ARTICLES & BOOKS   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

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Variations Vocation Voices

Variations

It is striking how much one monastery differs from another, and yet how quickly a visiting monk can recognize himself in the other place and easily begin to move within its rhythms. Each monastery has a genius loci, a unique spirit or genie which inhabits the place. It is this which launches the difference and develops it through all the years and centuries that the monastery is there. But when you come to a monastery from another monastery which has its own genius loci and history, then you quickly recognize that it is the same melody which sounds in both places, only here it is played in a different key. There are some unexpected variations and unusual harmonies, but ultimately it is the same song: men searching for God and living together as best they can in love.

Vocation

I wish Jesus risen from the dead would appear to me, just once, for only a moment of recognition, of being sure. Ah, but I know that if he did, he would give me my vocation to be a monk. So I have his gift; I have evidence of his appearance. Let it suffice.

Voices

Centuries ago monks sang the sacred words of Scripture from huge books, three feet tall and two feet wide. The pages were of parchment and the writing in handsome calligraphy, with styles peculiar to a particular monastery or to the monasteries of a region. There were three or four monks to a book, since the writing was large enough to allow them to stand at some distance and see it. What an effort these books were! Every letter of the sacred text drawn out by a devoted hand on the skin of a sheep or goat raised in the monastery's fields.
Although we sing the same words today in my monastery, they are so much easier to take for granted. The paper pages from which we chant have rolled off some press by the thousands. It's easily done. We could have all the words we want in front of us. But how much harder it is, as a result, to remember that they are something precious. Each word precious, each word given us graciously by God: God giving us words that we might sing the praises of God.
I stood with my brothers in the monastic choir the other day, and our voices, as usual, rose in song. I sang from my own private book held in my own hand, sharing the page with no one. From out of nowhere and with force, this difference in books, then and now, suddenly struck me. I had not been thinking of old monasteries. I had not been thinking of anything. I was more or less paying attention to the psalms. But once the difference struck me, I straightened and stood with new attention. And as I sang, as I prayed, I counted each word a treasure, a revelation, a beauty. The words reached deeper and deeper within me until they became no longer merely human words but words God was using to say something to me. They became God's voice within me, God's message.
Thoughts I could have never turned out by my own efforts, glimpses of understanding far beyond what the sum of my parts could produce another, the Other, takes voice within me and unfolds the mystery before me. The Word becoming words, becoming song: God taking flesh.