Jeremy Driscoll OSB A Monk's Alphabet

Jeremy Driscoll OSB
A Monk’s Alphabet
Moments of Stillness in a Turning World

DARTON - LONGMAN + TODD, 2006

For Paul Murray, OP who helped so much with this alphabet and who helps so much in general

Saints
Shooting Star
Slain
Slave
Smugness
Soul

Spiritual Direction
Spiritual Warfare
Stability
Stage
Streets
Struggling with Prayer

Style
Surprise
Survival
Suspicion
Swinging

Saints

What or who but the Catholic Church remembers so many, many men and women long since dead, remembers them and calls them by name, counts them friends, and recalls their deeds? Catholics in Oregon, the far West of what in centuries past was called the New World, remember and talk about Francis and Clare, Augustine, Gregory, Catherine, Gertrude, Cornelius, Clement, Philip, Elizabeth, Luwanga, Miki, and thousands and thousands more. This is just some measure of the respect and gratitude for one another that we learn from the Church: respect and gratitude destined to last an eternity.

Shooting Star

What is wondrous about a shooting star is that its visual impact is delivered with utter silence. It is an image of the life of the body going out and being replaced by the invisible and silent life of the Spirit. Silent. Invisible. Darkness. But wonder in my heart.

Slain

What slays me about the present predicament of the world is that the solution is available: truth is in our hands. But we are all looking elsewhere, doing other things. God has come in Christ. Wisdom and power to do good are given us. And instead we busy ourselves with things that move us in other directions. Whence such perversity? God does not force the gift that can save us. He seeks to persuade. We refuse.

Slave

I feel it useful to note, however plainly, that now, at the beginning of Lent, I am very much struck by a desire to enter deeply into the mysterious inner place of Christ's willingly "being a slave" - which is not a bad way of understanding virtually everything he was up to in his life and death but which is said explicitly in these very words in Philippians 2:7. Actually, I cannot enter his pattern with anything near the proportions of the distance he crossed, passing from (again, St. Paul) "the form of God" to "the form of a slave." Yet even so, his pattern is available to me, on however small a scale. I would want to understand my main work in this light and insert studying, teaching, and writing into Christ's self-emptying pattern. Then these have nothing to do with advancing a career, but rather are meant to be a service to my students. And let me add the ideal: even a very menial service to them. For this I need, among other things, also to be ready to suffer their seeming not to notice or care, and even, as sometimes happens, their discourtesy. I mention this academic work only because it seems to be what God is asking of me now. But being a slave means also being ready for more, anything more.

Smugness

God so hates religious smugness, self-satisfaction, and the certainty that the other is a sinner and will go to hell, that he would empty hell completely of the sinners who deservedly belong there and place the smug one there all alone to pass an eternity of painful astonishment, learning that God has mercy on whom he wills. Should some faint sense of desiring to adore the One who is so merciful crack even slight1y the bitterness of this so terribly misused virtuous one, maybe then even hell would be emptied of him.
In short, it is not for me to judge, not for me to presume to pronounce on others. "The last shall be first, and the first last."

Soul

It is possible to catch sight of my soul if I watch myself closely with a certain kind of attention. Here I stand in my body, receiving in my body through the senses a huge amount of data from the world surrounding my body. It is constantly flowing through. None of that is my soul. But if I also watch myself while I am doing this, while I am receiving the data, I can sometimes catch sight of an I who is none of these material and sensory things, including the instrument, the body, that registers them. Instead, I see myself as an I that on that level is sheer subject. It is sovereign, noble, almost majestic. In any case, it exists above and beyond and throughout the body. It is an I so forceful in its being that its very existence is a knowing that - though joined to the body - it is destined to endure beyond it and even now not necessarily to be affected by the body's misfortunes and aging processes. To be such an I, to catch a glimpse of oneself as such an I, is the knowledge of one's immortality.
I am not speaking here of a rational demonstration of the soul's existence and its immortality. I am describing the existential encounter with oneself and the existential knowledge that ensues. I am I. And that being so, how could I not always be?
One could object that a rhetorical question delivered like that under the force of some strong sense of self could be pure delusion. Just because I exist, why should I exist for ever? Against an objection like that I would want to suggest that such a position only demonstrates that one has not yet then arrived at the level of I that I am speaking of. I am speaking of an experience of I that delivers a knowledge of self as immortal in an incontrovertible way. Obviously my body and all of the material order is not immortal; indeed, it is all painfully short-lived. And yet something that is me - my I - insists on its existence through the midst of all that bodily deterioration. Thus do we distinguish body and soul.

Spiritual Direction

Today V. (38 years old) asked me if I would be a spiritual director for him. I asked him what he hoped for in this, and he said he wanted someone who would awaken in him all his spiritual life, the gifts given him by God, all his spiritual talents, that none be left not to develop. He said he wanted to learn to love Jesus with his whole being.
I feel, of course, unprepared to help him, but when asked, one should generally say yes. In any case, we have here an excellent description of what spiritual direction ought to be.

Spiritual Warfare

Those who enter into conflict with others do so because they do not know how to enter into spiritual combat with themselves.

Stability

After a period of formation and probation, monks make a vow of stability which binds them to a particular monastery for life. It is here, in these circumstances and with these brothers, that they will practice the monastic way and search for God. This means that people intend to make the monastery their permanent home. This is a choice for the primacy of God in one's life, to build in this place a monastery for the praise of his glory. The vow of stability lends a tremendous constancy and sense of permanence to the whole atmosphere. It implies buildings, places, even furnishings that represent strong traditions and are themselves permanent. Places we live in and things we use whisper to us, "You are not the first to be here and use this, and you will not be the last."

Stage

A larger stage on which to consider the Christian mysteries - as large, ultimately, as the universe. The "play" enacted is the history of our salvation, a very particular and situated story (Israel, Jesus, the Church through time); but the backdrop, sets, props and lighting are all the physical forces and things of the entire cosmos. They are indeed a part of the play; they are its setting. But then suddenly, in some brilliant and surprising move of the director that breaks all traditions hitherto established in the theater, the props and sets and lights themselves become the story. History and cosmos, one thing. Saved!

Streets

Every city names streets, some more effectively than others. Parisian street names are especially striking, So much of the place's history, near and far, is recalled. People's names, place names, names of major events - all these become the names of streets. So I move through the city, and I am constantly reminded of all that combined to make it what it is today. The effect is to create a sort of implicit gratitude which accompanies us as we move through the city and through the day. In part it is an acknowledgement of a past different from the present. Occasionally it is a warning or a "do not forget" that might be stretched out for miles. But Paris - or any city - is what it is today because of all these names. I walk through the air, I walk under the weather where these others once moved and had their influence. I am in the city that they brought to this point, for good or ill.
So, for example, in Paris there is Rue Bonaparte, and there could not not be such a street. There is Rue St. Sulpice, and you think of the church, the seminary, the famous orators. Boulevard St. Germain des Pres names the abbey destroyed during the Revolution with only the Church remaining: pres reminds us that it was once outside the city. And Germain is another whole story. Rue Mabillon names the great monastic scholar of St. Germain. Rue des Martyrs is where we tell the story of St. Denys having his head cut off and then carrying it to the top of the street. Rue Racine - well, there are streets named after hundreds of authors and musicians and other artists; and so we remember them and talk about them as we go by. Rue Odeon for the Paris theater named after the Greeks. Rue St. Benoit - this was a fun one for me, a Benedictine monk to find, and it reminds me that on the street markers in Paris there are dates of birth and death and something like the essential description - in this case, "Abbot, founder of Monte Cassino." Rue du Bac, so called because it finishes at the river where there was once a ferry but is now a bridge. Rue des Saint Pères - but which holy fathers were they thinking of, or was this a nickname for the monks of a monastery in that part of town?

Struggling with Prayer

It is a long time now since I have experienced clear prayer, that joyous prayer of union with God when nothing else that I would ever do with my life seems more worthwhile. Instead, when I try to pray I feel myself thrust back from joyful heights into the middle of ordinary life. But it seems God is doing this - though I am not sure, for were I sure, it would not be ordinary.
By ordinary I do not at all mean dull. Quite the contrary. People, things, and places are all lovely to me. I have a strong intuition for them, a wanting to let them be and to be present to them. I also experience this state as somehow related to God, but not in the way that prayer is, not in the way that religion is. Indeed, this "not in that way" asserts itself strongly deep within me in a way that quietly frightens me. Do I offend God? How can such a question not trouble me, for what is asserting itself from within is in effect something like a voice that says, "Now is not a time for prayer." Whose voice is that? First candidate ought to be the devil, and I consider that. But the voice insists, and it is as if I am meant to learn something from it, to risk it.
A concrete example: I had a whole Sunday to be quiet and alone. So, I thrust my intention upward to where God might be and tried to tell him that the day was a free space for him in me to use however he wished. I turned myself over to him. What happened? An urge emerged - it seemed not a bad one - to enjoy for a while looking at the bright and clever ads in the newspaper's Friday magazine. From there I carne to my sun-filled room, sipped coffee, and listened to Schubert. I thought of picking up the gospels to do some reading, but instead I somehow felt led - am I deceived? - to read the Carlos Fuentes novel I have going. Wonderful, real, awful, awesome life comes to be seen because Fuentes posited these words, this story. But just to be sure, I decided to interrupt this reading and to go to the Blessed Sacrament chapel and try to pray. I did for a bit; it was familiar space; but I could not concentrate there or stay. It is as if I am turned out from it to learn of something else instead.
People and things are especially lovely to me on days like these. Even so, I feel keenly the limits of it all. I feel that old classic, sad-sad-sad transitoriness. In the city a scene or a somebody strikes me in such a way as to loose a silent cry within that says "What could be more lovely than this!" And when I am sure that the answer to that is ''Nothing. Nothing could be more lovely," then another awareness strikes quick on its heels: the awareness of finitude, of limits, of a firm inner knowing that, good as it is, it is not this that my heart most desires and needs.
Fine, all this. But the dilemma lies precisely here. For would this not be the moment for turning to prayer, for seeking communion with God? Yes, of course. But it is precisely from this point that I am turned back, not as if in rebuff but simply to be elsewhere, in the midst of the common things. The theologian in me wants to ask: could this somehow be a traveling of some part of the road crossed by the Eternal Son in his becoming flesh and living among us? A clever question and maybe the right one. But what if it is not?

Style

I learn my style by imitating. I imitate my parents, my teachers, what I find in the great texts; I learn the moves of my profession or trade. In short, style comes from recognizing my debt to tradition. But that is not the whole of it, for how I shall combine all that I receive is what makes my style unique, even if only decipherable against the backdrop of tradition. How to give to all that has already been given the freshness of a new presence, the freshness of a new me deciding? This is the drama of a life unfolding. My language already exists, but no one has used it precisely the way I will. The body has a repertoire of gestures practiced in cultures through millennia, but no one has moved quite the way I will. The wonderful tension between all that we receive and each one's originality!

Surprise

Fortunately, God is not what we think he is - not in any small way what I might think, nor in any big way the sum total of what a whole bunch of thinkers, great thinkers through the centuries, might think. And yet we have no choice but to try to think what God is: what and who God might be. At some point God comes to meet such thoughts. He arrives and appears as Surprise. Our efforts at thought are his foil. Shaken off of them, his mystery shines. And something new is grasped in the surprise; something is learned; experience - it could be called experience with God - is gained. But God remains infinitely free, infinitely out of our control in whatever we come to know of him.
God is a Someone. God is not a big thing that can be thought of and contended with alongside the other things of this world. God is rather an infinite, sovereign, free Other-than-me who surprises by a completely unlooked-for personal coming down on me as the force that rules the universe in ways that I, I and all others, could never imagine. I bow down before him with something like fear, fear because I feel him loving me in ways I never could have thought or imagined.

Survival

It is truly remarkable, the capacity of the self to survive, the sense that each of us so uniquely holds of being whoever it is that we are. Many consequences could be drawn from a sustained observation and meditation on this. How is it that something in us cannot concede ultimate defeat even as we are continually confronted with defeats of many kinds and continually surrounded by death to remind us of our own? What is it that even dares the thought of outlasting it all, whether we actually do or not? Where does such a thought come from? Is that a divine spark within me? Is that my soul?

Suspicion

I am passing away. From my point of view, this is a huge reality, a looming fact. And yet I must admit that I can hardly expect that it should matter much to more than some relatively few people in my immediate circle. We are all surrounded by the passing away of everything and everyone, and we can pay attention to only so much of it. On the other hand - again, from my point of view - I am also still here. And if that is remarkable, it is even more remarkable that I ever appeared at all in the first place. The sheer gratuity of this fact, its inexplicable and unfindable source, plants in me the suspicion that my passing and the passing of us all may not be the last word. Perhaps on the other side of the passing there is another word whose nature and sense are scarcely known to us.

Swinging

Life would be dreary without all the things that swing. Votes swing, and people get elected. Music swings, and the big bands' notes are smooth. I swing, and it means I'm lively and up-to-date. But swinging's best sense has to do with physical things, that to-and-fro movement, that swaying, that oscillating tracing of some invisible curve that pulls a thing so far this way and then sends it back so far the other. When as a boy I was placed in a seat slung by ropes on a tree's branch and set to swing, swinging that way was like joining the world. I already somehow knew that the world was moving and that I was meant to move too, but I didn't know yet about rhythms, limits, momentum, gathering speed, directions and their opposites. Swinging teaches a lot of this, even if not all.
Some of the most heartrending swinging I've ever seen was when Pope John Paul II died. His corpse was being carried on a bier through the Vatican palace and into St. Peter's Square. AH the while the Litany of the Saints was being sung: the names of holy men and women called out and then beseeched one by one to pray for him. Rhythm, momentum, the to-and-fro between heaven and earth. But as I say, swinging's best sense has to do with physical things; and what really made this litany and procession so remarkable was the unexpectedly slow and exact1y coordinated constant swinging of the outer arm of each of four Swiss Guards who framed and walked alongside the bier. Invisible curve traced again and again, forward and back, the four comers of the earth quietly secured. Haunting, swinging rhythm that together with the holy chants was steadily, unexpectedly slowly, carrying a beloved man from one world to the next. A memory flashed of myself as a boy on a swing, and I thought surely the dead man had once enjoyed the same. Here we are in life and death, swinging.