I don’t know why it has surprised me to see familiar faces. Where else would these monks have gone? Did I think an entirely new community had replaced that which was here my last visit in 2018?!
It’s more though than the monks.
Sure several faces down in the chapel dressed in white robes with black cassocks bring me back to 2018, but entering the kitchen for breakfast that first morning gave me a quick shock. The same attendant was there overseeing the supply of oatmeal and eggs, coffee and buns.
Way out here in nowhere Kentucky someone working this menial, yet I would hope rewarding, job to still be here, only changed by the mask on her face now, why is this a shock? Where else would she go?
I assume by default, that she lives on a nearby property; there are several, not all of them farms. She is young; mid thirties I’d guess, so she’s perhaps set herself up to stay close to home, a farm she was raised on. Maybe she’s stayed close to care for an elderly parent or has married a local man, even.
She smiled as she saw me. My shock maybe catching her attention for surely she does not recognize me as well, masked as I too am, and after 3 years since last here.
But smile she did, and in a way that felt like a familiarity, which returned me to the place I recall her, from 2018. I spent a lot of my time that visit in the cafeteria. It made me anxious to be squirreled away in my room; a bit claustrophobic. I needed to see, if not engage with, people still yet that year. So the cafeteria it was.
Computer in hand, books alongside, I sat as she cleaned up, set up, and generally attended to her duties as kitchen staff. We exchanged words even, on a few occasions. Being the only two souls within earshot, this didn’t feel like the disregard for imposed silence it would’ve, had others been able to hear.
Back then she had company. Several other women attended the kitchen and oversaw the food service as well. There were bigger crowds, more retreatants, and therein more work to do I am sure. This year, 2021, open again just three months to outside guests, Gethsemani, like the rest of the world has yet to see the volume of visitors they enjoyed in pre-covid times.
She is capable of working alone.
I wonder to myself as I pick my oatmeal and pour hot water over my teabag, if she too feels the difference this year from then. I am not pulled to the cafeteria, anxious to see others yet not engage. I have this year, squirreled myself quite comfortably away in my room, just enough engagement in the time it takes to get each meal, and to gaze out the third floor window into the courtyard of the monks throughout the day…..
At Christmas, time deepens. The Celtic imagination knew that time is eternity in disguise. They embraced the day as a sacred space. Christmas reminds us to glory in the simplicity and wonder of one day; it unveils the extraordinary that our hurried lives conceal and neglect. We have been given such immense possibilities. We desperately need to make clearances in our entangled lives to let our souls breathe. We must take care of ourselves yet also our brothers and sisters.
John O’Donohue