It was a wan hope, however. But the last week of ten days that I was in Rome were very happy and full of joy, and on one of those afternoons I took the trolley out to San Paolo, and after that got on a small rickety bus which went up a country road into a shallow saucer of a valley in the low hills south of the Tiber, to the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane. I went in to the dark, austere old church, and liked it. But I was scared to visit the monastery. I thought the monks were too busy sitting in their graves beating themselves with disciplines. So I walked up and down in the silent afternoon, under the eucalyptus trees, and the thought grew on me: “I should like to become a Trappist monk.”
There was very little danger of my doing so, then. The thought was only a daydream—and I suppose it is a dream that comes to many men, even men who don’t believe in anything. Is there any man who has ever gone through a whole lifetime without dressing himself up, in his fancy, in the habit of a monk and enclosing himself in a cell where he sits magnificent in heroic austerity and solitude, while all the young ladies who hitherto were cool to his affections in the world come and beat on the gates of the monastery crying, “Come out, come out!”
Ultimately, I suppose, that is what my dream that day amounted to. I had no idea what Trappist monks were, or what they did, except that they kept silence. In fact, I also thought they lived in cells like the Carthusians, all alone.
In the bus, going back to San Paolo, I ran into a student from the American Academy whom I knew. He was riding with his mother, and introduced me to her, and we talked about the monastery, and I said I wished I were a monk. The student’s mother looked at me with a horror and astonishment so extreme that I was really a little shocked by it.
The days went by. Letters came from America, telling me to take the boat and come there. Finally I bade farewell to the Italian typewriter salesman and the other inhabitants of the pensione, including the lady who ran the place and whose mother had been overwhelmed with thoughts of death when I played St. Louis Blues on the piano, sending in the maid to ask me to desist.
With sorrow in my heart I saw the last of the Piazza Barberini and the big curved boulevard that ran into it; and the last of the Pincio gardens, and St. Peter’s dome in the distance and the Piazza di Spagna; but above all, I had sorrow and emptiness in my heart at leaving my beloved churches—San Pietro in Vincoli, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Pudenziana, Santa Prassede, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Agnese, San Clemente, Santa Cecilia . . .
I suppose when I was very young, I entertained, for a short while, the idea of becoming a priest or monk. All Catholic boys do at some point. There's something pretty powerful about the uniform--all black with the white Roman collar. It commands respect, even if the person wearing it is fresh out of seminary with little life experience. And Merton's fantasy about girls beating down the gates of the monastery is another one of those common Catholic boy things, too. Religion and devotion mixing with sex and passion. Merton hasn't reached the point of surrender yet. But visiting Tre Fontane fills him with hope for a life better than the one he is currently living.
I just spent three hours working on a resume and cover letter. It's something I do frequently. I see a job that I think I'd like, and I apply for it. It's an act of hope. For something better. Most times, I never get past the slush pile of applications. On rare occasions, I get a phone interview. On even rarer occasions, a face-to-face interview.
I know that I've written about the need for hope a lot. I think it's an important element in life. I tell most of my students on the first or second day of classes that hope is the one thing that links them all. They all enrolled in college for basically the same reason: to gain an education which, in turn, will allow them to obtain the job/career they want. That's hope. I would go so far as to say that hope is the motivating factor of almost every day. Simply getting out of bed is an act of hope. If we all woke up thinking that life is meaningless, none of us would get out of bed. Ever.
I need hope. Hope makes getting up every morning easier. It makes going to work a little less difficult. With hope there is the belief that something better is possible. I like living in a state of perpetual possibility. Every day seems like Christmas then. Like a present waiting to be unwrapped. That's the way I prefer to live. That may sound naive. I don't care.
I don't want to live in a world without hope and possibility. That would be a world without art and poetry and literature and theater and music. Without love and joy. I'm not ready to live in Orwell's 1984. Doublespeak and darkness and depression. Nope. Not for me.
Tonight, I lift my glass of wine to something better that's just around the corner. I may end up a Trappist monk or a librarian or the next Poet Laureate of the United States. Anything is possible.
This message has been brought to you by Marty, Patron Saint of Hope.
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