- Thomas Merton
Supper is a silent affair. We stand behind our chairs while the guest master welcomes us and gives a brief orientation. We say the Lord's Prayer as our meal blessing. Including myself, I count 15 retreatants, eight women and six men. The guest house has 16 rooms, the last one reserved for the "traveler of the roads" who shows up unexpectedly on the abbey's doorstep. All of my fellow retreatants are white, with the exception of one African-American woman who enters the dining room late and looks sheepish as she takes her seat at the lone remaining table.
The meal consists of a thin mushroom and rice soup, a simple romaine salad, bread, and cheese, all washed down with cold water. Each of us is responsible for busing her or his own dishes and setting the table for the next meal.
After supper I spend some time browsing in the library and end up borrowing two books: Thomas Merton's Contemplative Prayer and G.K. Chesterton's Essential Writings. My selections in hand, I retire to my room to read until Compline.
On the path to the church, in the shadow of the mountains, I am suddenly conscious of the way I walk. Years ago, Kim and I took a few classes in Alexander Technique from a local dance instructor whose choreography we admired. The first thing she had me do was walk across the room, so she could get a sense of my gait and my posture. After I had obligingly padded across the the carpeted floor a couple of times, the instructor asked me if I had ever worn casts on my feet.
I was amazed. I was born with clubbed feet, and had to undergo a series of operations between birth and the age of six, during which time I was outfitted alternately with casts or heavy orthopedic shoes (what my best friend in high school used to refer to as "Herman Munsters"). I told the instructor this, and she nodded knowingly. She told me I walked as if I was wearing concrete boots. She taught me the correct way to walk that day: head up, back straight, shoulders squared, leading with the knees, heel to toe, with full articulation of all the joints in my feet. I felt like a child learning his first steps, trying not to fall.
The clarity that comes with being on retreat causes many thoughts and memories such as these to surface. One is suddenly conscious of the way one walks, the way one breathes. It is a strange thing, to have to be mindful of breathing correctly. "As easy as breathing," the saying goes, yet I habitually forget the proper way to do it. Time and again, I catch myself breathing rapidly and shallowly from the chest, rather than slowly and deeply from the diaphragm.
Compline: the monks enter silently, dip their fingers in holy water, and cross themselves. Before taking his place in the choir, each one bows toward the altar. It is a deep bow from the waist, palms flat on the legs just above the knees. Orthodox monks call this style of prostration 'little metania.' The Trappists are still and austere in their white robes and black scapulars cinched at their waists with wide leather belts. After invocations, psalms, and hymns, Compline ends with a hymn to the Virgin Mary, illuminated in her niche above the altar.
The abbott is the last to leave. Before exiting the darkened church, he walks over to sprinkle us with holy water. I make my best imitation of a Cistercian bow as the cool droplets strike my face and head. The retreatants walk back to the guest house in the gathering dusk. The Great Silence, which is observed from the beginning of Compline until the end of Lauds the following morning, rolls over us and around us and through us like a billowing wind.
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