Imbolc                                      Waxing Bridgit Moon

Here I am, a heretic beneath the bell tower of Blue Cloud Abbey, sitting at this mobile scriptorium, pecking away at the keys.  The bell tower rises outside the window, a jet passing by, contrail at an acute angle toward the north, a metal angel streaking like Icarus toward the sun; a sun, obscured early by the western wing of the retreat center, that this morning draped a bloody red-orange mantel over the far horizon, visible for miles from this point, 900 feet above the floor of the otherwise flat prairie.

When the bell rings, which it does every quarter hour once, every half hour twice and the  number of the hour on the hour, I fly on the time machine of sound back to the middle ages when the sound of the bell determined the compass of a parish, all within the sound part of the same community, an aural community, knitting itself together every half hour.  These days, these latter days, these 21st century days the bell could not be heard over the rumbling engines of trucks bearing cookware, basketballs and note-book paper, cars scurrying here and there with people, like small loud beetles set loose on the hardened surface of mother earth.

How do we know what community we belong too, now, now the bell’s sound has become muffled?  Could it be that this very medium (there goes the bell, ringing 3:00 pm), these bits and bytes that travel from this prairie monastery, constitute our new bell tower?  A quiet sound heard world-wide, making us one people, one community, one pale blue marble in a vast ocean of airless space?

We ate lunch today with the monks in their lunchroom, a wide, long room with the animals symbolizing the gospels painted on a mural, done in a style reminiscent of Northwest Coast Native American design styles:  an ox, an eagle, a lion, a winged human.  Some of the monks wear the black robe, others blue jeans and sweaters.  Some of the monks have become stooped by age, while others, younger, would not be distinguishable from any one at the counter of a Marvin, South Dakota coffee-shop.  I had spinach, a vegetable medley, two peaches and a bit of tuna salad.  Fare fit for a simple life and just fine with me.

I find myself wanting to come here by myself, perhaps for two weeks or so, to concentrate on my Latin, on finishing the novel I’ve already well begun.  Perhaps I will, one of these days, if Kate’s ok with it.