(no subject)
"I am returned to the world after three weeks among the Trappists." I like that lead the best, because it makes my experience sound like Jane Goodall out among gorillas in the Congo. Though a number of the monks are considerably hairier and non-talkative than your average human being, I can't actually claim Congo-levels of exoticness from three weeks in a cloister of forty celibate men.
The last three weeks have been a struggle. This is another loaded statement. Even more than New York, Rome, or London (!), I feel like I've been tossed into a foreign world. I've had a hard time adapting to the monastic schedule of pre-dawn prayers and hours in choir, and more often than not, I've chosen to ignore rather than adapt to the rules of the enclosure.
I've kept writing from the community PC, and against better judgement, I've made most of those entries public. I've been thinking of a name for my Trappist journal (Mark has been asking me to journal and to pay attention to how I define things), and I'm going to stick with a pretentious latin phrase, "nobis post hoc exilium." Its a line from the Salve Regina, Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux's famous poem to Our Lady. We sing it before bed each night, and the line, "after this our exile," seems to capture where I've been at the past three weeks. I don't feel so much like Dante or Said or any of the other famous exiles- I'm forty miles from home with coreligionists, by my own free will- but this month has had a more pronounced sense of separation between what I believe I should be doing and what's actually going down than any time I can remember since I started college.
On that note, I became a college graduate today. I walked through commencement with a couple thousand other people at the Rose Garden this afternoon, an arrangement I agreed to under the hopes of getting a free meal at a restaurant from my parents. No such luck. But I've made a jail break from the abbey, Casey gave me a Catholic Worker t-shirt and a book of poetry from the Spanish mystics, and later tonight, I just might get to see A.
As far as the future's concerned, decisions loom. Talk about loaded statements.
The last three weeks have been a struggle. This is another loaded statement. Even more than New York, Rome, or London (!), I feel like I've been tossed into a foreign world. I've had a hard time adapting to the monastic schedule of pre-dawn prayers and hours in choir, and more often than not, I've chosen to ignore rather than adapt to the rules of the enclosure.
I've kept writing from the community PC, and against better judgement, I've made most of those entries public. I've been thinking of a name for my Trappist journal (Mark has been asking me to journal and to pay attention to how I define things), and I'm going to stick with a pretentious latin phrase, "nobis post hoc exilium." Its a line from the Salve Regina, Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux's famous poem to Our Lady. We sing it before bed each night, and the line, "after this our exile," seems to capture where I've been at the past three weeks. I don't feel so much like Dante or Said or any of the other famous exiles- I'm forty miles from home with coreligionists, by my own free will- but this month has had a more pronounced sense of separation between what I believe I should be doing and what's actually going down than any time I can remember since I started college.
On that note, I became a college graduate today. I walked through commencement with a couple thousand other people at the Rose Garden this afternoon, an arrangement I agreed to under the hopes of getting a free meal at a restaurant from my parents. No such luck. But I've made a jail break from the abbey, Casey gave me a Catholic Worker t-shirt and a book of poetry from the Spanish mystics, and later tonight, I just might get to see A.
As far as the future's concerned, decisions loom. Talk about loaded statements.