I don’t just want to ban The Bomb. I want to ban all bombs, whatever, and all bombers, whoever, and all bombings, whyever. There have to be better ways of saying no and making changes.
Anyway, being a stranger away from home my mind is more fixed on my journey and on my destination than it is on this waiting room, even though the place is very beautiful and full of interesting things that help me pass the time without getting bored.
But for the bombers, I think, all there is is the waiting room. And if they can’t run it the way they want to, they’d rather destroy it and themselves too. The only future they’ve got is here. And if they can’t have it the way they want then nothing else matters.
For me, because I believe my future lies somewhere else, somewhere beyond the waiting room, I’m not so keen to cause chaos now or to blow myself up. Getting on with my journey, reaching my destination, depends on staying alive now and keeping myself fit for the rest of the journey. So I concentrate on that. I’d like to be comfortable, of course, and have a pleasant time, and get along with the other travellers. But I don’t put all my store on that.
Death doesn’t worry me. Not death itself. But suffering does, my own or anybody else’s. Because suffering is an impediment. It gets in the way. All that stuff about it strengthening our character and refining our will, and teaching us that we’re only human and must put our faith in God. No. Suffering is bad for us because it makes pain a substitute for thought. The way religious fanatics talk about suffering is the way people used to talk about bringing up children. Spare the rod and spoil the child. Beat the evil out of them. Make them fear punishment and then they’ll learn to do good.
I don’t believe in a God of fear. And I don’t believe that we only learn that we’re human by being made to suffer. If we can’t think out for ourselves what we are, and if we can’t make decisions about ourselves and the way we want to live and the way we want to die without being tortured into them, then we aren’t worth anything. The people who put their faith in bombs, in killing and in violence, all belong to those inadequate people all down the ages who believed in fear and torture. They may not have begun that way, they may have begun by acting from the best of motives. But in the end, the only cause they truly believe in and live for is torture itself.
I expect that seems pretty simple-minded to you. Full of holes! But it helps me, because it tells me that whenever I’m faced with doing something, there’ll probably be two ways of going about it. One that’ll make things worse for somebody else and one that might help make them at least no worse off.
[Pause. Clatter of metal utensils and indecipherable chatter.]
Got to stop. Simmo’s just come to change the bandages on my eyes. My daily squirm when I’m supposed to have my character refined and realize just how human I am.
Isn’t it funny how pain is easier to bear if you can grip something with your hands. Because I can’t I groan and moan instead, and feel foolish and ashamed afterwards for giving in like that. But Simmo is terrific. All the time I’m moaning she says, ‘Go on, let it out, have a good yell!’ And that helps.
†
NIK’S LETTERS:
Dear Julie: 9.50 p.m. The end of my first day as a Spy in a Foreign Land.
I’m in my cell. I’m bushed. What a day! But don’t want to go to bed yet. Brain too busy sawing wood. Writing to you might calm me down.
I hate not being able to see you. Couldn’t, I guess, even if I was at home because of the distance. Damn distance. Damn money that makes distance no problem. And, also, I feel a bit locked up here. Not that I am. Just the way I feel.
When I phoned the hospital this evening, they said you’re improving. You had a comfortable night last night, and are ‘as comfortable as can be expected’. Did you know that? I hate the coolspeak of hospital people. They wouldn’t let me talk to the ward. Too busy, they said. Huh!
I think of you all the time. You’ll laugh when I tell you I even prayed for you tonight. Must be the religious atmosphere. Well, not prayed exactly. The monks included your name in the list of people they prayed for after Compline. (I always thought Compline was that milk powder stuff they give geriatrics who can’t eat proper food. Maybe it’s spelt differently?) Anyway, the last office of the day. (I’m picking up the jargon, you see.)
I admit I asked them to add your name to the prayer list, and I did say it to myself when they read it out, and willed you to get well. That’s nearly praying, isn’t it? But not quite. My idea about prayers is that they have to be addressed to someone—to a God—before they’re really prayers. And I wasn’t addressing anybody. No, that’s wrong. I was speaking to you.
But I’d better start from where I left off yesterday.
Old Vic stayed for Evensong and for supper afterwards, which we have at 7.00 p.m. I was glad he did because he showed me the ropes in chapel and during the meal. (Meals are strange. There’s a funny routine about passing things, for instance. At the start of the meal everything goes round the table, passed to the left from one to the next. It’s bad manners not to pass things. And you’re supposed to keep an eye on the blokes next to you to see if they need anything and pass it before they have to ask for it. This doesn’t matter so much at talking meals, like supper. But at silent meals, like breakfast, it matters a lot, otherwise you might never get the marmalade.)
Old Vic also explained about Silence. Silence is when the monks (and their visitors!) are not allowed to talk AT ALL, except in the visitors’ room on special business. Silence happens from 8.30 p.m. till 9.30 a.m. the next day (the Greater Silence) and from 12.00 till 1.00 mid-day, and from 5.00 till 6.30 in the evening (the Lesser Silences). During those times you’re supposed to pray and concentrate your mind on God, etc. Reminded me of you and your Sunday morning silences on the way to church. When it’s time for Silence a little bell is rung in the hall by the monk whose turn it is, and all the talking stops. It’s peculiar at first, everybody suddenly going dumb on you, like they’ve suddenly taken agin you. They even go distant; their eyes don’t see you any more, as though you didn’t exist for them. Least, that’s how it is with Bro. K. I haven’t had much chance to talk to any of the others yet.
But I already like Silence. Whatever is happening you know there’s soon going to be this pool of quietness. Bro. K. says they all look forward to it. All the real monks, anyway. He says Silence is a true monk’s natural state, part of what he is born for. When someone comes to try the life, the others watch to see if he takes to Silence, because it’s a good sign of whether or not he’s suitable. Apparently, some people can’t stand it and go to pieces and have to get out quick.
By the time Vic left it was Greater Silence. Bro. K. had already asked me if I wanted to live the kind of day the monks door just please myself. Out of curiosity, and because I thought he would like it (creep creep), I said I’d follow their day. Little did I know! This place is a slave camp.
He gave me a folder and said everything I needed to know to start with was in there and we’d talk tomorrow. Tinkle-tinkle little bell and Bob’s your uncle: no more chat. I went to my cell and did my homework. Here is my timetable:
5.30 a.m.: Get up. (Couldn’t believe my eyes!)
6.00—8.00 a.m. Chapel:
Matins (i.e. Morning service. 20 mins) Whatever am I
Eucharist (20 mins) going to do in
Silent Bible reading (20 mins) chapel for all
Meditation (60 mins) this time?!
8.00 Breakfast (Usually cornflakes, egg, toast, honey or marm., tea. But today is Friday, a ‘fast’ day, so tea and toast only!)
8.30—9.00 Housework (This morning I had to clean my room, one of the bathrooms, and dust and tidy the visitors’ room. I didn’t get properly finished, which for some reason amused the others.)
9.00 Work starts. (Wasn’t all this other stuff work? Today I weeded the garden. By now I was beginning to think this was getting too much like home.)
10.30 Coffee break. (Thank goodness! Coffee and biscuits.)
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10.45 Work again. (I peeled spuds & prepared peas & salad stuff for lunch & supper, and washed up the breakfast things, etc., in the kitchen.)
12.00—1.00 Silence. (Hurray! Private prayer & meditation. I sat in the chapel because I like it there, and nearly fell asleep.)
12.45 Mid-day office. (Some prayers said aloud together, a psalm, a bit from the Bible.)
1.00 Lunch. (Bread, fruit, tea, because it’s a fast day. I’ll starve at this rate. At least Grandad doesn’t stint on the food. Usually there’s cheese as well.)
1.30—2.00 Rest. (Lay on my bed and wondered what I was doing here.)
2.00—4.00 Work. (Given a book to read about the monastery. Then sent for a walk round the park, which is just as well because I was nodding off again.)
4.00—4.30 Tea. (Tea. Usually cake as well but not on fast days.)
4.30—5.30 Reading Time. (But for me today a session with Bro. K. until Silence put a stop to the chat. See below.)
5.00—6.30 Silence. Private prayer. Did mine in chapel.
6.00 Evensong.
7.00—7.45 Supper. (Cauliflower cheese, pots, peas, salad. Rice pud. Coffee. Fast over because it is officially tomorrow after 6.00 p.m.)
7.45—8.30 Recreation. (All the monks and live-in visitors meet in the common room and talk about their day’s work, etc., plus gossip and jokes. A kind of family get-together. I was nervous at first but am getting used to it. It’s meant to be a relaxing social time. On special days they have treats—drinks and sweets or whatever they’ve been given. Vic had left them a bottle of whisky so they opened that to celebrate me staying with them, which I thought was a pretty lame excuse to have a booze-up, especially as I wasn’t given any and had to have Bro. K.’s home-brew beer instead.)
8.30 Silence.
9.30 Compline.
12. midnight. Lights out, except with special permission from Kit.
See why I’m bushed? Haven’t worked as hard in my life, not even when Grandad is in one of his slave-driver moods.
The hardest work of all is in chapel. At first, I thought that would be the easiest—a doddle just sitting there in that nice room watching the monks do their stuff. But to start with, it’s very hard to concentrate at six o’clock in the morning, and when the offices are happening you have to bob up and down, kneeling and sitting and standing, and find the right place in the office books. You feel an idiot if you don’t join in or do the wrong thing—kneel when you should stand, etc. So you have to keep your wits about you. And unless you’re just going to slump like a pudding in your seat during the private patches you have to decide how to spend the time ‘meditating’.
In fact Meditation is the most difficult of all. I’ve heard people talking about it like it’s a spiritual happy hour when you float inside your head in a kind of cosy limbo. Well, it wasn’t anything like that for me. I hadn’t a clue what to do, so I tried thinking about what monasteries are supposed to stand for and why people want to be monks and nuns and whether Jesus Christ would be a monk if he came back. But I hadn’t been at it long before my mind started wandering all over the place, thinking about anything but what I wanted to think about. The harder I tried to keep it on the subject, the more it wanted to think about something else. Like an itch: the more you try to ignore it the itchier it gets. I got to wondering, for example, how Grandad was doing on his own, and how you were feeling and if you were awake at this unGodly (?) hour. (I guessed you would be, knowing how keen hospitals are to wake everybody up before anybody in his right mind would want to wake up. Hospitals and monasteries are alike in this respect, I guess. Which isn’t surprising when I come to think about it, as hospitals were first started by monasteries! Maybe that’s why nurses still look a bit like super-efficient nuns.) After that I started thinking about breakfast. I was famished and kept having visions of luscious bacon and fried bread sandwiches and lashings of marmalade and toast.
This had a dramatic effect on my innards. They started rumbling and gurgling, and generally making a lot of lavatory noise. I was certain everybody in the room could hear. Could feel myself blushing. I had a quick glance at my watch because I was sure it must be nearly eight. It was nine minutes past seven. I’d been meditating for eight minutes. Couldn’t believe it! Looked up, and caught Bro. K. watching me, a grin all over his face. He looked away as soon as our eyes met, which is just as well because I’m sure I’d have had the giggles if he hadn’t. It all reminded me of Sister Ann at St James’s. Remember? How could you forget! Luckily, the others kept their eyes to themselves. But they’ve been calling me Rumbletum ever since.
I’d better tell you about the others. There are six of them. Kit, David, Mark, Dominic, John and William. I’m the only visitor. A novice, Adam, is expected tomorrow. He’s been with them eight months and is coming here from their main house to stay for three months to experience life in a ‘working’ house.
Kit is in charge. Which he says means being the dogsbody who does what they all decide should be done when they meet at their weekly ‘chapter’. They vote for their ‘prior’ every two years and nobody can be prior more than twice. Kit’s on his second jag. He looks after the house, sees to visitors, and because he’s a priest, celebrates the Eucharist every morning.
The others have ordinary jobs outside, except for William, who is the youngest, twenty-four, and only recently made a full member. He came to the house two months ago and is still looking for a job, so at present he helps Kit when he isn’t job-hunting. David is an electrician working with a building firm in the town. Mark is a teacher in a local primary school. Dominic I’m not sure about yet but he seems to have something to do with social work among unemployed teenagers. John is a gardener with the council and works in the park and local cemetery.
What happens is that they all go off to their jobs like ordinary people at whatever times they have to. Dominic, for instance, has irregular hours sometimes. At home, they do their monk work and keep the daily timetable as best they can. They don’t put themselves out to convert people. They think of themselves as representing Christ in ordinary life, and they only talk about their faith if someone asks them about it. They believe what they are and the way they live is what matters, not how many converts they make or whether people even know they are monks. When they’re outside they wear ordinary clothes exactly like the people they work with. In the house, during Silence and for chapel, and when they are being monkish, they put on habits like the one I described Kit wearing.
Whatever they earn they pool. And they allow themselves a certain amount of pocket money each week so that they don’t have to cadge from their workmates. They don’t believe in begging or living off other people’s charity. They think that working for their living is part of being like other people and not becoming somehow special. At the end of the year, what’s left over from their earnings, if anything, they give away so that they never have anything to rely on or ever get cosy and lazy and right-wing.
There’s a lot more to tell, but later . . .
Anyway, they aren’t a bit like I expected. Not pompous or devout in a stuffy way. You don’t feel they’re going to pin you in a corner and give you the holy third degree. Which somehow only makes you keen to talk to them about what they believe. I’m quite impressed in fact. When they’re together during Recreation and meals, they’re lively and quite funny—they’re always making ghastly jokes. So I’m beginning to enjoy myself, if I’m honest.
The way they behave in chapel is the most interesting of all. They do everything in a kind of routine way, but somehow they make it seem special as well. Can’t explain it yet. But I quite look forward to the offices already, just to watch them and be part of the ritual. It’s like a play or a very serious game, yet it’s also private and—I don’t know—essential. If they didn’t do their chapel work, they wouldn’t be anything, just a bunch of reasonably nice blokes living in the same house and pooling their pay. What they do in the chapel seems to make them into what they are outside chapel. As ind
ividuals as well as a group, I mean.
This is all confused. I’m too tired to explain properly.
I’ll just tell you about what Bro. K. said to me this afternoon, then I’m off to bed. He explained about the community, then asked me how I’d like to spend my time here. All depends on how long I’m staying. Said I could just treat it like a holiday. Or I could go on like today, helping out and joining in with as much of their life as I like. (You needn’t suffer all of Meditation! he said, laughing.) Or I could do a proper Retreat, which he would ‘direct’—i.e. guide me about what to do. This is a kind of organized three or four days when I try and think seriously about myself and what I believe and my attitude to religion, etc.
I didn’t know what to decide so Bro. K. suggested I think about it over night and tell him tomorrow. I made this the thing I concentrated on during the Silence this evening. I’ve almost decided I’d like to do the Retreat. Might as well, as I’m here, and it’s something I’ve never done before. And you’ve made me think about spiritual things. Though, the only result so far is that I don’t know where I stand at all now, whereas I was quite sure before.
I told Bro. K. that I think I’m an atheist.
He said: At least we can try and help you to be a good one.
I said: What’s a good atheist?
He said: The same as a good Christian—one who doubts.
I said: Do you doubt?
Sure, he said, thank God!
I said: Why thank God? Don’t you want to be sure?
He said: There’s a line in a book by Graham Greene: ‘The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference. The doubter fights only with himself.’
I quite like that line, too.
Love, Nik.
†
The first three opticians on Tom’s list were of little help. There was no quick way, they said, to trace the owner of the specs, even if he did happen to be a customer. With enough time and trouble they would be able to work out from the remaining, cracked lens what the prescription was; then, if they searched their records, they might be able to match prescription to customer. But only might. Besides, it would all take days not hours, and was a long shot because the likelihood was that the owner wasn’t a customer.