24. Up On The Roof

I’ll tell you a little secret.  But before I do, I have to say I’m well aware I write things that could be potentially embarrassing.  And some of you, dear readers, have mentioned in your emails that you are worried for me.  And I’m troubled about my Great Sin of Having A Blog and Not Confessing It.  But writing to real people, even those I’ll never meet, seems so much more vital than recording my thoughts in a diary.  Writing in a diary is like sitting in a corner talking to a wall.  When I write on the Blog, at least someone is listening.  It makes all the difference in the world when someone is listening.  

Here’s something else I keep from my Brothers.   I go out on the roof of the monastery to look out over the valley on days when the weather is fine.  The highest roof on our clump of buildings is atop the Chapter House.  It has a trap door up near the peak of a steeply inclined roof.  I remove my robe first, so that I’m in boots and jeans and usually just a T-shirt.  There’s a ladder in the high attic that leads up to the trap door.  When I get to the top,  I swing open  the tar covered door, stand on the top rung of the ladder, step up and put my foot on the framing around the hole and throw my other leg over the peak of the roof.    Then I throw my weight forward and,  if I do it just right and my hands don't slip, my legs  slide over the peak of the roof just like I’m slinging myself up on to the back of a horse.  If I don’t do right, I bounce back and my foot has to find the framing or I’ll go crashing down through the hole to the attic floor.  I’ve never missed, however.  And I can’t launch myself too far forward and go flipping over the peak and down to the ground on the other side.  I’m too heavy to throw myself that far.

Once I’m comfortably straddling the peak, , I slide myself inch by inch along to very edge of the roof, my jeans rasping across the shingles.    What a feeling to sit there at such a dizzying height!  Vertigo grips me and I lean back a bit and slide my fingertips beneath the slightly wet roof shingles behind me.  Were I to lean even a tiny bit forward at this moment, I might tumble down into circle of driveway at the front door of the Chapter House.  Brother Jessica The Lightning Rod!  Don't try this with thunderstorms in the area!

On days with fine weather, I can see the entire valley spread out before me as if it were a calm green sea.  There’s the Hudson River.  Closer is the back side of Mount Marion and just a bit to the left is Churchland.

When I sit on the roof and look out across the valley,  I feel like I’m flying.  As free as a bird.   There’s something very Jungian about that, of course.  When we dream of flying it means our shadow wants to fly, to be free.  Or maybe to flee.  But why would I want to flee?  I’m very happy here.  Truthfully,  I haven't known much else for decades.  Like the Trappist monk Thomas Merton and his beloved hills of central Kentucky (“knobs” he called them) I’ve come to love every nook and cranny on the face of this mountain that looms behind me.  And I can recognize and name each winding creek carved on the landscape rolled out here before me.

And often I feel like Christ in the wilderness.  But in my case it's not Satan tempting me to jump from the pinnacle of the temple.  It's me.  Sometimes I’ve had enough of life.  I’m in my seventies, after all, and I have a great temptation to end it all before the journey gets worse.  I could just slip off the edge of the roof into the waiting arms of eternity. And here’s a strange thing …  I don’t know why, but I have a sense that eternity is feminine.

So up here on the peak of the roof I hover in place, held back by something I can't understand.  I want to go forward and embrace whoever is on the horizon, but something holds me back.  Is it my guardian angel?   Don't we each have one?  I guess I do, because I've never fallen off the roof.  Maybe she specializes in roof top safety.  She?  Yes, she.  I wouldn't want a male guardian angel.  I want one to love me like I always wanted a woman to love me.  Unconditionally.

I'll bet my guardian angel is a fine looking woman….cute, capable, soft and warm.  Sure of herself and saucy.  I’ll bet her name is not Mary or Theresa or Kundegunda of Sandeck.*   I’ll bet she has a snappy name like Sally.

As the sun continues to rise and warm the roof, the bell rings for Terce and it's time to leave the roof for mid morning chapel.   I back down the peak to the trap door.  Then I back into the roof hole, close the hatch and back down the ladder.  I back down all the way.  I'm always backing down.  

 * Kundegunda of Sandeck is a Polish saint.  She was a member of  the Polish Royal Family of her time.  For all I know she is the patron saint of land taxes and public executions.

Up On The Roof - Robson and Jerome