Chapter 6 part 2 6

6 He was lying prone on the church floor with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross as punishment for what he had written in a small leather notebook.Father Sebastian, vice-principal of the monastery, found the notebook on the counter of the monastery's gift shop when, just a few minutes away, he pointed to the lavatory behind the gift shop for a tourist and responded to another visitor's question. Question about the hand-thrown nets for sale in the shop: "How long have the monks been weaving their nets? Did they learn the craft from the islanders, or did they bring them from Cornwall? The money they sell nets supports the Abbey." Expenses?" He wishes now that he hadn't spent so much time with that person.Today is Ash Wednesday, which is February, and through the black cassock he is wearing, he can feel the ground is very cold, even a little damp.On both sides of the main hall of the church, choir seats were lined up facing each other. At this moment, he was lying prone in the aisle between the choir seats, listening to the monks singing vespers.Brother Timothy crooned like a hall singer: "Virgin Mary, you are merciful and sweet." When they had finished chanting the Hail Mary, he heard the hinged choir pews being lifted There was a crackling sound, and then, a weary shuffling, as the monks lined up to wait for the abbot to dispense holy water.At last all the lights were extinguished except for one near the abbot's seat, and Brother Thomas was left almost in darkness, in a vast silence.

He is forty-four years old, the youngest monk in the monastery, and a newcomer, a so-called junior monk who has taken a temporary vow.He was only four months away from making his lifelong vow—until death.What was going through his head—explaining to the man in the gift shop like he'd been here half his life?He went so far as to explain eloquently about throwing fishing nets with his hands.He lay on the ground, cursing himself.Father Sebastian thus had a chance to look through his notebook and become wary of his mental state.Father Sebastian should actually be in the navy, not a monk.He took the matter to the abbot.The dean is very old-fashioned, conservative, and a very Irish man.Thomas had been summoned to his office, to that forbidding papacy—he sometimes thought so.As a result, he fell to the ground right now.He has been taught at least a dozen times by the dean, but this is the first time he has been punished.Lying here, it doesn't seem so bad.He would stay here until the Master felt that he had given enough thought to the danger of suspicion before sending him to be released.He's been here for an hour, maybe longer.The church floor smelled of Murphy's soap and a sour, organic manure stink, which he realized was a mixture of swamp mud and garden manure.Over the past fifty years, this mixture has been brought in by the shoelaces worn by monks, and left behind in invisible crevices in the wooden floors.In this pristine place—when they all imagined themselves immersed in the sacred through never-ending chants and prayers—mud and cow dung were hidden everywhere.You can never imagine how happy this made him.Brother Thomas had dreamed of Jesus' feet—not his crucifixion, not his resurrection, not his Sacred Heart, but his feet.

The smell from the church floor, and even the sight of God's feet in his dreams, somehow made him view religion with greater reverence.Other monks, like Sebastian, might have accused the build-up in the cracks of the floor as unholy, but Thomas, lying there, suddenly realized that what he smelled in his nostrils was actually a shimmering The purest beauty that shimmers, and is shockingly divine.He smelled the earth.He's been living at the Monastery of the Virgin Cynara on this tiny South Carolina island for nearly five years, and each year has been a dark, hard bone to crack.Still haven't gnawed at the marrow that would allow him to see the light, he thought.Of course, occasionally he would suddenly feel a ray of light descending from the sky, shining on his heart.Like a minute ago, when he suddenly smelled that smell.After his other life was over, the one with his wife and unborn child, he felt irredeemably driven by a force.At times his explorations seemed impossible, as if an eye were trying to look inside, to see itself.So far, the only thing he has figured out is this: God seems to be quietly everywhere, and surprisingly common.That's all.His real name was Whit O'Connor.Once upon a time, in another life, he was a Raleigh lawyer representing various environmental groups, thwarting real estate developers and industrial polluters.He used to own a brick house, a beautiful yard, and his wife, Linda, who was seven and a half months pregnant.She worked in an orthodontist's practice as an office manager, but she wanted to stay home with the kids, even though that wasn't fashionable.That's what he liked about her—not following trends.They met at Duke University and were married the first Sunday afternoon after her graduation at a small Methodist church in her hometown near Flat Rock, North Carolina, and they have never been apart until the wheels of a truck flew out in front of her car on I-77.The medical staff handling the scene repeatedly told him that she was going soon, as if it would bring him some comfort.

His sense of abandonment was unfathomable—not only by Linda and his future family, but by God, the God in whom he had truly trusted.That is one's trust before suffering great pain.Linda called him from her office the day she died and told him she was sure they were going to have a daughter.Before that, she had never felt that she would have a boy or a girl, although he himself had always believed it was a boy.That morning, as she was showering, she felt it.She touched her abdomen with her hand, and she knew it.Now, recalling the past, a smile appeared on his face, and he gently kissed the ground with his lips.After the funeral, he learned from the medical examiner that she was right.He couldn't remember exactly when he first thought of coming here, but it must have been a year after she died.He sent his baptismal and confirmation records, letters of recommendation from two pastors, and a long, carefully considered letter.However, everyone, including the dean, still believed that he was avoiding grief.They have no idea what they are talking about.He clung to his grief so tightly that he almost fell in love with it.For a long time, he refused to give up on it, because giving up on it would be like giving up on Linda.Sometimes he wondered why he bet on these old men.Some of the old men were surly, and he had to avoid them on purpose.At least four people hobbled around on walkers and lived permanently in the infirmary.There was also a monk, Friar Fabian, who was always writing to the Pope complaining about the behavior of other monks and posting copies in the corridors.Brother Basil had a curious tic, and would cry out "Miep!"What does that mean?At first, Thomas couldn't stand it.But at least Basil was kind, unlike Sebastian.Thomas was not the type to romanticize the Abbey, and if he had been, the illusion had evaporated within the first week.All in all, his grief fell into a wider abyss.

"I'm not here to find answers," he wrote in his notebooks during the first year, "but to find a way to exist in a world without answers." Honestly, he He was rejected three times in the first three years until Abbot Dom Anthony finally accepted him.Thomas knew it wasn't because the Dean had changed his mind, but because he had finally worn him out.Another reason is that they need a young man.They need someone who can climb a ladder and climb into a church buttress to change a light bulb; someone who can fiddle with a computer and know that the word "reboot" doesn't mean putting your shoes back on, like several That's what the monk thinks.But the main reason is that they need someone to steer the Abbey's boat and go out into the creek to measure egret eggs, count the young, and measure the salinity of the water—something the Abbey does with South Carolina Natural Resources for extra income. The Ministry of Resources signed a contract to undertake the work.Thomas loves the job.He likes to disappear into egret habitat.There was some soreness in his elbow.He switched positions, turned his head the other way.He saw the church again, as a mouse sees it, as a beetle sees it.He didn't move his head any more, just rolled his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. He felt that he was lying on the bottom of the world, looking up.Where all stairs begin—didn't Yeats say that?He spends a lot of time here reading—especially poetry, and he is systematically reading all the volumes in the library.Yeats was his favorite.He lay on the ground feeling very insignificant.It occurred to him that all the self-important people—the people in Congress, the people in the Vatican, the people at AT&T—should lay here for a while.They should lie here and look up and see how different everything is.Before coming here, he admits, he used to be rather vain.The cases he took on—many of them high-profile events—put him on the front pages of state newspapers, and he still feels nostalgic for that life at times.He remembers a time when he successfully thwarted a major garbage disposal company from bringing in sewer sludge from New York City, which got him a New York Times appearance and numerous television interviews.He was proud of it.

On the day he came to settle here, he stood on the ferry and thought of the River Styx in ancient Greek mythology, and thought of the ferryman guiding him through the final pass.He imagined himself dying from his old life to a new life on the other side, hidden in the middle of the sea, far from the world.Although this is absurd and too dramatic, he likes this comparison.However, it was not the sea water, but the trees, whose twisted and twisted branches had left a deep impression on him.As soon as he saw the trees, he knew that this was a difficult place, a place that required a strong will.No doubt he acquired the name Brother Thomas because he was a skeptic in a monastery.Such naming is nothing more than a cliché, but he still accepts it.He doubts God.Perhaps he will discover that there was never a God.Or he will lose one God and find another.he does not know.Besides, he felt the presence of God as rheumatic monks feel the rain on their joints.He only felt a hint from God.On the first page of his notebook he wrote "Controversial Questions" in honor of Brother Thomas Merton, who wrote the book of the same name.He pointed this out to Dom Anthony as some sort of excuse, but that didn't help either.If you are going to be an apostate with impunity, you will not be rediscovered until long after your death, when people accept what is called heresy.He tried to recall the contents of the notebook that gave him the most trouble.Probably the questions that kept him awake in the middle of the night.He would sit in his room with the window open, listening to the loud music of the buoys in Bull Bay, and write them all down.On the question of evil, whether evil can exist without God's complicity; Nietzsche's assertion that God is dead, and that God is not a concrete figure in the heavens, but only some guiding force in human nature.The thought of the abbot reading these things filled him with panic.He wanted to get up and go to him and explain to him.But what can he say?It was windy outside, blowing from the bay and beating against the roofs.He imagined the wind and waves on the sea.The monastery bells ring to call the monks to bed, telling them that the Great Silence has begun.He didn't know if the dean had forgotten him.

Shadows were everywhere in the church, and the long glass windows were completely black.He thought of the chapel behind the chancel, with its mermaid chairs on the carpeted dais.He sometimes likes to go there and sit on a chair when there are no tourists.He always wondered why their famous little virgin, Sinara, was carved on the chair in the form of a mermaid, and a half-naked mermaid at that.He had no problem with the look, he actually admired it.It's just that it's not like the practice of a Benedictine monk to highlight the mermaid's breasts so much.From the moment he saw the mermaid chair, he fell in love with Xinara, not only because of her fabulous life in the sea, but also because of another legend about her: she heard the prayers of the people of Bailu Island, and not only brought them Saving them from the hurricane also spared them from the expansion of golf course development.In the beginning, when he was sitting in the mermaid chair, he was always thinking about his wife, about making love to her.Now he could go weeks without thinking about her.Sometimes, when he thought about having sex, it was just the same woman, just a woman, not Linda at all.When he first came here as a probationary student, it was not difficult to give up sex.He didn't think he could make out with anyone but Linda.Her hair hanging on the pillow, her smell—all gone forever.The sex thing went too.He let it go.He felt a tightening in his dantian.It was absurd for him to think that sexual desire would be gone forever.Certain things can lie underground for a while, or sink into the water like the lead weights monks attach to hand-cast nets, but they don't stay down forever.What sinks is destined to rise.The pun he came up on by accident almost made him laugh out loud.For the past few months, he's been thinking too much about sex.Living a life without sex has become a real sacrifice, but it doesn't make him feel sacred, he only feels denied, more like an ordinary monk who is struggling to keep his body.He will take his lifelong vows in June.Then, there is nothing to think about.When the footsteps finally came, he closed his eyes and opened them again when the footsteps stopped.He saw the toe of a pair of Reeboks and the hem of the cassock trailing over them.The Abbot spoke, his Irish accent unchanged for years. "I hope you've thought it through." "Yes, my lord." "So, not too harsh?" "No, my lord." Thomas didn't know how old Dom Anthony was, but when When he looked down now, he looked very old, the skin on his face drooping in piles from his chin and cheeks.Sometimes the words that come out of his mouth seem to spring from an ancient and eternal world.Once, at a Sunday morning meeting, he sat in his throne-like chair with scepter in hand, and said: "While St. Patrick drove the snake out of Ireland, he turned all the old pagan women into A mermaid." Thomas thought it was grotesque—a little bit grotesque.Does the Dean really believe that? "Go to bed," said Dom Anthony.

Thomas stood up from the ground and walked outside the church, the night swaying in the wind.Flipping the hood over his head, he walked through the center of the monastery toward a cluster of duplexes scattered under gnarled oak trees on the edge of the swamp.He walked along the path to the house where he and Father Dominique lived.Dominique was the Abbey's librarian, as well as the jester ("Every court has its jester," Dominique liked to say).He aspires to be a writer, and the noise of typing at night keeps Thomas awake.Thomas had no idea what Dominique was writing across the house, but it felt to him like a murder detective story—an Irish abbot who died in the refectory of his monastery, strangled to death by his own rosary. of.stuff like that.On both sides of the path are paved with cement slabs engraved with fourteen images of the Crucifixion. He walked between the slabs and through the wisps of mist blowing from the sea. He suddenly thought of Dominique. A smiling face is painted on the statue of the Way of the Cross.No doubt Dom Anthony punished him by scrubbing first the slates and then the choir seats while the others watched The Sound of Music on TV.Why couldn't he get into trouble like Dominic--for something ridiculous?Why must it be for all the survival crap he wrote in his notebook?For a while, he thought that the baseball card he used as a bookmark for his prayer book would get him in trouble, but apparently no one cared, including the dean.Thomas was startled to realize how much he missed something as mundane as baseball.He occasionally watches a ball game on TV, but, well, that's different.Dale Murphy hit forty-four home runs last year, and he saw only one.The baseball card was given to him by Linda on their last Christmas together.Eddie Matthews, 1953 - God knows how much she paid for this card.He envied Dominic.Dominique was at least eighty years old, and he wore a battered straw hat around all day except in the choir.It was he who persuaded the abbot to install a television in the music room.Once, after "The Great Silence," he knocked on Thomas' door, trying to convince him to sneak into the music room with him to watch a special about shooting the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.Thomas didn't go.He regrets it to this day.He was about to reach his house, and he stopped suddenly, feeling as if he heard a voice, the voice of a woman calling from a distance.He looked towards the egret roost to the east, the robe flapping on his lap.A nightingale cried.Hepjiba Perstyler, the Guller woman who guarded the slave cemetery on the island, once told him that nightingales were the spirits of dead relatives.Of course he didn't believe it, and he was pretty sure she didn't either, but he liked to imagine that it was Linda singing.At this moment, it was her voice calling from afar.Thomas pictured his wife in his mind—or, just an ordinary woman? ——Standing there in a swimsuit.He pictured the part of her inner thigh, just above her knee, the soft skin there.He wanted to kiss that place.He stands under a bent tree, and in this "big silence", he is thinking about going into life and then detaching from it.Then, he heard the voice again—a woman's calling.It's not the birds singing, it's not the wind moaning, it's a woman calling.