Excerpt from The Sacred Year (Part 2)

“Part of the package deal offered by the monastery to retreatants was the opportunity to meet daily with a spiritual director. Part Gandalf, part psychoanalyst, part drill sergeant, spiritual directors exist in a class of their own. Perhaps the most unique aspect is that the relationship is largely one-way, and thus free from the mutualities and shared niceties of almost every other category of human interaction.

After a luxurious eleven hours of sleep, I signed myself up to meet with a monk named Father Solomon the next afternoon. At exactly three o’clock I knocked on his office door, and a rotund man of a wrinkled and grandfatherly age pulled open the door with such force that the breeze blew the white hair off his shoulders. He adjusted his glasses, smiled broadly, and welcomed me into the small office, crowded from floor to ceiling with books: philosophy and theology, poetry and literature.

We each settled down into a comfortable blue chair, and Father Solomon asked how I was finding my first day of retreat.

I answered cordially enough, saying something about how much I was appreciating the change of setting and pace of life. Then I tried to return the formalities.

‘So, Father Solomon,’ I said, searching for words, ‘how long have you been here at the monastery?’

Father Solomon didn’t answer me at first, but instead measured me with a kind of gaze from beneath a twin tangle of white eyebrows. ‘Chitchat will not be necessary, no matter how well intentioned. After all, we’re not here to talk about me. You’re under no obligation to pretend.’

Though he wore a gentle smile as he spoke, I could tell he was watching me closely, gauging my every response.

‘Oh, okay,’ I said, shifting in my seat. ‘But I’m just making conversation. That’s what people do, right?’

‘If this were a standard friendship, then yes. I suppose you’d need to conjure up some interest in my life,’ Father Solomon said with shining eyes. ‘But this is no standard friendship. Think of me as an impartial sounding board, one who cares deeply for and about you, but who has no vested interest whatsoever in the course your life takes. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t want anything from you. You’re here for what—a week?’ I nodded. ‘Then that means we have a total of five hours together. Consider these hours a gift. Just receive and be thankful.’

‘Okay,’ I said slowly, trying to find my footing on very unfamiliar but surprisingly supportive ground.

‘Tell me about the storm that has brought you here.’

‘Is it that obvious it was a storm?’ I asked, shocked to learn that I was being so unintentionally transparent.

‘Well, not obvious, per se,’ Father Solomon said with a smile. ‘Sometimes I can just tell.’

So I told him about the storm, about my dissatisfaction with the masquerade of faith I’d encountered not only at the Change Our World conference but also deep in myself, about the externalized ‘show’ of religion I found myself caught up in that was largely devoid of any deep or abiding sense of truth or awe or wonder, of the religion that I’d once believed in but now found ironically and tragically devoid of the divine. I talked about the dislocation of being in a different city every night, of being told how great it was that I was ‘out making a difference in the world,’ and yet how strange and dishonest this felt given my own deep questions and inner turmoil. I even tried to put words to the gnawing hunger I sensed at the center of my life, the hunger that remained no matter how much I ate—a mirage that kept retreating into the distance.

At last I fell silent and waited for the sage to speak, but all I received at first was silence. Father Solomon pressed fingertip to fingertip in front of his face, occasionally stoking the coarse whiskers on his chin. When at last he spoke, it was with extraordinary grace and wisdom, though he aimed straight at the ache in the center of my life.

‘The thrill of a carnival only lasts for so long, doesn’t it?’

I frowned.

‘A carnival is a wonderful place to go every now and then,’ he continued, ‘but a terrible place to live.’

My mind spun for a few moments, trying to understand what he meant. At last my jaw dropped, and I saw in a single, crystallizing moment how perfectly the word carnival brought into focus the life I’d been living: the bright lights, the addictive cotton candy, the chipped-paint facades everyone was trying to maintain—a whole careening show haphazardly supported by a rusted-out interior that was threatening to crack.

Another image came at Father Solomon’s words: a barren-leafed, withering tree. I could see the tree’s roots in my mind, brittle and atrophied, no longer deep enough to support the life above ground. The meaning was clear: This was my life; and if I was to survive, what I needed was a kind of deeper sustenance, an abiding nourishment that would infuse my wearied, withered soul with new vitality, new life.

‘Yes,’ I said at last. ‘Yes. That’s it exactly.’

Father Solomon thought silently for another few moments, chewing on his lower lip. ‘Might I offer you a suggestion?’ he said at last.

‘Of course.’

And that’s when my Sacred Year began.”

To be continued...

(Part 2 – Excerpt from The Sacred Year by Michael Yankoski)