A Monk's Diary

Brother Nathaniel was walking around all afternoon, telling everyone he met: “Dom Emmanuel and I did a complete “360” in the middle of Higway 151!” Nathaniel was driving Dom Emmanuel to the airport in Cedar Rapids after a meeting at New Melleray and a snow storm was making the drive treacherous. Feeling the car begin to get away from him, Nathaniel remembered what he had been taught: “Take your foot off the gas pedal, DON'T press the brake, and turn the wheel into the skid . . .” He performed all this admirably – and it didn't work. A moment later, the car carrying the two monks was out of control; going round and round in the middle of the highway, with traffic moving all around them. At 7:40 p.m., Dom Emmanuel was home and Nathaniel was standing in the semi-darkness of the monastic choir, wrapped in his white cowl; head bowed singing Psalm #4: “When I call, answer me O God of justice!” The words are only a conscious reprise of the prayer that issued from his heart that moment when he felt the car getting away from him in the snow. Stuff happens. The gift of monastic vocation is that stuff happening to us is taken back into the cloister and into the darkness where is is broken open and allowed to yield its riches in contemplation. A car spinning out of control in the middle of a busy highway is not just a cool story to tell, not just a potential accident, or a line from “a tale told by an idiot”. The incident on Highway 151 was a word spoken to Nathaniel – God opening to the frightened monk a page of the book of truth and addressing a word to him. Now, as the monks sing Compline, the final prayer service of the day, before we go to bed, God is meeting Nathaniel in the memory of that scare he had earlier in the day. Praying the words of the psalm, God is reading to Nathaniel a “bed-time story”, the kind the child in us loves to hear. It is a story confirming the mystery of our human existence; of birth and death and dangers passed through on the way to the security of a home and family. God is saying to Nathaniel: “Remember, you were given birth and did not take it. You are not the author of your being. You do not hold life as a possession. Life is fragile. You are here for a time and today could have been your last – but if you lived a few moments only – it would be a miracle. Now, enter the darkness of this prayer and know that your whole existence is one great blessed womb of darkness; a continuous coming to be granted you as a gift from God. Be grateful – and pray.”