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Compline
is one of the most lovely offices, thanking God for the day.
I was
paying some attention to it, but mostly allowed the prettiness of the music,
and the thin, scratchy, weak singing of one of the monks
whose job it was to
sing the solo bits, to wash over me.
I wanted to try to pin some of
the faces in the choir stalls more firmly in my mind.
I can still hear the melodies, and still find
singular resonance
in the words sung each night:
Keep us, Lord, as the apple of
your eye;
Hide us in the shelter of your wings.
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FOOLS FOR GOD
by Richard North
Published by Collins, 1987
richarddnorth.com/archive/books/downloads/fools4god.htm
Part I
INTRODUCTORY
Zones of Silence
In a civilization which is more and more mobile, noisy and talkative, zones of silence and of rest become vitally necessary. Monasteries - in their original format - have more than ever, therefore, a vocation to remain places of peace and inwardness. Don't let pressures, either internal or external, affect your traditions and your means of recuperation. Rather, make yourself educate your guests and retreatants to the virtue of silence. You will know that I had occasion to remind the participants in the plenary session of the Congregation of Religious, on 7 March last, of the rigorous observance of monastic enclosure. I remembered the very strong words on this subject of my predecessor Paul VI:
'Enclosure does not isolate contemplative souls from communion of the mystical Body. More than that, it puts them at the very heart of the Church.'
Love your separation from the world, which is totally comparable to the biblical desert. Paradoxically, this longing is not for emptiness. It is there that the Lord speaks to your heart and associates himself closely with his work of salvation.
John Paul II, 1980
Chapter I, pp. 13-20
The Cardinal's Room
The Cardinal's room was light, airy and bare. There was a wash basin, hospital-style armchair in tubular steel, wooden office armchair, a large table, a public school sort of bed, an incongruous great cupboard, of a seaside boarding house type, a crucifix over the bed with an unmemorable Christ, plastic curtains which rustled at every motion of the wind, swing windows.
A timetable was on the table, as though the landlady of a hotel were advising her guests to be prompt to high tea. Luckily, I had no idea then that I had been put anywhere quite so grand as the smartest set of rooms in the place, or I might have left there and then.
The view from the window, in the south side of the modern Nunraw Abbey, looked out to gently sloping hills: conifers, grazing land and ripening corn. Beyond, the Lammermuirs high moorlands, reservoirs, and winding narrow roads. It was a stunning evening. A butterfly wandered in, fluttered around hazardously and found its way out again.
This is a Cistercian monastery, home to thirty- plus Trappist monks - Cistercians of the Strict Observance - sworn to poverty, chastity, obédience, stabilité, conversio morum (the continual struggle for personal change). Famously, the Cistercian is devoted to silence. The quiet of the place was periodically disturbed by the ringing of a phone or the slamming of a door. Every sound could swell itself along the bare, wide, high corridors. It was a hospital kind of noisiness. I sat on the bed and then on a chair at the table. I lay down, stood up, unpacked my toothpaste, thought about writing a letter, opened a book. There was nothing whatever that I had to do.
I had arrived down the road at the Old Abbey, now used as a guesthouse, earlier that day. After tea, a phone call had summoned me to meet the Abbot, up at the purpose-built monastery on the hill. I had given him a shopping list, downstairs in a big meeting room, which appeared to be neutral ground where the monks could meet the outside world. A few meals in the refectory - would that be possible? A talk with some of the monks? Coming to the night offices? Perhaps an insight into the work that the monks do? Reading in the library?
He cut me short after these questions and said that naturally I would have to live at the monastery proper if I were to do any of these things easily. A large, pink man, Abbot Donald McGIyn made any sort of timidity impossible. When a man reminds one of a farmer going about practical business, and requiring not to,be slowed in it by deferential nonsense, it becomes easy to state what is required, and to accept what is offered without anxiety.
Faced with something so unknown and unlikely as living with monks, and Trappist monks at that, I went into underdrive. It may feel like that to be an overweight woman checking into a health clinic: a very pleasurable shedding of responsibility. There was no point wondering how to pass my tirne with these Trappists: I had, for once, given up directing or pretending to direct - my life.
Something rather like this may happen to cheerful old recidivists as the doors of Pentonville Prison clang shut behind them on yet another Christrnas Eve, with them safely on the inside, when otherwise they would have to face the perils of a festive season with nothing to celebrate.
When I had come back from the guesthouse, the Prior (second in command) took a hand in things. Red-faced, sharp-featured, with razored white hair stubbling his skull, he had a keen look to him. Rather severe, I thought. He was wearing the Cistercian uniform: creamy rough wool habit and black scapula. He took my hand in a solid grip, and gave me a broad, conspiratorial wink. It seemed almost to be saying that this was an exceedingly rum place, and that he and I were quite probably the only sane people in it. This was kindly done. We drove round to the garages behind the monastery: it was slightly odd to find that one could do this so easily. Where the great whispering gates? Where the grille with a lurking, half-seen face?
Nunraw is built like an open prison without the fences. It is long and low and penitential in its demeanour. Coming on it from the village, from the north side, it turns out to be in a softly beige stone, rough cut, and a rather good mixture of the airy and the monumental. In the west side, where the visitors park their cars, there is a scruffy wall where there ought to be a brand new church, and at each end an inconspicuous door. One leads to the 'temporary' church, and the other to the noman's-land room, and the enclosure beyond.
A drive swirls round from the western side of the building to the southern. A small 'Private' sign is all that separates the sacred from the profane. There is a workshop and garage area which might belong to an army camp or a school, and from which runs a path through a little municipal-style lawn and flower beds, to a door which leads into the nether regions of the monastery. The whole place is perched on the brow of a hill. It is a very exposed position.
'Up here, the wind fairly cuts through you in winter', said the Prior, Brother Stephen, as we walked from the car. He insisted on carrying my suitcase. His step was lively. He installed me in my room, and showed me the route to the loos, the church, and the refectory. The rest, he said, could wait. The Abbot came and brought me some things to read: well chosen, useful books, and a doctorate thesis devoted to an American Trappist monastery, which had been printed as a kind of brochure. As I went down to Compline, Brother Stephen found me, and told me he would come and call me at 3.15 the next morning to go to Vigils. I told him not to bother but he said he had to get everyone up anyway, so it was no trouble.
