The True Monastery
August 11th, 2008 at 2:53 am (Way Of A Pilgrim)
The monastery was down a dirt road on a small hill, the land having been a gift from a rancher some hundred and fifty years earlier. Brother Dave, whom I had met in the store in town, made sure I was introduced to some of the monks living there. We shared a dinner together and, afterwards, prayer.
In the final hours of the night, one of the monks, an older man with a full white beard, stood before the others and prayed:
“Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake or watch or weep tonight, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ, reset your weary ones, bless your dying ones, soothe your suffering ones, shield your joyous ones, and all for your love’s sake.
“Visit, we pray you Lord, this place, and drive far from it all the snares of the enemy. Let your holy angels dwell in this place for our protection and peace, and let your blessings be always upon us. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.”
To this, he added:
“May the Lord grant us peace this night, and perfect peace hereafter.”
With that, we retired to our rooms. The furnishings were simple — a plain bed on the floor, a small writing desk atop which sat a golden cross. The window beyond the desk looked out upon the night, a starry pallet of God’s very essence.
I fell asleep almost at once and in my sleep I dreamed I was sitting with my Teacher again. He was listening to me, nodding his head, as I spoke what seemed to me to be the profoundest thoughts. As he did when we were together, when he was alive, he merely let me go on and on about my own virtue, my own knowledge, my own theories.
Then he said something to me, but in a fog I awoke to the sound of the morning bell. Darkness was still outside the window and there was the faintest hint of dawn near the far horizon beyond the hills. I tried to remember what my Teacher had said to me, but it was a blur.
I went downstairs in the monastery and went to the chapel where perhaps four or five others were sitting in the pews, deep in prayer. The utter stillness around me was comforting, the silence beckoning me to simply sit. I felt within my bones the world around me beginning to awaken, and thought I could smell something cooking in the distance.
I had often thought that at some point in my life I would go to a monastery and make it a home, whether it was on a hill such as this was or simply a quiet room in the city wherein could lie nothing but things which would point me back towards God.
Someone coughed, and it was as if a wall had suddenly dropped away and I remembered just what my teacher had said in the interrupted dream.
“My very life is the monastery whose innermost cell is my heart.”
It was as if I heard his voice, sitting next to me. He said it again. Then, in my own voice, barely approaching even a whisper, I said it again: “My very life is the monastery whose innermost cell is my heart.”
Breakfast called. I simply sat, quietly, feeling the walls of my monastery, rejoicing in the quiet of my little room.
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