Today as I sit in front of my computer and here the birds sing, I contemplate and remember my Monday morning, the time of leaving the Abbey of Gethsemani. I wanted to attend all of the services before we left and so I set my alarm on Sunday night. I managed for one last time the trek up to the church for Vigils. However, this morning was different. I had read that twice a week the monks observed Vigils in total darkness. Today this Monday morning was one of those times.
The monks entered and the lights went completely off. I could not look at my booklet but could only listen to the one speaking, the one whom the spotlight illuminated. Having it in the dark changes the focus. I experienced Vigils as a reminder of how I cannot experience the light without the dark. The light and the dark both have limits too much of either creates distortions. In connecting with the Cistercians of the past by remembering Vigils as taking place in the dark before artificial lighting, the monks reflect an intuitive knowledge of light and dark. The places of the known no more lessen our fears than the unknown creates them. The essence lies in attentiveness and obedience to vocation.
While my Vigils experience deeply affected me, it did not take away my exhaustion from the combination of the time change and my staying awake all day Sunday aided by the continual consumption of caffeine. Thus returning to my room, I set up my alarm for Lauds but somehow turned it off falling back asleep until 7 a.m. almost missing breakfast. As I rushed to breakfast and sat down at the table in silence with my husband, I felt like I was back at home already, the hustle and bustle of the outside world crept in. However, in the taking of the time to write some more postcards so I could mail them at the Abbey because who would be foolish enough to miss out on the monks paying the postage and walking around the grounds one more time, I felt at peace climbing into the car heading down the road to Abraham Lincoln's birthplace.
Foregoing checking the latest news regarding the Corona Virus on my phone, I picked up my copy of the Merton Annual. After the introduction are a series of letters exchanged by Brother Patrick Hart and Father Louis aka Thomas Merton. Reading these letters sent me back to the standing in front of Patrick Hart's fresh grave in the cemetery. The grass not having grown back yet, the brown dusty soil reminding me that the loss of this Brother, a long-time member of their community, remained fresh in the hearts and minds of many. Another era had ended.
And somehow for me, Lent/Easter seems to be a time of the soil showing. Ash Wednesday 2014, the day we receive ashes, reminding us of our beginnings coming from the dirt and our lives being continually nourished by the dirt, our family attended church together for the last time. That Friday our daughter walked out of our lives bringing to a close an era that would never return. Last year, 2019 right before Palm Sunday, my mother-in-law passed away changing the lives of the Trently family forever, an end of the era and the beginning of the new.
Now at this present moment in 2020, together around the world we are faced with the Corona virus and the ever-growing changes a pandemic brings.
Thus as Holy Week and Easter approach slowly makes it way to Pentecost, I come full circle returning to Merton and the Merton Annual, in which Joseph Q. Raab, ends his introduction with these words, "As you enjoy the articles here, may you gently be reminded, and consoled by the fact, that being in your 'right mind' has little to do with being 'perfectly adjusted'. The mad world needs the weird ones to bring back home some real sanity." In echoing words of Thomas Merton in 2019 the Corona virus did not exist on Raab's radar let alone on Merton's when he penned, Raids of the Unspeakable. I would suggest that for us in April, 2020 amidst this pandemic, that these words are a consolation and a reminder to be part of the Resurrection not the madness.
For it is in these moments that Christ makes all things new. The green grass returns leading us to a new place towards Resurrection. Christ's illuminated presence meets us in our humanity unbinding us in a way that our life experiences, the dirt, become an outlet for compassion to the world. The grief, the sadness and the pain lessen not by going away but by allowing Christ to transform us by moving through the challenges of life not clinging tightly to them.
May Christ's perfect peace be with you.
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