Whilst in the United States, Ven. Nigel Edmonds was invited to
make a three-month retreat at a Cistercian monastery. He shared some
of his thoughts & reflections with friends through letters he wrote.
March 2001
Dear S_____,
The story I recounted to you in an earlier letter with regard to
my experience in the jam factory is, of course, absurd. The situation
I described in that letter would be absurd in ANY context, but in
the setting of this place, it seemed doubly so. Early on in my sharing
of Trappist life with the community, I found myself reading Merton's
journals. In those volumes, he speaks of his immediate experiences
in the Cistercian life, & although MY experience of the same life
amounts to less than a speck of mosquito shit on the windscreen of
a Boeing 747, nevertheless, the opportunity to live in the environs
Merton had shared, to be surrounded all day, every day, by Trappist
monks - monks he had known so well - experiencing directly the patterns
& rhythm of life that brought him so much early joy & later pain,
has been both extraordinary & singular.
Unintentionally, my time here has developed into a kind of existential
experience of Merton. In many instances throughout the journals, Merton's
own difficulties with the life have been described in terms that I
have found myself using increasingly. ABSURD. Merton uses the word
a lot. Like him, I have found that moments of intense joy & inner
lucidity seem at times to be swamped, over-ridden & lost to a dominating
spirit of absurdity that leans in on every side. The absurdity of
the jam factory - Merton made similar observations of the cheese factory
at Gethsemani; I read his accounts with empathy & sardonic amusement,
particularly one bitter entry that ran: "There goes the siren - everybody
down into the fallout shelter & pack cheese" - ditto for the jam factory!
I didn't arrive here "looking for Merton". In fact it was weeks
before I reminded myself that Merton had BEEN a Trappist. I have read
many of Merton's books, but I'm not familiar with his journals, apart
from the "Eastern" volume; it wasn't therefore a question of reading-up
on Merton, then go charging out into the working day filtering all
my experiences through his. Even LOCATING Merton's works is a story
worth recounting. The monastery has two vast libraries. They are stocked
with such a rich source of spirituality that the first impulse is
to want to read everything - SIMULTANEOUSLY! It's also evident that
there wouldn't be enough years in one lifetime to read & absorb even
one shelf's worth of what is stored here. Aside from the two main
libraries, there's also a basement "overspill" library, plus several
rooms elsewhere in the monastery whose shelves groan with books, religious
magazines, & pamphlets of every sort. One can lose DAYS of one's life
just holed-up in any one of these hide-away rooms, reading - reading
-reading!
Yet for the most part, throughout the days & evenings, these beautiful
library rooms are empty. It's customary to find only two or three
of the very elderly monks reading during the day, & in the evening,
the story tends to be the same. Why so? - You may ask. The answer?
- Because everybody is "too busy". How is it that contemplative monks
are "too busy" to devote themselves to something they are famous for
- the contemplation of texts? I'll come back to this point later.
In the meantime, I want to talk about tracking down Merton's books:
I first scour through the two large, main libraries. I find nothing.
I look under "M", I look under "Modern Spirtuality" I look under "Cistercian
Spirituality", "Cistercian Studies", "Modern Mystics" - I look EVERYWHERE.
No Merton.
Despairing of the index filing - both card & computer - I search
the shelves PHYSICALLY. No Merton. One of the more interesting jobs
I do here is to work in the incense workshop - a far cry from the
brutality of the jam factory. One day, I mentioned to the "boss",
Brother-------, that I couldn't seem to track down any of Merton's
books. He then told me that it had been a long time since anybody
at the monastery HAD read them: "You know the reception room, where
monks receive guests & their families?" he asked. "Yes" I replied,
"It's a beautiful room". "Well, there used to be a time when we had
a sort of little shrine to Merton in that room, with all his books
shelved up, available for anybody to read - but if you're asking me
where to find them NOW, I wouldn't have a clue where to look".
I once saw Merton described in print as: "The most famous monk in
the Western world" - yet to judge by the attitude in this particular
Trappist house, he seems very much 'yesterday's man". In a way I'm
not surprised. There was such a fuss made about Merton when he was
alive, that I'm sure the whole community grew weary of it all. They
probably got a bit fed up with constantly having the Trappist charism
defined in terms of "Merton" & nothing else, as though no other monk
in the entire order mattered. To the reading public, that might have
been generally true, but there ARE Trappist monks who have, & still
do, far exceed Merton in their capacity to live out the "hidden life
in Christ". In any event, a "hidden life" hardly describes Merton's
latter years in the cloister.
It is easy to be unfair to Merton in this regard - after all, it
was Merton's superiors who ordered him to write his biography in the
first place, & they, like Harcourt Brace & everybody else, could have
had no prescience of the extent to which "The Seven Storey Mountain"
would take the world by storm. Merton HAD written material for the
order previously - "What Are These Wounds?" was written at an early
date in his career, & was a work of piety that Merton later disowned,
so disgusted was he with it. It was published as authored by "A Cistercian",
& it might have been better for Merton if that rule had applied all
the way through his "monk-writer" career - but that's an easy thing
to say now - it doesn't take into account the incredible impact of
"The Seven Storey Mountain" when it appeared, nor the explosion in
Trappist vocations that followed.
Merton continued to write books, & Gethsemani continued to make
enormous sums of money out of them. It was probably felt, quite naturally,
that Merton was "owed something", & this feeling of gratitude might
have been the underlying reason why he began to receive more & more
leeway in the way he lived his life at Gethsemani. From monks I've
talked to here who knew Merton, it certainly appears that he was living
ONE sort of life at Gethsemani, whilst the rest of the community was
living another. There was, apparently, a measure of private jealousy
& resentment, which in the circumstances is hardly surprising. I DID
eventually track down the books - gathered together on an end-shelf
in the basement over-spill library. The collection wasn't complete
by any means, but at least all the journals were there. Poor Merton
- banished in disarray to the dungeons!
Returning to my earlier point about why these vast libraries are
hardly used - This monastery itself is vast - The buildings are in
the classic French Cistercian style, & I'm told that a lot of research
was done in France to replicate the finest of the monastic architecture
to be found there. The buildings stand in stunning virgin-forest &
green downsland, & I'm told that the property covers 20,000 acres.
If one climbs into the belfry & surveys the area, its trees-trees-trees,
to the farthest horizon. At night, coyotes howl in the hinterland.
It's a truly beautiful place. Walking deep into the woods, there is
a silence hardly found in the modern, urban world. Yet no-one ever
goes there - everyone's TOO BUSY. Despite a lay-brotherhood living
alongside the monks, there are simply not enough able-bodied men to
maintain the estate comfortably. The buildings & the grounds COULD
employ hundreds, as indeed such monastic estates did in antiquity.
But this is the 21st century, & I doubt if there are more than 60
employed here now.
Outside of formal choir hours, the monks & novices have little time
to do much else other than continually fulfill tasks. They rush from
one household duty to another, squeezing their prayer & study life
into brief respites. The situation is, frankly, absurd.
We live in an era of almost zero vocations to the monastic & religious
life. One or two novices trickle through of course, but such an establishment
as this needs to be teeming with whole armies of monks & lay-brothers.
As it is, the monastery is like some huge battleship, being manned
by the crew of a small patrol boat. Absurdity was crystallised for
me the other day in the image of an elderly monk struggling to read
his breviary whilst at the same time overseeing hundreds of jars of
jam descending on a conveyor belt. Do these men realise that outside
in the world, there are countless laymen who struggle to lead something
of a spiritual life in circumstances NO DIFFERENT from those experienced
by the monks inside these walls?
It's absurd when a young man turns up here interested in pursuing
his vocation, & discovers that although he is a concert-standard organist
& composer, he will not be allowed access to the organ, & it would
be doubtful if he would ever be given any time to maintain his practice
for at least THREE YEARS. The monastery church possesses a lovely
modern organ, yet there are no more than two monks here who appear
capable of playing it, & even they hardly match up to the standard
this young man offers. Wouldn't this be a glittering gift to the community?
- Why squander this man's talent & compel him to live out his noviciate
in years of frustration? -why deprive the community as a whole of
the rich treasures this man could bring to their lives through his
playing? - Apparently, with the hours he would need to maintain his
standard, household chores & other maintenance work would go untended.
It's more important that he sweep the floors than fill the vaulted
church with music.
This wasn't the first visit this man had made to the monastery.
He's been backwards & forwards a few times in the last couple of years,
trying to decide whether or not this was the life for him. The issue
surrounding his playing seems to have made up his mind. I next saw
him packing his bags. "Are you any nearer making a decision about
the life?" I asked. He paused from his packing & looked up at me "Yes
- I'm not pursuing it any further". "Oh!" I said, "Why is that?".
He stared at the clothes he had already placed in his suitcase "I
have no desire to give up my work in music simply to come here & spend
my life as a janitor". Some in the community were critical, feeling
that he "lacked humility" - that he'd "got his priorities all wrong".
I couldn't agree. Here was a young man with great talent, who was
willing to dedicate that talent to God. Perhaps the community could
have recognised that, & made sure that the talent was cultivated.
How else did The Church amass its treasure-house of liturgical music
in the past? In these days, do they squander what is richest in flesh
& blood, simply to keep a great pile of stones in place?
He's not the only one. There is a monk here, about 15 years older
than he, who's a fine ikon painter. One or two examples of his work
hang on the monastery walls, with a piece inside the church that is
stunning. He once expressed a wish to me that he could have more time
to develop his work. "Why don't you ask?" I suggested. "Oh that wouldn't
be possible" he said "there's too much to do, everyone's too busy".
Ah yes, of course - silly me, I keep forgetting - everyone's too busy.
It's not that these men don't care. I'm living a few short months
with them, & I have seen more courageous efforts made to love each
other here than I have seen in many other spiritual communities I
have encountered. I myself received a warm welcome when I arrived,
& their genuine interest in me is deeply touching & has been a source
of great strength during my stay. I feel certain that if these men
could, they WOULD have their lives arranged differently. Sitting outside
sometimes, I gaze across at the far trees & wonder if it wouldn't
be possible to sell off these buildings to the Helmsley Group or somebody,
pack up what was essential, & troop off into the woods, to build little
log cabins & settle down to a simpler life of prayer, study & art
- to be surrounded by silence & simplicity - to cease to be caretakers
- to be contemplatives again.
My love always,
N