I’ve just attended None. It is the Liturgy of the Hours that is placed after the monks afternoon nap, is how I see it.
Lunch, or dinner as it’s called here, happens at 12:30 directly following 12:15 Sext. I can’t get into what each Liturgy is or why it is, all I can say is altogether they offer a rhythm and flow to the day for the monks; a flow that is punctuated by these calls to prayer that remind-and one would hope reinvigorate-them to the reason for being here at all.
This is a Trappist monastery in the Cistercian tradition of prayer, labor, and silence. The silence is self evident from the moment of arrival. First there are signs alerting visitors to keep quiet, then there is the strange zipped up sensation that permeates the grounds, rooms, and spaces here; as if everyone had laryngitis-wanting to speak but unable.
Yet I really do not wish to speak. It is the habit, or custom only, that keeps me feeling a keening to greet the passer-by or say good morning to the cafeteria attendant. It’s actually very pleasant to cross paths with someone and not feel compelled to social niceties. We simply smile with our eyes at best, and go on.
Prayer in this Cistercian order is assumed. From the start, before even coming here or choosing to come here, the assumption that prayer was the backbone of its purpose was in place.
What comes under scrutiny is what prayer looks like, or even is, here at Gethsemani. I’ve had to define it for myself, in my life, as the effort I put into my everyday. When my effort is done in the presence and consciousness of a greater purposing than my own one small bit, this to me is the best I can define prayer.
With prayer as a foundation element for the monks I can give this definition to them as well, but prayer for a Trappist is so much more. I take license in this because I really have no insight other than my assumptions from watching from the balcony of their monastic life, as I have.
The monk just now for instance, riding a bicycle around the campus over the high wall separating public from private. I have the gift to see into this secret garden, with my room on the third floor of the guest quarters.
When he first caught my eye I thought he was going to some task, peddling his way to an assignment. Yet now, as he’s to’d and fro’d several times across my line of sight, I am not so certain. Perhaps he is simply after some exercise; dare are I suggest, fun?
The sun is full in the sky this mid December afternoon. No clouds, no wind, 57 degrees. Who wouldn’t want to get on a bicycle, let the cassock fly behind along with the beard, and feel the air flow? I imagine I can see the smile that secretly curls his lips and crinkles his eyes, from where I sit way up here.
Is this too, prayer? It must be, surely.… The pleasure of being human lived out in one moment on earth;
this is prayer.
But for these Trappist, is this enough? Is it acceptable? They are here, sequestered as they are from the rest of the world, family and former friends even, to live out service to God and the world through praying for souls. Soul of individuals, soul of earth. Soul of humanity.
How then is prayer classified under these terms?
As I watch the monk once more come into my line of sight I marvel at the bright color and seemingly new model of his bicycle, and decide this too is praying as the Trappist prescribe, and as I call it.
Both can be right; both-and.
His ride is a pleasure bestowed on his own soul, touched into the earth he rides upon, and seen from afar by me. For this small event, otherwise inconsequential, to be seen by another and noted with thought on paper, this is the prayer it prays. Perhaps this joy, this experience of pleasure first for the monk, then to the earth he rides upon, is real prayer.
That I get to be a part of it; multiplication of loaves.