DARTON - LONGMAN + TODD, 2006

Offering

I sometimes feel stupidly disappointed that God has not given me some greater work to do. This is not vanity, or at least I hope it is not. Rather, it is just some strong desire to be useful to God, to be involved in something great like so many of the great things God's grace has brought about through the centuries and is doing in our own time. What is stupid in all this is that it draws my focus and center away from something God has given me to do and what I so longed for when I first came to the monastery; namely, to exist primarily for the praise of his glory, to have prayer as my work and my profession. So, to find that center again and to be grateful for it: to pray here in the monastery in the way that is expected of a monk and then to hold myself ready to do whatever else God may ask.
In fact, a monk is called to a life that is mostly hidden - hidden from others and eventually hidden even from himself. As such it begins to seem to the monk not to be much of an offering to God. I, for example, can experience my offering - faithfully living the life of the monastery from day to day - as something rather dull. I'd prefer to be doing something else, but that's how I know that it's an offering. Being disappointed is no sign that this is not what I am called to do and be. Indeed, according to the monastic theory, this is precisely how it is supposed to work: you offer to God the not knowing, you offer the not doing something greater.
My silly disappointment and my restlessness is not unlike that of the apostle Peter, who said to Jesus, "Lord, I will lay down my life for you." Jesus knew that what Peter offered then was nothing he could count on. Re is kind to Peter, but he also exposes him. "You will lay down your life," he says; "No, you are about to deny me three times." I do not need some greater work. I am fortunate to have what I have.

I read of Georgia O'Keeffe in, of all places, Hemispheres, the United Airlines Magazine, as I am flying over Montana, returning from Rome, and I find a suggestion for poetry in something she says of her paintings: "Seashells and rocks and pieces of wood that I like. I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world I live in." I find this so suggestive; it makes me want to do something in words like she does with a cow's skull or the insides of an iris or some other flower.
Flying over Montana is sweet and strange. There are many little clouds separated from each other, each cumulus; then very square irrigated man-made (and in that way beautiful) patterns of fields; and then the wild irregular patterns of sun and shade pasted across the land by the varying clouds.
I think how earlier in this long day I was in Rome, and now I am looking at this. The quality of light in North America is so very different from Europe, from Italy, where I can even feel now the difference between Adriatic and Mediterranean light. I love these lights. Even so, North America, Montana, heading West - we shall come over Idaho soon: this is my land, this is my first light. I love these differences, of course. But for me, I am penetrated now, surrounded by the most familiar light, flying through the air near my first point of reference!

Old

A strong man I know is dying. Re is old. His whole life has been a struggle, filled with his and other's pain. That he is still alive in his nineties is owed to chance. Re has survived scores of close calls. Re has always been strong both in body and in mind.
Among those who die slowly, from a lingering sickness or just old age, I have seen different kinds of death. Some are peaceful and serene; others can be a fierce physical and spiritual struggle. Often the strong cannot die easily. This is not from lack of faith. It perhaps stems from habit. People who have become strong by being made to go through demanding situations had always to exert a lot of control to hold things together. And since dying really is a slow losing of control, such people can experience this quite dramatically. It is a tremendous shock and a comparatively new experience. Yet it must, of course, be accepted, must be learned.
In each one of us there is a light, our essential self, which survives death, indeed, which is released by death because this essential self cannot be identified with our bodies even if it is intimately joined to the body throughout our life in the body. As we are dying, we should concentrate on that essential light and move toward it. I want to say this to the old man, whom I love. And I think, when my time comes, I will need somebody to say it to me.

When I think of the significance of my life or of any life, however great and influential, it is all nonetheless horribly, painfully insignificant against the backdrop of the whole of human time or the material size of the universe. And yet, my little life is in fact a space opened up for me by God out of the nothingness of being. God has opened this space for me, and he places me within it to be and to act. It is this decision of God that gives my life value, not the comparison of it with other things that are larger and more vast than it. In fact, this is a love story. God opens up out of the nothingness a space for me to be. Re creates me out of love and for the sake of love. And should I sin, he opens up out of that nothingness a new space for me out of love. In some ways this story of love is bigger than the whole material universe and the vast story of human living.

Opportunity

To fail with style is to transform a shipwreck into an opportunity.

Simple impressions summarize whole decades of my life. A butterfly is my childhood. Green trees against the blue sky: the loneliness of my youth. Yellow dry grass: all of it together. I am walking in the orchard. It is Sunday. From somewhere low inside me I feel my whole life surging up, decades of living and of experiencing things; and the surge gathers into a capacity to see clearly and to be clearly; and for some few minutes I am there walking, completely alive, completely joined to the history I have lived, to everyone who has crossed it, to all whom I have loved. But I am joined as well to my future, which moment by moment comes rolling toward me as I enter it step by step. Christ is here, but not like religion, not like a prayer. Everything I am experiencing and the whole of my life is being joined into one presence and person across from me, though not staying across from me but invading me as I step into it.

Oyster

If I declare that the world is my oyster, that means I'm at home in it and find it full of desirable things and people, that I'm here to enjoy myself. So, is that something I as a monk can say? Is the world my oyster? Joining a monastery is not the usual response of someone who discerns the world as his oyster. For me, in fact, things worked rather the other way around. To my surprise, my cloister has taught me to feel at home with the world. Life in this world, with all that it casts up before us for our enjoyment - is this not something truly wondrous and to be grateful for, even if it is not my only home and does not define my entire destiny? All the same, there is a deeper advantage in the oyster association. The original expression can be traced back to Shakespeare. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Pistol, in answering Falstaff, exclaims, "Why, then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open." In Shakespeare's time, cutting open an oyster was an image for laying difficult matters bare. May I dare to claim Pistol's image to describe my reflections here? It is what I am attempting: that is, if not entirely to lay bare, then at least to pry open a little some of the difficult, mysterious, beautiful matters of the world. The world: my cl-oyster, a splendid pearl!