Alone with God, and everybody
Cunningham, Lawrence S
THE LAST WORD ALONE WITH GOD, AND EVERYBODY Lawrence S. Cunningham At the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani where I visit, the office of vigils begins at 3:15 in the morning. The cantor intones...
...These are the scenes which click by on the mental screen of my mind as I watch for the first crack of the dawn which will not come until we are about ready to go back to church for morning praise...
...Is it now too late for the rapist and the housebreaker...
...Are they there because they love the night or because they need the money...
...Only the odd passing car on the country road at the edge of the monastery breaks the night sounds of the frogs, cicadas, and, far off among the knobs that dot this rural area, punctuated barks of restless dogs...
...Are these scenes some form of prayer...
...The bell rings for lauds and my vigil is over...
...Have the dopers found some rest...
...Have the bars closed and their disgorged denizens made it safely home...
...Do the monitors continue their blip in the intensive care wards or has, at this moment, a flatline appeared...
...Do the people on death row sleep easily amid the coughs and groans of the prison population...
...For forty-odd minutes the community sings psalms interspersed with readings from Scripture and other writings...
...A few yards up the hill, Thomas Merton lies in the cemetery under a plain white cross...
...Have the street hustlers and the young-but-so-old hookers quit the streets yet...
...Is it easy for the cops in their patrol cars and the firemen in their stations and the nurses in the ER room...
...the organist who is a brilliant scholar and well-known musicologist...
...In this place he once wrote, "The more we are alone with God, the more we are with one another in darkness...
...Have the sirens silenced a bit...
...Who has just driven by in the pickup truck and to what destination...
...I usually get a quick cup of coffee (the brother who is the monastery's gardener puts on a fresh cup for the visitors in the guest wing each morning) and go outside to sit in the velvety dark of the Kentucky night...
...That kind of language sort of sticks in my throat right now...
...Are the milkers and produce buyers and long-haul truckers at work...
...A monk, like any sane person, knows that getting up in the middle of the night is an act contrary to natural inclinations...
...Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...This dark time is for vigilance: "O Watchman, what of the night...
...Are my kids and wife and friends and students safe...
...Do the homeless stir a bit looking for comfort in their doorways and cardboard boxes...
...I glance at the rows of white-cowled monks, spying old friends: a brother who has stood in this choir since 1940 (he entered the monastery at the age of fifteen...
...The cantor intones the ancient psalm, "O God, come to my assistance," and the community responds with the line, "O Lord, make haste help to me...
...Have the deserted mom, the battered child, the lonely old woman finished their tears for the night...
...That tag of a psalm opens each monastic office as it has for 1,500 years since Cassian, one of the great monastic pioneers, described it as the perfect prayer of the monk...
...I think of those who work in all-night diners or convenience stores, looking forever like people out of a painting by Edward Hopper...
...I think of those who lie awake staring at the ceiling, worrying about money or children or the nagging pain in the belly that keeps them from sleep...
...Is the night just picking up for them on the West Coast...
...former novices of Thomas Merton, including the abbot, who have survived the postconciliar exodus from religious life...
...Who else is up at this hour, Lord...
...When the fourth-century Abba Poeman was asked if monks who doze during the liturgy should be aroused, he edified his hearers by saying that when he saw a brother dozing, he let him nap on his lap...
...and the young novices who still cannot suppress a yawn despite the fact that the night is the time of the monk...
...They do not have the texture of prayer language and I would feel too self-consciously hypocritical to say, "Lord, protect them," even if I were saying it to myself...
...In that long space everyone is free to spend the time in silent prayer or in reading or simple quiet...
...Who at this hour are sitting at kitchen tables, the smoke wreathing their heads and the coffee untasted as they worry about the coming of the day...
...Are the street people now snoring in wine-drenched quiet...
...For me, the best time of the monastic day comes in the long interval of two hours between the end of vigils and the morning office of lauds when the monks regather to greet the coming of the dawn...
Vol. 122 • December 1995 • No. 21
