Unexpected Monks

 

I’m just back from the monks.  Always an adventure.  I can’t remember if I’ve told you that I’ve finally figured out that the way to convince my superego, who is a cynical old ratbag who lives entirely in her head*, that the forty-five minute commute is worth it in an arranging-your-life way** is to go early enough to do at least some of my daily ‘sit’ before the service starts. I know I’ve told you before that sitting in that space, in the monks’ chapel, is amazing, all by itself, chanting and being hit in the face with holy water not required.***  I’ve always picked up the whatever-it-is in old, much-prayed-in churches:  call it numinousness, if you like.†  I assume it’s why people sneak into church to pray rather than staying at home:  one space is not like another††. It’s why I find most cathedrals overwhelming, not always in a good way, and back before last 12 September††† it didn’t feel very welcoming:  it felt much more like a giant boot about to stand on me.  The monks’ chapel is big enough to hold intensity, but not big enough that I feel the force of gravity multiply as soon as I walk in the door, or maybe it’s just that here I’ve found the atmosphere that supports rather than stomps me.  But that intensity does help you—well, it helps me—focus, and focus is not one of my natural talents.  So I go early, when I can, and sit, and focus.‡  It’s like sitting in company—which is another support thing‡‡—even when there’s no one else around.

So I arrived half an hour early and slipped in, preparing to wrap myself up in my blanket, put my gloves back on, and sit in the friendly (if cold) near-dark till the monks filed in a minute or two before the service began and turned on the lights.

They were already there.  Sitting in their long pews.  In the dark.  What?  Now, I wobble easily, and I’m convinced that whatever I’m doing, I’m doing it wrong, and that goes several times with bells, whistles and incense as I fumble my way into becoming a practising Anglican.  So while it was not a moment out of Rosemary’s Baby or Buffy the Vampire Slayer or similar I still had a mega wobble as I emerged from the hallway into the dark chapel and found the pews on either side of the altar full of black monk-shaped shadows.‡‡‡  Waaah!  Eeeeep!  I shouldn’t be here!  I’m doing something wrong!  But it wasn’t on the service sheet on their web site that there was a stretch of silent contemplation before Tuesday evening prayer!  Nor did it say, clueless members of the public should stay home!

I crept to my usual place.  I wrapped myself in my blanket as quickly and quietly as I could and sat down.  Nobody told me to go away.  I admit that my focus was less good than sometimes.  But I could still feel the atmosphere winding itself around me like another blanket and saying ‘there there’.  And a minute or two before the service started the abbot got up and did turn the lights on . . . and a couple more people emerged from the monks’ guest space to sit in the congregation with me, thank you very much God, one of my several horrors is of being the only person on the lay side at some random weekday prayer, although one of my lesser and, over time, diminishing horrors was finally faced today, which is that I was the only woman present.  Eh.  I was so busy worrying that I was DOING IT WRONG by being there at all that I forgot to be stressed by being the only woman.

The abbot still threw holy water at me at the end of the service.  So it must have been okay.

And then I drove home in the spitting snow and sleet and merciless continuing fanged wind and met two gigantic lorries out gritting the roads.  Sigh.  So it’s a good thing I got my holy in tonight, I may not be going anywhere tomorrow, including to Forza bell practise.

* * *

* Poor thing.  No wonder she’s cranky.  When she signed on for this job I’m sure she was hoping for a more nourishing intellect than mine.

** To give the old bag credit she doesn’t argue with me about God.  The Road to Damascus thing is blisteringly convincing to anyone present, including your box-ticking, ledger-sheet and graph-paper-minded superego, whether she likes it or not.

*** I love the smack of holy water.  Just by the way.  It’s the reality of it.  It’s WATER.  As well as all the symbolism it carries with it, including that it’s an abbot who’s throwing it at you.  I’m still pretty freaked by taking communion, which is probably an auxiliary reason why I can’t quite get myself out of bed in time to go to Mass with the monks.  If I can get to the New Arcadia bell tower on Sunday morning I can frelling well get to the monks on some other morning.  Although the New Arcadia bell tower doesn’t require any driving.  If I can ring epic frelling touches of Grandsire doubles inside on Sunday morning I can DRIVE to the monks some other morning.  I’m working on it.

† If you can stand it.  But according to Merriam-Webster online, numinousness is the noun form of numinous.

†† Also it’s a lot harder to convince yourself you should stop wasting valuable time and do the washing-up/hang the laundry/mop the floor/water the houseplants if you’ve escaped your material reality to sit in church.  Religious experience has rather more in common with my life as a twitchy, easily distracted, guilt-prone writer than I might have expected.

††† Today is my six-months’ half-birthday as a Christian, as a friend pointed out.

‡ I may be Knitting Lady at various bell towers but I am Blanket Lady at the monks’.  If this frelling dratblasted weather continues I may start taking two blankets.  One of the monks seems to have a permanent cold.  I feel there should be supplementary blankets with the capes and habits and scapulars and cuculae and things.

‡‡ Hence relentless nagging of poor Aloysius.

‡‡‡ With optional sneezing.