Page 11 of Saint
Shadows stretch behind the gravestones now, like long fingers reaching east toward the trees. It will be compline soon, our final prayers before night closes over the abbey.
“This life is supposed to be an offering,” I say finally, gesturing toward the graves with the hand holding the details of the Trappist monasteries. “A holy andwholeoffering, and I still feel that I’m offering only in part, that I’m holding back part of my sacrifice. Maybe Elijah’s coming here was a gift, because I see that now—I see how far away I am from being totally and completely God’s.”
“You still sound like a banker,” Brother Connor says, a little sadly, as the first bells begin tolling for compline. “Like life is about closing out accounts and reallocating funds.”
“I wasn’t actually a ban—it doesn’t matter. What matters is I’m still holding on to my past life, when I need it to be burned away, threshed away. I needmore.”
Brother Connor looks down at the papers in my hand as the bells ring again. “You’ve made up your mind then. About the trip.”
“I have,” I say, and a new energy fills me, something akin to what drove me to Mount Sergius in the first place. It’s something close to hope. “I’m going to go.”
Brother Connor touches my arm, gently, fondly. “I’m happy for you, Brother Patrick. My only worry is that you’re going now not to seek, but to flee from something. Or someone.”
I shake my head. “This is what I’m supposed to do. I know it. I know it like I knew I was supposed to come here almost five years ago.”
“Then I am happy for you,” he says softly. “And you are certain?”
“I’m certain. I even know the three monasteries I want to visit.”
We begin walking to the church, the bells insistent now and comforting in their peals.
“Then I suppose we should tell the abbot,” Brother Connor says. “And get you a new passport.”
7
Timeat the abbey pours itself into basins, just as the fountain in the south cloister does, with the water in each pool rippling into a near stillness before gravity gently and inevitably pushes it onward.
We wake for vigils, and we dress in our habits, which vary in the details, but which all have a long black robe, a belt, and a length of black fabric called a scapular which hangs down both the front and the back of the body but remains open at the sides. Then we go to prayer, shuffling from our cells in the pre-dawn dark.
After we pray vigils, it’s time for lectio divina—holy reading.
When I was in finance, reading was crucial—scanning, skimming, assessing, all of it as quickly as possible because time was money and any time spent taking in information was time not spent turning that information into the next pile of money. And so when I came here, I assumed that reading the Bible would be much the same. You get through the chapters as quickly as possible so you can move on to the next thing.
But that’s not how lectio works—that’s not actually how being a monk works, either. Productivity is never the point, the outcome is never the point. The doing is the point.
And so too with lectio. You are not reading to get through a chapter or to accomplish a task, you are not searching for an epiphany. You are there to linger and to savor. To be snared by a single word or image and then let it waft through your thoughts like candle smoke, letting it call forth all the memories and feelings and thoughts it will.
In a way, it reminds me of sex. There is something wonderful about slow, languorous lovemaking, about tracing over someone’s body with loitering fingers and lips. The kind of sex that remits revelations which might sound infinitesimal to anyone else—the existence of a small scar, perhaps, or a few crisp hairs at the top of a foot—but that are life-changing in their discovery. In its intimacy, its affection, its vulnerability, and in its capacity to haunt, evoke, tease, reward...
Yes, lectio divina is very much like sex to me.
After lectio-sex is lauds, our prayers said in the light of the now-waking sun, and breakfast, which concludes the Grand Silence for the day. After breakfast is a few hours of work, which for me is principally about being the abbey’s de facto CPA, accounting for our printing press, brewhouse, and taproom, as well as any income brought in by people staying in our retreat center. I’m not exactly managing seven- and eight-figure portfolios, but careful allocation and expansion means the monastery has a healthy buffer for any potential crisis and can easily meet its needs for the coming year—the charities we support in our county and in Kansas City, funding our health insurance plan, paying for the usual utilities and business expenses, paying for our agricultural equipment and supplies.
When I’m not in the office next to the abbot’s, trying to tune out the French audiobook du jour and assessing farm equipment repairs and potential grant applications, I’m helping out wherever a set of big shoulders and an uninjured back can be of use. Usually in the barn or the brewhouse—or chopping deadfall—but I’m often needed in the taproom too, wheeling in kegs and rolling the tapped ones out.
I’m grateful for it, for the work that tires my body enough that sometimes I can sleep without dreaming. I’m grateful for the honesty of the sweat and the soreness of it. I spent the first eleven years of my adult life earning money in the slickest and most oblique ways, by convincing people and companies and trusts to let me play with the moneythey’dearned. So yes, it feels nice to work with my body, and my hands. It feels nice to use whatever gifts I have for math and money to make the abbey more secure in its future and the care of its dependents.
It feels nice to do good things.
After work, there is Mass in the abbey church, lunch, and then communal prayer. We go back to work in the afternoon—some of us changing in and out of habits depending on our various jobs—and then we return to the church for vespers, our early evening prayers. Then there is lectio again, dinner, and our free time, which is usually when Brother Connor practices his katas under the oak tree and many of us treat ourselves to a cold glass of beer—or two. Thus lubricated, we’re back to the church for compline, and then off to bed.
Prayer and work.
Ora et labora.
Two weeks after Elijah told me he was getting married, I’m sitting in the beer garden outside the taproom, watching the sun sink toward the horizon. Brothers Titus and Thomas are winging wet sponges at each other instead of wiping down the tables, and a visiting brother from an abbey in Italy is valiantly attempting to make conversation with our carpenter, Brother Andrew, who is not exactly known for his chitchat and who is grunting into his beer every time the Italian asks him a question.
It strikes me how different this beer-filled evening is from the evenings I spent before I came here—especially before I started dating Elijah. Working until it was definitively playtime, skipping dinner so I could get hammered or go to a strip club or both. And if for some reason Ididget dinner, my phone was in my hand the entire time. In fact, even if I went out to drink after or to get a lap dance, my phone was still out. I have vivid memories of strippers purring in my lap while I stroked their hips with one hand and answered emails with the other.
