chuck played. She has told me much about her life, and it has been a good, loving life, and I think if Chuck got to know her, he would raise her life even more to a melody, taking the rich places of her life and crafting some lovely notes and words.
During the retreat, on Saturday afternoon, we showed a DVD of the writer Anne Lamott. I had never seen it before, though I have corresponded with Anne over the years. She is a wonderful writer and a delightful person. But that is another story, too good, perhaps, to relegate to a few sentences here. Anyway, to my dismay, the DVD projector was not working properly. There was a “lag” as the picture played on the screen – it was like looking at a rapid slide show instead of a smoothly moving film. The audio worked fine, as did the movie as it played on the small computer screen. But something was lost in the transmission from the computer to the big screen. The retreatants did not seem to mind. They were able to fill in the gaps, listen to the DVD and watch the staccato-like images on the screen. It “worked” even though it sort of limped along in fits and starts. But the audio was as smooth as can be.
Like any weekend, or any day in life, that particular weekend was an interplay of highs and lows, misfires, adaptations, wondrous revelations spoken, sung, written, harmonized, strummed, jotted down. And I suppose that there was experienced some level of anxiety as some the retreatrants wrestled with how to better express their rich interior landscapes through words. And I found myself wishing that more folks had come to the banquet of the music of Chuck Henderson. And I wish the DVD player had perfect synchronization between the voice and the image.
The same might be said of this weekend, this feast of the Body and Blood of Our Lord. For it is a feast of this banquet of life, a setting aside of a day when we remember the gift of Jesus to his followers in the very offering of his body in the Eucharist.
Eucharist is best translated as “thanksgiving.” It seems strange. Like something is lost in the translation, Such a generous, all encompassing word settles on the familiar substance of bread and wine. (Another theme, incidentally, that Chuck put to music and rhyme). But it settles and then moves, expands, finds its proper place in the farthest reaches of the universe and the deepest recesses in the human heart.
Anne was beautiful to watch as Chuck sang. I wondered if she was thinking with love about her grandmother, about growing up in Michigan, about the hard and good times in her life, and finding in her heart as she did so a gratitude. As if the staccato like memories of her life were given a graced cohesion and fluidity with the tender words and cadence of Chuck’s voice and guitar. I like to think so.
Life is a daily banquet and everyone is always invited. It seems that few take the interest to ponder where all this came from, and how rich and vast it is. But that is okay. The world is a symphony of God’s love, and we had here a gathering who wanted to write, and listen, and who have now gone back to their lives – their work, their marriages, their loves with all that these offer in their joys and sorrows. A small panel shared how to find the gold in such things, and put it to paper. And then a man sang with all his heart, and even more was given us through the beauty of song, words written on the air and breathed into hearts, making the fits and starts of human life a lovely song.
As he left, Chuck gave me a hug and said he wanted to come again and sing. And that made me so happy. I will write to him in gratitude for what he gave, and for what he will give when he comes again. And at Eucharist later this morning, I will remember those who write and sing, raising something of this Body of the Lord to a visible and audible expression. Out of the fits and starts of this seemingly cranky machine of life, artists go for the gold in the seemingly misfiring engines of our lives, and make them purr and run and shine. It is always that way. But we need words and song to better see it, hear it, love it.

The Bear
His name was John, but everyone knew him as “The Bear.” The nickname had nothing to do with his personality. It had to do with his low, gravelly voice and his short stocky frame. He was one of five or six men who hung out in a small Italian grocery store across the street from a church where I served. I stopped in nearly every morning for a cup of coffee and was greeted by a chorus of “Hi, Father!” from the rear of the small shop. The Bear could always be found leaning against the counter, with a cup of coffee in his hand. Every morning he asked how I was, and what was new, and if I liked the Pope. As the days stretched into weeks and then years, the Bear became a living part of my mornings. I developed a deep affection for him and I suppose never really thought about it all that much, until one afternoon when I received a all from Matt, the owner of the store, who told me that the Bear had died. He was crying on the phone and had closed the store and gone home, which is where he called me from. He gave me what details he knew, that the Bear had suffered a heart attack and that this family wanted me to say the funeral Mass.
I never thought to ask the Bear about his family. I realized that I knew little about his life other than how friendly he was and genuinely funny.
At the wake, I met his sister and found out that John, as they knew and loved him, lived with her and her husband and their children uptown in a very nice house. She told me that he loved children, had never married, and that their children brought him so much joy. He lavished them from the time they were very little with gifts and tales of his own youth. Looking around the room, I spotted the children, now young adults, and their loss and grief were deep and obvious.
At the funeral, I started to choke up while speaking of him. I did not realize until I had lost him how much a part of my life he had become, how his goodness and simplicity were something that lived in me far more deeply than I realized. His capacity for being good was as natural and as deeply touching as any friendship that I had ever known.
His buddies from the store stayed in the rear of the church, except for Matt, who sat behind the family. I could not help but see the similarity between the church and the store as regards the position they took. Always in the rear, out of the way, on a friendly kind of fringe.
Late that afternoon, hours after the cemetery service, I was driving back to the rectory and drove over the train tracks that ran right next to the little grocery store. Stopping before I crossed the tracks, I looked to my left and saw a man standing down a ways, his head bowed and crying, his face buried in a handkerchief. He never saw me, and shaking his head, turned and walked into the rear door of the grocery, where Matt and the others were gathered, mourning the Bear. I will never forget the sight of that man crying.
It was Abraham Joshua Heschel who wrote that “truth is buried in the earth.” He meant that truth is of being itself, that God is in us and of us. We do not have to go digging all that far, or all that deep.
I saw such a sublime truth that day, in that man who loved and lost a friend, a good friend. The Bear never knew what he left behind, never knew how far his goodness entered the hearts of other people. He would have laughed and scoffed if he had been told that. And then asked me quickly, once again, how I liked the Pope.
How good life is.
How wondrous are those who live that goodness, and in so doing help us to love, and to cry by the railroad tracks only to return to the company of friends, a gathering of the gifted.

Is There Coffee in Heaven?

Recently, I read an article in a newspaper about a place called the Southbury Training School. The school is in Danbury, Connecticut and it is home to about five hundred men who are mentally challenged. It has been in existence for a long time and many of the men have lived there most of their lives. A small group is bussed every morning to a rest area on Interstate 84, where their job is to keep it clean. They remove the garbage, clean the bathrooms, polish the floors.
One man’s name is Bobby. He loves coffee and always carries a plastic cup with him, attached by a string to his belt. One day, while the men were being driven back to the school, their conversation revolved around a cemetery that the van passed. For a little while, the men wondered aloud where would they go after death, and would anyone remember them, and would there be coffee up there. It was Bobby who asked the last question about the coffee and when he did he was promptly told to shut up by the others. Their attention span is very brief, and Bobby did not seem to mind the rebuff. He found immediate delight in the raising of his plastic coffee cup to his lips, gazing out the window as he took a gulp.
Anthony worries about death, since several friends of his have died. They were life-time friends – men he lived with ever since he came to the school fifty years ago. On his small refrigerator he has taped their pictures and obituary notices. He hopes that someone takes care of him when he is dying and has left a note to that effect on the same refrigerator door.
It is a very small world, that school, and it is a world that reveals a facet of poverty. It is a world that offers windows through which we can glimpse the grace of God.
The men are well cared for and they also care for each other. Their poverty is not one of lack of income. It is, rather, a poverty of roads that they could have taken if they were born normal. Their choices were severely limited by mental illness. They could never live out the kind of dreams that come to so many others, like those who pass through the rest area every day. Yet they keep the place clean and the grass mowed.
The gospels often portray Jesus as speaking of things that are hidden and secret. Jesus speaks in this way and his disciples do not understand. They cannot grasp what he is saying and are afraid to ask. Jesus does not clarify things for them. Life moves on and they stay with him. They trust him enough to stay, even though they are afraid and do not understand.
Our lives are not much different. Beneath the wealth of our words sleeps wonder, and every now and then it awakens and beckons us to look about at the passing beauty that is life and those places where something of God might be more clearly seen. Maybe some day, one of you will enter a rest area on Interstate 84 and will see a man there, dressed in a yellow work vest. His name is Bobby – buy him a cup of hot coffee, a taste for him of heaven on earth and an image for us of God in this world.

The Little Girls at the Carnival


There was a carnival in town and I watched from the sidelines as Carmelita the Clown spoke to a small group of children. The group stood in a short line. The boys and girls waited their turn for Carmelita to speak to them individually. Two little girls watched and waited. They had their hands folded, as if in a prayer or expectant anticipation. They listened carefully to what Carmelita was saying to the children ahead of them. I suppose that they wanted to say the right things when their turn came. The look on their faces was beautiful – they both smiled in wonder and in awe at the woman who played so well the role of a caring and loving clown. Carmelita was very kind and patient with each child as she or he responded to the questions that Carmelita asked them. The questions were very simple – where they were from, what their favorite colors were, did they like being at the carnival.
All around the group, for as far as I could see, were the delights of the small-town carnival. Big and small rides swirled in the distance. A Ferris Wheel rose and turned majestically in the late afternoon sky. All colors and shapes of bright neon lights adorned the rides and the chance and food booths. The walkways everywhere were lined with colored posters of fairy-tale lore – dragons, princesses and princes, lions and bears, palaces and distant planets. The posters enshrined the doorways and walls of the rides, as well as the food and game chance booths and “shooting galleries” with their moving plastic ducks and water guns.
Directly behind the two little girls as they stared entranced at Carmelita was a large work of art. They could have touched it; it was that close to them. It was a palace that rose to the sky, its turrets reaching to the clouds. On the turrets there were men and women, dressed in their medieval finery, waving and smiling, as if they could really see Carmelita and the wonders she was working with the hearts of the children. But of course it was all make believe and the only things that moved were the line and the smiles and eyes of the two little girls. Their hands stayed folded.
“Life is a Carnival,” or so goes the title of the song by the Band. And I suppose that it is, for young and old alike. Our ways get more expensive and fantastic as we get older. The stuff of make-believe gives way to what is real and what we can buy or invest in. We learn to seek out midways near and far, lined with all that life can bring, and we of course hope to get something good for free, be it a stuffed bear in our youth or a later lottery winning. .
But every now and then, someone can and should make us open our eyes in wonder. And like those two children, the looming promises of dreams may rise within our reach, but we are so absorbed in what is right before us that we pay it no mind. For someone is then speaking and our hearts are moved, we smile, and our eyes open wide. Perhaps it is when the meaning of life reveals itself to us, and we are stopped dead in our tracks with the delight of it all, and realize that it was everywhere, all around us and within us, awaiting the right time to speak. It is that close to us. We can touch it.

Rainbows


Not long ago, we had a wonderful evening here at the monastery. We shared a meal with a gathering of long-time friends of our monastic community. Our Abbot, Francis Michael, wanted to express his gratitude to those who came, to thank them for their love and support. He spoke warmly about how much the community values their friendship and presence. I sat at a table and listened to Francis Michael as he spoke and looked about at the people at the other tables. I was asked to take pictures, and I got up a few times, taking some pictures. They came out well – I think I captured as best I could the kind and receptive expressions on the faces of those who listened to him. After one such stroll around the room, I returned to my place and noticed a strange light to my right and when I looked that way, I noticed a slight opening in a large curtain. Through the opening I saw the light – it was a brilliant blend of oranges and reds, purples and golds of the setting sun. I quietly excused myself and went outside to the cloister area and that was when I saw it. A gorgeous rainbow arched across the sky, seeming to begin or end in our lake area and stretching with an endless beauty toward our abbey church steeple. I took a few pictures and then headed back inside and returned to my place. Our night prayers were to begin in just a few minutes, and I knew I would go to them with a sense of gratitude for the evening. I also felt an excitement for having been able to photograph a rainbow.
It is a safe bet that every person who has ever lived has been enthralled by rainbows. The rainbow enjoys a prominent place in folklore, mythology, in religious texts. It is a rainbow that God sends to let Noah know that the deluge was over and that his wandering on the flooded earth would come to an end. It is a rainbow that some have followed, hoping to find at its end a pot of gold. It is a rainbow that arches over the Emerald City when Dorothy sees it for the first time after a long journey in the classic tale “The Wizard of Oz.” Perhaps a common theme beneath such variations is that despite all the turmoil of life and amidst all its sorrow, something beautiful comes and we look up and take the hope that it offers – that God is leading us all somewhere. And every now and then he sends a sign. And so it is that we take heart in whatever comes that may promise something good. We gladly follow a yellow brick road, or the sight of land, or look real carefully for that pot of gold.
Rainbows are high and elusive. There is a song about the seeking of lasting good in this life being like chasing rainbows. Rainbows recede as we move toward them. And they do not last very long. They exist through a prism like crystallization of moisture and sun, or rain and light. When the sun shines through the rain, a rainbow appears.
We often look to brighten the rain of our lives through whatever light we can bring to those darker times, but we are not too adept at creating our own rainbows. We do not have that kind of artistry.
The Incarnation is the Word made flesh, the belief that something of God not only shown through a man but in fact lived through him. People all over the world have looked heavenward since the beginning of time for a sign of divine life or activity. The rainbow is one of many such portents or omens of God’s presence and artistry. The Incarnation brings the artistry of God very close to earth. A light shone among us, and it still shines. It shines in a special yet ordinary way.
I was happy when I walked back to the table that night, with my camera and the picture of the rainbow. I showed it to Jim, our business manager, and he smiled and said “All we need to find now is that pot of gold.” I looked about the room at the small gathering of those who were still absorbing the words of gratitude from Francis Michael. I saw smiles and expectancy on their faces, a thankfulness for his words and, presumably, for being a part of our monastic life.
I looked again at the small opening in the curtain but it was dark and the light was gone. And I am sure that the rainbow was no longer there, high in the sky. But I looked about at what remains of God’s presence in this world, right here in our monastery, in the lives of those in the room that night and in every person who comes to this place.
Later that night, it started to rain. I came up here to this third floor room where I am now, where I write. There was a lot of water on the floor and when I looked up at the ceiling, I saw the leak and the dripping of water. I called Augustine right away – he is familiar with the trouble spots in our many walls and ceilings, and he came up right away. He said it could be easily repaired. I asked him where the water came from since I knew that above this ceiling is an open space and he smiled and said, “You never know with the rain. It has its own way of moving through any crack it can find.”
And you never really know with God. The Incarnation is like a tiny opening through which God came to us, through the Yes of a young woman whose very body carried the Light of the world. And when we extinguished that Light through our own blindness, the Light became even more, and became a living part of Everyone. And it shines and shines, through what we know to be of love and hope and goodness. God finds a way to seep through the openings in our hearts. It cannot be fixed or stopped or rerouted. In time, the whole world will shine with Eternal Light. It will be like a rainbow coming to the ground, laying down a path for a path for everyone, the gold of God’s love within easy rich, his Light dancing at their feet.

Dust

Dust

During my summer months when I was in college I worked at a large brewery in Newark, New Jersey. It took me a while to get used to the various jobs I was assigned but I soon got used to the routines. In my younger days, variations were easier to deal with. I guess we all stretch more easily in our younger years. I never knew what job I would be given on any given day. Sometimes I drove and delivered beer, other times I worked on the assembly lines and other times I mopped the large floors in the enormous warehouse.

There was a large silo near the shack where we would wait to get our job assignments. It was used to store the hops that went into the brewing of the beer. It was a very tall structure and made out of concrete. When I arrived at work one morning there was a crowd gathered at the silo and everyone was looking up. I parked my car and joined the group and when I looked up I saw a huge hole in the silo. It was about ten feet in diameter. Twisted pieces of iron stuck out from the edges of the hole and at our feet were small pieces of concrete and a lot of dust. During the night, a spark had ignited the very fine dust in the silo and an explosion ensued as the result of spontaneous combustion. I recalled doing such experiments in high school with some flour in a cardboard box but had no idea of the power that was latent in a swirl of powder and an untimely spark. No one was hurt in the blast and it was not too long before the hole was repaired and that things turned to normal.

I do not know of anything more common and perhaps mundane than dust. We move it or brush it from one place to another and dispose of it as best we can. As tiny as it is and as innocuous as it may look, dust can wreak havoc on any fine instrument – be it a camera, a computer or the human lung. And, in the scenario of the damaged silo, a tiny spark can wreak havoc when it hits a cloud of dust.

Small things can have enormous ramifications. Negatively, a word of gossip or slander can cause a gaping hole in any human life. Rumors can, like do much dust, fill the air and an insensitive comment is all that is needed to blast away one’s good name. On a more positive note, human kindness swirls around us like so many flecks of gold. Without the meaning that faith provides for human life, the deeds are yet good, as good as gold. But with the spark of faith, life bursts with a sense of purpose that is as healing as it is spontaneous. Faith can blow wide open a window to our world. We see things and people differently. And we surely see the seemingly small in the light afforded through the window of faith.

Life admittedly can wear us down. Our lives can border on the tedious, the mundane, and the achingly routine.

I must have passed that long ago silo hundreds of times. I never saw the dust and had no idea what power it possessed. I have lived hundreds and hundreds of days since my youth, and have seen ordinary lives transformed though the gift of faith. It was as if some people sensed the gold in their lives and asked God for a match. The gold was always there, swirling away in all those ordinary days, and then it caught fire. It was beautiful.

Now that I think about it, people did take notice, and maybe some of them looked heavenward, asking for a light. .

The Man in the Car

The Man in the Car

I drove my brother Peter to the grocery store in a town very far from here. He wanted to buy something but I cannot remember what it was that he wanted to buy. I remember that it was a very hot summer day. I waited in the car while Peter went inside the store. There was a man sitting in a car parked next to mine and he had the door open and was reading a Bible. I could see colored ribbons in the binding of the book and tabs that marked different books and chapters of his Bible. It was a worn, well read looking book. The man was old and did not seem to mind the heat as he read. He did seem to notice me as he was very absorbed in whatever it was he was reading. And I wondered what chapter, what verse he was reading. I must have been there about fifteen or so minutes and then Peter came back to the car with the bag of goods that he bought and we headed off back home. The man was still reading as I pulled out of the parking space.

Religious words, the kind that the man was reading that day, have a primacy in all religious traditions. As varied as they are, as contradictory as they are, as resistant to a commonly share interpretation as they are and will always be, we bow our heads and read them, ponder them, trying to discern and remember what it is that God is telling us about this world. That old man left one world and entered another as he was sitting there reading his Bible. He did not notice me, or the heat of the day, or the other cars and people who passed that day, entering and leaving the store. His eyes moved from word to word. But eventually, there came a time when he would close the book, close his car door, start his engine and drive out of the parking lot and head back home, hopefully driving with care all the way.

Recently, a guest here at our retreat house asked me what I write about and I told her “simple things.” I am not a theologian or a spiritual writer of any depth, or at least I do not feel that way. I look about me at things that I see, things that move me and make me think, and I like to write about them. But now, thinking about what was asked me, I can share something with you that occurred to me since she asked.

I guess I have thought about what she asked me, about what it is that I write about.

We all move in and out of different worlds every day of our lives. We drive through them, may park for a while and look about us, and then move on. Occasionally, we may rest for a while and read some sacred words so as to better place us and give some sense to where we are parked. But then we must close the book and move back into the world – the very world we were just reading about. It is a world that requires driving with care, choosing carefully the ways we move, lest we get lost or have a collision. In my writing, or at least a lot of it, I play off that sense of moving through the world with not thinking too much about it and how that is where life unfolds, the kind of life that we try to hold close with sacred words and our eyes that scan a page and hearts that ponder religious meaning.. So much happens to each of us in life on our respective roads. We do not often have time to rest, to read, and to try and figure out where we have come from and where we are going.

We have to move on, heading home. To my way of thinking, the best religious writing helps us see that Providence, the loving care of God, has much to do with moving the world along as we travel its roads and mysteries. The love of God is a real, loving, tangible thing. It is a living thing. That old man may have thought, as he closed his Bible, that he was driving onto a yet to be redeemed highway, a road that his reading might better map. I hope he made the connection between the good that he read and the good of the miles, the heat of the day, and a man he may have noticed watching him, and now writing about him, admiring his need to find something of God in his Bible and on his odometer. Simple things, things that move and live in and through mystery, with colored ribbons, traffic lights and turn signals. Things of God and an old man and a summer’s day.

Judith

Her name is Judith and she was a student of mine. She was in her seventies and sat in the front seat every class. She was a Romanian Jewess. I became very fond of her. She would take notes each class. She was almost childlike in the joy she took in being able to relate philosophical themes to her own previous reading and experience.

As I grew to know her, she made my heart dwell on all that is good and beautiful in life.

I noticed the numbers on her arm one evening and immediately knew what the faded blue ink meant, though I did not say anything.

She asked me to dinner to her home one night. The evening started with the usual introductory light conversation.

She saw me looking at her arm.

She said, "I know you know."

And I said, "Yes."

And she spoke. She was sent to a Nazi concentration camp as a teenager. Already married, she lost her husband and her entire family. They were all gassed. All that she loved, all that she knew, all that was hers, were taken from her.

She cared not about the existence of a God, she said, and did not say this with a trace of anger or bitterness. It was more like, "Well, if he somehow is, all well and good, but history has made me dwell on other things." I felt a strange but disconcerting peace with her as she said that. Something deep, very deep, in me shifted.

We shared wine. She filled my glass as she spoke. And I listened deeply.

She was a living reminder of unspeakable cruelty and horror. She had lived through hell. And yet, remarkably, she impressed me as living a very kind and loving life, a day to day existence, not worrying about what might happen the next day or the next hour. Something about her was so keenly attuned to the present that she drew you into the singular and passing moment that was to be shared and savored. I think she learned through her suffering that whatever is of goodness in life is rare, is to be shared, and is not to be questioned. Indeed, the sense I had from her was that goodness must be shared. There was an imperative quality to her goodness. It just "is" and is good - but you must have some!

I felt a holiness to her.

I think of her every Easter season.

Consider, Jesus said, the lilies of the field, and how they neither toil, nor spin, and yet have more beauty than all the treasures of Solomon. Consider, he said, the birds of the air, who are cared for by God, and who do not want.

Who cared for her, and for all that she cherished and lost? Where were You, God?

May I consider Judith this day, and say that she knows something of eternal life? She lives from a deep reverence for so many things. I have a sense of violating her very being should I try and find something of You in her. I think she deserves to accuse You of abandoning her. Your God no longer informs her horizon. Yet, I must be honest with myself, in that she imparted to me something of God's mystery. I hope that she would grant me that, and not be offended.

She gave me a bowl of soup that night, to take with me and have before going to bed, because, she said, the night was cold. But I left her home with such a feeling of warmth, I cannot remember the cold at all.

I just remember a woman who endured suffering and gave up on You. Yet if You decide to show something of Yourself to her, that will be fine with her. You will be welcome at her table. Meanwhile, she is busy about her life, imparting to others no message other than her goodness and warmth. I like to think that You entered her life long ago, though I could never have told her that. She was too busy with the present moment, sharing her wine, her wisdom, her soup, her very life.

Perhaps many things we call religious are in truth a sacrilege, and many things that we discard as profane are in fact on fire with grace. Or, hopefully, grace is, as Bernanos said, everywhere and we have no language for that. Soup can grow cold as words try and fathom such things. A night can lose its enchantment if the source of it all is probed too deeply.

I hope that the language of God has something to do with dinners, with compassion, with warm soups and people who in their anger reject You and yet become You.

I do not think that it really matters what she may or may not know about You. You have already come to her, and given her your best. I think that I ate my soup in silence that night, after I got home, knowing that Judith touched my heart so deeply. Did You speak through her? And You never used words? Just soup, given to me by a woman who survived fire and hatred. A woman who so long ago abandoned any hope for You, and yet who fed me, wanted me to be warm. And who is still kind. She had and has every right to hate. She had and has every right to curse You. She had every right to curse me and to curse all who profess to know You. Yet - what else can I say - she was and is a grace and a power, a woman brimming with life and goodness. She was crucified and yet loves.

I can only pray to be like her and to learn from her, and to hope that if You are still a Stranger to us who profess your name, I took some soup from You on a cold winter's night.

The Holy Land

A letter arrived a week ago from the Holy Land. A friend of mine was there for two weeks, her first visit there, and she wrote to me from Jerusalem. She wrote with such joy and gratitude, being in the same place where Jesus was. She wrote in ecstasy and I had the impression that she could not find words adequate enough to convey the sense of awe and reverence that overwhelmed her during her stay.

I have known Jean for more than thirty years. We have shared many good times over the years and I have especially fond memories of dinners at her home, with her husband Carl and their daughter and four sons. I was assigned to their parish in 1976 and they welcomed me into their lives. Jean loves candles. Whenever I came to their house for dinner, she would arrange candles on the table and I remember watching them burn their beauty as we chatted about so many things, over shared food and wine. The lights from those candles have long moved somewhere else, for I know that light travels and, somehow, it never really goes out, even though the wicks die and the wax burns away. But the light is born, and moves on and on, carrying with it words and memories, as far as the most distant star.

I believe in such things, even though I do not think about them all the time. But every now and then I read something that inspires me to wonder about this mystery of life, with all its wonders, and how close something is to each of us that is extraordinary and within our grasp to hold. Life – all of life – is a gift from God, kind of like an eternal candle that he sent from far away, and when we share love and memories, food and wine with each other, there are eternal dimensions to it. A day may seem done, as we turn out the lights above us or on our tables, but something has happened with each sunset. Something new has been born and has begun its travel, its growth, into and through the cosmos that is all about us and within us.

Easter is still a fresh memory. As I write this, I think about the readings that have taken place in our church the last few weeks. Many of the Biblical readings have to do with the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. They are astonishing in their import. He appears many times, and at first is unrecognized by those who knew him. He eats with his disciples, speaks with them, walks with them, stays with them. He then allows them to see what he is and who he is – and they realize that he is everywhere – in the breaking of bread, in the gathering of those who love and those who are looking for love.

Religious memory is an odd thing, when you think about it. We use words and images to remember Jesus and mark off days on our calendars to appropriately celebrate how he is with us. We look to the past to illumine the present. Yet the past speaks only of his presence in the “now.” Religious festivals serve to heighten an awareness of the divine in our lives. And that is all well and good.

The Holy Land has definite parameters. There are borders and streets, Faith is a light given to many, in various manifestations. It is refracted through the patterns of different beliefs and is evidenced as such in the many diverse places of worship that make the Holy Land a site of pilgrimage for millions of seekers of the light that is God. It is sad that we have enshrined the light we believe to be God, in a holy city, but are at a loss as to how to enflame that same light as it exists in each of us. Some day, I believe that the most cherished hope of all believers will come true – that we will learn to worship, in love, side by side and not be threatened by different articulations of belief.

Jean flew home, filled with memories of all that she had seen and heard in the Holy Land. She experienced the wonders of that place we call holy because Jesus walked there, dined there, loved there, suffered, died and rose there. And these things we rightfully enshrine and hold sacred.

I am sure that she had friends over for dinner since returning home. I would bet that she lit candles and placed them on her dining room table, and shared with her friends and family her time and joys in the Holy Land. And she, like men and women of long ago, will once again talk of the wondrous presence of God that she experienced in a far off place. Perhaps she will hope someday to go back. Until that hope comes to pass, she will abide in the love of her family and friends, lighting candles along the way, talking of life, sharing her food and wine, and, all the while, the One she seeks will be with her. The One who came from afar and who truly is every meal, every word and gesture of love, every Light that makes of this entire earth a Holy Land.

Friends at the Monastery

Anthony and His Tomato Seeds

Night before last I was in the retreat house and sitting with Father Anthony, at the kitchen table. He held in his hand a small plastic bag, with a picture on it of a bright red tomato. I asked him what was in the bag and he smiled and said “Seeds, tomato seeds. They have been in the freezer.” He went on to say that given the right conditions of sun, soil, and water, they will grow. He did not mention himself in the process. Soon, he will carry the seeds to his garden and they will indeed respond from their frozen sleep when the conditions are right.

Brother Michael read another passage about seeds in this morning’s second reading at Vigils.

And we know how fond Jesus was in comparing the Kingdom and the power of God to a seed, a mustard seed. From the smallest of things come wonders.

This morning’s gospel is a brief recapitulation of this week’s readings. We hear again about the appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, to the eleven gathered at a table. The appearances are rich in meaning – Jesus is revealed through the calling of a name, in the breaking of bread. In other accounts, Jesus promises that where two or three are gathered, he is there with them. He presences himself in the weak, the poor and the hungry, the strong and the satisfied. Indeed, there is no where and no one from which he is absent. His presence is the sacrament permeating all creation.

He admonishes the disciples for their unbelief – they are stubborn in their lack of belief in those who conveyed the good news of his resurrected presence.

All the things said by Jesus about where he is still speak to us. His words of stubbornness may apply to us as well, in varying degrees. We can easily want to reduce the presence of the Lord to this or that way of thinking, seeing, believing, loving, remembering. It seems to be a long-standing human problem to situate the divine in one place or another. We are reminded again this morning that there is no meal, no gathering, and no naming in love from which he is absent. His call to each of us is to broaden our vision and expand our hearts to trust his living presence in everything and everyone.

Anthony will soon take a packet of seeds and sow them in his garden. In doing so, he will allow to come into play the wonders of growth, of a power that comes from the distant sun, from the intimate nearness of soil and rain. With the right temperature and care, there will be growth. He held the seeds in his hand – as God holds us in his hands, with the same kind of loving power.

God has sowed his spirit, his very life, through all of creation. Perhaps we are asked to see that we grow at different rates, given the variation of our lives and capacities for growth and possibility. We see things differently. We respond to things differently. But as we gather this morning, we should, I think, ponder our own capacities for stubbornness. Jesus asks us again to respond to his presence in the unfolding mystery of this Saturday, in our sharing of food, our planting of seeds, our calling each other by name, our walks with each other along the roads of this monastery.

Amelia and a Second Look

A friend of mine was here at Mass on Easter Sunday morning. Her name is Amelia. She is a photographer and her photos, many of which are of the monastery, are beautiful. We chatted for a while and she told me that for most of her life, she looked at things but never really saw them. It was not until she got her first camera that she began to see everything and everyone about her in a different way. “Not that they had changed – the beauty was always there,” she said. “I had just never seen it before. Now everything is different – the human face, a chair, a door, a road.”

Life does not arrive with a commonly shared meaning. Interpretations range from the bland to the mystical. Human responses provoke misery or usher in joy. We do share a common road that is life, but how differently many of us walk it.

As Christians, we profess a common faith and so walk a common road. But at a close inspection at what is at our feet, we stumble as well in trying to walk through life with each other in peace. Christianity is no stranger to inner divisions that have pitted believers against each other to this very day.

Everything we know invites a second look.

In the recent issue of Time Magazine there is a photograph of the Dalai Lama, prostrate on the floor of his study. The caption to the photograph states that it was taken during his morning prayer to the Buddha – a prayer he makes every morning. So it is that someone from the East lays down, seeking God. Perhaps Buddhism, with a second look, is not as godless as some would make it to be.

Recently a Saudi Arabian sheik declared that he would do his best to establish ecumenical dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews in his country, for, as he stated, the times are in desperate need for people of different faiths to live peaceably. Tensions, bloodshed and violence, all carried out in the name of religion, are causing him and others to take a second look at the meaning of God and the human person.

We live in times when the road beneath us is widening – there is more room for those of different approaches to God, to history, to what it means to be human. We must learn to walk with them.

Amelia told me that life has more beauty than she ever imagined and she uses a lens to capture it. And she captures it well. Her life is one taken aback by a second look.

Jesus tells two men about the meaning of Scripture while walking on a road. They do not recognize him until the breaking of bread, and then he vanishes from their midst and, as we believe, their hearts are filled with joy because they will always have the bread, bread to share, bread to keep his presence.

Our times prompt among many of good will a second look at long held religious traditions. With the lens of faith, we are asked to look anew at the road of life and to trust the Lord who lives in bread, in human friendship, in human hope. We look to our right and are learning to welcome and learn from the Buddhists. We look to our left, and a Moslem approaches us in peace. Each prompts more than a second look at the sources we have to understand and welcome them. But they are looking too, their hearts burning, knowing that the possibility of divinely given peace is just ahead, perhaps out of visible sight, but as real as the Lord who is encouraging them to walk nearer to us that we all may find him, with a second look.

Adele Lerner

Understanding is a gift that most of us probably take for granted. We make use of it all the time – it functions quite automatically without our having to think much about it. There are some scholars who have made a lifetime study of human understanding, most notably in our own tradition Bernard Lonergan. To plumb the depths of his writing is difficult. It is also ironical because you use the very gift he is writing about when you try to understand what he is suggesting about your ability to see, grasp, come to terms with and know.

For most of us, we get through our days using understanding without thinking about it. But when you do think about it, two things, among others, can be said. Understanding takes time. And understanding is a collaborative effort. We need time to let things sink in. And no one comes to understanding anything alone. We need others.

Mrs. Adele Lerner is one-hundred and one years old and she lives in New York City. She recently had her first exhibit of her oil paintings. She did not pick up a brush until her sixtieth birthday, when her husband gave her a painting set as a gift. She calls herself a late-bloomer and that the gift wound up sustaining her through the loneliness after her husband’s death, thirty years ago. “I am a very slow learner,” she said. “ I learn at my own pace. I feel that it is never too late. If you don’t know something, go and try and learn it every day until it comes to you.”

In a sense, Manhattan and all its beauty came to her through the years. She saw things, many things, and painted them. One of her paintings shows a former synagogue converted to a church.. In the painting, its Star of David peeks out behind a cross and the words “Jesus saves.” It strikes me as an image as to how God sees us and how he would like us to see each other. A beautiful blend of color, traditions and ways to God. Perhaps it is easier to do on canvas than in and through human life. But I feel that some artists paint what we may someday be.

We have a gospel this morning, a story about Mary as she wept, and then took a second look into the tomb. The story unfolds and she is moved by Jesus from pain to recognition and then joy. A few sentences in which she moves to a new way of seeing, loving, hoping. Jesus spoke her name, and she saw who he really was. We can assume, I think, that it would take more time for her to understand, at least in part, what had been given to her by Jesus.

It takes us time, too, to see, to hear, to look at life and each other with the sight afforded by faith and love. We need each other for that in this community of faith. And we need to give each other the time to come closer to the Lord who stands in our midst and calls us by name to see life in a new, loving way.

The responsorial psalm this morning is “the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.” It is that fullness that we are asked to see and believe and love. I like to think that everyone has a gift that can help us see the meaning of that psalm bloom in life. An old woman’s slow moving hand across a canvas, a kind word to lift one’s spirits, a visit to a sick monk, these and more – bits of living color to the as yet unfinished canvas of God.

Maria in the Morning

It was very early in the morning, in the town where I grew up. I was there not long ago to give a mission in my home parish and was staying in the rectory. I woke early each morning and headed downstairs to write at the large dining room table.

On my first morning there, I was writing and heard the back door open. It was before sunrise. After a few minutes passed, I heard the shuffling of grocery bags. It was Maria, the cook. I had met her the day before. She is from Poland. She started to sing, very softly, a Polish song and I can still hear the sweet rise and fall of her voice. I liked the melody but could not understand a word of it. In the stillness of that morning, everything seemed raised in an atmosphere of joy to her singing. It was not long before I could hear the birds outside and they, too, were welcoming the morning with their melodic choruses. I was there for five or six mornings and Maria sang her way through every one of them.

I do not understand why that memory seems singled out for me. I had a lot of conversations with people those few days and saw people and places I had not seen in years. Yet, whenever I think back on the brief time I spent there, I may hold a while a memory of this or that place or person, but then there is Maria and her morning song.

One morning, she told me that she heard that I grew up there, but moved away. I told her yes, that I spent most of my youth in that town. “I come from far away, too,” she said. “But my home is here now. People are good here, too, like home. Are people good where you are? It is good to have good people. They make you home again.”

And so she spoke, and sang, and I remember her with a lot of affection but do not really understand why. She was like a gift each morning and when I was writing this, I felt badly that I did not tell her as much.

Our gospel this morning starts out with another early morning experience. It is strange – the last sentence tells us that the two disciples believed but did not understand. It is not clear as to whether they believed that the body was taken, or that Jesus had really risen. It is stated that they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

We know, we believe, that because of the Easter event on an early morning long ago, everything is different. We gather this morning, being offered a hope from God beyond what we can understand. We can only ponder the gift of eternal life given us through the risen Jesus and take it to heart – and to each other – as best we can. We will soon be asked to renew our promises to love God and each other. The prayers this morning voice our need to be refreshed, rekindled, with the love we need to know life and live it.

Maria spoke of goodness, and feeling at home, and she sang with joy every morning. She spoke of coming from far away and learning that goodness really makes a home.

The disciples were to gradually learn that the risen Jesus lived in them. He was their life and ours. There is no life apart from him. We may not understand that, as we may well not understand the enormity of this gift of life, eternal life. But it speaks to us everywhere and especially in the stillness of the morning, when we light a fire, and there is a song of joy, and all that is lastingly good from a far away place shines once again in the darkness. The gift of God’s love comes into us, making of us his home, making us good.

The Triduum

All over the world, Christians are remembering and re-enacting the last three days of the life of Jesus. It is called the Triduum. Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday each have a special service to commemorate the events leading up to the Resurrection. I am not a scholar of religion, but I know that other great and small religious traditions also have high holy days when their aspirants reenact the ways of God in this world. Christianity is not unique in its attempt to ritualize and therefore remember the presence of God among us.

I have read that it is best to probe deeply into one’s own tradition so as to best understand its riches. If people are not satisfied with the tradition into which they were born, it is possible that they have not taken the effort or the time to savor its tradition, its depth. All religious traditions run like deep rivers through the many landscapes of history. Each offer possibilities of goodness, grace and hope for those who drink from and live near their waters.

These three days always give me pause to ponder the mystery of one life, that of Jesus, and what it has to do with us. He called upon people to drastically expand their horizons and in doing so provoked anger from those who would not let go of the familiar, the prejudicial, the places that power had afforded them.

We are all familiar with the story.

We are, as well, all familiar with the closing chapter – that of Easter.

But it seems to me that we somehow experience the meaning of the Triduum more so than we do Easter. We do not yet live fully resurrected lives. I do, however, think that we already share in part in the grace of that long ago morning.

These three days touch deeply on many traits that are common to us all. There is the prelude of Palm Sunday, which sets the stage for the Triduum. Jesus is greeted with joy and alleluias galore by people who will soon turn upon him and call for his death. Holy Thursday calls to mind the Last Supper, the intimate gathering of Jesus with his disciples and the unfolding of the plot by Judas to betray him for thirty pieces of silver. Good Friday is a day of violence, dashed hopes, betrayal and death. On Holy Saturday, the Creator will sleep in death, laid to rest in a tomb by those who loved him and who hoped he would never leave them. The readings give a sense that the world fell into darkness with the absence of Jesus.

Easter is not ours to truly yet know. As I write this, there are accounts of more violence all over the world. People are routinely blowing up themselves and others. Numerous places are torn by violence. We long for peace and yet we do not know how to make it come about.

We are encouraged to look to Sunday for our definitive hope. But I think we are as well encouraged by the events of the Triduum to look at our Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays as these are living symbols of ordinary life as we know it, with all its joys and sorrows, promises and betrayals, peacemaking and violence. The mystery that is Easter shines on each and effort that we have at our disposal, in the seeming ordinariness of our lives, to live and act with hope. We all fail. We all know denial. We all greet good days with joy and renounce and avoid as best we can those days when troubles far outweigh the joys. This life is our journey, our Triduum. Our hope is that someone went through it all and rose from it and came back, is here, is with us. That is, I think, the real meaning of these days. No road in life is away from God, for he lives on every one of them. We are asked to walk together through our days, and to be of comfort and strength to each other despite our weaknesses and our refusal at times to embrace the good.

Someone came to us with a light and way of loving far more powerful than our own. And he shared that with us that we might have hope. To live the mystery that is Easter Sunday is to persevere through these three dark days, when it seemed that all was lost but through which everything was ultimately found.

This is the cover of my most recent book, published by ACTA Publications in Chicago. It is selling well and I am real happy with it. There are many photographs which I took here at the monastery, as well as a brief essay accompanying each photo.

Off the Highway

Off the Highway

There is a small restaurant, one of a vast chain called “Huddle House” restaurants, in Alabama. I was driving along the Interstate and was hungry and I pulled off the highway, parked the car and headed inside. I sat at the counter. It was a small, friendly place. People nodded to me and smiled as I sat down. I nodded back. I placed my order – the waitress was a thin blond woman and I guessed her to be in her fifties. A young woman came into the restaurant and stood next to me, waiting to talk to the waitress. She was about seventeen years old. She was dressed in what looked to be a brand new “Huddle House” uniform, identical to those that the other women and men were wearing – a red top, black pants, red hat. She and the older waitress chatted for a moment and it was the young woman’s first day at work. The older woman assured her that things would be okay, that there would be someone helping her, especially when the place got very busy. So, she told her, there was nothing to worry about. She then took out a piece of paper from her pocket and wrote down her name and phone number. “My name is Nellie,” she said. “I live just around the corner and if you need any help at all, you just call me and I will come right over. You hear? It is no problem at all. Do not think for a second that you are bothering me. I am only too glad to help.”

The young woman took the piece of paper, folded it and put it in her pocket. “You make me feel at home already,” she said. And Nellie looked at her and smiled and said, “I was where you were once and I remembered the kindness of people when I was starting out. You remember – and just do the same some day.”

I listened. And I thought. Maybe, I thought to myself, that I listen to such conversations and read more into them than they mean. Perhaps I should just let it go, but the scene and the words seemed to be nudging me to remember something.

I have read a lot about God. I am what might be called a professional religious since I am a priest, live in the monastery, and am immersed in language, symbols, references to God and the holy seven days a week for every week of the year. Well, perhaps I should qualify that – there are occasional trips home to see my mom, who is not well, and therefore I get hungry when I drive and find places like the Huddle House. And I cannot help it if I hear what is being said – after all, the women were so close to me. As close as these words are to you.

I got back in the car and headed east, toward Atlanta, and, with the waitresses in mind, another image came to me almost as fresh as the one I was just leaving behind. A few days earlier I was in a restaurant near my mom’s place. I go there early and was the only one in the large dining area. The waitress came over and took my order and when she took the menu back from me I noticed that she was missing all of the fingers on her left hand. I watched as she walked away. I watched as she arranged some napkins and utensils on another table. I watched as another waitress came over to her and said that she would be just around the corner if she needed help carrying anything. The waitress with no fingers smiled and said, “I think I will be okay – but I will give you a holler if I need help.”

It is hard for me to place into some kind of a coherent conversation what it is I know to be of my monastic life, with all its religious finery – and the easy, raw and available beauty that people speak to each other every day. The instances I saw on my little road trip were words of availability – people going out of their way to be of help. In once living vignette it was an offer to help a newcomer, a stranger. In the other, a woman knew the need of another woman who had no fingers and who could not carry things like most of us full fingered people do.

I suppose that the difficulty I experience in my wonderment about this life and the life of the road is that people often come here to the monastery to find a sense of God. I leave here, driving along roads and getting hungry, and listen and see. And somehow I believe that God speaks sort of anonymously but yet as clear as a bell. I pull off roads and find that I am dining with religious revelation, even though there is no cloister in the Huddle House and no altar in the restaurant near my mom’s place.

My life as a monk is good. I think that I need to parameters of this place to help me situate a sense of God.

Yet when I am driving, heading east to the monastery, I cannot forget what I heard and saw just a few miles west.

We are all born with something missing – be it fingers, a decent chance at life, a strong or willing heart, a sense of meaning. And we all are strangers at one time, one place, or another. It seems to take me a bit of hunger and a turn off any familiar road to rediscover what a monastery, or a restaurant, or a church or office or home are all about.

God lives and travels through each of us. No one person has or lives a full sense of God. Each of us is part of the living road toward God. God is the destination and God is the way. We are all aware of such in different and varying degrees. I have this place, set apart to ponder the many roads of life. And I am grateful for it. But I am as well thankful for the hungers in life that make me turn in different ways, seeking God, seeking food, and finding his presence all along the way.

Pulling off the familiar can seem to slow us down. But I find that in that stillness, I am sometimes given the opportunity to refresh myself and to pick up the journey again, knowing that I experienced something good, just a bit a bit back East.

Living Stones

Living Stones

We recently were given our annual retreat. Our retreat master this year was Damien Thompson, the Abbot of our monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky. He is a warm, friendly man and impresses me as being much at peace with life, with what it means to be human in an ever changing world. He is a gifted story-teller and in his talks he shared a lot of his experiences over the years, experiences that have been markers for him in his life-long search for God. He is very laid back, very easy to listen to.

He talked a lot about living in the present moment, for it is there that God reveals Who He is and what He is about. If life is an ongoing revelation as to God’s coming to us, no small part of that revelation is His presence in each and every human being. It is a very “in your face” means of communication. Damien reminded us that it is here, in the lives of this monastery, that God is most present to us. I think it is true that we often look elsewhere.

Damien talked twice a day, in the early morning and late afternoon. The talks were given in a large room called the Scriptorium. It is on the south side of the building. We often meet there to discuss house policy, to watch an occasional film, to hear lectures and, every Sunday, to hear our own Abbot speak to us on the Rule of Saint Benedict.

As Damien spoke one afternoon, I looked across the room at the large wall. The walls in the Scriptorium are made of carved stone. The stones are of different sizes and were perfectly chiseled so that they fit next to and above and below each other just right. The sun cast a soft golden light on the wall, and the colors and textures of the stones were especially beautiful. Shades of creams and browns and sands shone in the late afternoon light. Each stone has a different natural design, as unique, I suppose, as fingerprints. There are gorgeous patterns of swirls, curved lines, speckles and colored layers upon layers. I wondered where the stones came from. I asked one of the monks earlier today and he told me that they came from a quarry in Tennessee. Now I wonder if they were chiseled here, or were they brought here ready-made so as to be placed in accordance with a pre-designed architectural blueprint. I will ask about that.

I listened to Damien as I gazed at the stones. He was talking of our community and how it important it is for us to make a real go of it in terms of loving each other. We are all so different, in many ways. We are a small gathering of men but in that paucity of numbers lives the rich design of God, revealed in an eternal and different way in and through each monk. Damien called us to realize that as human as it is to make preferences among such difference, it is the call of Jesus that we find Him and love Him in everyone. No one is to be left out. No one is to be deemed less worthy of being accepted, loved, embraced as a brother.

The stones looked lovely, especially in the late afternoon light. I then noticed that the same light was shining on the monks. It was easier for me to see the near perfect pattern on the wall just above and behind them. It is not as easy to see the light of God as it shines on each man here, a light far more warm and revelatory than some sunlight on a wall.

It is written that the church is made of living stones.

I am grateful to Damien for reminding us that God has made his home in the sometimes stony flesh of the human heart. He has gifted each of us with patterns and ways of being in this world, this monastery, that are unique. Some day, the peoples of the world will be given a way to nestle near each other as near perfectly as the stones on our Scriptorium walls. And the Light that made that happen will shine from without and within each living stone, a church raised by God, carved from this journey of being human and struggling to find a way to fit with each other.

Judy

Judy

Judy wrote me a handwritten letter. Her penmanship is beautiful and I had recently written to her how beautiful it was, so easy on the eyes. She writes with a small and graceful script. In her letter to me, she thanked me and wrote that she had to work hard to make her handwriting legible. If she writes slowly and with care it is, she discovered, easier to write legibly and, I might add, lovingly. I have the impression when I read her words that they are born from a kind of love, and gently placed on the paper.

When I first met her, the word that came to mind was gentle. She walks gently, looks about her with gentle eyes, and writes in a way that I imagine as being a soft movement of her hand across a page, so that the words flow as gently as she is gentle.

She wrote me about being in our retreat house parking lot one morning. She can remember exactly where she was, when she looked up and saw a leaf, golden in color, falling to the ground. “It fell so gently,” she wrote. And I smiled when I read those few words. Then, as she remembers, she looked to the ground where the leaf had come to rest and there were, in the soft mud, the prints of the geese – are they footprints? - as they made their way down to the lake. And Judy saw beauty there, and one thought quickly flowed to another, and she remembered feeling a presence, the presence of God, as if God had left his presence along with the falling leaf and the footprints.

In those few sentences, I saw a world, a gentle world of a woman looking above her and below, and in a swirling leaf of gold and in the yet moist footprints of winged creatures, she knew God to be near. It was all one world to me – the falling leaf, the delight of her being captivated by it, her downward glance at the tracks of the geese. It all offered a sense of God, something which I could take in from a few well crafted sentences. In the parking lot, Judy would have not seen it all at once. It would take a turn of her head, then a feeling in her heart, and a sense of wonderment. Could it be that God was really there with her?

She became, as the letter evolved, apologetic, or perhaps bashful, about what she had experienced. I think that she may have thought that I would judge such connections made from leaf to geese God to be off the mark – that God is not near falling leaves or walking geese.

If the word “God” is appears in a sentence, it follows that the words that precede it and follow it take on a special and heightened meaning. We use the word “God” as a way to anchor a sense of his presence in our lives. And so it is that when writing about God, the meaning can get quite specific, tied down to a place or a way of thinking, or loving, or seeing. I suppose we take some comfort in knowing that we have a word for the divine and that we can connect the word to seemingly adequate points of reference. We like to “map” God. We like to know that we “know.”

It is written that when asked about God and the Kingdom, Jesus looked about his world, his very immediate world, and replied by talking about seeds and leaven, the birds of the sky and mustard trees, of treasures hidden in fields. It seems that he delighted in knowing that the ways and presence of God are all about us.

We need people who help us make connections between what falls to the earth, like a leaf, and how it is that it reveals the soft and gentle ways of God. We need a way to assure us that when we see footprints on the earth that it is good to make an association between divine, human and creaturely presence. We all move in and through God. His footprints tread tenderly on the surface of the earth and the winding paths of the human heart. We look for God constantly – for it is God who is the source of every longing for love, every longing for the good and beautiful to last forever.

It takes a gentle soul to really see things for what they are. Revelations do not come readily to those who press too hard at the ever present surface of mystery. Many come here and enter our church and perhaps press too hard with words and insistence on the door of the house of God, asking that the Mystery speak, and speak clearly. Maybe on one such day, not long ago, there was a man or woman in the church, awaiting a sure sign of God. In their rush, they may have passed a woman in the parking lot who was gazing with awe at a gently falling leaf and then at her feet, at the tracks of webbed feet that wound down to the lake. She may have said something about a presence she felt, but was never asked. And she may have been to shy to tell. Only later, would she write gently on a page, and share her happiness that came with a falling leaf, and tell-tale tracks.

All about us is falling, even the universe, and we are falling with it. Someone walked through it a long time ago, and left tracks we can follow. They are there now, and they will be there when we come to rest. Love moves gently through us all, through all that is, leaving its mark, and we look about and make the connections, feeling it as close as a leaf, as near as a moist track, as gentle as a word written on a page.

Some pix

Some Recent Guests at the Monastery

Communion Calls

Communion Calls

Before I came to the monastery, I was a parish priest for twenty years. Once a month throughout those years, I brought communion to people who could not make it to Mass. Such visits are known as communion calls. They were usually done on the first Friday of each month.

I had my list and drove to each person’s home. I would often stay for a while, but had to keep my eye on my watch so as not to keep the next person waiting. I knew that the people looked forward to my visits since most of them were elderly, lived alone, and did not have many social contacts. I had with me a small metal container, called a Pyx, into which I placed the hosts that were needed for the visits. And I had a little green ritual book, with a few ribbons, to mark the places where the prayers for the sick were. Most of the people knew the prayers by heart and would recite them with me, which I liked.

I was thinking about the people I knew in those days, early this morning. We had an unusual event late yesterday afternoon – it snowed for a while and there is a light blanket of snow on our fields this morning. When I looked out the window, for some reason, while gazing at the peaceful beauty of the scene, a memory came to me of Pops, a man I used to see every first Friday. He once told me that he loved snow when he was younger but as he aged it became such a worry for him. He was afraid of falling – and he did not get as many visitors.

Pops lived with his daughter and her family. His daughter’s name was Agnes. I cannot remember her husband’s name. They had an adopted daughter who at the time was a teenager. She was a very pretty girl and I heard, years later, that she became a model. Agnes would answer the door when I came to the house and after setting up a small table with lit candles, she would excuse herself and return after Pops received communion. He sat in a comfortable recliner chair and he had a small dog, a really cute dog, who would come to me with his tail wagging, would sniff my shoes, and then, seemingly satisfied that I was okay, would jump onto the recliner chair right next to Pop. There was just enough room for him. He snuggled against Pop’s thigh and was very quiet, but attentive, as Pops said his prayers and received the small host, the presence of the Lord. After receiving, he would close his eyes for a few seconds in prayer, then open them and look at me for the okay to start talking. And talk he did, about his life, his loves, his worries, his hopes. Agnes would come back into the room, offer me a soda, and then sit and join in the conversation. The little dog never moved, but always listened.

Vincent lived in a small apartment. I often had trouble finding a parking place near the building. He was originally from Greece and was on in years. He wore tailored suits, and donned the best of them when I visited him. He had quite a hair-do. The grays and whites were arranged in a style that reminded of Elvis’s early look. Vincent kept a large shrine to the Virgin Mary in his living room. It filled one corner of the room – a large shell-ike structure in which there was a statue of Mary. It was surrounded by plastic flowers and at her feet were always arranged fresh fruits, one of which Vincent always offered me before I left. “It is special, very special,” he would say.

Helen was a very large woman whose size, I think, confined her to her bed. Her husband was a small Chinese man and I never heard him say a word. He smiled a lot, and I could tell that he and Helen loved each other very much. Helen was once in the Air Force and there were pictures of her in her uniform on the walls of her bedroom. On the table near the bed was her favorite picture which she pointed out every visit I made – it was a black and white photograph of her and her husband taken while they were on their honeymoon, in Hawaii. In the picture, she was much thinner and towered over him. He was smiling in the picture – and I noticed that his smile had stayed much the same over the years.

Margaret lived alone in a huge house. She never married. She had a lot of cats. I would be reading the prayers and cats would be at my feet, in my lap, sneaking up behind me on the couch where I sat. She often told me that the cats liked me. There were pictures of Richard Gere all over the place. She said she was related to him. I wondered about that but never said anything. “Real cutie pie,” she would tell me. She was in her eighties.

I am sure they have all moved on now and live in the communion they once received every Friday. Pops. Margaret, Helen, Vincent – they are ageless and have become a part of me, in my heart, the place of all communion.

I think we, who are here on this earth, live in this communion but cannot quite see that yet. We can taste it. We can love from it. We can hope for it. We somehow take into our bodies and hearts the fullness of the life that is all around us. We are in a living banquet and are rather modest in the ways that we celebrate it. It is a banquet with honeymoons and smiling faces, cats on the sofa and doggies at our feet, of women bringing sodas and old men anxious to speak their hearts and their loves. All of this was never far from the reception of communion. All of life is a communion call – as if God is the ever present first Friday Visitor, asking that we be with him, receive him, welcome him.

I look at the beauty of freshly fallen snow – it is rare, here in Georgia, to have snow. Just yesterday I was telling a group in our retreat house that I used to love the sound of falling snow when I lived in the northeast. There was that pervasive hiss as the snow fell and touched the earth. Even when the snow stopped falling, there seemed to be a sound in the air, the sound of snow, a peaceful yet rich sound. Something like a communion of white, of innocence, of purity. Billions of hosts, coming softly to the earth, covering everything. A gift from God, as is everything, coming from above, arising from below, whispering to me as to where he is, communing with us.

The whole universe is a Mass – feeding us every day. The banquet of God, this life we live. It is special, very special.

Dylan and His Cactus Plant

Dylan and His Cactus Plant

I was over in the retreat house and had brought my camera with me. It was snowing, which is a rare event here, and I wanted to take some photographs of the gardens adjacent to the retreat house. I walked into the parlor, near the front door, and a young boy was standing there, near the door, looking out at the falling snow. He turned to me and smiled and in his hands he held a small cactus. He raised it and smiled and said that he bought it in our store and how nice Father Gerard was, the monk who sold it to him. “He told me that a flower will bloom from it, right at the top.” And with his gloved finger, he pointed to just where the flower will sprout.

I asked his name and he said “Dylan.” And he smiled again. I think that the falling snow added a special glow to his face and eyes. I asked if I could take his picture and he said he would like that, so we went into a large room and he never let go of the cactus. I took several pictures of him. Natalya, a regular guest to our retreat house, stood nearby and commented on how beautiful was Dylan’s cactus and that she was sure that the flower, when it sprouted, would be just as beautiful. Natalya is from Russia and is pursuing her doctoral degree. She is very pretty and writes beautiful poetry. Dylan beamed when she spoke to him. Later, when I downloaded the photographs, I looked at them and they turned out well. Dylan was so at ease in front of the camera. I love the expressions on his face. His mittens are of two different colors. He has his stocking cap tucked under his arm. His smiling face and the cactus are the most prominent features in the photos. Natalya is out of sight – she was behind me as I took the photographs. And, of course, the conversation is not there, either. But the words that she spoke to him with encouragement and affection surely enticed from him that beautiful smile and the gentle look in his eyes.

I do not know if I will ever see Dylan again. A lot of people come through our retreat house and, as Guest Master, I am privileged to meet them and chat with many of them, if only briefly. There are those with whom I talk with at more length. Some of the encounters grow into friendships, though such gifts are not possible to tell at the outset. Friendship evolves and blooms, according to its own beauty and pattern.

Someone recently wrote to me and in the letter she included a commentary on one of my other photographs. It was a color photo of a tree. I took the picture in autumn and there are shades of browns and greens and yellows, all visible in the leaves of the tree. She wrote of shades of human life, shades that spoke to her from the colors of the leaves. Everything in life seems to be a living icon – trees and colors, stones and walls, bridges and cacti, mismatched gloves and a young boy’s double joy of a tree in his hands and the sight of falling snow. The picture I have of Dylan is silent and yet there were words from Natalya that prompted his smile. Well, photographs do not say what they are about – but is it not true that they do kind of speak? They tell us something.

Voices surround us. Voices well from within. The colors and shades of life form for many a pattern of love, of beauty. We speak words of encouragement to each other, putting each other at ease. All the shades of life that hit us from all side and shine on everything and everyone bespeak a pattern, a design of intricate love.

I hope the flower on Dylan’s cactus blooms and I hope it is beautiful. He is young, and probably will not remember the words spoken to him by Natalya, words that made him smile, made him at ease. I hope he always is given that in life. Maybe he will become fascinated with growth – the growth of a cactus that he held in his hands, the growth that was and is the world about him.

He may think the monastery to be a strange place. I do not know. We did not speak about that. But I do know that he saw the beauty of falling snow here and was grateful for the kind and encouraging words of Father Gerard and Natalya. And so he smiled and held a gift that he hopes will bloom.

We hold Creation, this gift from God. We hold it in our hands and hearts, with mismatched gloves and smiles. It will all bloom, someday. The best of voices tell us that. The voices of God, in all its tones and shades, asking us to be still and to trust what we hold. Listen to love, in every room of life. Hold and offer every gift you have been given. Time is the blossom of God, held in the hands of a little boy, who waits for its flower. Mismatched words, perhaps, like a Dylan’s differently colored gloves. But it is how we must hold onto what we have, and each other, as the colors speak, and the poets write of what the trees say and what the heart needs to know.

The Happy Bus Driver

The Happy Bus Driver

I once knew a happy bus driver. I do not remember his name, but he drove the De Camp bus, the #66, which went from Montclair, New Jersey to Manhattan. I used to take it all the time. They were real nice buses, with a lot of lights and buttons on the dash. I used to sit up front and watch the world slide beneath the wheels.

It was New Year's Day some years ago and I took a bus into New York. I met some friends for brunch and then went to the Port Authority bus terminal to catch the #66 back home. I recognized the bus driver from previous trips. He was always so friendly. He took my ticket with his usual sincere smile and I found a seat near enough to the front to see the lights and the road ahead. After giving the number of passengers to the dispatcher....a guy who stood near the bus and always wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat...the dispatcher whistled and with a wave of his hand okayed the departure of the bus. The bus was full. So off we went into a new day, a New Year, on toward my home town.

Troubles started half way home. Traffic was backed up for miles on Route

3. The bus stopped. It inched forward and stopped again. The red and yellow rear lights of automobiles, trucks, vans and buses twinkled for miles ahead. I heard grumbling behind me. At first it was barely noticeable. A few coughs, a little swear word or two. But then the grumbling increased in volume. It sounded like a terrible human orchestra tuning up for a song they did not know at all.

The bus driver looked at me in his rear view mirror and smiled. "Watch this," he said. And he then turned off Route 3. I had never seen that done before. In my experience, stuck bus drivers always stayed stuck. They preferred, for whatever reason, the slow crawl as opposed to pulling off the road.

The bus driver started to sing Christmas carols. He had a good voice. His voice had that smooth Perry Como quality to it. When Perry Como sang, even the worst things in life were given a silver lining.

We went through Rutherford, a part of Lyndhurst, a section of Clifton.

The bus driver knew the streets as well as the words and melodies of the carols he was singing. As he guided the bus along, the mood of the bus changed. People began to sing, and smile, and everything seemed as twinkly as the lights on the dash of the bus.

Bernard Lonergan was a Jesuit theologian. Some have called him the greatest religious thinker since Aquinas. His stuff is complicated. I tried reading him more than once, but got stuck a lot, not unlike the vehicles on Route 3 that New Years morning. But Lonergan once said something to a friend of mine and I have never forgotten it. Religious maturity, said Lonergan, has a lot to do with "sitting back and realizing that God is the driver of the bus." By "bus," Lonergan was referring to human life, the cosmos, history....this vast mystery we are moving through and that has a Driver and plenty of lights. Lots of twinkly lights.....headlights, rear lights, dashboard lights, stars, human eyes and hearts, dispatchers who sport western wear in an eastern metropolis, happy bus drivers, and words that come from human hearts.

Well, we all got to where we were heading for that day. There was no extra charge for the songs, for the happiness of that bus driver and his wondrous detour.

I saw him in Montclair months later, in a diner. I asked a friend of mine about him and he said to me "Yeah, lives alone, not far from here. Drives a bus and he's crazy. Sings all the time." I felt sad when he said that. But then there are those among us who loathe detours and who have little patience with those who sing through the blues.

God will get us where we were all made to go. It is a good ride. Trust the lights, the detours, and listen real close to you heart when things seem to get panicky. Listen for a song, a soft melody. It will ease you and help you to trust the God who is just ahead in the driver's seat. Some say God does not exist. Some say he is crazy. Don't pay them any mind. Just listen to the song, and watch the lights. We are all moving somewhere...

The Peaceful Man

The Peaceful Man

For many of us, peace is hard to find. We know it exists and we can experience it many ways. The ways and means vary as to how it comes to us, how we find it. Amidst the hectic activities of our days, we may clear some time to be alone, to still the voices in our heads and to savor a bit of solitude. There are many disciplines that foster the experience of peace. Here at the monastery, we are familiar with many of them and we try to live and foster peace as much as possible. But even here, it is not easy. Peace eludes us as well. We certainly have an ideal setting for it – all these acres free of the many varieties of traffic that jam the highways of outer and inner roads – the landscape of our culture and the interior roads of the mind. It is hard to secure a lasting sense of peace. A monk may work at it in the relative serenity of the cloister but there are times when peace flies out of one’s hands, like a bird that one holds for a while, but which soon fears the foreign grasp of human hands, and struggles to be free again.

Peace, in a lasting sense, is something from which we are estranged. Try as we might to realize it or even describe it, it never seems to feel at home with us very long. It senses our dis-ease with it, and takes flight.

A man came to stay with us for one night. He arrived late in the afternoon, on a bicycle with a small trailer hitched to the rear wheel. I met him by our gatehouse. He was a strong looking man, with a full beard and a friendly face. We shook hands and began to chat. I introduced myself and he told me that his name was Jerry Nelson. He told me that he needed a place to stay for the night and that he would be no trouble for anybody. All he needed, he said, was a place to pitch his tent. I was at first hesitant to let him stay, since I did not know who he was or where he was coming from. It is hard these days to welcome the stranger. He anticipated my hesitancy and took out some papers from his small trailer. He handed them to me and they were newspaper articles about him and his journey. One article had a picture of him accompanying the story and I trusted the connections that were becoming apparent to me. I told him to stay, and we walked down by the lake, where I thought it would be most convenient for him to pitch his tent. We chatted for a while. It was nearing time for Vespers, our late afternoon chanting of the psalms, which is followed by dinner. I asked him if he would like to have dinner, and he said yes. I headed back to the church as he started to set up his tent. I sat in church and read the articles he had given to me and was astounded. He had biked from Washington, D.C., to Oregon, stopping at churches and Veterans Homes along the way, giving talks so as to raise awareness of the plight of Veterans, in particular those men and women who really never found their way home again after the experience of war. They may have been brought back to this land of the free, but the experience of war imprisoned them in a place of mental anguish and spiritual death. It is to these that Jerry has given his life, his passion, his words. After Vespers, I headed back down to the lake and brought him back to the retreat house, where we had supper together.

I tried to make him feel as much at home as possible. I felt guilty that we had no rooms available, and told him as much. He assured me that it was okay, that he had everything he needed down in his tent. And he told me more, about how he never planned far down the road, that God always took care of him. He learned, he said, not to plan too far down any highway, to take things a day at a time, and that when evening fell, he would be given a place to stay. I sensed volumes of spiritual wisdom, hard won, behind every word he said. His face had a weathered but serenely wise look as he spoke. There was a gentleness to him and something that gave me the impression that he had learned to receive every aspect of life as a gift, a gift from God. I thought how every mile that passed beneath his spinning wheels had given him something. He carried a lot more in his trailer than bare necessities of life. The little that he had housed a heart of movement, of giving, of a wisdom that matured through suffering and surviving, and emerging from his own experience of war as a messenger of good will, peace and compassion.

We parted ways that night and I told him I would come down in the morning, Sunday morning, and bring him back to the retreat house for breakfast. When I came over to the retreat house on Sunday morning, he was already there, sitting in the parlor, drinking coffee out of a paper cup. We went back to the kitchen, picked up a few things for breakfast, and chatted again. He told me that he had to be on his way.

I came back to the retreat house a short while later – I had to go to a meeting with the other monks – and when I came back, Jerry had folded his tent, packed his trailer and was gone. He left me a little key chain and a note. The key chain is small, and has a little string of plastic beads of different colors. The pamphlet attached to the beads reads that the colors are for different things – black for Good Friday, red for Pentecost, white for Christmas and Easter, blue for heaven and truth, green for the Trinity, yellow for divinity.

I felt sorry to see him go. I wanted to do more for him, perhaps to keep something of him here. He embodied a truth that I felt was real. But it is a truth that needs movement for its realization, for its very life. A kind of truth on wheels. I told him the night before that I envied him and admired him. He smiled and asked me what this monastery is about – specifically why we have to stay put. I told him that it is the way we seek God, by simply being still. He thought about that and then said that he understood. “But,” he said, “If ever you want, you just get yourself a bike and you can ride with me.”

I hope to see him again. I told him he is always welcome here. He can pitch his tent and give his wheels a rest anytime.

What is peace?

I hesitate to define it, as if it is something we can settle with words and then go about getting it.

It is movement. It is listening and speaking, stopping here and there along the way, resting by a lake, chatting over a meal, then moving on. It is like me here in this place of stillness, into which rides a man on a mission who needs a place for the night, to rest.

It is learning so slowly about the God who gave us colors and beauty and who came here, for a while, and who said that peace is here, and that it will come, but that there must be suffering first, because the world will not understand it or take readily to it. It is a kind of peace that disturbs. We may want to hold it for a while, but it has to move. It has wheels, wheels spinning fast, of different colors.

I finger the beads on my little key chain – the colors I touch symbolize all the truth we need to know and live. The truth is within us, within each of us, at times still, at times moving, seeking rest by a lake.

Bread on the Waters

Bread on the Waters

Thousands of people come here to the monastery every year. It is peaceful here and I suppose that most come to rest for a while in the quiet that we try to offer. I am sure that it is the hope of many who come that they will better grasp a sense of God, or meaning, or a renewed sense of direction in their lives.

Every now and then people come who have no such expectations.

A bus load of kids arrived recently. I knew that they were coming. They were kids of special needs – some were autistic, others were physically challenged. They came from a school far from here and had been on the road in a yellow bus since four in the morning. Their teachers and some aides were with them. I met them in the retreat house after Mass and chatted with them for a bit. They had brought large bags of bread and were excited about going down to the lake to feed the geese.

I went down with them and watched as they lined up at the shore line and tossed bread to the geese. The geese by now know that people mean food, so they honked and squawked with what I guess was delight as the kids threw pieces of bread to them. There was one goose out in the middle of the lake that made his way as fast as he could toward the banquet of flying bread. He moved fast across the water, making a racket and leaving a widening wake behind him.

Standing behind the kids, I enjoyed watching them as they fed the geese. One kid was so taken with it that instead of tearing off little pieces of bread, he tossed the entire loaf into the lake and laughed as the geese fought each other for a piece of that soggy and floating treasure.

One boy turned around and looked at me. He dropped his bread on the ground and came over to me, told me that his name was Charles and took my hand and held it as he talked to me. He asked if I was a monk and I told him yes. He said that he was happy. Happy to be there and feed the geese but he saw that I was by myself. It was then that I noticed that all the kids seemed to be paired – they had a buddy system.

Those kids remained in my heart all day. I had to go to work, at our bonsai pottery barn, and thought about them as I wrapped pots. Later, as lunch time approached, I want back to the area near the retreat house and told their teachers that it would be fine if they all had lunch in the retreat house. I knew that they had planned to eat their lunch outside but it was a chilly, windy day. I would have had lunch with them but I had to get back with the other monks at mid-day prayer.

Most people, I think, assume that we embody and offer here some sense of clarity about God and his ways in this world. I suppose that is okay. Much of the language that is heard here – human conversations, the chanting of the psalms, talks given by monks in the retreat house, the homilies and almost the sum total of words here, all bespeak of God and the human. And we speak and listen, in the hope that when the words are tossed, we are somehow fed.

Does it all work? I suppose it does, to some extent. We often hear good “reviews” as to what is said and heard here.

What is that phrase? Something about tossed bread on the waters, tossed, perhaps, in the hope that something good will happen.

I think of those kids, who, when they were born, had their toes counted with love to make sure that they arrived in this world in perfect shape. How long did it take till it was known that something was wrong? With an inability to speak right, or see right, or think right, hopes were painfully lowered and lives were altered. Hearts were set on a path of lifetime care in intense, concentrated ways. The kids would be different.

High above the shore of our lake stands our magnificent church. It is clearly beautiful. Striking in its form, it offers a place where people seek God and pray to him. How hungry we are for God to come, and answer our prayers. Yet, how far away God must be, for much of what we pray for is forever late in the coming. We pray for peace which eludes our grasp. We pray for health, which is bound to fail. We pray for each other as we stumble through life, hurt each other, somehow miss each other, not knowing how to communicate the love we feel, the love we need, the love whose absence makes such a wound of this world. Yet we persist in our prayer, and toss to the silence of God our words. How and when will he speak?

On the shore I watched those kids as they tossed their bread. Bits of bread, and the occasional loaf, sailed through the air and onto the waters. They tossed in such a happy and carefree way. I watched their glee as the geese came. The tall, majestic house of God rose behind them, a place where at that moment other words were being tossed to the infinite mystery of God – thrown to another far shore.

Some day, I believe that all that is of God will rise. Every word that has ever been spoken to him, no matter from how far, and how desperate and how angry, has been heard. No matter how foolish sounding to the supposedly learned, or how futile to the pragmatic among those of us who have walked this earth, God has heard and will answer every cry. God will rise.

I watched the kids yesterday and daydreamed later, as to how the lake before them would surge and rise, and from it would rise fantastic things – a great wooden ship with sails of spun gold, and a magical circus with dancing bears and angels who swallowed fire and tossed diamonds to the shore, and a castle with jeweled windows and vast streets on which people laughed and danced as they beckoned to the children on the shore. And the kids ran across the waters, seeing as clear as day the wonders that rose before them, and felt their bodies as being whole and good, and their minds as fresh and as bright as can be. And Charles would look back at me, and run to me and take my hand and ask me to come, come and see, come and go with him.

But I of course know that only bread was tossed and the shore brought to them only geese. But their bread is the only prayer they now know, and they tossed it with all their hearts, pieces and entire loaves, over and over again, and I know that God will come. And, somehow, I think that their prayers of bread are more honest and far reaching than any prayer could ever say.

The Little Way

The Little Way

There is an ancient custom in all of our monasteries of having a book read to the community during the main meal at mid-day. We take turns as readers and this week it is my turn. The book is a collection of meditations on the Incarnation, by Ladislaus Boros. In the section I read aloud yesterday, he referred to the writings of Saint Therese of the Little Flower – Therese of Lisieux. She was a French Carmelite nun and was only twenty-four when she died, in 1897. Her writings were published after her death and they became a literary sensation in France and then all over the world. Her spirituality, as reflected in her writings, became known as “The Little Way.” She embraced small, ordinary things throughout her life. She believed that a way to God could be found through attentiveness to and a love for the little things in life – the things that make up any ordinary day. I believe that the reason her writings caused such a huge sensation among the average reader was because her words helped people see and love God in the ordinary. As simple as that may appear, we need to hear again and again in our lives words that help us take to heart the presence of the divine in our everyday lives. We tend to look at some far horizon for a sight of the miraculous when all the while it is right at our feet. In the brief selection I read yesterday, Boros wrote of how Therese could look at a flower, or a rubber ball, a sunset or a scene from a train window while passing through the Alps, and from these she would ponder the loving presence of God and write of that love. It was as if God spoke to her through windows, through flowers, through a bouncing ball.

As I read the words from the book, I occasionally glanced up to see the clock, so as to be ready when the bell rang, to finish the section in an area where I could pick it up again the next day. I looked from the clock to the monks in front of me, who were taking their meal in an attentive silence, listening to the words of the ordinary as I read them. Sun streamed through the windows, casting a lovely light all through our large refectory. My voice filled the room, sharing words written a long time ago about the very things I saw in front of me. The sunlight was beautiful, as was the scene of the monks, their heads lowered in a kind of reverence, taking in the nourishments of words, food, water.

We intake so much during any given way in order to live. I suppose it is normal that few of us pause to give thought to all that we absorb in a day in order to live, to understand, to appreciate what we see. We need food and drink to live. We need words and symbols to understand and to see. We need each other to learn how to love, how to live good and peaceful lives.

We need saints to help us look at the lives that we live, and to see the sublime in and through the ordinary. God is, for many, a far and lofty Being. He may seem so far – be it in the heavens or in some imagined life beyond this one. These days, His existence is debated in several books that have reached best-seller status. But every now and then a person comes along who sees things with such beauty and who writes about them. And so it is that a train window becomes a tabernacle. A rubber ball becomes an orb of revelation and a flower speaks the eloquence of God. And we listen – and recognize that God is here, in our midst. He may seem to be silent but He speaks through the saints. And what he says through them can be salvation for any one of us. For the words of saints rivet our eyes and hearts to the right here in our midst – to the seemingly ordinary things and people that come our way every day.

Eric

Eric

There is a young man riding on a bus, on his way from Conyers, Georgia to Buffalo, New York. It is a long ride. His name is Eric and he stayed with us here at the monastery for many weeks. Eric worked and prayed with us during the time he was here. He is a quiet man. I got to know him better when we worked at bonsai together. He has spent a lot of time working in Catholic Worker houses in different parts of the country and I liked listening to his stories from those experiences. There is something special about him – he has a gift for living in the present moment and traveling light. He does not have a lot of baggage.

I will miss him. It saddened me to say good-bye to him yesterday. In the brief time that he was with us, he imparted a lot of goodness just by being who he is and sharing where he has been.

These coming weeks will have a lot of post-resurrection stories. One of my favorites is the gospel that tells of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They walk with Jesus and yet do not recognize him until the breaking of the bread, and in that recognition, which comes as gift, their hearts awaken with a fire that enkindles them with joy. It is a beautiful story about the presence of Jesus in all of our lives – how we walk with him all the time, presenced as he is in people and celebrated in the sharing of bread and stories.

Eric may be sleeping now, his head resting against a bus window as the bus moves north, making its way toward Buffalo. I hope he had a good stay here with us. I told him yesterday that I hope he returns some day. He smiled when I said that and said that he would try and come again.

I wonder who is seated next to him on the bus. Maybe they will share stories about life, and perhaps some food. And I like to think that Jesus will be there as well, in the sharing and the telling. When Eric told me stories, I felt good about life. He has a way of seeing life and loving it. He came as gift and moved on, leaving a lesson of genuine grace.

Sanctuary

Church Columns

The Winning Ticket

The Lottery Ticket

I thought about him all day yesterday, a Mr. Schenk, a man I have never met and will never meet. He lives in New York and I read about him in the paper yesterday morning. Maybe you read the article. It is about how he won a million dollars in the lottery. He was riding with his good friend, a Mr. Gallo, in his truck and he they were scratching off the tickets. They were laughing as one ticket after another was a losing one. Then came a scratch that exposed the million dollar jackpot.

Mr. Schenk has been diagnosed with lung cancer and, even with the best treatment, is not expected to live much longer than a year. He was diagnosed in December and bought the winning ticket in late January. The article gives a lot of odds – the odds of him winning the lottery, the odds of his getting cancer. There is a big spread concerning the odds of his getting a fatal disease. There is an even bigger spread of his winning a million dollar ticket.

He is now trying to negotiate with the lottery people so that he can get his winnings in one lump sum to help him pay for the cancer treatment, which will be very expensive. There is a lot of red tape. A lump sum has never been given out before and he was told that the chances are one in five that he will get the money. So, he is hoping for the best, hoping that something can be worked out through the legislature. But he was told by an authority that such things take time and Mr. Schenk knows that the odds are that time is not on his side.

Mr. Schenk is struggling with a lot of odds. In one way, he is a real winner. The first check for thirty-four thousand dollars has already arrived. He went to his favorite bar and bought everyone a round of drinks, though he did not tell them that he won a lot of money.

He never married, is childless and has worked at odd jobs.

It is early in the morning here and we just finished praying the psalms. I thought again of Mr. Schenk. He is probably still asleep up in New York. Maybe he will wake up in a little while and plan a day with his friend, Mr. Gallo. I like to envision them taking a ride somewhere, to a place that they both like. In the comfort of their friendship, maybe Mr. Gallo will find the right words to ease the fears that his friend must surely feel these days. Whether or not Mr. Schenk gets the lump sum, the treatment will at best extend his life a few months. Money will buy him a bit of time.

But he has something that never came from a scratched ticket. He may ride today with a friend that money cannot buy. In the quiet of their truck, the best that life can give has arrived and has apparently arrived many times before, in the friendship of Mr. Schenk and Mr. Gallo.

I wonder how many fingers will scratch off lottery tickets this day in the hope of securing a jackpot of cash. There is no way of knowing that number of scratches. Could be in the millions, maybe in the billions. Enough human breath to make several hurricanes will blow the powdery film off countless tickets and nearly all of those who carefully exhale on the surface of their tickets will be losers.

Do you have a friend? Will you be with him or her this day? Maybe you will take a ride somewhere and enjoy the comforts of the gift who is your friend. Life is brief. In that sense, we are all losers. No win can give us years that stretch on forever.

I believe in Jesus. I do not know where Mr. Schenk is as regards his faith. But I do know that he won a winning ticket a long time ago, when he found a friend in Mr. Gallo.

There has been a lot of theological scratching over the centuries as scholars have tried to remove as best they can the obscurities covering the life of Jesus. Who was he and what did he offer? Maybe it was and is something as simple as offering us all friendship with God. Maybe his life and death brought us all to life with God, and with each other, in a way that is best comparable to real human friendship.

I like to think so. It is the deepest hope I have.

I am sorry that time in abundance on this earth is not yours to have, Mr. Schenk. It isn’t anyone’s, in the long run. We all struggle with red tape of all varieties. I hope you get the lump sum, if that is what you wish. I can understand how much you must want that. But I want to understand, too, why I think it does not matter in the big scheme of things. I think that long ago you scratched the surface of the heart of another and found friendship. And in that simple human need, you struck gold.

I wonder if anyone was gazing into the window of your truck when you and Mr. Gallo were side by side and in your hands you held a million dollars. A window is small, but on that day it offered a glimpse of the eternal as its presence, through friendship, appeared as plain as day.

You won, Mr. Schenk. You were given a gift that will never be lost. It rides with you now and will carry you through your illness and to eternal life. You know friendship – God’s ticket to the meaning of life.

Christmas

Christmas

I have been scanning old family pictures. Many are of photographs that my dad took when we – my two sisters and four brothers – were little. I showed them to my oldest brother, Johnny, not too long ago and I could feel him absorbing as many details as possible. He lingered a long time over each picture. He said, “If I look at these in the quiet stillness of my room, I know I will start to cry. It has all been so beautiful. And all so good.”

The passing of things hits home as we grow older. Mortality begins to exact its claim when we have been given a lifetime to remember and look back – and wonder as to the beauty of it and its loss.

I mention this today because there is a space in the human heart that yearns for what was and what will be on Christmas. Expectations are heightened by the joy that surrounds us this Season. We look back and hope that all that was somehow still lives. We look ahead and hope that God will be good to us, to those we love, and, on this day, our hopes and desires for goodness reach out to the whole world. For that is what we are, in fact, as church. We span miles and history. We celebrate a birth that binds us all as brothers and sisters.

I have thought about what my brother said that day, when he felt loss looking at the photographs. He did not say as much in so many words, but is it not true that he was speaking out of a sense that the past had become a real and living part of his heart? Over the years, sisters and brothers, a mother and father, aunts and uncles and grandparents became more than simply other people. They shared life with him, with me, and somehow became a part of us. And when they pass from this life, it is as if a piece of us is missing – but something of them still lives within.

I do not know why that is, on simply human terms.

So let me try the Divine – a word or two from Revelation.

Let me try to speak of the Gift that is this Child whose birth we celebrate this day.

As he grew, people drew near to him. They loved him and wanted to be a part of him, a living part of his life. We all know what that desire is like, from the love that we feel for each other. And so it was that in time, he gave himself to them. His spirit was poured into them and he gave himself to them as food. God made his home in us. Something – Someone – lives in us and is God.

These are words we hear over and over again – but they come alive and take on a power when we hear ourselves – when we listen to our hearts, and what we say of love and longing – to each other or in the privacy of our rooms when we pray – or look at old pictures and hope that our heart’s wishes comes true.

The Abbot recently said that we have barely come to understand the meaning of the Incarnation. I had the image of my brother touching the surface of a photograph, hoping to better remember, love, and hold a person no longer present in this life.

Yes, we scratch the surface of life with our words, with trying to fathom the meaning of God becoming one of us.

But it is Christmas – and as much as we try and pick out the best gifts for those we love – be it something you can buy or say, write or hope – we do so from the love of a God who is making us a part of each other in much the same way that he has become a part of us – for that is what love does. That is what love is.

Yes, Johnny – it all was and is beautiful. And it has all become a part of us – and will live forever. It is the Gift of Christmas – and it always was. We just kind of feel it better and more deeply the older we get and the more it all becomes us.

The Christmas City

The Christmas City

Route 17 is a highway that winds its way past Newark and goes through Lyndhurst and then up through Bergen County. I am familiar only with that particular stretch. I am sure that it is longer than that little piece, but I've never had reason to go that way. It is one of northern New Jersey's more colorful highways, but the scenery isn't what lends the color to this long slab of concrete and macadam. The color hits you from all sides, from all the stores and malls that are situated all along the highway. Route 17 passes through many municipalities, many of which have banned the use of neon lighting. Nevertheless, there are lots of lights along the way. Gas stations, shopping malls, computer stores, dog kennels, rug stores, automobile dealerships, diners, fast food places, fancy restaurants and nearly whatever else you can imagine existing along that particular ten or so miles of 17.

Advent is quite the season for travelers who frequent Route 17 in late November and through December. The smaller stores along the highway are all decorated for Christmas. These stores bask in the wonderfully decorated shops that constitute the Malls that exist on both sides of 17.

There is even a place called Christmas City. During the pre-Christmas season, it sells all sorts of Christmas decorations. Therein, in that City, is a forest of artificial trees, ornaments, wrapping papers of all colors, Season's Greeting cards, fake reindeer and Santas, aerosol snow, plastic wreaths, concrete elves, twinkling electric lights, polyester or red plastic Christmas stockings, indeed, everything that one might need for Christmas. Almost magically, the City appears out of nowhere right after Thanksgiving. But, as any faithful traveler on Route 17 knows, the transformation is not the stuff of enchantment or dreams. During the “off season,” a.k.a. “Ordinary Time,” the place is a humble dealership that barters swimming pools and lawn furniture. After Christmas is over, a first time pilgrim, heading his or her way up 17 toward the New York Thruway, would never dream that the collection of pool pumps, chlorine tablets, linings, portable cabanas, metal chairs, in-ground pools and other swimming pool necessities give way every Advent Season to tons and tons of manufactured Christmas stuff. The transformation happens so fast, one would swear that out of the dark skies of a late November evening, it all just plops right out of the heavens and hits the earth, right smack on 17 North, nestled lovingly among the huge, sprawling Malls that draw hundreds of thousands of people each Holiday Season.

I am writing this in Ordinary Time, according to the liturgical calendar. To be specific, it is July 29th. It is a hot, humid afternoon. I just finished having lunch, which consisted of a peanut butter sandwich, chocolate chip cookies, a Coca-Cola and an olive. I am in Covington, Louisiana, visiting my parents. There really isn't much to do here, except read and write and go for a few walks. My father is watching a baseball game with the sound turned all the way off. I never realized that is a not all that unusual practice with some people. Funny, I wonder if people get tired of all the words that hit them from all sides, including homilies or religious words. After sixty some-odd years of hearing and speaking words, I guess people can easily grow weary of them. Perhaps, in varying degrees, we all grow weary of interpretation and just want to look and see. My mother is either reading a book or writing a letter. I'm not too sure which. I can't see her from where I am sitting, but I know that she is at the desk just off the living room. No one is thinking about Christmas, or Advent, or shopping or phony elves. No one is thinking about swimming pools, either. But I have been thinking about the Incarnation and about what all this means here. Maybe one shouldn't be so direct about such things. I just don't know. My mother's eyesight is failing and my father is recovering from recent surgery. He does not have the strength that he used to, but looks well. I leave for home on Tuesday evening, and will tell them that I love them and will call when I get home that night. And I will write letters, and make phone calls. I am pretty good at keeping in touch. But it never seems enough. We cannot seem to love enough, to say enough. I cannot keep back the inevitable passage of time, and cannot deny within myself the pain that I feel seeing my mother and father experience the indifferent blows that come with simply growing older. It all seems to have happened so fast, so fast.

In a matter of months, I will be one of the multitude that drive past Christmas City and will probably feel an ache. The lights, the accompanying music on the radio, the surrounding square mile after square mile all beckoning to be as bright, as joyous, as expectant, will all bring to the surface of my mind the lingering thought that I am not fulfilled, not all that bright, not as joyous. My heart will not be able to match in depth and intensity the cultural creation that is Christmas City and the surrounding power of the magnificently lit Malls. The lights will make me squint. I will feel small, not up to the occasion, but will continue on and buy presents and try to look my best and fit into the whole rush of it all, and look forward to the near return of Ordinary Time.

On one of my recent visits down here, I was on my way to bed and passed my parents' bedroom. I looked in and saw my father in prayer, kneeling by his bed, saying his night prayers. I am sure that my mother was right across from him, quietly saying hers. From the earliest I can remember, I recall their doing that every night before going to bed. There have been three ongoing channels of communication in their married life: with God, with each other, and with seven children. It is a microcosm of all that is truly life. Our conversations during the day touch on so many, well, ordinary things. Relatives, the church, my getting a haircut, what's for dinner. Nothing all that profound. But I will say a prayer this night, for all things ordinary. I will give thanks for peanut butter sandwiches and hot July afternoons and the deep feelings in my heart, spoken and unspoken. I will thank God for the night prayers of my mother and father. I will pray for the wisdom to trust the Incarnate Word in such things as ordinary as this hot afternoon in late July, when Christmas is so far away on the calendar and yet as intimate as my breathing, as near as my mother straining to see, to understand. And, if I feel estranged this Advent season as I drive past Christmas City, I pray that I will remember this July afternoon, an off season, an unmemorable day, a day unadorned and yet a day that is the very stuff of human living, a day of lunch, talk, idle chatter and night prayers. A day imbued with the sacredness of ordinary things, each in their proper place, awaiting the same glorious disclosure that awaits all seemingly small things. I may feel no less estranged, but may feel a bit heartened in knowing that is precisely why he came: not to remove human estrangement, but to sanctify it and give it hope, to move it all along toward himself, in Covington, on Route 17, in Christmas City, and on this otherwise uneventful day in July.

Mr. Reilly

Mr. Reilly

My brother and I used to take the Public Service bus to get to high school. The school was in Newark, about a forty minute ride from Montclair, where we grew up. The buses back then were not as sleek as they are these days. The windows were much smaller and the greens and grays of the buses were not kept as shiny. But it seems to me that they had a homier feel to them, a used and worn feel to them. The seats were softer, slightly indented by so many thousands upon thousands of unknown and forever anonymous fannies. The ads that lined the ceiling were more local and not as cosmic as today's bus ads. And there was a nice familiar wheeze to the buses back then. I could hear the wheeze from blocks away, giving me enough time to take a few more drags om my cigarette and scramble in line to board the bus.

We took the #60 bus, which came down tree lined Park Street and then turned onto Bloomfield Avenue, the main street that passed through several towns, and headed on down to Newark. There were and still are all sorts of stores on Bloomfield Avenue. I used to like to look at them as the bus passed them by. The bus came at roughly 7:05 every morning, and Mr. Reilly was our bus driver. He looked quite old back then. But a lot of perhaps younger folks looked older then. He was small and had a tanned, leathery face. There was to him a wheezened look. He kind of looked how the bus sounded. He wore the typical bus driver hat, which was very well worn and had a public service emblem on it, right above the little green sunshade. Mr. Reilly hunched over the large steering wheel as he drove, as if to get a better look at what lay ahead down the road. The steering wheel of the bus was large, and he gripped both sides as if he had to do that to keep the bus on the ground. I do not think that I ever heard him say a word. He just looked up and nodded to each person getting on the bus, eyeing your hand to see if you had the proper ticket or money. I do not remember him ever looking directly at me, but do remember his small eyes in a mirror that hung off the top of the large window directly in front of him. We sat in the rear of the bus and every so often I would look to see if he was watching what we were up to and nine out of ten times my eyes met his. I cannot say it was a fond or endearing look that I saw in his eyes. It was more of a beady, watchful squint, something like that of an old tired snake. But there was a tired friendliness to him, as quiet as he was. I think that he had seen a lot over the years.

Snake eyes don't necessarily mean a thing as to how a person truly is. But his eyes were steady and beady and watchful.

I can remember a few people who got on the bus every day and I remember where they got on. There was a lady who boarded in Bloomfield and she was very severe looking. Everything about her seemed strained and taut. She was encrusted with heavy make-up and wore her hair in a tight bun that sat on her head like a hard bread roll. Her pursed lips were a deep colored red and her face was heavily powdered. She often had little whisp of powder on her lips. I could not tell if it was sugar from a doughnut or freshly applied talc. She never looked at anyone once she sat down and almost immediately opened a paperback novel and no matter what happened around her, she never looked up from that book. I can still see her reeling back and forth as the bus rolled down Bloomfield Avenue, never once taking her eyes off the page.

There was a man who sat near us in the back of the bus. He always headed straight for the rear seats and usually found one near the back door. That was the area where we sat. He always smelled like fish and wore the same clothes every day - brown baggy and oversized corduroy pants, brown shoes and an old worn green jacket. His hair was thick and oily and combed straight back. He always had a stubble of growth on his face, as if he had last shaved the afternoon before. I imagined that he worked in a factory in Newark and lived alone somewhere in Montclair. He boarded the bus in an affluent section of the town and that made me wonder even more as to where he came from. Funny thing was that I saw him about five years ago on the bus, going the same way. He could not have had the same clothes that he wore thirty years ago, but he still favored brown pants and brown shoes. He had a different jacket on. He still had that fishy odor to him.

The bus passed a Burroughs adding machine store in Bloomfield, not far from the Newark line, and every morning there was a fat lady drinking coffee and standing in that store, looking longingly out the window. She must have worked there since she was always there before opening hours. I saw her in the same spot every school day morning for four years. The Burroughs place is now a car dealership and yet when I would pass there over the years I would always think of her and what she thought about during all those coffees and all those hours, standing there looking east, towards the hazy skyline of Newark.

Just inside the Newark line there boarded a woman who was so pretty. She was then in her early thirties and had a European look to her. She dressed very simply and wore her blond hair neatly brushed, with a part. It hung just down to the collar of her coat and she had a habit of brushing away what she thought might have been little flecks of dandruff, but I never saw any. Her hands were soft looking. She had a small scar on her left cheek. She never wore make-up and had a morning puffiness to her face, as if she had woken up just a short time before getting on the bus. She always looked worried or hurt, perhaps melancholic, and yet I thought that everything about her made her beautiful, even whatever pain she may have had difficulty hiding. She seemed so human to me.

And so it was, for four years. We had a lot of fun in the back of the bus and got in trouble for our antics more than once, when annoyed passengers called the school office and filed a complaint. Whereas they were more tolerant of smoking in those days, we did cross the line when we opened a can of marbles and let them roll hither and yon down the aisle. A few times there were fist fights and they created a panic, too. But the worst was when Bogey Murray set the back seat of the bus on fire. It was a cold day and he later said that he needed warmth. That is the only time I remember Mr. Reilly stopping the bus and complaining to the supervisor, who was at his post in Montclair center. We were thrown off the bus and got in a lot of trouble at school. We were allowed back on the 60 bus the next day, and Mr. Reilly never said a word about the incident. Well, he never said a word anyway about anything. He just shook his head and glared at us as we boarded the bus.

Several days ago, an obituary in the New York Times caught my eye. A guy I went to high school with was killed riding a motorcycle in New York State. I immediately recognized his name. He used to board the bus near the Newark line. He was at one time the chief of surgery in a New York hospital. He was only forty-nine years old. I had not seen him since the day we graduated in June of 1966. I see his face in my mind's eye as I knew him back then, friendly and warm. He had blond hair and blue eyes and even back then we all knew that he was exceptionally bright. But it was his personality that so easily won people over to him. He became so successful, and now he is gone. His death saddened me, even though we never kept in touch. I would like to write to his wife to express my condolences but there was no mention of where she lived. His death made my mind wander back to those days, to him and others who seem so fresh in my mind, so fresh, as if we were together just yesterday riding the bus again.

I am sure Mr. Reilly, too, is gone now.

I wonder if there are buses in Paradise. Are there roads, and people in need of a ride to near and far places? Is there such a thing as travel? Does the pleasure of taking a trip, and gazing peacefully out of a crystal window to vast realms of Paradise await us? I hope so. I hope there is the chance to people watch, to look with wonder at how different we all are. I hope that there are growth and movement and so many things that enchant us in this life and that for some folks seem to provide a touch of heaven right here on earth.

Mr. Reilly, can you hear me? I am older now, and do not move much from this monastery. Oh, we move around quite a lot during the day. But we do not travel much out of the cloister. I don't mind. I kind of travel a lot in my head and heart here, back and forth in time and memory. I think back on those many days when you drove the bus, when you drove us and we drove you crazy. I want to apologize for that. Dorothy Day believed that prayer was powerful enough to change even the past. So, I pray this day for the you and us that were back then. Maybe just one little prayer saved you a bump or two on the road to Newark, on your ultimate way to Paradise. I hope so. I mean that.

Mr. Reilly, it is Christmas and my Dad will is gone two years now I am sure the two of you never met in this life. He worked in New York back then and took the train every day, not far from where you picked us up. My brother died right before graduation. You may have heard about it since it the car accident happened just about a block from where you picked us up on Park Street every morning and everyone was talking about that accident for weeks. I heard people talk about it on the bus, when you drove the bus past the tree that the car slammed into.

Do you drive a bus up there? If you do, keep a lookout for a two young men who look very much alike. I am sure that they will be sitting together, catching up on old times. They would love to meet you. Pull over and give them a ride, showing them the best that Paradise has to offer. Someone who came from there said that there are many mansions, so there must be places, such nice places, places to go and a need to somehow get there.

When I, too, get there, I will look for you. Perhaps we will even be neighbors, on a beautiful tree lined street, like Park Street. There must be such wide streets in Paradise, Mr. Reilly, because there are so many people who have wanted their whole lives to reach Paradise and settle in for the long haul. They may like to take their time and walk.

My Dad would like you and I am sure that you would like him. When I, too, get there, I will look for you. Perhaps we will even be neighbors on a tree lined street, like Park Street.

We can catch up on things.

Oh, and Mr. Reilly, just one more thing. Some day, you will be driving by, and you may see a young pretty woman, with dark hair and blue eyes. That's my Mom. She does quite well with new situations, but on that day she may need just a bit of help. Tell her you've been in touch with all she loves and she'll like that, and know just what you mean. She'll be anxious to start a new life with those she loved and missed while here. She and Dad gave us a touch of Paradise while here, with the way they loved us and each other. They probably never realized while they were here how good it all was. They gave us life, fed us, clothed us, watched us all the way, and it went so fast, so very fast. Maybe you can tell her, Mr. Reilly, how good it was. She will worry about that.

Yes, it is good and has been good. It sometimes takes me time to realize that, to look back and see that it has always been that way. God manages to get us all where we need to go, like you did, Mr. Reilly. And I thought so little of it all back then. So I thank you again, and ask that you remember me in your travels up there. Thanks for all those miles, those times we traveled this life together and did not think much about what all that meant and how good and truly sacred it was and is. I send my love and prayers and deep gratitude to you, Mr. Reilly, to the man you were and the man you now are.

A blessed Christmas to you, Mr. Reilly.

Mass

Listening to the Notes

Following the Notes

Father Luke

Morning

Sunset

Morning Light on Old Windows

This is a window on an old barn, taken early in the morning a few months ago.

Travel Thoughts

“Let us move on to the neighboring villages so that I may proclaim the good news there also. That is what I have come to do.” Mark 1, 29-39

I like the sense of movement in the Gospels – Jesus moving from day to day, village to village, from one group to another, one human need to another. There is no indication that he had a need to plan things out ahead of time. He seemed to go from place to place as he wanted or needed to do so.

Most of us do not have the freedom to hit the road as such, to branch out in whatever direction we would like. We are in our jobs, our relationships, our vows and marriages. These and other commitments keep our circle of movement fairly predictable and given. We are then involved in a different kind of movement – not one of miles or villages, but of relationships responsibilities.

“Grace” may be a word that has fallen out of fashion or usage. I think its meaning is still as real as it was when the word was more in vogue. Grace is that special gift of God’s own life within us. Grace is relationship with God. And grace is therefore the life of the spirit as revealed through the gifts of joy, perseverance, patience, kindness, goodness, truth. These are gifts that enhance any life. Jesus moved from place to place and told of the grace of God that was at hand wherever he went. He offered the availability of knowing God’s love through loving. That is a good place to be, and no one of us has to travel very far to find it.

Fourth of July

We had a pleasant Fourth of July here. Every year we have a barbecue in the cloister and it is good to sit around and chat with each other. It was a very hot day but there was a breeze in the cloister. Here are some pictures of the gathering.

 

 

 

 

Waves

Waves

I wanted to write a piece about a flower – I wanted to get a picture of one and write how it comes from a seed and how we come from much the same and yet we need love to blossom. I wanted to write about how wondrous it is that God brings such beauty out of something as tiny as a seed.

Beauty emerges wondrously from so many things.

Will God bring life out of death? I hope so – I am not sure. How can one be sure of such a mystery?

When I see a flower and know that there are trillions of them, I realize that we cannot create even one. And they are so beautiful, so very beautiful. Such a finely crafted and living mystery – with colors that entice and attract, petals that absorb and little veins that sustain, with roots that nurture and stems that wave in the breeze and, yes, there are the wondrous places in each flower where more seeds are made – to be given to the wind, dropped to the ground, consumed by a bird – so that there will be more and more flowers and beauty, over and over again.

It is said that God is everywhere and I like that and believe that, though it is a presence I am rarely conscious of.

God has colors and petals and seeds and is as well the sun and the rain and the wind - and a child smiled at me and it was the most beautiful thing I saw today. I looked for a flower and was given a child.

You were by the lake and your Uncle Chaminade gave you bread to feed the geese and you laughed and took the bread from his hand. And I took your picture as you stood on the shore of the lake, as you watched for magic things, like turtles and geese, ducks and the movement of the waters. It was beautiful. It was yesterday, was it not? Just a while ago. And then I left you, with your image in my camera and your face and life in my heart. You looked at me a lot and smiled and probably do not know my name, but that is okay. I remember when I was young and there were a lot of older people and I did not think back then about knowing their names. Maybe your Mama may tell you who I was, the monk with the camera.

And life is, indeed, a little while. We do not have each other very long, though you do not yet know that. You gazed out at the lake and you saw it with the eyes of a child, looking at things that fascinated you and made you smile. And I saw your Mama and Grandma pick you up and hold you and kiss you, and they said that they loved you – but as they spoke your eyes were yet on the lake and I understood that.

We hear, feel, and look and look and look. The waves promised more with each ripple, with each passing moment. It is good that you listened and looked. Some day I hope you connect the voice you heard, the love that held you, with the place where you were looking. It is all one.

Someday you may think about how it is that you looked at a lake and could make the waves come to you, with the magic that they bring. The waves came and brought turtles and geese. You reached out and took bread, and fed the geese.

And such is life. You will grow and hopefully be held and know more love, and waves will come, bringing children and friends, and, yes, even more geese and turtles. And your heart will grow, as will your vision. And you will be held and told you are loved, and may even then look beyond, to see the waves – and that is good. And I hope all good things come to you on those eternal waters– and that you feed them, and listen to who holds you, and run, run, to each wave and share that love with whoever comes ashore.

It all comes, in little and eternal whiles, wave after wave.

 

Watching Her Dance

Watching Her Dance

There was a small luncheonette on a small street in the town where I grew up. I used to go there with my friends when I was in high school and we would sit in a booth and have sodas and french fries. There was no menu. There was a chalk board with the day's offerings and those few. A cake or a pie sat beneath a plastic covered plate which was on the long counter. On the wall behind the cash register were stacked rows of cigarettes - the most plentiful items in the store. The floor was red linoleum. And it was there that she danced.
I remember the day I first saw her. I was alone, sitting in a booth waiting for my friends and she was sitting on a stool at the counter. She was by herself and seemed to know the owner - an older woman - very well. They had that way of talking and laughing. She had blond hair and it was long and hung down her back in a pony-tail. She wore tight pants and slippers and a white blouse. The shirt-tails of the blouse were tied in a knot at her waist. She was, I thought, so pretty. I watched her talk and laugh and then she took a cigarette from her large purse, lit the cigarette and inhaled and then thought of something that made her laugh. She coughed and laughed at the same time - and then took a long drag from the cigarette. She got off the stool and I then saw that one leg was shorter than the other - she had to drag her left leg behind her and her body moved up and down a bit as she made her way to the jukebox. She put in a coin and I watched the record rise amidst the colored lights beneath the plastic dome of the jukebox and then gently come to rest. The volume was turned up and I heard the "hiss" of the blank first seconds of the 45 and then on came "Let Me In." Do you remember that song? I remember the melody and the words but not who sang it.
And I remember her stepping back carefully from the jukebox and then dancing by herself. The song has a "shimmy" beat to it, and her feet slapped the floor as she moved to the music. Her bad leg dragged behind her good one and she snapped her fingers to the beat and closed her eyes and danced. The woman behind the counter looked at her and smiled. I watched and had no idea then that I would remember that woman and her song and her dance for many years. For it was just a small place, and a pretty woman, and a rock n'roll song and a kid who watched the pretty woman dance.
That was almost forty years ago. Wherever she is, I hope she still dances and laughs. And I hope there are those who watch and learn to carry as well - and with a song - the hurts in their lives. "Let Me In" was her special song. And let her in did. I have never danced as well as her. But she is still teaching me, every time I sing that song in my head and think of her, moving across a red linoleum floor and not missing a beat, somehow still asking me to follow and learn.

Scenes from Cartersville

 

 

Cartersville

I gave a talk at a small parish, St. Francis of Assisi, in Cartersville, Georgia this morning. I drove there last yesterday afternoon and spent the night in the rectory, which is actually a nice house not far from the church. It took me over two and a half hours to get there – there was a lot of holiday traffic on Interstate 75. I did not mind – I inched along and listened to music and watched the sun go down ahead of me. The pastor, Daniel Stack, is a real nice guy and he was kind enough to make dinner for me when I arrived. He is a good cook – he made some pasta with cheese and pesto. It was good. He has a big dog named Beulah and she is a lot of fun.

The talk went well. I shared with the people some thoughts on spirituality and writing and some things about my life here at the monastery. I told them about a writer I have lately been reading – the late Irish writer John McGahern. His book, “A Memoir – All Will be Well” is a wonderful read. He writes so beautifully about his youth in Ireland. Dan had just returned from a trip to Ireland and I mentioned to him that he might really like the book. McGahern also wrote some novels, some of which I have here but have not gotten to them yet.

I returned here this morning. The talk was at eight – at a breakfast kind of thing. I enjoyed chatting with the people at the table. It reminded me of my years in parish life and how the church simply is people, in all their varieties, needs, gifts and goodness. I think that good spiritual writing is that which opens up the reader’s heart to the goodness that is his or hers in life – given by virtue of being alive and having a heart. Spiritual writing should not give on the illusion that spirituality is something to be “achieved” with right practice or proper virtue. The practice and virtue are tied up with taking a good look at one’s life with the help of words that enable you to see and love who you are and where you are at.

Monastery Greeting Cards

We have some nice cards for sale in our Abbey Store, if you want to browse.

My Books

People often ask if I have had any books published. Here they are - along with some articles as well.

Thirsty Boots

There is a song “Thirsty Boots” by Eric Anderson. I cannot remember what the song is about and I now wonder what it means that boots have thirst. Maybe the words mean that a person’s feet can thirst for the road, if the place one needs to go is important enough.

Some people get their boots wet and they need to dry. Others may want their boots to get wet and so they leave them on a window sill or on the road. It is hard to tell, sometimes, why people do the things that they do.

But the song says that boots get thirsty.

And I look about me and try to understand that people do some funny things, things that may seem strange at first. But a song can be written about them and beauty can be made from them. It is a nice way, I think, to walk through life and to take what may seem strange and give it a place of beauty in a song or on a page. We all thirst for something good – and it is worth the walk to get our feet wet and find it.

Thomas Merton Retreat

Power

Day before yesterday, I was with the people who are with us on retreat. We gathered in the upper room of the retreat house. It was late afternoon and we had all left what we were doing to be with each other to share some words on Thomas Merton.

The lights were out but the room was not dark. Victor Kramer, a professor of religious studies who is a Merton scholar, asked us if we wanted the lights turned on and we said no, that it was good. We were able to see quite well. The darkened room perhaps gave a welcome allusion that it was not really close to one hundred degrees outside.

I sat near Victor as he spoke about Merton. He spoke warmly about Merton’s writings and the relevance of his works to this day.

From where I sat I could see the faces of everyone. A window was letting in a generous amount of light. I looked at the window and saw the branches of a tree, with blossoms on it, swaying gently in the soft breeze of a late June afternoon. The light was soft. Those sitting nearest the window were bathed in that light and they looked especially beautiful. They were bright and I thought of angels as I looked at them and wished I could have taken a picture, to capture that image, to keep it.

We listened to Victor’s finely crafted words. I listened and watched the light shine and the breeze blowing and the people, their smiles and eyes, and wondered about their hopes for the weekend. I suppose that one sure hope is that they come away from us with a better appreciation of Thomas Merton and our life here.

The Gospel that morning told a story of terror, fear, power and awe. Jesus speaks to the winds and calms the seas. He rebukes the disciples for having little faith. They are awed by who he is and what he does, how his words are possessed of great power.
And so it is that this Gospel might inspire one to ponder the power that is God and to seek a way to bring it back – it is common to pray to God to alter the weather, to still the seas, to detour the wind.

We look for great things from God. We turn to him to show us his power, to calm the winds and seas of our lives.

Yet the seas heave and the winds come.

Jesus would tell of God’s power as manifested in the small, the hidden, the obscure, the every-day, the seemingly mundane. And people would ponder the meaning of small things, trying to learn the meaning of a seed bearing power, of common bread and wine as divine food, of a flower revealing splendor and glory.

And we gathered in a room with light and each other, and a gentle breeze and the hope that we understand something of God, the God who comes in light and darkness, in the wind and in the smiles and eyes and hopes of people.

It can take years to appreciate the splendor of any single day. The awesome gift that is any late June afternoon, when people gather to better know Who it is who is in them, seeking the light that shines everywhere, wanting to hold the winds that caress each branch. We try and capture it with a camera or our words as if to hold still what we are – while God’s love and power take it back, only to give us more.

The Thomas Merton Retreat

Some folks at the Merton Seminar/Retreat

Victor Kramer, looking over his notes.

Prophecy

Mike and Friend

A few days ago I had to go to the airport to pick up one of the monks, Tom Francis.

I was given the Stratus.

I pulled the car out of the garage and noticed a strange light on the dashboard.

It was some kind of a warning light. I could not tell what it meant but took a risk and hit the road. It was hot and I was lazy and hoped that the car would make it to the airport and back.

The light stayed on all the way.

But the car seemed to work fine the whole trip.

Tom’s flight was on time. It was good to see him. I never told him about the light on the dashboard, which was still on as we drove and he told me about his trip. The world of immediacy was fine – the car moved, it was a nice evening, the meaning of the light faded as long as the car moved.

I made a mental note to tell Mike Wilson, our mechanic, about the light but forgot to say anything to him. Now I am aware that I put others in peril through my neglect, my forgetfulness. It was not intentional – it was just one of those things, as the saying goes.

I saw Mike a few days later and then remembered to tell him. He had already noticed it and had fixed it, so my warning to him was deflated. He then said that it was an indicator light that the gas cap was not properly fastened. He said that are three clicks when you attach the gas cap and if those three clicks do not happen that means that the cap is loose, that air is going to get in, and then that air will get into the gas tank and then the gas line. Then you are doomed, stranded somewhere and in desperate need of help on some crazy highway of life with thousands of people passing and not one stopping to help because they may get killed, or do not have the time or the interest, or are just like many of us who routinely pass by people with unscrewed gas caps of mind, heart, or Stratuses.

And such is life. I confess guilt for trying to get the most mileage out of life while ignoring more than one warning on my dashboard.

Jesus tells of prophets and how to recognize them – that we will know them by their fruits. I do not know what to say about the major prophets. Most people did not listen to them and I am afraid I would easily fall into that category. For as long as life seems to move along, even when there are warnings galore on the dashboard of existence, I hope to get by.

I do not know if any great prophet is on the horizon. At times I wonder if God has shifted his way of operating with us. If, out of an exasperated Providence, he is getting his way and getting us to where we need to go. We have not heeded the big warning lights very well. So perhaps he has placed thousands, maybe millions, of lesser lights in our midst, like countless little flashes on the moving dashboard of life. Small voices, small lives that are prophetic in how they live, how they love, how they hear and respond to God’s call.

Three simple clicks of a gas cap assure that a ride will go well. Such a small thing that if done has enormous ramifications that can last for miles.

There will be acts of kindness this day, done with no expectation of paybacks, all of them hidden. They will never find their way into print or any kind of cultural notoriety. Such small things that, when done, presence the prophetic word in our midst – right before our eyes, like a small light on a dashboard.

The Gate

Where is the Gate?

Roads hold the promise of a direction and gates signal an arrival. We all know that life has many roads and gates. As far as the way to paradise, we live with a sense that it is a matter of getting from here to there and the opening to Heaven will be known by its Pearly Gates.

So it is that we live our days with our hearts set on passing from this life to the next, hoping to find when we die a magnificent Gate, maybe even one made of precious pearls.

Yet Jesus says that the road to life is rough and its gate narrow, and that there are few who find it.

Jesus said as well “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through Me.”

He is then the road and the gate.

Many look this day for variations of easier roads and finely crafted gates. And it is understandable that they look down the road a piece for something shining in the distance, something wondrous that will open to them.

It is hard to love. It is hard to be that vulnerable to each other, be it in marriage, friendship, community life, an office, a ride on a bus. There are claims galore on our time, our hearts, our energies, our imaginations.

The Spirit dwells in our hearts. We hear these words every day in their liturgical context and they remind us that we embody a road and a gate. The Gate to life opens a bit when we risk all that we can be and do for each other. The road is eased when we help each other walk it.

I think it is that simple – yet at the same time, that difficult.

We look for pearls and God constantly gives us each other.

Monastic Brothers

Fr. Damien Thompson, on the left, is the Abbot of our monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky. He was here for a few days a couple of weeks ago. He met with most of the monks and we enjoyed having him here. He was in Maryknoll for many years and then became a Trappist monk.
Fr. Ed Morley, in the right, is one of ours and he is from Philadelphia. We wash dishes together and I can always count on him to get me laughing with one or more of his jokes. He handles all the incoming office-related mail and does a lot of correspondence related work for the Abbot.

Mark is our infirmarian. He has a real gift for caring for the sick and the elderly. There are eight men in our infirmary now and some are in need of a lot of hands-on care. They are all well cared for. Mark lived in a lot of places when he was young, including Panama. His family later moved to St. Louis. If he ever needs another job he could be a stand-in for ZZ Top.

Guerric was professed this past March 25th. He is from Connecticut and I enjoyed meeting his family when they were here for his profession. Guerric's main, but not only, job here is cooking. He is a wonderful cook and can make sand taste good. He is also on the business committee and helps out in the infirmary. We share this office where I read and write and he is real pleasant company.

Francis Michael is our Abbot. He is from Philadelphia and entered the Trappist Order here, at Conyers, in 1974. It is an easy date for me to remember because it was the year that I was ordained. We are all blessed with him as our Abbot. He is doing a fine job at a time in history when being an Abbot brings with it a lot of challenges. This picture was taken at a meeting we had with architects who are proposing different possibilities as regards some future projects.

ET (Eutropius) and Chaminade in the bakery this past Tuesday. We make our fruit cakes there and I think there are plans to make fudge there, as well. There is ample space there for both types of cooking.

ET is from Jacksonville and came here in 1994. He is the main plumber here and has several other jobs as well.
Chaminade is from Ohio and he maintains our website trappist.net. He is also gifted with writing and photography. I hope to do a book with him one of these days - pictures of our life here with some essays..

Augustine is out tallest monk. He is easy to spot in any crowd. He is originally from Chicago. He was professed last year. He has many jobs here, one of which is assigning the work among the monks and making sure that things run smoothly - not an easy job because of the size of the place and the constant need for manpower. He does well with it though and things that need to be done get done.

Friendship

Friendship

My first day of school was in September of 1953 when my mom brought me to kindergarten. She stayed a while and left. I wonder if I cried. It must have been a terrifying day for me. I was deposited into the land of strange, needy, new lives. It was a time when the need for friendship was to take some new twists in an unknown territory. I was to learn a lot of things. I know I went there not consciously looking for friendship but within a day or two it became a top priority. I needed friendship to get through those early storms of life.

There were a lot of kids and there was the teacher, Mrs. Temple. Mrs. Temple was a white lady. The kids were of many colors. And they were of different religions, too, though I did not think about that then. It did not matter then – but it sure was to matter later. It did not seem to matter to Mrs. Temple. Looking back, I think that was good. Maybe she was some sort of prophetess.

It was the Jackson Street School. There were a lot of kids. We played with big blocks and there were tiny felt pink rabbits and turtles that were soft and were able to be stuck to a board. We had lemonade and ginger snaps. We sat on the floor and were read stories and there was a piano. We painted, using jars of tempera colors. The windows were big and the floor was shiny. We did all kinds of things. I wore shorts and nice shoes and we sang songs and clapped. It was all planned out and I had nothing to do with that – I just had to show up and behave myself.

I soon made friends and was to discover that this world is inhabited by the good and the bad, fast and the slow, the strong and the weak, the secure and the jealous, scoundrels and villains and heroes and rascals. These and more were evidenced in my first year of involvement with the human race at large, in small sizes.

It is now 2006. I am in a monastery. It is a Saturday. My sister dropped me off here twelve years ago. She did not stay. She left right away. I think I cried then, too.

There are a lot of men here. Our abbot is a white man. We call ourselves brothers and we are of different colors, just like it was in the Jackson Street School. We are all Catholic and so that is a big difference from a long time ago. I am not really sure if that is progress.

There are no shorts allowed here but we can and do wear nice shoes.