How did I ever get back out of there, into the world, after tasting the
sweetness and the kindness of the love with which you welcome those that
come to stay in your house, even only for a few days, O Holy Queen of
Heaven, and Mother of my Christ?
It is very true that the Cistercian Order is your special territory and that
those monks in white cowls are your special servants, servitores Sanctae
Mariae. Their houses are all yours—Notre Dame, Notre Dame, all around
the world. Notre Dame de Gethsemani: there was still something of the
bravery and simplicity and freshness of twelfth-century devotion, the vivid
faith of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Adam of Perseigne and Guerric of
Igny and Ailred of Rievaulx and Robert of Molesme, here in the hills of
Kentucky: and I think the century of Chartres was most of all your century,
my Lady, because it spoke you clearest not only in word but in glass and
stone, showing you for who you are, most powerful, most glorious,
Mediatrix of All Grace, and the most High Queen of Heaven, high above all
the angels, and throned in glory near the throne of your Divine Son.
And of all things, it is the Rules of the Religious Orders dedicated to you,
that are loudest and truest in proclaiming your honor, showing forth your
power and your greatness obliquely by the sacrifices that love of you drives
men to make. So it is that the Usages of the Cistercians are a Canticle for
your glory, Queen of Angels, and those who live those Usages proclaim
your tremendous prerogatives louder than the most exalted sermons. The
white cowl of the silent Cistercian has got the gift of tongues, and the
flowing folds of that grey wool, full of benediction, are more fluent than the
Latin of the great monastic Doctors.
How shall I explain or communicate to those who have not seen these
holy houses, your consecrated churches and Cistercian cloisters, the might
of the truths that overpowered me all the days of that week?
Yet no one will find it hard to conceive the impression made on a man
thrown suddenly into a Trappist monastery at four o’clock in the morning,
after the night office, as I was the following day.
Bells were flying out of the tower in the high, astounding darkness as I
groped half blind with sleep for my clothing, and hastened into the hall and
down the dark stairs. I did not know where to go, and there was no one to
show me, but I saw two men in secular clothes, at the bottom of the stairs,
going through a door. One of them was a priest with a great head of white
hair, the other was a young man with black hair, in a pair of dungarees. I
went after them, through the door. We were in a hallway, completely black,
except I could see their shadows moving towards a big window at the end.
They knew where they were going, and they had found a door which
opened and let some light into the hall.
I came after them to the door. It led into the cloister. The cloister was
cold, and dimly lit, and the smell of damp wool astounded me by its
unearthliness. And I saw the monks. There was one, right there, by the
door; he had knelt, or rather thrown himself down before a pietà in the
cloister corner, and had buried his head in the huge sleeves of his cowl there
at the feet of the dead Christ, the Christ Who lay in the arms of Mary,
letting fall one arm and a pierced hand in the limpness of death. It was a
picture so fierce that it scared me: the abjection, the dereliction of this
seemingly shattered monk at the feet of the broken Christ. I stepped into the
cloister as if into an abyss.
The silence with people moving in it was ten times more gripping than it
had been in my own empty room.
And now I was in the church. The two other seculars were kneeling there
beside an altar at which the candles were burning. A priest was already at
the altar, spreading out the corporal and opening the book. I could not figure
out why the secular priest with the great shock of white hair was kneeling
down to serve Mass. Maybe he wasn’t a priest after all. But I did not have
time to speculate about that: my heart was too full of other things in that
great dark church, where, in little chapels, all around the ambulatory behind
the high altar, chapels that were caves of dim candlelight, Mass was
simultaneously beginning at many altars.
How did I live through that next hour? It is a mystery to me. The silence,
the solemnity, the dignity of these Masses and of the church, and the
overpowering atmosphere of prayers so fervent that they were almost
tangible choked me with love and reverence that robbed me of the power to
breathe. I could only get the air in gasps.
Merton is thrown into the deep end of monastic life feet-first in the above passage. No monk is there to guide him, whisper in his ear, tell him where to go or what to do. He simply follows the crowd without question as the church bells toll in the dark morning. He will either sink or swim or tread the mysterious waters all around him.
Today, I did something that I've never done before. I went to a Bigfoot conference. Now, that may sound ridiculous to many of my loyal disciples. An ice arena full of people, wearing Bigfoot tees, trading Bigfoot encounter stories, browsing vendor booths, eating pizza. And, above all, embracing the mystery that is about eight- or nine-feet-tall and smells like rotten cabbage.
I have been working on my Bigfoot poetry collection for close to six years now. In a way, that has been a process of learning to live with mystery. I can't say that I firmly believe in the big guy, but I can say that the universe is a much more interesting place when the possibility of Bigfoot exists. So I say, listened to the speakers, and let myself be swept away by the world of Squatch.
It was sort of wonderful. Like being at Hogwarts for a day, waiting to be sorted. Bigfoot wasn't even the strangest attendee. There were Mothman and Dogman and UFOs. Disembodied lights floating in midnight forests. Ghosts and the Loch Ness Monster. By the end of the day, Bigfoot seemed pretty tame by comparison.
I am tired verging on exhausted right now. Ready to go to bed, like Harry on his first night as a Gryffindor. I can't say that I'm a Bigfoot convert now. However, I did meet several people who opened that door a little wider in my mind. People who were like me--skeptical, yet open.
Saint Marty hopes he makes the Quidditch team tomorrow.
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