Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2002 The beautiful gate: my journey to the monastery C. Timothy McNeill Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the Nonfiction Commons Recommended Citation McNeill, C. Timothy, "The beautiful gate: my journey to the monastery" (2002). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 285. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/285 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The beautiful gate: My journey to the monastery by Columba Timothy McNeill A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Major: English (Creative Writing) Program of Study Committee: Sheryl St. Germain, Major Professor David Hunter Constance Post David Wallace Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2002 Copyright© Columba Timothy McNeill, 2002. All rights reserved. II Graduate College Iowa State University This is to certify that the master's thesis of Columba Timothy McNeill has met the thesis requirements of Iowa State University Signature redacted for privacy iii In thanksgiving .•. -to Sheryl St. Germain, who guided me on this writing journey and nudged me to revisit cloudy landscapes. -to my workshop colleagues at Iowa State University: I am grateful for their openness. -to Leo and the staff at Cafe Beaudelaire, who let me sit at table three for hours and days as my past spilled onto paper. -to my parents, for introducing me to the mystery of faith. -for the support of my confreres: Abbot Barnabas and the monks of St. Benedict's Abbey. I am most blessed to belong to this God-seeking community. This memoir is dedicated to my sister, Kimberly Ann, who always stood by my side, even when I had lost my way. IV Table of Contents Preface VI lnvitatory 1 Sin is Behovely 8 Up from the Shadows 52 A Boy in the Band? 74 Rudely Decadent 83 Dying is an art 98 Dawn in the Elm City 112 Snowed in with Mary and Mother Cabrini 145 The Beautiful 172 Closing Antiphon 217 v "Look at us!" Peter said. The cripple gave them his whole attention, hoping to get something. Then Peter said: "I have neither silver nor gold, but what I have I give you! In the name ofJesus Christ the Nazorean, walk!" Then Peter took him by the right hand and pulled him up. Immediately the beggar's feet and ankles became strong; He jumped up, stood for a moment, then began to walk around. He went into the temple with them­ walking, jumping about, and praising God. When the people saw him moving and giving praise to God, they recognized him as that beggar who used to sit at the Beautiful Gate ofthe temple. They were struck with astonishment-utterly stupefied at what had happened to him. Acts ofthe Apostles, 3:4-IO VI Preface When I began my graduate studies in creative writing at Iowa State University, I didn't set out to write a memoir. I usually wrote poetry and fiction. Most of my work incorporated images from my past: smoky nightclubs, glittery brooches, art museums, brightly patterned rayon shirts, quiet church interiors. My only foray into creative nonfiction had been an essay about having high hair in the 1980s. My undergrad professor counseled me to stick with poetry. But something within me stirred during the first few weeks as a grad student in 2000. I had begged Sheryl St. Germain to let me into her already-full nonfiction workshop. I felt I needed to explore nonfiction, to go beyond a witty essay about hairspray and blond highlights. A desire arose in me to eschew the veils of poetry and fiction, to present the bare narrative of my life. The time had come to tell my story. Sheryl's class was entitled "Infected by Place." Most students wrote about landscapes: the damp coast of Ireland, a Christmas tree farm in Iowa, a waterfall in Vermont. As I set out to chronicle the changing tides of my past, I found it difficult to submerge myself in one place. My story hopped around like a jet-setting rock star on a three month-forty-six cities tour: Connecticut, Colorado, California, Missouri, New Haven, Denver. As I wrote each essay, I came to realize that my tale wasn't so much about place, but of being a displaced person, a person who glided through landscapes until I reached a final place, a monastery in Kansas. My narrative became an exercise of being infected with the nooks and crannies of memory. I spent hours sitting in an Ames Brazilian bistro, Cafe Beaudelaire, writing with such intensity that I barely noticed the youthful passersby or the red brick dorm across the street. With a pint of Bud Light inches from my notebook, a cigarette resting in the ashtray, I plunged into the varied places of my past. The words gushed forth like water from a rock. vii I follow in the footsteps of a great company of spiritual memoirists: St. Augustine, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Patricia Hampl. These writers provide moving testimonials to the torrents of grace lavished upon a soul experiencing conversion. As I join the ranks of these autobiographers, I cannot help but feel a kinship with them, for we traverse along similar arcs: a youthful embrace of the flesh, a spiritual epiphany, and a turning toward God. But as my past took shape on paper, I quickly realized that I differed from other writers: I went into much greater detail about those instances when I strayed from the straight and narrow. My candor set me apart. In his Confessions, St. Augustine acknowledges his concubine and his illegitimate son. When he writes about the passions of his youth, however, he resorts to lyricism and theology to veil the particulars: "At one time in adolescence I was burning to find satisfaction in hellish pleasures. I ran wild in the shadowy jungle of erotic adventures." Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain uses similar language when he describes his sinful past, employing rhetoric about hell and the abyss rather than explicitly stating that as a Cambridge student, he fathered an out-of-wedlock child. In The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day recounts how she and her lover ended their relationship shortly after the birth of their daughter. Nowhere in Day's memoir does she include the fact that as a young woman, she had had an abortion. Patricia Hampl's Virgin Time offers fleeting mention of past lovers and taking her first birth control pill, but her piece focuses on the journey to belief in God, the quest for community and contemplation. Whatever their reasons, these writers choose to not dwell on certain matters. In my nonfiction workshop, I immediately realized that I could not hide behind metaphor. One of the first pieces I presented to Sheryl's class had to deal with a horrific event in my life that happened after I had a moped accident. My Inquisition-like colleagues pounced on the proliferation of white spaces between the lines: I was holding something viii back, the piece dido 't make sense. They demanded more: something was missing. I awakened to the fact that to effectively portray my spiritual journey, I'd have to stand naked before my readers. I felt as if I was leaping from metaphor to neon-glare honesty, stepping from the comfort of a Broadway theater and onto the set of the Oprah Winfrey Show. To be true to my story, I had to divulge both the calm waters and the crashing waves of my past. I suppose questions could be posed: why bother recount a past peppered with youthful folly? Shouldn't a monk fix his gaze on the future? Does the whole notion of "looking back" entail a desire to return? Look at what happened to Lot's wife! As I peered at the landscape of my life, I did so not to drown in the past, but to acknowledge God's handiwork in guiding me to the monastery. I think Thomas Merton's insight fits me: "For the saints, when they remember their sins, do not remember the sins but the mercy of God, and therefore even past evil is turned by them into a present cause of joy and serves to glorify God." Hardly a saint, I approached my memoir with a desire to bear witness to God's merciful touch. Like Patricia Hampl, "I write about the past because I want it to be the past." I may be infected by memory, but I do not wish to relive the past. I simply like to marvel at my journey. A consequence of my honesty, however, is that I will not be able to publish this memoir. After reading an earlier manuscript, Abbot Barnabas, the spiritual father of St. Benedict's Abbey, said, "I enjoyed your work immensely, but you cannot publish it. I'm concerned about your privacy." When he told me this, I was crestfallen. My pride had been piqued by the accolades of my workshop colleagues: "Brother, this will make a great book!" and "Brother, you have to publish this!" Father Abbot's pronouncement dashed all visions of book signings and public readings. I confess that I even daydreamed that I could go on Oprah's show, my work a selection for her book club.