New Camaldoli Hermitage WINTER 2017 Poetry and Prayer River Dreaming the sea that lies beyond me I have enough depth to know I am shallow. I have my pools, my bowls of rock I flow into and fill, but I must brim my own banks, persist, vanish at last in greater flood yet still within it follow my task, dreaming towards the calling sea. – Denise Levertov 62475 Highway 1, Big Sur, CA 93920 • 831 667 2456 • www.contemplation.com In this Issue Poetry and Prayer: Living at the Edge of the Mystery 2 Poetry and Prayer: Living at the Edge of the Mystery Deborah Smith Douglas, Oblate OSB Cam Deborah Smith Douglas, Oblate OSB Cam 3 ‘Tis a Fearful Thing Yehuda Halevi Poetry and prayer have been profoundly connected human enterprises for millennia, possibly since the earliest begin- The Lightest Touch David Whyte nings of both language and religion. 4 Quiet Billy Collins But how is it that their roots entwine? Can exploring poetry enrich our praying, deepen our silence, enlarge our aware- 5 The Golden Crested Yes Isaiah Teichert, OSB Cam ness of the world around us? Prologue: Sounding the Seasons Malcolm Guite This issue of our newsletter is an invitation to ponder those questions. Trust Thomas R. Smith Poems, the African-American poet Jericho Brown has said, 6 Denise Levertov at the Hermitage Christopher Lorenc “pierce the self, lay us flat before powers unseen.” 7 The Two Magnets Denise Levertov So of course does honest and courageous prayer. A New Flower Denise Levertov Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and himself an accomplished poet, has said that both poetry Remembering Rain Lynn Martin and prayer “are about what happens when you’ve run out of ordinary language—both are about coming to the edge of 8 Song I Have Made Aaron Maniam, Oblate OSB Cam something greater, something much more mysterious. Both are about the world being more than you can imagine it to be.” 9 Thoughts on Singing Poetry Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam It is striking to hear how many poets speak of their craft in 10 The Kingdom of God Jessica Powers terms that make it sound like praying. Jericho Brown, for instance, suggests that both writing and reading poetry can Falling Away Ziggy Rendler-Bregman put us in a place where we are “more real and honest and vulnerable” than at any other point in our lives, making us at 11 Poems of Prayer Fr. Robert Hale, OSB Cam once both “whole and permeable.” From the Pages of Vita Monastica “Wholeness” and “permeability” are not just the effect or aim Fr. Cipriano Vagaggini, OSB Cam of poetry, but of prayer. 12 The Hermitage in Exile Paula Huston, Oblate OSB Cam To become more whole—more fully alive, more at one with “the Oneness that is God” as the Benedictine monk John 13 Bringing Children to the Hermitage: An Opening to a Main put it—has long been a goal of contemplative prayer. To become at the same time more permeable—to risk being Possibility Madeleine Gallagher more open to God and to our neighbor, more vulnerable and available to the pain and beauty of the world—is to Big Sur to Rome and Back Again Ignatius Tully, OSB Cam hope to approach the radical self-emptying kenosis of Jesus in Gethsemane, where he prayed to be filled with nothing 14 2017 Annual Camaldolese Retreat: To Love the World— but God. Responsible Contemplation Helena Chan, Oblate OSB Cam Prior Cyprian’s essay on “singing poetry” explores these mysteries, reflecting on his experience composing music From the Development Office Jill Gisselere of moments when the prayer and the song are “not two” but one. He has learned, in composing as well as praying 15 Activities and Visitors Scripture, to “listen to the text until it reveals its song.” What the Monks Are Reading This kind of listening, of attentive reverent waiting for some- thing to reveal itself, is at the heart of David Whyte’s poem, “The Lightest Touch.” Good poetry begins with the lightest touch, he observes: a whisper, a breeze, a hand in the dark. And in the silence that follows that touch, what has died in us (“even the laziest, most deathly afraid part” of us) can, like Lazarus, 2 – New Camaldoli Hermitage lift up its hands and walk toward the light. ‘Tis a Fearful Thing Aaron Maniam’s poem cycle “Song I Have Made” on the Yehuda Halevi, 12th c. Spanish Jewish poet, physician, liturgy of the hours both describes and effects the same and philosopher. sort of waking up to hidden reality, the same kind of listen- ing. He salutes the way prayer “can sing the unsayable,” ‘Tis a fearful thing can “make space for broken voices,” can lead us to “hear to love what death can touch. the music in the silence.” A fearful thing Chris Lorenc’s memories of accompanying poet Denise to love, to hope, to dream, to be – Levertov on retreat traces the Hermitage’s own particular to be, history in the confluence of poetry and prayer, and its And oh, to lose. ability to foster deep spiritual friendship. A thing for fools, this, And a holy thing, What Father Robert calls “authentic poems” can be found in all languages and shapes and faith traditions, and can a holy thing give voice to much that is otherwise unsayable. to love. For your life has lived in me, Across nearly a millennium, Yehuda Halevi speaks of what your laugh once lifted me, a fearful, holy thing it is “to love what death can touch;” your word was gift to me. Emily Dickinson touches on love’s paradox of presence and absence, noticing even in parting from the beloved To remember this brings painful joy. that there is the “Door ajar that Oceans are—and Prayer.” ‘Tis a human thing, love, a holy thing, to love Denise Levertov reminds us of the gift and call of “deeper what death has touched. waters” and the opportunity of “dreaming towards the calling sea.” Ziggy Rendler-Bregman in “Falling Away” finds “hope for Extract from “I cannot live with You” something more” in a wintry season, aware even in the Emily Dickinson midst of loss of a kind of lightness, “the weight of so much falling away.” So We must meet apart— You there—I—here— Thomas Smith in his deceptively simple poem “Trust” With just the Door ajar lightly touches the way we live by tiny acts of faith every That Oceans are—and Prayer day: taking a car to a new mechanic, mailing a letter, all the ways our very lives seem to be “delivered, even when we can’t read the address.” We hope the small handful of poems we have been able The Lightest Touch to include in this issue will invite you to explore that liminal David Whyte space where poems and prayers both live, and listen to your own life till it reveals its song to you. Good poetry begins with the lightest touch, 1 From an interview with the Reverend Richard Coles for the BBC program “Songs of Praise” 7 March 2010: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury. a breeze arriving from nowhere, org/articles.php/561/the-archbishop-on-the-relationship-of-poetry-and-prayer a whispered healing arrival, 2 Both of these quotations are from Jericho Brown’s essay, “The Possibility of a word in your ear, God” in A God in the House: Poets Talk about Faith (Tupelo Press 2012) a settling into things, 3 See Paul Dafydd Jones’ “The Riddle of Gethsemane: Barth on Jesus’ Agony in then, like a hand in the dark, the Garden” in Reading the Gospels with Karl Barth, edited by Daniel Migliore it arrests the whole body, (Eerdmans 2017) p. 149 steeling you for revelation. In the silence that follows What makes someone give their whole life to writing a great line, poems? I think it is because words are able, if you you can feel Lazarus, treat them right, to catch the bird in flight —without deep inside stopping it, killing it. Rather flying with it for a second. What bird? The golden crested Yes, the Affirmation, even the laziest, most deathly afraid the Breath of Life. (p.7) part of you, lift up his hands and walk toward the light. – Bruno Barnhart, OSB Cam from EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU and RIVER FLOW copyright © Many Rivers Press. Reprinted by permission. 2 – New Camaldoli Hermitage contemplation.com – 3 Over the years we’ve organized several Billy Collins poetry sessions at the Hermitage. Monks read his poems aloud, and guests often respond with a kind of glee; there’s always a lot of laughter at these seminars (though Collins certainly has his serious side as well). Many retreatants become converts to poetry in the process and remark they didn’t realize poetry could be so delightful; they’d thought of it more in terms of a chore. Here is one of Billy’s poems that reflects on his own relationship with silence, and with his time at the Hermitage. Father Isaiah Teichert, OSB Cam Quiet Billy Collins It occurred to me around dusk of total silence to show for myself, after I had lit three candles a spring day in a cell in Big Sur, and was pouring myself a glass of wine twenty or so monks also silent in their nearby cells- that I had not uttered a word to a soul all day. a community of Camaldolese, Alone in the house, an order so stringent, my guide told me, I was busy pushing the wheel in a mill of paper that they make the Benedictines, or staring down a dark well of ink— whom they had broken away from in the 11th century, no callers at the door, no ring of the telephone.