One of the things that makes my house-mate situation manageable is that the house is fairly huge, and that I'm set up downstairs on the east side, and my house-mate is set up upstairs on the west side. Another thing is that my house-mate, who is lovely, is often gone, spending a third to a half of her time at her place in Joshua Tree. She was out there last week for several days and as usual, I luxuriated in the silence, the solitude, having the unalloyed run of the place.
The day before she was due to return she called to say she'd be back Wednesday and would go back out again to the desert Saturday through Wednesday. And then, almost in passing, she added, "And after that I'll be around all the time for two or three months cause it's getting super-hot out here!"
Immediately my brain began darting about like a disturbed ferret. Where can I go? I need to find someplace to go. I need to spend a month away. That monastery in the redwoods I keep hearing about? Taos, maybe my friend Julia would let me use her place in Taos. I could go out to Joshua Tree myself and bake [this remains a definite possibility]. I like heat. Of course there's no internet so I'd have to make that vile drive to the Yucca Valley Starbucks...
Pretty quickly, however, my mind travelled farther afield.
My friend James Stephen Behrens, for instance, a monk at Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia, recently mentioned Kurisumala Ashram. Wikepedia informs me this is "a Cistercian Monastery in Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. "Kurisu" is the translation of the word Cross, into Malayalam the language of Kerala, the small State in the South West tip of India; "Mala" means mountain; "Ashram" means Monastery. Hence, the name describes the community of monks who practise austerity and live a strict monastic life on the mount of the Cross in the high hills of Kerala.
It was at the invitation of Zacharias Mar Athanasios, the Bishop of Tiruvalla, that Fr. Francis Mahieu, a Cistercian monk from the Scourmont Abbey, in Belgium (later known as Francis Acharya) came to Kerala to start the ashram. In the course of time, Bede Griffiths joined him there. On 1 December 1956, the two of them started the new foundation at Tiruvalla in theSyro-Malankara Catholic Church. Eventually they were successful in obtaining 88 acres (360,000 m2) of land and on 20 March 1958, the eve of St Benedict’s day, Fr. Francis, Fr. Bede, and two seminarians traveled sixty miles to the site, high up on the holy mountain of Kurisumala. Well contented with their hilltop, they spent the next few months in a hut made of bamboo and plaited palm leaves with no facilities, no furniture, and a floor covered simply with cow dung."
I mean sign me up.
There's Tarrawarra, another Cistercian monastery in the Yarra Valley, 60 km northeast of Melbourne, Australia.
But the place that really haunts me is The Beehive Hut, on the Aran Island of Inishmore, in Galway Bay. The hut built and maintained by my friend Benny McCabe of Dublin, who, among other things, is a traveler and citizen of the world, a tango dancer, a poet, a political activist, and a psychotherapist. "What would you do there?" a friend to whom I was waxing ecstatic about the Beehive Hut asked. "DO? My God, man, I would sit. I would look out the door. I would smell the sea. I would walk and poke around and think."
This beehive hut is on the Dingle Peninsula in Cy, Kerry
but you get the idea.
Who would not want to hole up in there with
a teapot, a breviary, and a pile of poetry?
photo: Sharon
So I have got Robert Flaherty's Man of Aran in my netflix queue and An Aran Keening by Andrew McNeillie on my bedside table and I probably won't get there this year but I have "planted a seed." I've been to Europe twice, both times during "los añososcuros"(the drinking years), so to go sober, and also to see a place, that from the pictures, looks so much like the coast of New Hampshire, where I grew up, and to visit the country from which my paternal grandparents emigrated, and to go to Mass in some little stone church would be a special kind of pilgrimage.
Then again, maybe I'll just stay put for awhile.
"God is at home," 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart observed. "We are in the far country.
Dingle in Ireland is mega-beautiful and I spent many summer holidays there. It is my spiritual home. I don't recommend the beehive huts to stay in - when it rains in Ireland it tends to hang around for a good while ! Blessings
Heather, I needed a little virtual retreat, and thanks to this post, you gave me one! How lovely to imagine each of these places. Your post brings me back to Catherine de Hueck Doherty's description of (a) poustinia. What is it that makes us long for a simple, small space where we can be alone with God? I find myself remembering little oases of loveliness where I could just sit and BE. Did you plan this to coincide with the Nativity of St. John the Baptist? Hhmm. Kind of apropos. Meister Eckhart's quote at the end was as beautiful as the photos. God bless you. PS. Thanks for the meaty reflection on St. Therese. There is so much there to chew on. How could someone so simple on the surface continually yield such riches for a century now? Although I loved St. Therese when I was very young, I couldn't believe how complex she was when I first picked up "Story of a Soul". I may never grasp all she was conveying. She's not for sissies, that's for sure.
“I wish, O son of the living God, O ancient, eternal King, / For a hidden little hut in the wilderness that it may be my dwelling.” – hermit from 600 AD Ireland
*
Ancient Irish poetry from Cellach, king of the Irish province of Connaught, who wished he’d remained a student instead of king:
“Woe to him who leaveth lore for the red world’s arts or ore; Who the true God’s love would leave With the false world’s Kings to cleave!
Woe who taketh arms in life And retaineth hands of strife, Better far books of whiteness, Where psalms are seen in brightness!”
*
You might like to read "Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom" by John O'Donohue, which is where I got the above.
Oh dear, Philomena, say it ain't so! The beehive hut in rain is no good?...I will keep Dingle in mind at least.
Bill, I once spent the month of August in a cabin at the Dorland Mtn. Arts Colony in Temecula. No A/C; no electricity in fact. It did get a bit toasty, like about a hundred and five, during the day. But the whole time I lived by the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun, both huge events, viewed from the top of the "mountain," and I still remember it as one of the best months of my life.
Mary Beth, always good to hear from you. I didn't plan the post to coincide with John the Baptist, but the Magnificat reflection today dovetailed beautifully: "How his heart, touched with the love of his Savior from the time he was in his Mother's womb, must have longed to enjoy his presence! Yet he spends twenty-five years in the desert without coming to see our Lord even once; and leaving the desert he stays to catechize without visiting him but waiting till our Lord comes to seek him out"...[St. Francis de Sales]...and I may have more from Joseph Schmidt (who wrote with such insight on St. Therese of Lisieux) soon. Another correspondent very kindly sent me another short book/pamphlet of his...
And TS, I may have seen that John O'Donohue book--I know someone lent me a couple of tapes of his several years ago, talks he'd given, that were primo. Also Esther de Waal, who writes of Benedictine spirituality--I remember a book of Celtic prayers of hers, also lovely. Thanks for the Cellach as well. I do think we should all prefer books to "ore!"
So many wonderful places to consider. I used to spend a lot of time at a Dominican monastery in Connecticut; hardly a mud floor, but so removed. I would like to do that again - there or somewhere else. The idea of a faraway place pulls my heart, silence, poking about, staring at the rain.
6 comments:
Dingle in Ireland is mega-beautiful and I spent many summer holidays there. It is my spiritual home. I don't recommend the beehive huts to stay in - when it rains in Ireland it tends to hang around for a good while !
Blessings
Give me a one-room cinderblock structure in the remotest East Mojave, with nothing but a table, chair, and army cot, and I'll be happy as a clam.
But not in the summer - please!
Heather, I needed a little virtual retreat, and thanks to this post, you gave me one! How lovely to imagine each of these places. Your post brings me back to Catherine de Hueck Doherty's description of (a) poustinia. What is it that makes us long for a simple, small space where we can be alone with God? I find myself remembering little oases of loveliness where I could just sit and BE.
Did you plan this to coincide with the Nativity of St. John the Baptist? Hhmm. Kind of apropos.
Meister Eckhart's quote at the end was as beautiful as the photos.
God bless you.
PS. Thanks for the meaty reflection on St. Therese. There is so much there to chew on. How could someone so simple on the surface continually yield such riches for a century now? Although I loved St. Therese when I was very young, I couldn't believe how complex she was when I first picked up "Story of a Soul". I may never grasp all she was conveying. She's not for sissies, that's for sure.
Potent post!
“I wish, O son of the living God, O ancient, eternal King, / For a hidden little hut in the wilderness that it may be my dwelling.” – hermit from 600 AD Ireland
*
Ancient Irish poetry from Cellach, king of the Irish province of Connaught, who wished he’d remained a student instead of king:
“Woe to him who leaveth lore
for the red world’s arts or ore;
Who the true God’s love would leave
With the false world’s Kings to cleave!
Woe who taketh arms in life
And retaineth hands of strife,
Better far books of whiteness,
Where psalms are seen in brightness!”
*
You might like to read "Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom" by John O'Donohue, which is where I got the above.
Oh dear, Philomena, say it ain't so! The beehive hut in rain is no good?...I will keep Dingle in mind at least.
Bill, I once spent the month of August in a cabin at the Dorland Mtn. Arts Colony in Temecula. No A/C; no electricity in fact. It did get a bit toasty, like about a hundred and five, during the day. But the whole time I lived by the rising of the sun and the setting of the sun, both huge events, viewed from the top of the "mountain," and I still remember it as one of the best months of my life.
Mary Beth, always good to hear from you. I didn't plan the post to coincide with John the Baptist, but the Magnificat reflection today dovetailed beautifully: "How his heart, touched with the love of his Savior from the time he was in his Mother's womb, must have longed to enjoy his presence! Yet he spends twenty-five years in the desert without coming to see our Lord even once; and leaving the desert he stays to catechize without visiting him but waiting till our Lord comes to seek him out"...[St. Francis de Sales]...and I may have more from Joseph Schmidt (who wrote with such insight on St. Therese of Lisieux) soon. Another correspondent very kindly sent me another short book/pamphlet of his...
And TS, I may have seen that John O'Donohue book--I know someone lent me a couple of tapes of his several years ago, talks he'd given, that were primo. Also Esther de Waal, who writes of Benedictine spirituality--I remember a book of Celtic prayers of hers, also lovely. Thanks for the Cellach as well. I do think we should all prefer books to "ore!"
So many wonderful places to consider. I used to spend a lot of time at a Dominican monastery in Connecticut; hardly a mud floor, but so removed. I would like to do that again - there or somewhere else. The idea of a faraway place pulls my heart, silence, poking about, staring at the rain.
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