The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris [15]
Thérèse was then twenty-four, and close to death. At Easter of 1896, the year before she died, she herself had become impoverished by the loss of a sense of God’s presence that had been with her all her life. She saw this as grace, that God should permit her to be overwhelmed by impenetrable darkness. Again, she addresses God: “Lord, your child has understood your divine light: she asks pardon for her brothers, and consents to eat for as long as you wish it the bread of sorrow, and she will not rise from this table, which is filled with bitterness, where poor sinners eat, until the day you have appointed. Further, can she not say in their name . . . ‘Have pity on us, Lord, for we are poor sinners.’ ” Thérèse concludes, boldly, “I told [the Lord] that I am happy not to enjoy heaven here on earth in order that he may open heaven for ever to poor unbelievers.”
Here a saint emerges, an astonishing brat who dares to speak thus to God, in a voice that Emily Dickinson might well recognize as kindred to her own. (I can hear them talking, perhaps in the Elysian Fields: “My business is to love . . . My business is to sing,” Emily says, and Thérèse replies, “My call is love . . . love embraces every time and every place.” From the confines of a room in Amherst, a drafty cell at the Carmel in Lisieux, each woman might be said to have traveled extensively.) I believe that Thérèse became a uniquely valuable twentieth-century saint, a woman who can accept even the torment of doubt, as she lay dying, as a precious gift, who turns despair into a fervent prayer for others. I think of her as a saint for unbelievers in an age of unbelief, a voice of compassion in an age of beliefs turned rigid, defensive, violent.
Late in the morning, I emerge from my study in the basement of the library to find buses of the Guardian School Bus company disgorging flocks of brightly dressed children, who with their wary-looking teachers and weary parents, are waiting—jumping, dancing, screaming, running, slapping hands and knees—on the steps of the abbey church. Soon they’ll take a tour of the woods and no doubt collect some red and golden leaves. I notice in the courtyard by the guest wing of the monastery that tough little roses are still in bloom, despite the hard frost.
October 2
GUARDIAN ANGELS
It has to do with us, this feast. What we long for, and see, and do not see. “And so the angels are here,” says St. Bernard, whispering like a child.
Two crows interpose themselves between me and the golden trees—ash, oak—between the blood-red maple and a full moon grown pale in a cloudless blue. Their cries, on the chill wind, come as mystery, much like the question Bernard tosses up to God: “What are we, that you make yourselves known to us?”
JEREMIAH
AS WRITER:
THE NECESSARY
OTHER
The Benedictine monks of St. John’s Abbey practice what is known as lectio continua, reading through whole books of the Bible, a section at a time, at morning and evening prayer. They read through the entire New Testament in this way every year, and during the time I’ve spent with them—eighteen months over the last three years—we also listened to Genesis, Ruth, Tobit, Esther, Job, the Song of Songs, Hosea, Jonah, and large portions of the books of Exodus, Samuel, Kings, and Isaiah. The most remarkable experience of all was plunging into the prophet Jeremiah at morning prayer in late September one year, and staying with him through mid-November. We began with chapter 1, and read straight through, ending at chapter 22:17. Listening to Jeremiah is one hell of a way to get your blood going in the morning; it puts caffeine to shame.
The monastic discipline of listening aims to still body and soul so that the words of a reading may sink in. Such silence tends to open a person, and opening oneself to a prophet as anguished as Jeremiah is painful. On some mornings, I found it impossible. Like one of my monk friends, who had the duty of reading the