The parish priest said, 'If you apply to the monastery, I will write to the prior and tell him you're psychotic." And so it never happened. But here I am now, a church cemetery groundsman, an echo of the boyhood hermitage dream. I am silent behind this tall, enclosing, sun-soaked, sparkling wall of schist rock. No one knows that I am here; no one cares.
A friend said to me, "It's good for an old priest to work in a cemetery." I work here not to contemplate death — my aching back, my flagging strength are sufficient to remind me that I am closer to my death than to my birth. I have been on this life-pilgrimage for many decades now — noticed by God, healed and smiled upon along the way.
Behind the wall there are sometimes tears of sorrow for losing Holy Spirit, but also tears of stunned wonder for the scent of viburnum, the violet tucked into the oak tree's root-embrace and awe before the mother who visits her young son's grave.
There's silence, words unspoken, but also inner noise needing to be stilled — the over voice of argument, justification, the rehearsal of old wounds, the sorrow of regrets. Raise up instead the voices of psalms —memorable lines absorbed over years. The inner bending of the heart more than knee. Here, my prayer is one of eyes and ears more than teeth and tongue.
Treasure of my heart — the One of limitless imagination who had the bright idea to place us in the paradise garden in the first place and who, ever-speaking the divine love, came to be with us in this bloodstained, smoke-choked place, and to rise up from death inviting us, "You love too."
My hermitage is among the graves — the soldier who died in the faraway place, the architect, the pediatrician, the engineer, the woman whose dear ones carved into her stone that her virtues were more precious than rubies, yet another woman called blessed peacemaker, the infant's grave hidden under pink azaleas.
While I appear to be alone, I am with the ground hog — the red monk is a companion. The doves, wrens, robins, junco and jay are my company. The narcissus, wild rose, witch hazel and windflower, my praising community. The world is not shut out — I hear the Montessori four-year-olds delight, the sirens of trouble, the passing car's radio blast.
Thoughts of my sins from even long ago press in — the lies we call white, the sneaky-ness, the arrogance, having too much to say. A penitent-bowed head. Invading weeds, the thorns that sting. All irretrievably lost in the mercy-abyss. O God, your compassionate patience! Still more, the present desire to love Christ and to live among the clean of heart. Entering or exiting my churchyard cell, I pass through the lych gate, moving from shadow to light.
