When I walk through the village here, I cannot say I am happy about the possibility of returning to the world. I know readers will think the life of a monk boring compared to an existence in even a small town like Saugerties. But … no offense intended … this is a profane place. Profane in the sense that it’s devoid of anything spiritual in the daily rhythm of its life. I’m not speaking about religion, nor even about God. I mean there is no spritual space here for the important things in life like beauty and peace, let alone tears of joy. There is no quiet dimension where a person can listen to his interior voice and just be, like up on the mountain. Or silently exist with nature all around, sucking up the beauty of life on this blue-green earth. In reality, The Fall of Man turns out to be the Dream of Life most of us lead, where we are separated from the creation that was given to us. When you think of it … and I think about it a lot … we humans give up our inheritance with a mere twist of our perspective. We are indeed in the garden, if we wish to be there. An angel didn’t kick us out of paradise. The siren devils in our heart marched us outside, where we stand in the rain and wonder why we are unhappy. One devil is our need for noise and so-called excitement. Another devil is our need to be treated “fairly,” but we often mean more than fairly. Still another devil is our need to be in control. But there are angels beckoning us back into the garden, and I wonder if they have names. I wonder if their names are Acceptance and Selfless and Listen?
If I ever had a child I would name him or her Listen. The Appleton family in Connecticut in the 1630’s gave the names of Eliphalet, Mehitable, Israel, Hannah and Renewed to their children. I like Renewed the best. Perhaps they later had a little boy and named him Repent. Too bad they didn't think of Listen.
As I stood in line at the hardware store, a pretty young woman began a conversation with me. At my age, and given my vocation as a semi-cloistered monk, any women under age 70 is pretty. And I’ve met a few over 70 who were pretty, too. I was wearing just jeans and a jacket and introduced myself as Brother Jesse as I always do. She immediately became enthusiastic, mentioned she was a fourth grade teacher and asked could I please-please-please come to her class on Career Day and speak to the children about my work. Stunned, I mumbled my regrets and said it was a life, not a job and there wasn’t much in my work to interest ten year olds. Then I laughed and offered to speak with them when they reached 21 years of age. I told Bouncer about my encounter that evening.
“You should have accepted!” he said. “Kids need to know what monks do.”
“They do? I don’t think so,” I said. “What would I say? ‘Good Morning, Children: When I wasn't praying or buying toilet parts, I cut and pasted texts for the past thirty years while trying to discover the average height of donkies from two thousand years ago by interpolating hundreds of references pertaining to walking distances available from copies of the ancient texts?’”
“That’s pretty boring,” said Bouncer. “I can see you don’t know how to entertain fourth graders … or their pretty teacher. Don’t ever ask me out on a date.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“The excitement is always in the telling,” Bouncer continued. “I’d approach it differently, Ace. ‘Good Morning, Children: I also have my nose buried in the Church Fathers most of the day, but before I became a monk I was an Official Executioner for the State of New York! I was an Electrocutor! You shoulda seen their eyeballs pop out when I turned on the juice!’”
“Oh, c’mon, Bouncer,” I said.
“And their hair got a permanent wave! No extra charge!” he shouted.
He was laughing uncontrollably when I picked up my tea and moved to another table.
“Ya gotta get their attention first, Ace!” he shouted after me.
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