In 1966, I was 8 years old, a newly transplanted minion via divorce, when we moved to a little white house near Main Street in Moncks Corner from Chicago. We moved during the summer, a totally different fresh hell than I experienced up north. One of the first things I found out was that — Carolina moms put their kids out a daylight after breakfast and retrieved them, miraculously sound by dusk. It didn't take long to find new friends to commiserate with. Debbie was the first friend I can remember.
There seemed to be a pretty large pack of kids on our street, we gathered on a curb shortly after breakfast and mulled around until someone came up with a plan on how to spend the day. We found ways to cool off under shady oaks or creeks that grown ups didn't know traversed the woods nearby. A few of the mom's occasionally felt sorry for us and would come outside to bust open a cold watermelon on a picnic table to disperse.
I was fortunate to have reprieve, jaunts with my friend Debbie and her family. Her grandfather was a supervisor of some sort on a plantation nearby. I believe it was Gippy, but I can't be positive. I know that I traipsed a few magical plantations that summer with Debbie; Medway, Mulberry and Rice Hope, never realizing how privileged I was to have this backdoor experience until later. Somehow even at the young age of 8, I knew that the dark hands and dripping backs of the workers on these beautiful places were the sacrificial foundation of their majestic presence.
Debbie's grandmother took us fishing. We pushed off in a little jon boat with a small engine into the Cooper River from a boat house so thickly disguised by flora that the temps dropped 20 degrees it seemed. In the reedy inlets near the plantation, I caught my first fish on a short pole with a bobber. When I pulled it in, it was eaten by a larger fish that got away. I can still see the alarm in the freshy dead fish's eye glaring up at me from the bed of the boat. But their was no alarm in the occupants of the boat. Debbie's grandmother chuckled and told me to throw the line back into the water to catch a bigger fish, and I did. I have done so several times since.
Was it an ode to the future? My first sermon? Or just elementary particles of the universe coming together haphazardly?
We moseyed across the tidal Cooper River. The boat stopped and the engine was cut off. We drifted while watching the bobbers intently. I saw a group of 15 or so hunched white men with hoes and scythes in brown belted dresses and straw hats just beyond the marsh. I remember wondering how in the world they could stand wearing all of those clothes on such a hot day.
I asked quietly on that still river, "Who are they?"
Debbie's grandmother said, "They are monks."
That wasn't enough info for this kid. "But, who are they?" I asked again.
Debbie's grandmother didn't answer but Debbie told me that they were men who never got married.
And that's where I left that until the first dictionary or encyclopedia a few years later told me more. What I gathered was that monks deprived themselves of the privilege's of life to dedicate and consecrate themselves to a life of adoration and worship of Christ. They were a self sustaining group that normally farmed and sold their abundance to fund charitable organizations in their communities.
Fast forward 20 years and I was once again on that serene river with Don at Mepkin Abbey as we took in the beauty of spring on a trip down from the NC foothills. I looked at a plot of land to the right on the monastery where a few monks gardened and it felt as if I were 8 years old again. Could any of them be ones I saw two decades ago I wondered.
Another decade goes by and I take my granddaughter here for a picture day. I look at the plot of land near the marsh and remember the day bygone that I saw the monks once again.
I visited on Christmas once with my friend as well. A beautiful Creche gallery was the draw.
Having gone to Mepkin in all seasons but summer, I picked up my sister one day to take a tour for the first time, previous times I just walked the grounds. It was sooo hot! I don't remember the brother who guided our small tour of 6 people. The name Brother Francis comes to mind though, he was well advanced in years and smart as a whip. A botanical, universe, local, historical, and religious history lesson ensued for the next hour. Down one of the pea gravel path's he took out a small matchbox from his pocket from which he said held enough weaponization to kill tens of thousands of people along the eastern seaboard.
"Do you want to see?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
I did, and moved in closer. The little box held beautiful red and brindle colored beans. After we ogled them, he slid them back into his pocket and pointed to the beautiful large leafed flowers behind him. The Castor plant produces the bean/seeds. The toxin in castor seeds is ricin, one of the deadliest natural poisons, estimated as 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide. The apple in the Garden of Eden so to say gave the brother an ironic story to share in Mepkin Abbey. A mosquito swole to the size of a large fly on his eyebrow as he talked with us. My sister told him about it but he didn't flinch. I read in Thomas Merton's book The Seven Storey Mountain, that the gnats and fly's were penance as well and were not to be swatted. But, I do believe the frequency of those bites would have been much less in Kentucky than coastal South Carolina. Anyway, I would be asking for a lot of forgiveness myself for that one. Before leaving Mepkin Abbey that day, I once again felt the connection to the invisible spot in the water where I sat in a jon boat, with a friend and her grandmother so many years ago. .
So, here I am 58 years later, closing the cover on Thomas Merton's book, The Seven Storey Mountain. What possessed me, a protestant with no knowledge of Catholicism, to pick up this book this past Christmas? And is it providence once again to finish it on Palm Sunday, 2000 ish years later as Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a donkey? I told myself when I questioned why in the world I was buying the book, that it was to understand what makes a monk, just as I questioned the grandmother in the boat the day I first saw them.
I have seen reference to Thomas Merton, the Trappist Monk in several books over the years but nothing to make sense of the purchase. On the pages, I found beautiful writing, and difficult to understand ramblings. I thought my last few months of reading were going to be futile, but too far in to stop now, I finally found a pea graveled path once again, in Gethsemani with Father Merton and ended it here, on the Sabbath, my favorite day.
I knew nothing of the Order. Nothing of the Cistercians, and not until the last 20 pages did I know that the church that he wrote of, "that was being planned for the deep south" in 1949, was Mepkin Abbey. I quickly Googled Mepkin Abbey to find that indeed it was.
For me the short answer to my lifelong question of "What is a Monk?" is, an individual with intense dedication to contemplation of God. A worthy endeavor and one rarely examined for its intensity. The rewards of such devotion to Christ would take Merton and countless others until the end of time to deluge, but he helped me to see contemplating Christ in a different way and enabled my small jaunt of Godly mysticism (which isn't encouraged, but manifested) in the closing chapters of his novel.
Mepkin Abbey was established with 29 monks in Moncks Corner on the Cooper River in 1949. 15 years later, my 8 year old self was fishing in the Cooper River when that big fish took a bite of my little fish and then I caught a big fish with the little fish head and saw the monks. Whether it is my mysticism, or God's, or just a grand ole fish story, my take away is that deep goes deep and the reward that you seek, may be on the last page, continue the quest. God through his infinite wisdom joined Merton and I through his novel, two souls over time and space, he affirmed that I am always (unless by willful denial of his guidance), in the exact place he wants me to be.
I am so glad that he shared his faith, and lack of it. Little did Merton know, that it would will ripple out into the universe and come back to land on a little girl in a boat and stay with her the rest of her life. This is from the last page of Merton's book that I just finished. "Your solitude will bear immense fruit in the souls of men you will never see on earth. Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be: On a mountain or in a prison, in a desert or in a concentration camp or in a hospital or at Gethsemani, it does not matter."
