urban trappist scriptorium
Spots of Time
VI, Vespers
i thank you God for this most amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.e.e. cummings
Vespers celebrates the day of labor and prays for blessing on the seeds that have been planted. The song of Mary rejoices that even lowly ones are chosen. We offer hopeful intercessions for leaders, friends, the poor, and the dead, praying for good here and beyond, then take silence to pray with our hearts.
Supper comes after Vespers, and we eat a simple meal in silence again. The sunset blooms over the hills and through the broad westward windows while I enjoy a piece of Gethsemani's famous fruitcakes, "blessed with Kentucky bourbon."
A fire tower once stood atop the highest knob on the monastery's forested grounds. I hiked up to it not knowing it was gone. Few people used this dirt trail, eroded, straddled with spider webs. When I reached the crest, I was sore to see only four concrete blocks, former anchors. I sat on one and sweated.
Content with having walked up something moderately big, I stood and started to walk back down. Some thorns hooked my shorts. They were small and drab. Their stems were bristly and even their leaves thinned to firm points. I released the barbs individually and saw their raspberries. They offered raspberries.
I reached into the bramble and caressed the small, purple bulbs from their buds, crushing them one by one against the roof of my mouth. They were the smallest ripe berries I had ever seen. They were the sweetest berries, most of them, I had ever tasted. They were sweet because they were small and because there was no fire tower, but they were also sweet on their own, monos.
Alone, I saw Who had planted these. I sat again and listened. This was my raspberry sohbet.
Sohbet, a word used by Islamic Sufi mystics, means dialogue, but a dialogue of/with a quality entirely other. It acknowledges a divine attendance and an interaction. Sohbet can be, chronologically, quick, but the echoes from it ripple deeper than the time passed can account for. Sohbet violates physics. Sohbet is kairos.
I left maybe half of them for the next monastic mountaineer who might also be despondent at seeing four lichened concrete blocks and tempted to leave too quickly.
At the bottom of the trail where it branches from the road, there is an even larger cluster of raspberry bushes with even larger berries, but you can't see them unless you are descending from where the fire tower once was. And unless you have plucked the raspberries on the top, you won't be keen to the deep violet hues of the fruit in the shadows of the forest.
When not laboring, a monk practices what is called lectio divina (Latin for "holy reading",) a careful method of prayer that first reads and rereads a minute passage, perhaps not even a full verse. Then he lets his mind play with it and make associations or interpretations. Then he prays about his meditations in a sohbet. Then he humbly enters God's presence in contemplation, a spiritual union which is the aim of monastic life.
Contemplation - which does not at all mean simply thinking deeply about something, nor does it mean carefully examining some idea, nor does it mean anything so active or rational - is a very good topic to get a monk worked up, especially if you try to define it plainly, authoritatively, and quickly. But I will call it this: being alone in conversation with God. Monos, sohbet, kairos: three in one.