Page 12 of Sanguine
Brother Connor could ask me to scrub the cow shit off the barn walls and I’d agree, because I trust him completely. He is short, slender white man with a snowy mustache and bright blue eyes, well into his sixties but with the energy and strength of a man half that age. Before he came to Mount Sergius in the eighties, he owned a karate school in Kansas City, and most days, he can be spotted under the large oak tree near the graveyard, practicing his old forms under its shady branches.
“I know you are silent today, so you don’t have to respond to my rambling,” Brother Connor tells me.
It’s a courtesy, because there isn’t a ‘you broke your vow of silence’ jail at the abbey, or anything. In fact, there are no vows of silence at Catholic monasteries at all, at least not in the permanent sense. There are periods of silence throughout the day, and brothers and visitors often take temporary vows of silence to induce greater introspection and contemplation—as I have been doing for the last two weeks—but there is no total surrender of words. We sing out loud, we pray out loud, and during certain periods of community recreation, we talk a whole hell of a lot. And I’d be lying if I told you there wasn’t a fair bit of bitching, gossiping, and bullshitting too. Less than there was in portfolio management, sure, but still more than zero.
The only silences that are enforced—mainly by frowning and mild scolding (for severe infractions)—are the Grand Silence between compline and breakfast, silence at meals, and in the chapels where monks and visitors alike go for prayer.
Still, though, I appreciate Brother Connor’s courtesy. It’s important for me to honor my promises to myself—even if they only matter to myself. Especially if they only matter to myself.
Like, for example, the promise to have God and God alone as the sole object of my devotion.
“The abbot would like to see you,” Brother Connor says as we walk from the refectory under a covered walkway towards the building that houses our various offices and the welcome center. Visitors are already beginning to mill about the cloister, sitting on the green, grassy garth or on the many wooden benches. “And I hope you don’t mind, but I asked for the privilege of being with you while he speaks to you. I think you’ll be very excited by what he has to say, and I wanted to see my Brother Lumberjack smile for once.”
He says the last part in a teasing voice—it’s an ongoing joke at the abbey. All the brothers here are assigned work according to their strengths, and with my background in finance, my work has been primarily of a QuickBooks and Excel nature. But my other strengths are quite literally strengths, and so the abbot has designated me the official grunt of Mount Sergius. I heave plastic tubs of hops in the brewhouse, I lug around reams of paper in the print house, and when I’m at the hermitage, which is less frequently than I would like, I’m tasked with chopping up the deadfall and bringing it to Brother Andrew, who is our resident carpenter.
And the years of labor have left their imprint. While I’ve always been tall and wide-shouldered, there’d never been any doubt that my muscles came from a gym, butnow…
Well, now I’m built like a lumberjack. And given that I haven’t shaved in a week, I probably look like one too.
“And if you don’t mind me saying so,” Brother Connor says as I rub self-consciously at the thick stubble on my jaw, “you seem like you could use a smile today.”
I’m grateful for my shield of silence right now, because I worry if I start talking, the old version of myself will take over and I’ll never stop. I’m worried that I’d trap my friend in this walkway and steal hours from his day by making him listen to me describe the precise arch of Elijah’s eyebrows and the low, rough notes of his voice. So instead of speaking, I give a slow nod of assent.
Yes.
Maybe I could use a smile. God knows I don’t get to see Elijah’s anymore.
“I often find that silence begets memories,” Brother Connor says, stepping forward to open the door for us. “The worst memories. And the best.”
I give him a look as we move inside the building. All the windows are wide open, letting in the humid spring air and a stiff breeze intent on ruffling every paper in the building. It smells like coffee, grass, and something unique to Mount Sergius. Like incense and old paper and name brand clothing starch.
“Memories aren’t meant to be torments, Brother Patrick,” Brother Connor says softly, meeting my gaze. “They are gifts.”
Gifts, my ass,I want to say. But I don’t. Brother Connor knows what I left behind when I came here. He knowswhomI left behind. Everyone does.
I didn’t want it to be a secret that I was queer. No more than the widowed brothers kept their late wives a secret, no more than the brothers who still speak fondly of past girlfriends and teenage sweethearts. I wasn’t coming back into the Catholic fold because I felt shame about whom I liked to take to my bed (everyone) or whom I let into my heart (only Elijah).
I came here for God.
I came here too be a good man for him and to pull myself out of the outside world where I’d done nothing but let people down. Where I’d been chaotic and selfish and messy. I felt like I owed the world that. The retreat of myself.
That’s why I came, but I wasn’t about to let the price of my surrender be the best and most honest parts of myself. I wasn’t going to let anyone inflict spiritual violence on me. OnlyIgot to do that!
Anyway, looking back, I can’t help but think God led me to Mount Sergius for a reason, because the abbot understood me completely when I explained my stance to him, and then introduced me to Brother Connor, who eventually told me his story of the man he’d left behind to come here almost forty years ago, and who listened with the understanding of the fellow broken-hearted when I told him about Elijah.
Only Father Harry has been what I’d braced for—cold gazes and pointed Leviticus readings at mealtimes and things of that nature. It would have been something I could guard against if he hadn’t also been my novice master, but after the fifth meeting with him silkily suggesting that my soul was in mortal danger if I didn’t repent of my lust for men, I went to the abbot and asked for help. That was when my spiritual development was given over to Brother Connor instead. It was an unusual arrangement, but monasteries are their own little worlds, somewhat removed from the rigid, ultramontane politics that stifles parishes and dioceses, and so Abbot Jerome was able to do as he saw fit. And then when the year was up, the post of novice master was given over to Father Matteo and Father Harry was put in charge of ordering monastery supplies like giant rolls of toilet paper and industrial-sized bags of coffee.
Brother Connor seems to sense my inner disagreement with his words of wisdom, and his eyes twinkle as he pats me on the shoulder. “Gifts, Brother Patrick,” he says again. “Because of what they can teach us.”
My memories aren’t teaching me anything other than how to discreetly wear a chastity device under my robes, but I don’t say that, of course, because I don’t say anything at all. Temporary vow of silence and all that.
Abbot Jerome is already sitting behind his desk when we get to his office, the ubiquitous breeze blowing through the room and an audiobook playing from some unknown source. It’s in French, and Brother Connor asks, “Proust again?” as we sit down in the sturdy wooden chairs set across from the abbatial desk. Brother Andrew had made them years ago, and they were some of the only chairs that I enjoyed sitting in, because the arms were set back far enough that I could sit with my thighs slightly apart, which was more comfortable with the cage.
“I’m on to Camus now,” the abbot says, looking up from the papers on his desk to us. “Vivre, c'est faire vivre l'absurde, and so forth. Hello, Brother Patrick.”
The abbot looks like no one more than he looks like Friar Tuck from the cartoonRobin Hood, except he doesn’t have a tonsure. And he isn’t a badger, obviously. He’s short and round, with fair skin, bushy eyebrows, and silver hair. His nose is as prodigious as his chin isn’t, and his scoldings are as common as his smiles. He spends most of his free time writing essays about apophatic theology, transformation, and a very, very dead person named Gregory of Nyssa.
We sell his books in the gift shop. They have a lot of footnotes.
