The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris [142]
When I finally finished shaping the first draft and knew that I was well on my way toward having a piece of writing, I glanced outside for the first time in hours. I noticed that the sky was doing glorious things. Quickly, I pulled on my boots and a jacket and began walking west, toward one of those sunsets in which both the eastern and western sky are vivid with color—dawn in reverse, gold gone to peach gone to scarlet. And as I walked I began to have a biblical sense of God’s presence in the sky, of God speaking through the colors. It seemed a blessing not only on the day, and the coming night, but on the closure of this particular piece of writing, which I’d been trying to draw out of my heart and onto paper for nearly ten years.
As I’ve spent so much time immersed in Benedictine liturgy, which is centered on the psalms, I know many of their phrases by heart. One of the goals of monastic life is to let the psalms become so much a part of one’s consciousness that they surface unexpectedly, in response to the circumstances of daily life. As I walked on that afternoon I suddenly recalled a blessing from Psalm 121: “The Lord will bless your going and your coming, your resting and rising forevermore . . .” It is the aim of contemplative living, at least in the Christian mode, that you learn to recognize a blessing when you see one, and are able to respond to it with words that God has given you. Yes, in response to that wildly colorful yet peaceful sky; yes, I could say back to God, with a line from Psalm 65: “The lands of sunrise and sunset you fill with joy.”
THE NURSING
HOME ON SUNDAY
AFTERNOON
Every Sunday afternoon at 2 P.M. there is a worship service at the nursing home. The pastors in town share the duty, the Lutherans one week, Presbyterians the next, then the Catholics, then the Church of God. The pastors prepare a Bible reading and brief sermon, and church women bring cookies and coffee. It’s a popular event with the residents of the home, those who are mentally alert and those who are less so. I always find it absurdly joyful, a restorative to the soul, but I don’t attend as often as I’d like.
What I love most about the services is the Lord’s Prayer and the singing. It reinforces my belief in the power of poetry, and also in the aptness of Auden’s definition of it as “memorable speech.” People who may remember little else can still say all the words of the Lord’s Prayer (the King James version they grew up with), and they also have a remarkable ability to recall the words of hymns. The last time I conducted the service there—our minister was out of town, and had asked me to fill in—we sang “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus,” “Blessed Assurance,” and “Amazing Grace.” One woman would not stop singing “Amazing Grace,” so we just let her go happily on, eyes closed, smiling and swaying in her wheelchair, while I said a prayer and a benediction. A pastor later told me that “Holy, Holy, Holy” has the same effect on her.
I know there are several people in the home who appreciate hearing the Bible read, and they also like what they call a “good message” based on the scriptures. With the others, you can’t tell how much gets through; in this regard, preaching at the home is a kind of reality check. While you have no idea how much, or even what, is getting through to people any time you preach, here that fact is simply more obvious, and more humbling. For my Sunday service, I had picked out some Bible readings in advance—a psalm, a gospel text