Post #23.6, Thursday, August 12, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         The monks are seated at the boards spread for the meal in the oratory this morning. Some are here with hidden scars, some with pale echoes of “Gloria” still lingering, passing the basket of bread from one to another as we all are one great omelet of God’s love.

         These years later I find that Brother August has come into this community appreciating the spiritual union with others. I seem to be received here as my own son, which apparently only confuses me. But it is a good time for finding new beginnings here.

         The abbot assigns me a bench in the scriptorium where I may work at my own little project of copying Anatase’s marked passages in the remedies book.  He is being very generous with the materials and a place to do this work as he seems not to remember me at all. And he is assuming I am the young man I appear to be, having had no practice and perhaps no skill at all.  But if anyone did remember me here I would probably be expected to work with of all the monks as they seem so steeped in a major project today lettering a gospel. I would have to do the useful work for the good of the community and then, only if there was not other work to be done, I would be allowed to work on the little project I brought. I feel like a pickle in the omelet as I begin my own project while the monks all work as one.

         The master of the scribes, the one who oversees the quality of the work in the scriptorium passes through the room with the silence of a ghost, looking over each shoulder unseen or ignored, constantly measuring the quality of the work. I feel he is standing over me, though the abbot didn’t assign this project and the quality of it isn’t for assessment by this master. The master of the scribes now goes immediately over to August, and there are whispers. 

         Brother August is at a larger raised desk made for standing and adding artwork; he’s all the way across the room working on the little art pieces, illuminations of letters and trimmings painted into the margins in order to inform the illiterate and to capture the imaginations of us all. There are whispers between them.

(Continued Tuesday August 17, 2021)

Post #23.5, Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         “We don’t have to hurry,” August explains, “the bread is rising, and the meal is eggs which will cook quickly as everyone is gathering at the boards.”

         We break each egg and beat it into the froth as Brother August shares another bit of Brother Joel’s wisdom.

         “He always said, ‘As it is in heaven, it is on earth.’”

         “So you think Brother Joel is serving eggs in heaven?”

         “No. He meant, things of earth are here for us to see as symbols of the unseen things of the Spirit. So he showed me the lesson of the omelet. Do you see how each egg is here in the basket before we break into these shells? Each is good in its own tangible way, some with speckles, some in pale shades of tans and whites. Good and fine they are separate, but eggs are neither food for people nor hatchlings for the flock until the shell is broken. When the eggs spread together on the griddle each only stays a separate egg for moment with its own yolk and white, then it spreads into another and another until the whole omelet is one great creation like a psalm sung in unison.

         “Brother Joel gave me this lesson because I was one who believed the individuality of my shell-self was how I was beloved. My self was my protection against, against what? Was I waiting for my chicken-self to hatch and flap off into a flock? Was I shielding myself, saving this deepest being from bonding into the great spiritual omelet of God’s love? It’s a simple lesson. Jesus tried to say it in so many different ways – the vine and the vine tenders — the washing of the feet – in so many ways he was walloping the shells of us against the iron skillet and pouring our all into the omelet of one another. Brother Joel said our spirits within us join with Spirit until we are all the one great and holy omelet of God’s love.”

         Jesus had a prayer for that. John 17:21-23 …”that they may all be one. As you, Father are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, … I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #23.4, Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         As a guest at Ligugè I’m assigned to visitor’s quarters in a small room in the villa while the monks are outside the walls in caves and hovels. In my last life here as a monk my cell was made of a few stones but mostly of sticks and branches and I feel it was much too easy to burn down.

         Since the abbot saw Brother August and I talking together, he assigned him to be my mentor for chores and for learning the Rule of Ligugè. And this week we are tasked with serving the meals. Preparing to break the fast is a good way to start life in a new place.

         I come into this day in deepest darkness with the echoes of the chants of night haunting these matins and I am at the cooking hearth and ready to begin. Brother August hasn’t yet arrived so I just go ahead and lay the cutlery on the boards and put some wood on the fire, but I don’t know what else to do to prepare. I see bread is rising here. I need to find Brother August to learn the plan he has in mind for this. I know his cell was near the graveyard because he was at his cell when he saw me there yesterday. The early light is already in the east, so maybe I should just go tap on his door to wake him.

         Of course Brother August assumes I’m my own son and that keeps our past journey a secret. And here I find Brother August is taking in his washed clothing left to dry last night spread out on a bush. I’m a bit surprised to see him unclothed because he no longer has the breasts of a woman but his chest is marked with a surgeon’s blade. He sees me and quickly covers himself with his scapular as though a man’s bare chest were a secret.

         “Excuse me,” I offer, “I didn’t mean to surprise you; I just didn’t know when we needed to start the meal preparation. I really didn’t mean to impose.”

         August answers, “And I didn’t mean to hide myself so abruptly. It’s just that I have a scar I choose not to explain.”

         “Of course. I also have scars I don’t wish to explain.”

         So it’s agreed. I won’t mention the wounds still healing so that everyone can just go on pretending it was my father who was crushed to death in Bordeaux.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #23.3, Thursday, August 5, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         The abbot is allowing me to stay here and work in the scriptorium to copy from Eve’s book as long as I follow the rule of this abbey. Having been here before I know the daily patterns they keep. But the abbot doesn’t remember me.        

         He argues, “No, you know nothing of the Rule of Ligugè. We don’t use The Rule of Benedict here. We follow older patterns for prayer. You must observe and learn, then obey.”

         Here they follow the old way in which the monk’s live in individual cells and private prayer is respected. But also, in the emerging patterns of communal life there are times when all of the monks and visitors gather for meals and worship. As a community we each take our turns to share in the earthly chores of preparing meals and tidying and scouring and working in the gardens.

         Our songs are psalms sung in the tradition of call and response, and our prayers are long and heartfelt – some from repetitions in unison, some in silence, some spoken anew both in times together as community and also alone in our cells.

         The rigors of communal order are not as firm as would need to be in a place where teens are also being trained and when the guidance of community as family is needed. Here the rule has naturally sprung from needs of community. It surely wasn’t laid down upon the gathered with the purpose to put some earthly person in charge and empowered to control the others. It’s said this place was established by St. Martin himself respectful of the ascetic hermit life as a church together not an earthly kingdom. May there continue to be this distinction I value.

         Brother August surmised that Benedict never understood the value of hermitage when he made his rule. So I sought out available reading from the books here as I await my task assignment. I learn that Saint Benedict was himself among the desert fathers of an earlier time. [Footnote] Knowing that of him gives me a better appreciation for The Rule. He must have known personally of the temptations of the lone ascetics for wandering from purpose. It must have been from his own self-knowledge he made his criticism; then he surely was overwhelmed as a bishop seeing all of the chaos of transforming a bevy of young boys into monks. So this Rule suited a need.

Footnote– St. Benedict spent three years as a hermit living in a cave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_of_Nursia retrieved, 6-2-21.

(Continued Tuesday August 10, 2021)

Post #23.2, Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         Brother August and I are here where the old, earthly bones of the monks are buried. This sculptor’s image of a soaring bird incised on the stone marks this heap of earth for Brother Joel in the most fitting way. “As it is on earth it is in Heaven,” was a favorite phrase of Brother Joel’s.

         “I will let the abbot know you are our guest with us today.” August leaves me here in this bone garden considering the immortal natures of us all.

         Dear God, thank you for these brushes with life we are granted between our earthly births and deaths. Amen.

         The abbot here is an ancient man. He seems more kindly now, and doesn’t remember me at all. But he is the same one who, so many years ago, sent me fleeing into the dark of night because my son came for me with the cart and donkey that were known to collect the dead of plague. He feared that all my coming and going as a messenger had given me the plague and now this gravedigger had come to take me. So the last time I saw this abbot he was raging with the fear of death, chasing me off and burning down my cell behind me.

         “So glad to meet you Father. Brother Nic was a dear friend of our family, and I have come to visit his grave. But I have another matter I ask you to consider. Nic was teaching a child to read and write with a particular ancient book of herbs and remedies we’ve had in our family. That child was hoping to have some descriptions from this book copied onto a trimmed end of parchment.”

         “Oh, that isn’t done here. Scribes are rare in these times, and our commitment here is to the gospel.”

         “Have you inks and edges of parchment? I myself, am an able scribe and I will do the work of it.”

         He has to consider this long and hard before he can answer.

         “Brother Nic came and made his poverty here. He endowed us well, and perhaps his lessons for this child will one day yield another  worthy scribe; so I shall allow you to stay with us as long as you are obedient to the rule of this abbey.”

         “I am familiar with the rule.”

         “Here we do not adhere to The Rule of St. Benedict.” So you may only think you know.”

(Continues Tomorrow)

Post #23.1, Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         Brother Joel is with us in soaring spirit, though maybe never really walked on earth at all. He is surely still present with Brother August and I in his ancient strand of wisdom.

         I affirm, “Yes, a suit of armor called ‘pride’ would impede love for others, and if it is forged from our personal fears and self-loathing it can obscure love for self. Jesus’ command to love makes love of self the pre-requisite to love of neighbor.”

         August wonders at Brother Joel’s nuance.  “But isn’t ‘love of self’ exactly what pride is?”

         “What did Joel say? Did you ask him?”

         “When Brother Joel pointed out that my iron suit of protection may be the flaw that separates me from love for my siblings I felt the pain of truth pierce that armor. First I wanted to argue then to hold back my tears from Brother Joel who knew my heart too well. Then he said, ‘God knows you and loves you right through your armor. God made you, and you are God’s.’ So my tears flowed freely and my armor of pride rusted away.        

         “Brother Joel stripped me naked of pride right while we were still in Bordeaux awaiting Nic’s return with the cart. At first I felt vulnerable, but then my prayers echoed around in the hollow with the answer in the old man’s voice and God’s love for me became adequate love to carry me through the moment between loosing my pride and allowing the kind of humility that lets me love of others. It’s nothing like the humility that others might see on me outwardly. An external, observable, pretend display of humility is all that is asked in The Rule. But stripping the safety of outward pride is raw. I thank God for the wisdom of Brother Joel, and that I was granted time to remove the war-irons before we left Bordeaux. I made amends with my brothers then.”

         Dear God, thank you for letting me find Brother August anew, repentant as he is, without that rub that has even kept me from seeing him in the way you see him. Amen.

         So here I find my own pride shields me from August’s assumption that I am my own son, and he thinks it was Nic who taught me to read. Why does this bother me? Am I the sort that believes a son is lower than a father? Or don’t I trust Nic to be my teacher?

(Continues Tomorrow)

Post #22.13, Thursday, July 29, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         Brother August explains, “Brother Joel gave so much guidance to take me through a sin which to others might have been considered personal pride. I’d so easily learned the spiritual moments of true prayer as art in carving stone. But Brother Joel noticed my tethers of pride were to be found, not in the sales, but in the presentation I made of my art to others whom I wished to have in my circle of love.”

         “And pride is sin?” I ask, inviting a nuance I’ve considered for centuries.

         “Of course. Everyone knows it is sin. Paul said so. And Rule #57 of Benedict saw the pride in the pricing of the art because throughout The Rule the measure is always based on how something is observed by the earthly witness who would be the abbot or the bishop. So a monetary price on something in a symbolic way defines worth, but The Rule doesn’t really address the bond between Creator God and creative artist. And placing a value in coin was nothing about my issue with pride.”

         I affirm, “I’ve read enough of The Rule to notice it has so much more to say about the opinions, judgments and punishments of earthly observers than it has to say about the ever-present love of God. So I would assume the rule would speak only in observable symbols of pride, such as wealth, rather than a deep in the heart kind of pride or humility.”

         August affirms, “Yes, I wanted to use my art to gain the appreciation by others, though not in the form of money. In fact, my need for this affirmation from others was beyond even my human-to-God prayer. It was something that stroked and tantalized my sense of pride, as much as any kind of lust could do. And Brother Joel pointed out, the problem with nurturing personal pride isn’t the money part or the lusty part; it is, he said, that my pride fitted over me like a coat of armor, shinning my whole form into something others notice, but also keeping me from actually connecting with others in the way of God’s love. Brother Joel noticed it was my pride that separated me from my earthly brothers. I so much wanted them to be amazed by my art, not because I believed myself superior in a prideful way, but because my strong armor of pride was protecting me from humiliation by them. Pride and humility are both the sides of the same coin.”

(Continues Tuesday, August 3)

Post #22.12, Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè        

         Changing the subject, I just asked Brother August if The Rule made allowances for an artist who cuts stone.

         He answers, “At Ligugè we don’t concern ourselves with The Rule yet the abbot here has been generous in allowing me to continue my prayers with a hammer and chisel in hand.” 

         “That’s good.  I can imagine there would be no room for an artist in all that order and routine of The Rule.”

         “Oddly enough, Benedict’s Rule Number 57 [Footnote] would allow for a craftsman to do such work. But The Rule of Benedict isn’t about the works of art, so much as the sin of pride an artist may have. And indeed, pride was my own burden of sin. But The Rule doesn’t address ‘pride’ as something that would intrude into my love for brother with the striving and envy I had been practicing. Rather Benedict’s measure of sinful pride by a craftsman comes in the selling of the art. Apparently, for Benedict, value is only measured outwardly, according to the monetary worth of something. So the artist is not to receive money for the work or The Rule assumes that may lead to pride. In the instance of selling one of my works which Nic purchased from a dealer to bring as a gift to this place, I received nothing for the work but I benefited from the opportunity for a long walk here with Nic and your father. So by The Rule I showed no sin of pride because I received no money.

         “Ligugè has been a good home for me all these years, and for Nic also; We added Brother Joel to our numbers but lost your father along the way. Brother Joel was truly a spiritual guide for me in considering my actual sin of pride. Thankfully Joel lived a very long life and his bones are only recently in this graveyard.”

         Brother August shows me a marker he made for Brother Joel. On this, Brother August has carved a bird in flight — soaring. It is a perfect image of this elder monk, since Brother Joel’s spirit was always gliding and soaring as a bird. But chiseled into a weighty earthen stone I can also recognize Brother Joel’s awkward paradox of earth and spirit.  

         “So what did Brother Joel have to say of pride?”

[Footnote 1] White, Carolinne, Translator,The Rule of Benedict, London: Penguin Books, 2008. page 84.

 (Continues Tomorrow)

Post #22.11, Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         Here I am at the monastery visiting the place where Nic is buried. Brother August came over when he saw me here. Now Brother August remembers me from twenty years ago but even though he has heard about it, he doesn’t believe the story of my very odd gift of ever healing, even from death to life in a never-ending sameness of age. So Brother August assumes I must be someone else.

         “Really, you look just like Nic’s friend, Lazarus.”

         “So I have been told. And I’m named Lazarus.”

         So he assumes I must be my own son. It could be a bit creepy for me to try to make a correction of that, since I suppose the shock of seeing my bloodied dead bones is seared forever onto the minds of the on-lookers of the Bordeaux tragedy.

         “I’m Brother August. I journeyed with Old Nic and your father, so many years ago. I had no idea Lazarus had a child. Your father’s death was such a tragedy for all of us who knew him.  I know Brother Nic visited your family’s vineyard often whenever he could. So you’ve probably known Nic since childhood.”

         “I knew Old Nic well.”

          Brother August yammers on in eulogy, “I know Old Nic loved children. He probably taught you to read, didn’t he? He was always taking lessons along for the children of your family.”

         It’s hard for me to be silent in this wrong assumption Brother August is making especially when he assumes it was Nic who taught me to read. I catch myself weaving into all my generations a deep vein of personal pride. I learned to read and write ages ago in order to become a man in a Hebrew speaking family and in a Greek reading world. For this moment a monastery is a good place to practice silence.

         I answer, “I know of his reading lessons. He was a dear friend. And I know that you are the artist who prepared this stone marker.”

         “Nic told you everything didn’t he.”

         “Only up to a point. He mentioned monasteries are now minding The Rule of Benedict.”

         “Well, here at Ligugè we are aware, but this is a very old community so we already have our patterns. We borrowed a copy then sent it on.”

         “That’s good, because what I have heard of the Rule from Brother Nic, it would probably allow no place for an artist.”

         “I guess you didn’t hear everything then.”

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #22.10, Thursday, July 22, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         As night creeps over I see ahead of me the hulking peak of an old villa roof.  I’m coming upon the monastery that was a Roman villa centuries ago. In a time long ago St. Martin repurposed this rich gift of a grand Roman edifice for use as a spiritual refuge for monks coming in from the wilderness to be in community. I know this place as it is now with a sunny atrium for the scribes and an oratorio for worship and dining. The cells for the monks are dug into the clay beyond the walls or built of thatch and rock scattered around the back areas of this land.

         If I knock on the door tonight I will only intrude on the silence after the vespers. So tonight I’ll sleep in hayloft of the stable. Tomorrow I’ll meet the abbot and beg a guest room or a cell. I might not mention I once had a cell of thatch that was burned up by the abbot who feared I brought plague to this place. All these years later I’ll only confuse people I’ve known in a long ago time with my incessant look of youth. My circumstance requires me to pretend I know nothing of the past. Always, it seems, history is most comfortably spoken from the present so the out of style and unpopular truths it keeps can be edited out.

         Sun rising now, silvering the morning mist and I walk through the open place of the wall of stacked stone surrounding the graveyard for monks. Here is the newly made grave with some stones already gathered. I’m sure this is the burial place of my friend. Already there is a marker — a partly carved sandstone with an artist’s bas relief showing an ox head. Yes! I know this artist was one of us who knew of Nic’s love for such simple beasts. I already know the one who placed this blessing here for those of us who knew Nic well.

         Dear God, thank you for nurturing this hope I have of meeting Brother August once again and for this celebration of Nic’s gentle nature.

         “Hello Mister. Did you know Old Nic?”

         I turn around and there is Brother August with a snowy tonsure like a great halo of heaven crowning his brow.

         He continues, “Oh, excuse my surprise, but you look just like the brother’s old friend Lazarus.”

 (Continues Tuesday, July 27, 2021)