Page 86 of Saint
“In a quarter of a mile, turn left at the fork,” and even as the phone says it, we see it. A sweep of stern hills with a cluster of medieval stone buildings roosting proudly at their base. The sea heaves below, and even through the rain, I can make out the foam and churn of the water.
As we pull down the narrow lane to the abbey, a bell tolls from below. A call to prayer that I feel as keenly in my soul as I felt the tuning fork in my heart.
45
It’s notthe abbey like something out of a children’s history book, all damp gray rock weathered by centuries of wind and salt. It’s not the probably haunted graveyard full of winding paths and crooked stones.
It’s not even the sea, which rolls against the broken edge of the world with a ceaseless fury, or the wind, which never truly stops, but only abates into grazes and whispers.
It is none of this that makes me fall in love with St. Columba’s—or rather, it’s none of this alone. Instead it is the absolute, undeniable certainty that this is a place where hearts are tested. This is a place where everything but God is stripped away.
They say that Irish monks are different, special—that it was in these stark green fringes that Christianity survived the nastiness of the Early Middle Ages. That it was Irish monks who saved history, literacy, art, and faith for this part of the world.
I’m sure the actual history is more nuanced than that, but right now, I’d believe it. I’d believe every word of it. Looking at this place, being shown around by a rail-thin monk with a pale, wind-lined face and a beard the color of fire, hearing the bells against the matching song of the wind...
Yes, I’d believe it. If you found God in a place like this, you’d never lose him again.
* * *
Though the rain never leaves,the day is more than long enough for Father Finbarr (whom I’ve privately been calling Father Firebeard) to show Elijah and me around the relevant parts of the abbey.
St. Columba’s has a very traditional layout that probably hasn’t changed much since the days of Brian Boru. A square is made, with one side being the church stretching west to east, another side comprising the dormitory and former scriptorium, and yet another making up the refectory and former malthouse. The final stretch is the library, tea rooms, and gift shop, the latter two of which are only open for a few hours each day and are closed when we see them now. Set to the south is a low-slung stone building that houses their small but popular brewery, a cottage that functions as their hermitage, the parking lot, and trailheads for the visitors to take up to the cliffs or down to the sheltered beach below.
Father Finbarr talks very little, even compared to the other Trappists we’ve been staying with. His tone is polite, warm even, but he gives only the most perfunctory of explanations as we walk from place to place, ducking his head as we walk through the drizzle, unbothered by the way his glasses fog up when we walk back indoors.
The only meal the brothers share is lunch, he explains to us, and all other meals are taken alone when a brother chooses. A stricter silence is kept than at Our Lady or even at Semois, and typically the only conversation that doesn’t directly pertain to work or prayer happens at their weekly chapter meetings, when they discuss affairs of the abbey. They are allowed to talk to visitors as needed, but Father Finbarr says most visitors seem to embrace the atmosphere of silence when they come and don’t require much conversation.
Tomorrow, we will be shown the brewery and be allowed to talk to the master brewer, who is a layperson named something so Irish that I make a mental note to ask Father Finbarr for help pronouncing it later. And unlike at Semois or Our Lady, there are no assurances that prayers are optional when we are handed the prayer schedule. Our host doesn’t say that they aremandatory, nor do I get the impression that he would scold us if we were absent. But there is something about the way his light blue eyes flicker to mine when he asks me if it’s true I’m considering becoming a Trappist that I think he would mark my absence if I were gone.
He seems to assume that I’m here because I want to be here. That I’m here seeking exactly what St. Columba’s has to offer—that elemental experience of belonging to God in the unique way of the Trappist monk—and that while I’m here, I’ll drink deeply of it.
He’s right.
That is what I’m seeking, that is why I'm here, and I will drink as deeply as I’m able. It’s just that there’s something else I want to drink deeply of too.Someoneelse. Because I only have five days left with him before we return to the real world and our real lives, and I feel those five days like I’m a Disney princess trapped in a villain’s giant hourglass. Like the passing time is a physical thing, slowly burying me alive.
That feeling gets no easier when we pick up our bags from where we left them at the visitor’s entrance near the gift shop and are shown to our accommodations. The abbey is too small to have a proper guesthouse, and so we are staying in the dormitory with the monks.
Our rooms are separated by several cells which I suspect are actively inhabited by brothers, and while the flagstone floor could possibly hide the sound of soft footsteps in the night, the doors are made of wood so creaky and old that I suspect they predate the invention of the telephone.
Elijah’s eyes meet mine for a brief instant before he wheels his suitcase to his room, and I know he’s thinking the same thing as me. There’s no way we’ll be able to meet at night without Father Firebeard and his fellow monks knowing.
I feel like a teenager as we deposit our things and then follow Father Finbarr to the refectory to serve ourselves a quick dinner before compline, because I find myself trying to triangulate breaks in the schedule and locations from our tour where I think Elijah and I could spend a few minutes alone, but it’s far harder here than it was at the other two abbeys. Perhaps I can make a case to Father Finbarr that I’d like to explore the grounds a little, perhaps there will be a day nice enough for that, or perhaps we can linger in separate spots after compline and wait until everyone has gone to bed...
No, this feels worse than being a teenager, I think, as Elijah and I help ourselves to soft bread and warm stew and a dark St. Columba’s beer. This feels like cheating, like infidelity. Not the thrill of the adolescent chase, but the reckless urge of the unfaithful.
But what’s my alternative? Not find time with Elijah this week? During our last week together?
Impossible.
I will find a way, and as we take our seats to eat and the rain patters on the thin glass of the windows, I tell myself explicitly what I’ve known since Semois, maybe even since the hermitage.
I’d rather the sting of repentance than the anguish of wishing. Wishing for the rest of my life that I’d used every hour of these last days with Elijah.
The refectory was clearly built during the times when every second son joined the Church, because the room and its long trestle tables could easily seat a hundred people. Since St. Columba’s only has twenty monks now, the chairs are spaced far apart—far enough to make conversation impossible, even if we felt brave enough to break the taboo on talking. We eat in silence, and then it’s time for compline, which is beautiful and haunting and also in English, which feels like a gift after two weeks of muddling through prayers in French.
And then it’s bedtime, where there will be no chance of sneaking out, and as I fall asleep, I pray to myself, murmuring in my mind the words that brought me here to the Bell homeland, to the sea and the wind and the sheep.
I lift my eyes to the hills...
