by Kevin Scully
Shame strikes me when I find, after all these years of monastic life, that I cannot erase the clarity of the event or the conflicting urges of that moment. I have never felt so overwhelmed with passion, despite the drink. Or perhaps because of it. I was dripping with sweat and exultation. I heard Donna whimpering. I lay to one side, stroking her back and kissing her ear, whispering sincere apologies. I did this for some time. Then I rolled over and went to sleep.
I did not hear Donna get up. I did not hear her dress, pack up her things, or her dump a few of my belongings next to my snoring form. I did not hear the Kombi’s engine turn over, its gearbox engage, the roll of wheels and the vehicle depart. I was insensate to everything. I did not really hear the voices that cajoled me, the reassurances that accompanied lifting me up and plonking me into a wheelbarrow, and pushing me to the Guest Wing of the Community of Saint Candida.
The Bearable
Lightness of Being
One idle afternoon, I took up the pile of jottings from my room and read over some of the pages as I sat silently with Fr Aidan. I get a sense of sadness in so much of what I have given myself over to. Not that it has been sad—or even solemn—but if someone were to scan these pages, I fear their impression would be that they have been the recollection of an unhappy man.
Quite the contrary. St Candida’s, especially in my novice years, was full of fun. And forgiveness. So much of my ill-spent past I laid to rest. Wise Novice Masters, priests and Fr Abbot ensured we confronted our shortcomings and failures. And helped us to put them behind us. That can only bring joy.
Laughter, jokes, sometimes silliness bordering on insubordination, was key. Brother Cyril, who came to us from his family fruit stall, was full of banter. In his years peddling fruit and vege at Chrisp Street market he developed a lively sense of the absurd. He had a repertoire of impossible Cockney expressions that he applied to our work and life. Within a month of his arrival, each of the brethren had a nickname, used only by Cyril, Matthew—of whom more later—and me.
Cyril was naturally subversive: witty, contrary and delighting in routines of his own making. He had been involved in the serving team of his local church and knew more about Christian doctrine than he let on. He was superb in the sanctuary. He had been drilled in reverential regimentation and possessed an outlook that made him an asset in liturgy: always alert, anticipating the moves and moods of the celebrant, quick to counter any oversight or cover any glitch.
Cyril—his name in the world was Frank—was truly of the world. While deeply prayerful, camouflaged in seemingly vapid rabbitting, he was never really at home in the cloister, even though some thought him the perfect novice. He missed the rush of the city. He went back to Poplar and rejoined the family stall. We received Christmas cards from him, usually with some short scribbled ‘news’, each year: the changes in populations, the redevelopment of the docks, the push of the supermarkets, the struggle to sell his stock. In the late 1990s he wrote to tell us he was moving out—Suffolk or Essex, I can’t remember which—having packed in fruit and vege for security work.
I believe for some time he was Churchwarden to his local church. (Before the move.) I can imagine his mixture of practicality, rootedness in the place in which he had grown up, his easy-going conversation, not to forget his purposeful piety, would have made him a cornerstone and strong support to clergy in such a setting.
The cards stopped coming. Addresses were kept by the Abbot and Fr Aidan had begun to lose the acuity he had formerly given to such clerical work. Where he is, as is Cyril’s contribution to CSC, is lost.
Matthew, in a like and different way, was a graphic joker. He took to sketching members of the community—fellow novices at first, (that was, of course, Cyril, Matthew himself and me). These started as mere whimsical renderings of what we did on a daily basis: in the chapel, at our lectures (Matthew had a particular gift for capturing the look of perplexity or confusion on my face during introductory talks on the religious life), meditation (Cyril nodding off). These extended to other members of the community at prayer, work or recreation.
His ability to render a likeness with some inherent commentary, usually with a sense of whimsy, was remarkable. This led to further insights—perhaps a view of us trying to eat some meal that had caused merriment in the Refectory. These small vignettes would be hidden for us in our office books and random volumes in the library. Muted giggles would break the silence of readers when a fellow novice would come across one of Matthew’s cartoons. I believe one of the Trustees, while looking over the library before the disposal of the books, came across such a work in a long unopened commentary on 1 Chronicles. I hope it was saved: Matthew’s drawings are now selling for far more than could be gained from the academic’s analysis of the exploits of King David.
Matthew took to cartooning as a career and was for a long time almost a fortnightly feature in Private Eye. I was told this by a number of visitors who used to quip that PE was a foundation stone of their spiritual reading. I believe his works still appear there from time to time even now.
For all the laughter, lightness and humour, so much seems to pass me by now. Whether it is my personality, background or the grind of life in a monastery, I don’t know.
I meet other monastics from time to time and they do not seem to have lost their lightness of touch. Perhaps the beauty of our surroundings, the diminution of our number—not a singular fault of CSC by any means—and the direction of travel of society. (It would be unfair of me, an arguable misfit, to reflect on what seemed the doubtful quality of potential novices: no longer the brightest and best; more of the mad, bad and dangerous.) Perhaps it is God’s way of reminding us, as the Psalmist suggests, that our belief that our names will last forever is delusory.1
Which seems to be a long way from thinking about the lighter times of the Novitiate.
1. This would seem to be a reference to Psalm 49, though the translations into English are substantially different. The closest to Br Columba’s allusion would be the Authorised Version.
EDITOR’S NOTE
A round of parochial duties—stewardship campaign, a run of funerals, and a series of visits which led to the dinners and discussions that make up Marriage Preparation, and the normal rota of services—meant that I had slipped in my efforts to put Columba’s papers in a proper order to my satisfaction, and a hoped-for approval by him. I had sought a number of times to find the right placement, but never settled on a convincing way of compiling his narrative. That was not just because of the random nature of his notes and the impressionistic sense that was gained from them. There seemed to be a sense of something missing, an ending perhaps. So it was that the task was neither clear nor urgent. I suppose in some ways it does not matter.
Or so I thought until I opened I opened my email programme one morning to find a communication from the Master of Lazarus House, Sussex.
Dear Fr Scully,
I email with the news that Brother Columba of the Community of St Candida died suddenly, yet peacefully, in his sleep on Monday. As it happens, I have discovered, it was on the anniversary of his profession. What an irony God has at times.
As Master it was my privilege and duty to minister the sacraments of the Church to Br Columba during his time here, and particularly to anoint him during his final illness.
It has now fallen to me to oversee his funeral arrangements. As you know, Bishops’ diaries are the driving force of much in these matters. The Buddhist community now based at the former monastery has been very accommodating in granting access to the cemetery. Columba is to be the last interment there.
The arrangements, thus far, are for the Bishop of Salisbury to say a Requiem Mass at Whitchurch Canonicorum (near Bridport I believe) and commit Columba’s mortal remains at the Community cemetery.
Columba was not a great one for idle conversation, as I am sure you learned in your visits to him in London and here. He did, however, ask me to send you his Office Book, his Bible and prayer rope, which I will
forward by recorded delivery. He left precious little else. His clothes, few as they were, have been disposed of. He will be buried in his habit and scapular.
I do hope you can come. We will be holding a service here for the residents (I am hoping our Visitor will officiate) who cannot make the journey to Dorset, which is quite a distance, especially if done in the one day.
Best wishes,
Bishops’ diaries being the driving force, I was not able to attend. I was approached to conduct at a funeral of parishioner—a resident of Care Home, as it happened—undertakers playing their usual game of making all the arrangements without consulting the clergy beforehand. I found myself oddly distracted during the service, almost to the point of saying Columba’s name at the Commendation when I should have said Clifford. Other duties likewise prevented me from taking the train to Sussex to join them.
The promised parcel duly arrived. I had hoped for a well-worn Office book of the community, of archival interest, only to be reminded that CSC had formally adopted the use of Common Worship Daily Prayer before they left Dorset. Tucked into the back of the Bible—a tatty Authorised Version which, from the evidence on the endpapers, had been the schoolboy Columba’s on the Central Coast of New South Wales—was a birth certificate. His name was Barry Mortimer. No middle name. Part of him was, in part at least, a Londoner, like Father Aidan, albeit from south of the water. No-one, as far as I knew, was aware of his English origins. Unless, of course, anyone besides myself had read his scribblings.
This has left me with a narrative dilemma. In not attending to the papers with the focus they warranted, or indeed with the urgency I should have given them, I have been overtaken by events. I now have to wrestle not with the order so much as tenses. Do I go back and correct what was in the present to the preterite? Can one play with time? When I began this sorting Columba was alive and, thus from my point of view, so was his story. Yet the fact remains that he is no longer. He has gone to meet the maker he so tellingly wrote of. Has that moved his life from the present to the past? Or can I attempt to cast his words in the light of his faith in eternal life—a life that is changed, not taken away?
I have spent some days looking over my notes. They are inevitably sometimes a distraction from other tasks, though this seems a worthy one, too. At times I have sought to elucidate some obscurity or lost practice for the general reader. But what comes through again and again with this man’s life’s mission was a sense of discontented satisfaction. There was always more to him than could be read. His silence was a shield as well as way of life.
As I sit here at my desk, musing on his writings, I am drawn to making the kind of assessments he made of himself. Has my life been up to the mark? Has my living been commensurate with my preaching? Can people see the light of God in me? Or this too just vanity? Another grasping after an egotistical shadow?
Lazarus House,
Sussex
Dear Fr Scully,
I know you are comfortable with people using your Christian name but, as we at CSC always preferred to maintain honorifics, especially as they seem to be clear-felled in the world around us, I do so now.
I have appreciated your repeated overtures in seeking to re-visit the House. While you would be most welcome here again, I fear even Sussex has greater attractions for you beyond a collection of crumbling clergy, some wives and husbands, and their concession to me as the token monk.
I also appreciate your repeated attempts to return my papers. As I have said before, they are really of no consequence to me. Indeed, they are something of an embarrassment. Especially now you know something of my background. I am sorry I did not respond to the time you mentioned the Central Coast but, to be honest, I was slightly embarrassed. I am sorry if you felt I was holding back on matters we could have spoken of.
As to the papers…such an egotistical pastime was, I have come to realise, an attempt to deal with my circumstances at Care Home which, through no fault of anyone, was quite a solitary life.
Here at Lazarus House I have found my way into a new form of community. It presents its challenges—the ecclesiastical breadth of the residents being only one. I know we are always claiming the diversity of Anglican polity is one of its defining charms or strengths, but the reality is often far from what the politicians call spin. Sometimes it is hard even to imagine how this has been maintained. (If it has; I sometimes fear bishops and other ‘leaders’ have to sing from a score that they do not really believe!)
But I digress. All this is a far cry from the matter in hand. I appreciate the offer but I really do not want the papers back. As I have said, they were attempts by me to deal with circumstances that are no longer part of my now. The monk’s task is to engage with the here and how, while keeping an eye on eternity—for us, our homeland is in heaven, as it says in the epistle to the Philippians1—but we need to be where we are. My scribblings were, I suppose, a way of placing the past into the present at Care Home. But things are different here.
The round of public offices, the celebration of Holy Communion and other aspects of our corporate life here provide me with more ‘nowness’ than I could eke out in Bethnal Green. That part of my journey needs to be as autumn leaves, cast off from the tree that is Columba. The tree metaphor holds well. My roots, while relatively shallow, are in good soil here. The House has a tradition that, like all else, seeks to engage with the past, draws on the present, but with an eye to the future. That means change, of course, with all its attendant thrills and trepidation. They are the leaves of the present spring.
To the papers again: really, please do with them as you wish. My only request is this: if you seek to publish them, as would appear your implicit, if not fully worked out, intention, do not press ahead until I have the opportunity to have finished my work and journey here. This will not be long. My mental faculties remain clear but the toxic cocktail inside my body (St Francis’s brother ass) suggests we are nearing its terminus. I have explained to the Master here (and he respects my decision) that I do not want many pharmaceutical, surgical or general medical interventions that will drag out this final act. So let me go and go in peace. As Hopkins wrote,
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.2
I have no evidence—or is it more a wish?—that this will not be too far off other than what I encounter in my own body. Yet it is best to be realistic. But all this is, of course, in the hand of God.
I also realise some of my writings contain what are very personal matters. I leave you to be the judge as to their suitability. Nothing in them—good, bad, indifferent, sinful—has not been taken to God in an appropriate way. I hope you understand my meaning. I have had the benefit of some fine confessors and spiritual directors in my life, and I am glad to say there are a number of very fine priests here.
My thoughts and prayers continue for you in your ministry. Bethnal Green is a place of relentless change, I know, but there are points of stability which the Church, through you (though you may not feel this) provides. I know your weekly services at Care Home are valued—they certainly were by me—and the round of offices and mass that make up the life Catholic in St Matthew’s. Thank God for them. They are the bedrock of our lives.
My best wishes to all at the Sunday service. They really are a jolly bunch, perhaps a little too much so for someone who spent so long in the cloister. I do hope my (to you) understandable reserve was not construed as a sneering stand-offishness. As you know, it was—it is—the Blessed Sacrament I came for, and each gathering to celebrate Christ in our midst has its own character.
In all, I hope you and I are, with the saints living and departed, trying to live our lives in praise to the Almighty in an effort to join, rather than be just surrounded by, the Cloud of Witnesses.3
Pray for me as I pray for you.
Best wishes,
Columba CSC
1. Philippians 3.2
0
2. From Heaven Haven, A Nun Takes the Veil by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poem has one other quatrain:
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
3. Columba is referring to Hebrews, Chapter 12.
CODA
I put down my pen there. For a few days I could not address this material. My days seemed tinged with a wash of senselessness. I was about to call my spiritual director when I realised I had a gap in my diary, so I took myself off to the nearby Priory for a couple of quiet days. There, in my guest room, like one of those overseen by Columba, I spent time in sleep, prayer and reading over his words.
What would be achieved in re-editing what has been something of a labour, not so much of love, as a seeming duty? And yet duty is a driver that must be part of the religious life: we are bound to proclaim the freedom given us. That God’s love for us is inexhaustible, even when we have spent all we have for ourselves. There is a perplexing conundrum here. Do people need to be told what should be obvious? After all, we are less walking advertisements as embodiments of faith. Or so we hope.
I am still troubled about the nature of some of Brother Columba’s revelations. Maybe I should have sought to discuss them with him. In the papers he speaks of his ill-spent past being laid to rest with gifted confessors and spiritual directors. The seal of the confessional can be on both sides of the grille. For all that, there seems a tinge of unfinished business (perhaps just for me) about some of the events he writes of. But, I suppose, that is so in all our spiritual lives.