It’s made me curious that there are two young men here with red hair. Not red red like my guys, but definably red, for sure.
Maybe some of the others here are technically redheads as well, though I’ll never know it because the evidence has turned white….
Redheads catch my eye of course. With four children, all redheaded, how could this anomaly unique to just 5% of the earths population, not catch my attention?
One bearded and raggedly dressed; common for the age. One, clean-cut, along with who I assume is a father, or uncle. He is young in the way that makes me wonder why he is here. So young in fact, that I feel as if he is not really old enough to choose to be here, that maybe he was forced to come along, to make up for some digression from a proper path, as this adult at his side determined.
It makes me think about my own children. Would they ever come here? Would they connect to the unique beauty, the surreal silence, the surprises found in stepping away from the cultures of everyday life and constant connection to everything?
Because it is that; and it does happen. Immediately upon turning the final bend to arrive at Gethsemani the phone alerts me to the fact that I am out of range. I no longer have direct connect to the line of my own life.
I am out of range.
I was alright all yesterday afternoon and evening; the wonder of first arrival kept me seated if not calmly, then curiously, in place.
Waking today too, the delight of here was astounding. The wonder again, of getting to be here, remarkable. I was ready to do all that was here to do!
Now it is 3:30 in the afternoon. I have been awake and present to the day for over 12 hours. The first call to prayer; 3:15am. The bells toll, the doors click open then closed, and attention to details begins. Prayer. Psalms. Liturgy.
It feels to me that there is no time nor space to decide this for oneself here; what is the lesson for life and how does one write ones own liturgy when scheduled into the day are 8 strategically places disruptions? How do you get deep and wide, if every few hours the bells toll, and the requirement is to join the others and make noise to God as a whole?
I am, needless to say, disturbed by the disruptions.
I have found the most satisfaction in god by finding him on my own. Satisfaction being a deep feeling of truth and rightness, that tested through life, holds on.
Rules and regulations, assignments and prescriptions; these haven’t been the answer for me so I easily wonder how it is the answer for others. For me, finding God, knowing God more intimately, is about being co-creators. For me this means finding one’s way to one’s own liturgy, and living it in the hours of one’s day no matter what the day holds uniquely for each.
The bike riding monk just crossed my frame of vision again. I am certain, simply because it is here at Gethsemani that I am seeing it, that he is on a task. He does not continuously cross my sight on a joy-ride, but rather he has been assigned a chore, one of the ‘labors’ inherent in this tradition of Trappist monk. No room for decisions of one’s own about how to live God into the world; that was forfeited upon entry.
I can stop my rigid judgments here though; for in fact wasn’t the decision for one’s own that I address made once and done, when by choosing the route of prayer, labor, and silence, that put them here in this place?
We all need community. For some just one is community enough; a partner to walk alongside and share the everyday with. For others a community is the greater whole into which they step for work, to living, to engaging; these cities, towns, nations, all communities they select to do their own form of praying, laboring, and even silencing, among.
For these monks, to see it this way, with grace, that they do have personal power to make the choice to call this their liturgy, and to believe it in as their best expression of God in them, this softens me. When I look across at the monk again peddling past, I can stop the disgust that rises, thinking him forced to live this way, without freedom of selection, and see that his selection has already been made, and to him, this is his freedom.
For me I am still seeking, knowing that this, the seeking, learning, then seeking some more, is the personal path I have, if not consciously chosen, then continuously move through and into more each day.
We all make liturgy of our lives, no matter what we hold in our hands or put our eyes to. For this monk, the assignment of a bicycle to carry him across the grounds to task who knows what is enjoyed, if not embraced, as his freedom of prayer and liturgy.
Who knows, maybe too it is his pleasure, and he really is smiling through curled lips and crinkled eyes, as I gaze down at him from my third floor window.