Sat with a friend in a hospital waiting room today, both of us too tired for words. So I borrowed Julian's: all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. Said it under my breath until I half believed it.
Vigils at 4:15. Psalm 63: 'my soul thirsts for you.' My soul mostly thirsted for coffee. I offered Him both, and I think He took them.
Evensong tonight, and the Nunc Dimittis: 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.' I've sung it a hundred times. Tonight was the first time I thought of Mum while singing it and still made it to the end. Just.
Centering prayer is meant to be simple. Twenty minutes, one sacred word, and when you notice you've drifted into thoughts, you return ever so gently to the word. Thoughts are boats going down a river; you don't have to climb aboard. This week every single boat has been the alto line of the Advent anthem we're rehearsing. Twenty minutes, roughly forty returns, and I could sing you bars 12 to 30 in my sleep. Julian of Norwich would tell me this is fine. All shall be well, and all manner of descant shall be well. I return to the word. The altos return to bar 12. We carry on.
At the Office this morning we had Psalm 88, the darkest one in the whole psalter. It doesn't even end in hope. The last line is 'darkness is my closest friend.' And I felt wonderful. Good sleep, sunny morning, the bread came out well. Singing it felt almost dishonest. Afterward I asked our novice master about it. He said: 'You aren't praying it for yourself today. Somewhere right now someone is living that psalm and can't pray at all. You're lending them your voice.' I've thought about little else since. Every psalm I don't feel is someone else's psalm. I just have to show up and sing it for them.
Every October our parish leaves a book at the back of the church for All Souls. You write the names of the people you've lost, and on the evening of the 2nd they're read aloud at the requiem, one by one, while a candle burns on the altar. Today I wrote my mother's name for the fifth year. My handwriting has got steadier each time. This year I added my old choir director, who taught me to breathe from the belly and never, ever to go flat on a descant. There's something about seeing her name on a page with a hundred others, in a hundred different hands. Grief is so private, and then for one evening it isn't.
At Compline we turn the lights down until there is only the one lamp by the icon of Our Lady. Then the Salve Regina, from memory, because nobody can see the book anyway. Brother Anselm is eighty-three and sings a quarter-tone flat. For my first month I found it maddening. Now I listen for him. If he isn't there, something is wrong. After the last note comes the Great Silence, until morning. No talking in the corridors, just shoes on stone and the bell. I'm learning that the silence is not an absence of prayer. It is where the prayer goes to finish itself.
Brother Anselm gives me the bread every Tuesday now, which is either an honour or a penance depending on how it rises. I've been reading The Cloud of Unknowing with my novice master. The anonymous author says we can't reach God by thinking, only by love, and that we should 'beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.' I've loved that line since I first read it, and I've also had no idea how to actually do it. On Tuesday I was kneading, eight loaves' worth, and somewhere around minute six my mind did its usual thing. Lists. Latin vocabulary. Whether my mother is sleeping well. And then, for a short while, it stopped. Not emptied, exactly. Just the push and fold, the heel of my hand, the dough growing smoother and warmer. One small word kept returning with each push. I won't say which word; the Cloud suggests keeping it to a single syllable, and keeping it to yourself. When I told my novice master, I expected him to say that was only concentration, not prayer. He thought for a long time, as he does, and said, 'The author was a monk. He probably made bread too.' The loaves were a bit dense. Brother Anselm said they tasted prayerful, which I have decided to take as a compliment.
Vigils is at 4:15am. This time of year it's fully dark, and the abbey church is lit only enough to read the psalms. Brother Columba died in September, aged ninety-one. He had the same stall in the choir for sixty-two years: back row, left side, under the window with the cracked pane. He always arrived first, sat with his eyes closed, and always, always cleared his throat right before 'O Lord, open my lips.' Nobody has taken his stall. It isn't a rule. We just haven't. Last Tuesday I was the first one in. I sat in my place, novices' row, front. The church was completely silent. And then, from the back left, under the window with the cracked pane, someone cleared their throat. I didn't turn around. I don't fully know why. Maybe because turning around would have meant deciding what it was. The bell rang, the others came in, Father Prior intoned the opening versicle, and we sang the Invitatory as usual. Afterwards I told our novice master. He is not a man given to drama. He listened, nodded, and said, 'Columba never missed Vigils in sixty years. I don't suppose he wants to start now.' Then he sent me to help with the bread. I'm not writing this to claim a miracle. I'm writing it because the communion of saints, which I profess every Sunday, felt very close that morning. Close enough to clear its throat.
You’ve reached the edge of the sky.