Abbey of Gethsemane

      Most of life's journeys begin before they have started. And my brief experience under the sun has taught me that people unwittingly and unknowingly plan to go places buried deep within the soul, to places they vaguely know or have seen in the ephemeral shades of their dreams.

      My journey to the Abbey of Gethsemane in central Kentucky which I made in the spring of 1996 really began when I was a child. It began with a question that sought an answer, with a question that still seeks an answer. Although I became aware of the works of Thomas Merton (the abbey's most famous resident) when I attended the University of California, I realize an inelectable force drew me to the abbey like gravity draws a baseball to the earth long before I ever set eyes on Merton's work. The impulse to seek out the hidden spaces of mind and spirit compelled me to returnĘto a state of being long since forgotten. My trip was a return home: it was a reassertion of the question.

      It is difficult for me to put into words how I felt upon my arrival at the Abbey. I fear my words to be paltry and inadequate, and woefully deficient when describing the significance of the experience. I felt as if I were passing between realms, from the realm of the mundane to the realm of the sacred; I felt as if I had arrived, as I wrote in my journal, at the axis mundi of the universe; I felt as if I were in a wonderful dream that was too good to be true, but was in fact reality! It was as if my soul were saying to me: "Well, you finally decided to open your eyes, now, take a look about you and see what you have been missing! Enjoy!"

      Expectation and delight surged in my as I unpacked my car and headed towards the Abbey to check in with the guest-master. At the entrance to the lay-dormitories was written the ambiguous words of St. Benedict: "Treat the Stranger as you would Christ." After stowing my belongings in my room, I wandered about the abbey and its grounds, gaining a sense of my surroundings, a little unsure of what to do. I listened to an introductory talk by the guest-master, Father Jacob, a tough, genial old monk from Philadelphia, checked out the cemetery where Thomas Merton is buried, and spent some time in the monastery's chapel, which is simple and austere, yet is stunning and quite intimate. Deciding to go for hike, I got hopelessly lost in the woods surrounding the abbey but made it back to the monastery for compline, and, more importantly, for dinner. Tired because I had been up since five in the morning, I retired early and fell into a dreamless slumber.

      What does one do on a retreat at a monastery for a week?

      Retreats at the Abbey of Gethsemane are silent and unstructured. It is up to the retreatent to make use of the resources that the Trappists have to offer. Prayer, silence, and solitude are found in abundance. The monks, following the Rule of St. Benedict, pray in community seven times a day. The divine office, as the prayer cycle is referred to, provides a framework structuring one's retreat. At the heart of the divine office lies the Psalms, which are prayed in their entirety every two weeks. The divine office also consists of readings from the Torah, the Writings, and the Prophets as well as texts from the Christian Bible. Mass is celebrated daily. Retreatents are encouraged to pray and reflect in private throughout the day, as a way of deepening the experience of communal prayer.

      The effect of praying regularly throughout the day is subtle and almost unnoticeable until one leaves the abbey. I was not aware of how powerful, how total the experience was until I returned to home. Simple acts were ripe with significance. The bells calling the community to prayer, the monks entering the chapel and turning East to begin prayer, the chanting of the Mass and the Psalms, the rhythm and the cadence of the office, integrates one's mind and body to the drama of the monastic day. Prayer, in a monastic seeing, permeates one's psyche, one's being. Participating in the daily offices imbues one with a sensitivity for the divine. It opens one to aspects of reality deemed irrelevant and illusory in the secular world.

      Prayer, both communal and private, is facitlitated and made possible by the atmosphere of deep silence prevading the monastery. The silence is pervasive, total. It envelopes, beckons, invites. I was surprised at how respectful retreatents were of the silence. There was little talking. Meals were eaten in silence. Conversations were kept to a minimum.

      It took me a few days to get used to the absence of noise. Although I could hear very little external noise, my mind was full of mental pollution. Conversations and songs, memories and dreams, were amplified and intensified. I became aware of the mental junk incessantly stirring in my brain. And this noise, this junk, was loud, and revealing. I discovered aspects about my self that I respected and enjoyed, that I abhorred and disliked. Most of all, I discovered an entire aspect of my being overlooked and forgotten in my normal life so inundated with superfluous noise and distractions.

      Religious writers and psychologists refer to this aspect of being as the "true self." I would humbly assert that it is a mode of being is which the disparate and fragmented aspects of one's life are brought together in a sublime moment of harmony and unity, and the potential latent in human nature is extricated from the quagmire and morass of alienation and sin, from dis-unity and dis-harmony , and is actualized for a brief moment in time.

      This growing awareness of self, of the authentic self, of the self awakening to itself, was deepened by the hours of solitude afford by the monastery. While meals and the divine office are shared in community, the majority of my days were spent in solitude. I would spend hours hiking in the beautiful countryside surrounding the abbey, losing myself in the wooded hills and open fields empty of noise, of people. Occasionally, I saw a monk in his work clothes passing by or another retreatent, but for the most part, I was alone. Comfortably alone. I sat in what is called the Garden of Gethsemane and pondered the enigmatic, modernistic statues of the apostles sleeping peacefully while Jesus, alone, agonized offer his fate. This image of Jesus was peculiar. Defiance and resignation, anger and hope, the passion for life tempered by the sober realization of the imminence of death, emanated from the statue. You could not help but be drawn into His passion, and realize that His passion is our passion, and that we will all somehow enter the Garden and be confronted by that which we seek to avoid, our own mortality.

      But, when one has imbued oneself in prayer, silence, and solitude, it is almost impossible to believe that life's journey ends at the grave.

      Because the eternal, for a moment, is revealed; the infinite is grasped, if only for a second. The illusion we call reality is dispelled, if only for a breath.

      Death -- in a sacralized context -- is the culmination of life, of a life conscecrated to God, immeresed in prayer, dedicated to the love and service of others.

      Thus, most of my retreat was spent by myself in silence and prayer. Nothing extraordinary happened. Stepping outside of my intellectual prejudices and biases, however, permitted me to see life from a new and vivifying perspective. My life became a silent prayer, an act of adoration and praise, to the God with whom I wrestle like Jacob wrestling the angel. Painful questions and bitter experiences, relentless doubt and ruthless superstitions, resolved themselves in an instant of blessing and grace. Sadness gave way to joy, the prosaic to the mysterious, the mundane to the sacred. Again, nothing extraordinary happened. I simply opened my eyes and saw what was there.

      I will always cherish my time at the Abbey for it was a return to a place remembered in my dreams, to a place felt deeply within my heart, to the source of my origin. I still hear the question, and it simultaneously haunts me and sustains me. Life is so chaotic at times, but I pray that underneath it all, we are heading towards that which speaks to us on the deepest level possible -- God.