Jeremy Driscoll OSB
A Monk’s Alphabet
Moments of Stillness in a Turning World

DARTON - LONGMAN + TODD, 2006

For Paul Murray, OP who helped so much with this alphabet and who helps so much in general

Hair

Auschwitz is, of course, impossible to write about, perhaps also impossible really to visit. It can't be taken in. I went out of a sense of duty, that I really must try to see this. I can only note that I went there and saw some things. Maciej and I did well to arrive early, at eight o'clock in the morning. We were able to go through it in relative quiet without too many other people around. It was hard enough moving through the cruel buildings, feeling the massive ghost of suffering. Thousands and thousands of pictures lined the walls, each one a somebody like me and those I love. But something snapped within me when I entered the room piled high with the hair of the women. It was in clumps and strands, and you could see the difference between one set of hair and another. You could see how it had been combed, braided, curled, set with pins. Who were they, these precious women - wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, friends - who looked at themselves in the mirror and, with great care, groomed themselves just this way one last time?
In the same room were clothes of tiny children, the size of two-and three-year-olds. And then a huge pile of children's shoes. Darling shoes, with cute little buckles and straps. I kept looking at the various designs, trying to distinguish in each a different little boy or girl. Maciej and I were in this room alone and silent. I was grateful to have him to look at for a moment, to look in his eyes and see his equal horror across from mine, his equal disgust that this could have been done. Neither of us said anything.
In another room: thousands of eyeglasses piled into a mound. How precious seeing is to us. How clever we are to have overcome the problems we have with it. How wonderful to be able to read. Each set of glasses: a prescription through which someone received the world and loved it.
Crowds were arriving, and we left, returning quietly to Krakow. We arrived back in the beautiful city after passing again through the beautiful land. We ate a simple meal in an outdoor cafe which seemed all green for the freshness of the trees and grass that surrounded us. We go on living, and in the city moving all around us are the others who go on living. Why we are still alive and others are no longer - who can say? Who can bear the question?

Hallelujah

One of the great riches of monastic life - in increasing contrast to cultural patterns in America - is the living together of many generations side by side, day in and day out. In my community we have monks in every decade, from their twenties all the way to their nineties; and we are all in it together, including dying and helping one another to die.
Father Anthony was having a long, drawn-out death. He was holding on very hard because, though weak and in pain, this was certainly better than actually dying. He kept wanting to put that off because he was so worried about getting it right, about coming before God with the proper disposition. Many of us would stop by and try to give him hope in God's mercy, urging him not to worry so much, as he no doubt had done for others during his long life as a monk and a priest.
It was Easter time and he had not yet died. In the middle of the night of Holy Saturday the monks were gathering for the long Easter Vigil that would celebrate Christ's resurrection. Brother James was the community nurse and was assigned also as a minister in the Vigil liturgy. He found himself vested in his long white robe, and he had a little time to spare before the ceremony began. So he decided to go by and be sure Father Anthony was sleeping well. Re entered his room with a lit candle so as not to waken him. But Father Anthony stirred, and seeing the illumined figure, all in white, he thought it must be an angel, and so he at once exclaimed "Hallelujah!", thinking that might be the right thing to do. Brother James was taken aback, not only from the sudden unexpected shout but also for the strange word shouted; for in the Catholic tradition we use the somehow tamer "Alleluia," and in any case, it is not the sort of thing we monks generally say to one another. What exactly was Father Anthony meaning to convey? Brother James said softly, "Pardon me, Father?" Father Anthony said again, "Hallelujah?" The second shout was more tentative, though not all hope had been lost. Brother James carne closer to what he later reported was a confused face; he said, "What is it, Father? Do you need something?" A flash of recognition lit up, or rather I should say, dimmed the face of the old monk for a moment, and he exclaimed with no small disappointment, "Ah hell, James, it's you!"

Hand

The ugliest hand I ever saw was stretched out in greeting toward me as I once boarded an airplane. It was to be a transatlantic flight, and my arms were full of various bags that carried things to relieve the boredom of the long trip. I had the good fortune that day of being upgraded to first class and was entering that rarefied world for the first time. I was boarding ahead of the hundreds of unlucky passengers who would follow after, and I was feeling grateful because I knew only too well what it is like to fly these long flights in the regular seating with the regular boarding process. So far there were several other passengers sorting themselves out in the first class cabin. I hardly took notice of them as I fumbled with my own bags, although I was aware that there was someone seated in the aisle across from the seat into which I was settling. As I was leaning over, trying to place my computer carefully under the seat, this neighbor reached across the aisle and tapped me several times, not without a certain vigor, on my leg. Because of the angle at which I was perched in this moment, I couldn't immediately turn to answer the surprising summons. But I was tapped immediately again, twice and more vigorously. I turned to look, but since I was still cocked into an awkward angle because of the unfinished struggle with the bags, at first I saw only my neighbor's hand and arm as far as the elbow. Two things immediately struck me: one was the handsome quality of the sport jacket he wore, though, as I say, I saw only as far as the elbow. The other was his hand. I thought to myself, before I could check such a rude consideration, "My God, that is the ugliest hand I have ever seen!"
I was beginning to feel worried because generally I don't like to talk much on airplanes, and now here was a fellow passenger who, it seemed, couldn't wait to meet me and stretch out a friendly hand. Bracing myself for the encounter with whomever it was I was to sit by for the next eight hours, when I turned to face him, I was completely astonished to see a chimpanzee dressed in trousers and a sports jacket. Liberated from my baggage, I stretched out my hand to shake his. From the seat directly to his right, a lovely young lady then introduced herself as his trainer, explaining that he was a famous chimp who was flying to Rome for a gig he had in Italy. I could see at a glance why he was famous. He had charm and was nicely dressed; he moved with ease in his first-class environment. This was clearly not his first trip in this privileged part of the plane. He lightened the atmosphere around him a lot more than I could do with my habitual determination to avoid talk on a plane. Even so, I was pleased to think of not having to sustain an extended verbal conversation with a fellow passenger. The chimp and I had established a rapport, and we would communicate from time to time throughout the flight. It was a pleasant trip. After a fine meal and several glasses of wine - the chimp had eaten only bananas - I settled back in my seat for a sleep. I glanced over to see the chimp with headphones on, and I fell asleep thinking how strange and wonderful the world is. From New York to Rome in just eight hours. Then the chimp to his tasks and me to mine. I go more lightly thanks to our unexpected encounter.

Hawk

There are hawks floating on the wind today. I love to follow their easy flight. I trained binoculars on one and decided that I would watch it for at least five minutes without taking my eyes off it. On and on, round and round, gently up and gently down - looking, hunting. Beautiful.

Hearts

Praying and singing on a Sunday morning, alone in my room and filled with joy, I praise the risen Lord. Suddenly my friend Peter M. jumps into my mind as someone who could understand what I am feeling and feel it together with me. In that being connected to him, even with my attention riveted on Jesus, I think I have some sense how heaven will be. We - a huge throng - shall be adoring and thanking Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in so doing we shall also know one another, discovering that the deepest joy and desire and secret of the other's heart is the same as our own.

Heaven

When the disciples of Jesus asked him to teach them how to pray, he taught them the prayer so familiar to Christians and used by them still to this very day, the Lord's Prayer. It is called such because the one whom Christians call Lord and Master gave it to them. Jesus answered the disciples' request by saying, "When you pray, say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven ...'" It is Jesus who taught this prayer and who prays it in an original, radical way. Christians believe that it is he who prays it within them. Or put the other way around: they pray it in communion with him. Praying with him, they learn that heaven is not so much a place as it is a way of being. When they say, "Who art in heaven," they don't mean "who art elsewhere"; rather, they are acknowledging in the divine Father his majesty and his sovereignty over the whole material order and the whole course of human history. His is a way of being before the beginning of creation, and it will be his way of being after the end. Heaven is meant to be the "place" of our future, where we are destined to share for ever in God's way of being, in his before and after. When I pray this prayer and acknowledge a Father in heaven, I enter mysteriously somehow into the realm where I am meant to be for ever, within Love's eternal flow. Paradoxically, then, in this moment, heaven is revealed as interior to me rather than somehow hopelessly beyond. And yet heaven placed within me is not my own doing and not a part of my original nature. Christ gives me this gift. In Christ heaven and earth are joined together for ever.

Höss

At Auschwitz, just beyond the double rows of electrical barbed wire, outside the prisoners' compound, is a yard with a simple gallows where Rudolph Höss, the Kommandant of the camp, was executed shortly after the liberation. I had read his memoirs of the camp, written during the months in which he was awaiting execution. Claudio Magris called these the clearest writing on Auschwitz in terms of establishing the objective facts because it is the only account completely devoid of emotion. Magris says, "A man who tells that story [Auschwitz] in anger or with compassion unwittingly embellishes it, transmits to the page some spiritual charge which attenuates the reader's shock at that monstrosity." H6ss simply explains how difficult it was on the logistical level to do all that was expected of him. There were not enough ovens or sufficient quantities of gas, and the people were arriving too quickly and were not especially cooperative. (His wife and children lived in a house very near.) He is imperturbable in his matter-of-fact descriptions, which renders them virtually unbearable to read.
What were his matter-of-fact thoughts as he stood in this yard, looking out over the place he commanded, waiting to be hanged, not far from where he had lived with his wife and children?

Humility

I need to come back to it again and again: the humility of God. The One who is infinitely great makes himself lowly and small for our sake. To forget this or to pretend it has not happened is pride. I must come back to it again and again. Inscrutable.