I was in a monastery the other day and got to talking to a monk who, when I asked him why he was a monk—why he volunteered for a job liable to loneliness, a commitment to an idea no one can ever prove or document, a task that entails years of labor in the belief that somehow washing dishes and cutting grass and listening to pain and chanting in chapel matters in the long scheme of things—said, because it’s hard.
I was startled; sure I was. You would be, too. Rarely do people say with a grin that they do something because it’s hard to do it. But he said it again, still smiling, and then he talked about it for a while, haltingly at first, as he felt for the words, and then with a lovely flow, like something let loose from a dam after a long time pooling behind the dam.
Because I am not sure I can do it at all, he said, let alone do it well, and do it for years and years, perhaps for my whole life. I cannot think that way. I try to be a good monk for a week at a time. Walking helps greatly, I find. Also birds. We have a resident heron here who has been a great help to me. Sometimes he or she is right there by the reeds when I am in pressing need of a heron. I have come to think that the birds are shards of faith themselves in mysterious ways. You could spend a whole life contemplating birds and never come to the end of the amazing things they do. There are many swallows here and I spend hours at a time watching them conduct their intricate maneuvers. They have the loveliest gentle chitter with which they speak to each other in the air. Remarkable creatures altogether. When I was first a monk I was of a mind to adopt one as a pet, and I actually got a ladder and climbed to one of their nests, but when I loomed into view there, surely a great horror to the parents and the young ones, I could not find it in myself to reach in and steal a child. I went back down the ladder and went to the chapel.
I want to be a monk because I think that would be a very good use of me, he continued. Does that sound strange? It sounds a bit arrogant, I suppose. I don’t mean to be arrogant. I want to be an implement. Something like a shovel with a beard. If I live with humility and intent, if I do what I do well and gracefully, that is good. Beyond that I cannot go. When I speak to children they will ask me things like, if I do enough good, and other people do good, then the good stacks up, right? and the good eventually beats the bad, right? and I cannot say this is so. I am not very interested in speculation about such things. I was never interested in theology. I think theology is an attempt to make sense of that to which sense does not apply. I cannot explain why I hope that what I do matters; all I can do is do what I do, either well or ill, patiently or not, gracefully or not. And I do find that doing things mindfully, patiently, easefully, makes the task far more interesting. I love to cut the grass here, for I sometimes come to a sort of understanding with the grass, and the hill, and the creatures in the grass, and with my legs and arms and back, a sort of silent conversation in which we all communicate easily and thoroughly. Do you have any idea of what I mean with all this?
I think I do, I said. I have children and a fascinating graceful mysterious wife and sometimes we are like five fingers in a hand. And sometimes when I write, that happens, that the page and my fingers and my dreams are all the same thing for an hour. I always emerge startled.
Yes, he said, yes, that is why I am a monk. I thought perhaps I could add to that larger music, by being a monk. I might have held almost any job, I suppose, been any sort of man—I was very lucky in life, and had a wonderful childhood, and education, and I loved women, and they loved me, and I might have been happy and fulfilled in a dozen ways. But I knew inside that I had to try to do what was hard for me to do, to be of best use.
That’s well said, I said.
Then perhaps I was a good monk during the saying of it, he said, smiling again. And now I must be off. Perhaps my best use for the last few minutes was to talk to you; and now my work is certainly to clean the kitchen, for it is Wednesday, and it is my job to make the kitchen shine. Come down a little early tomorrow, before everyone else is up, and see if I have been a good monk for the next couple of hours. Sleep well. The birds begin to sing at about four in the morning. It is my belief that the warblers are first but I could be wrong. A better monk would know, but I am not yet a good monk in that area, though I have hopes.