This is day two of a six day series expressing my time, day by day, spent in silent retreat at Abbey of Gesthemani, December 10-17.
It is 12:37. The clatter of silverware is married in the air with Gregorian chant gently piped in to break up the silent sound of lunch.
I’ve chosen a side table, the view allowing sight to the gardens but not as directly as a front table.
No one sits with me.
No one sits with anyone. This would somehow be too difficult; awkward; to sit facing someone and not say a word…
We’ve only just begun, the 22 of us, to acknowledge each others existence with a small smile if an eye is caught. The first two days we walked to nones and vespers, dinner and supper, cast down, as if we alone were present in this grand place.
It was easier this way to remain silent, imagining we are invisibly cloaked like a child in a sheet, than to acknowledge the presence of others, and thereby call up our human instinct to connect.
I am at the Abbey of Gesthemani. A week silent retreat is well underway, my body just beginning to align to my soul in the gratitude and peace of getting to be in this sacred space. In this space made sacred, because it offers time, place, and room to simply be.
And see what takes place.
I sit in the unknown and wait, which feels both awkward and courageous.
mark nepo
I’m coming to realize this place is not in and of itself sacred, but it is made sacred by what strength, belief, and trust I give it. Without this-my own conviction, determination, to meet something here-this place is just another, made of four walls, floors and a ceiling.
There’s quite a variety of people here with me. I am surprised by the diversity, and yet right behind that, not surprised at all.
And then just after this surprised un-surprise, wonder at whom among them is surprised by me.
Without explanation to many of you, I find myself seeking out one person in particular. He sits furthest out from everyone, is a tight corner with little light. The first meal I saw him there and felt my heart ache; he is so much like one of my own boys; red headed, younger by far than any others here, and settled.
Yet I felt something from him-or did I project?-unsettled.
I continued to find him each day, never anywhere but at meals. I speculate that he doesn’t frequent the library as others do, or fancy the liturgies like myself-but then what have I got to go on for this fact, having attended only two myself…
I like to consider he is considering a next step, a choice into this monastic life, the driving investigation of his week here.
But there’s my projecting. He may have taken the first turn off the road, after breaking up with his long term girlfriend, so close to the holidays…
There’s an older gentleman, one among the many, who-despite the signs posted and the obvious structure of silence in place-can’t seem to contain his words. They spill every meal from mouth, full and deep, unavoidably intrusive amidst the drone of silence, and yet I welcome them. They are an anchor of humanity for me; reminding that this too, is a sacredness. Some simply must open their hearts through their mouths and share. It is very difficult sometimes, for some of us, to do otherwise.
The last I look forward to seeing each day, though I have come to recognize them all, tripping through my imaginings of where they are sleeping, which floor and which door, they do their silent introspections, or snoring~
This last is another woman. There are only three of us so she’s not difficult to miss. The third comes in tandem with a husband, so I wonder less at her silent retreat, having this discordant connection along.
Yesterday this second woman and I shared a table in the library. Me reading old journals I didn’t know I’d packed along, delighting, to my surprise, in some of my past selfs wanderings. She, silently giggling over text messages coming in while she made her way diligently through a very tall pile of Christmas cards to be addressed and notated. She seemed so stern and resolved when I saw her first in the lunch room, and yet here, in her private bubble, what fun to watch her giggle and scribe heartfelt notes to friends and family.
You would think that the silence of this retreat by design would be a wholly introspected time, with no space for noticing things outside of the intention of time for you. The redhead may be in such a space, but the rest of us I perceive, not nearly so.
Like the cows I walked to visit this morning, it is impossible to not notice a form of familiarity in front of yourself. These people here with me, coming for reasons I can only invent, get it both ways. The prescribed silence of the space negates the propensity to commune, yet draws-at least me-deeper into the community I find myself. It may only be one week, but I am discovering a whole new way to be, with others.
And I am liking it; very much.
That’s not to say I don’t ache to open my mouth and see if I can still speak, or don’t look forward to getting and giving a deep, warm hug. It’s to say there can be both, and both are essential.
I am figuring this out, and I look forward to what I make of it. I suspect, and of course madly hope, it is a richness of being unrealized as yet. I am 52 December 19; I say, it’s a good time to begin this realizing~
I have never feared the future, only in my weak moments, my ability to reach it~
trish