Deep within me, perhaps within you too, O brother, sister, fellow-traveller in this life! there hides a contemplative nun, who wants to do nothing in this world but observe its wondrous mysteries and pray for its wellbeing. It’s rather disturbing for a man to find this buried beneath his ingrained habit of action—to be always doing, whether or not it’s reasonable: action for the sake of it. I still have that within me—to play, to learn, to blunder, to survive, to reproduce; but too much more might be mere repetition, and now contemplation begins to seek its place in the sun.Two of the poets I most revere have imagined themselves nuns. Tennyson’s St Agnes’ Eve has 36 lines, beginning:
Deep on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon
My breath to heaven like vapour goes:
May my soul follow soon!
The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward
Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies
Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my bosom lies.
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ early poem Heaven-Haven is short enough to reproduce in full:
A nun takes the veil
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
* * * *
We went on a pilgrimage to Cowes yesterday. K’s had a week off work but we haven’t been able to get away for various reasons; till she had the idea of this day-trip. We drove to Southampton and left the car there, taking the ferry to East Cowes as foot-passengers, as it happens along with hundreds of visitors to some pop festival, each burdened with their bedrolls and backpacks. For ourselves, free of schedule and agenda, we contented ourselves with merely hanging out in Cowes, the heaven-haven where I’d spent my early teens.
In accordance with this new-found spirit of not-doing, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
11 comments:
"fellow pilgrim" .. I like that notion.
As a contemplative nun I can assure you it is a life of intensity and not the escape from life that you think it is. It is not an escape.
Dear anonymous contemplative nun, thanks for dropping by. With your intensity I am surprised you could find time to escape long enough to surf blogs.
I never wanted to escape this life, nor avoid intensity!
Nor did I ever want to argue with those who comment on this blog. Would be delighted to learn more about you.
Davo, we are indeed fellow-pilgrims.
I have absolutely no desire to be a contemplative nun.......smelling the roses, yes, I will go with that.
Having met some lovely contemplative nuns, I could not possibly travel my path in life with the public face of constant patience, pleasantness and beatitude. It takes a particular person to do that, I am not that kind of person.
Being a fellow pilgrim, now there's a notion.
Let the machinery take the strain, I say.
These pics are breathtaking and it's the first time that I heard about a contemplative nun. I wonder which nun isn't now and then :)
i loved it, absolutely. this was refreshing. i could feel the spurt of fresh air in your veins that lead to a fresh mind.
MKL: I meant nuns who don't teach or nurse: they just sing mass and work in the garden and keep silent.
Ah ZACL, the option I was proposing was not to take the vows but be one for the afternoon, or just imagine! And the whole point was to be inward, and not to bother about any public face at all.
Which is in contrast with the next post . . .
Dear Ghetu, I value your praise and dispraise---perhaps too highly. It's as if I'm trying to please a father! But then sometimes you do the same.
"the public face of constant patience, pleasantness and beatitude," - this might describe many nuns well, but not the ones I knew growing up. They were feisty and stubborn for the most part. I think they must have reserved their pleasant, beatitudinous side for their nightly prayers. Thank the heavens my dad pulled us from Catholic school before I suffered too much permanent damage!
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