blog of the visit to pluscarden abbey, 3rd-5th March

Categories: uncategorized

Tags: faith, life

Date: 18 March 2006 22:47:00

3rd March
at ralia services, on the way north
I arrive at chaplaincy for 12pm, to find I'm the only one there yet. Force myself to pass the time with chocolate. We're all in cars by 1pm, and off. I'm with J. and we pick up D. from Stirling Uni on the way. The scenery quickly becomes breathtaking. The route to Pluscarden is mostly the same as that to Kingussie, where I spent retreats many years ago now. It's impossible to describe, particularly once we move into snow-covered hills. This goes on for the rest of the weekend. I am constantly surrounded by thick blankets of snow, making everything look clean. During the journey, J., talking about the planned visit to Taize itself in the summer, mentions that she hopes she'll be sad to leave. This jumps out at me and won't go away. To hope for sadness. It seems unnatural but it's quite valid. I am to encounter great sadness during my time at the Abbey, as I face up to things I had hoped I wouldn't have to. But there is a cleaner and stronger kind of joy at the heart of it, because now I'm being real with myself.
poetry in motion - snowball fight!
On the way we listen to music from Taize, which is beautiful and seems to roll across the landscape around us. At about 5pm we finally get to the Abbey, and a snowball fight breaks out quite quickly. A Church of Scotland chaplain who shall remain nameless reveals a devastating eye for a moving target. We are up to the abbey for the last service, Compline. Afterwards I consider stepping apart but quickly decide to go back to the living room, where everybody else is. My head is still spinning and I've had little time to slow down enough for proper prayer. I huddle in human warmth instead. 4th I sleep fitfully and miss the early service, and the next one. This isn't a problem, but the nature of my sleep is. I'm shot through with worries and trouble. It's common enough for this to happen when one draws apart for prayer or meditation: all the submerged worries, which one usually cannot hear because of the noise of the world, slowly return to the surface. There is little I can do but concentrate on remaining calm and observing these fears as they float past. To try grappling with them would be foolishness, if they could be sorted out they'd have been dealt with long ago.
P. and I head for Conventual Mass
This is the state I'm in at the first service I attend, which is conventual mass at 10am. I have brought a problem to Pluscarden with me: there is something I want, a need I'd hoped would survive being brought into full focus in a clearheaded place. I had hoped to spend the weekend here without accepting that God might know best, but I've been wrestling with this particular situation for months now and today I begin to realise that I may as well let go. This acceptance seems to be the trigger for things to start working as they should. Once I've recognised that, the day feels like it begins to move. The snow is bright and fresh and never less than six inches deep, crunching underfoot and turning everything cold and alive. Conversation is happy. I'm glad at least to have realised so quickly how much rubbish I've brought here with me, the detritus of life. This afternoon I sit in the lounge, getting used to the world again, slowly warming up and glad of company. One of the best bits of this retreat is that I can get to know people a little better. J2 does music workshops and has brought a strumstick with her, which is brilliant. Everybody has a go. In the afternoon we go for a hillwalk and talk, and by the time that's past the regular communal meals have helped me rise a little. In many ways it feels like being back at Kilcreggan - the rhythm of community life is a helpful pacemaker, and prevents one following one's own moods off into space. So I am glad to sit at the meals, and to join in with the group. At night I return from washing the dishes to find a roomful of tired, glad people reading in warm silence. I sit for a while reading then I just enjoy the quiet of it all. That's what this place has given. The motto of Pluscarden Abbey is "In this place I will give peace." 5th
The abbey hall at night
Determined to make something of my last day I rise excruciatingly early this morning and make it up to the monastery for 4.45am and Vigils & Lauds. These two services run into one another so we sit for two hours. It's hard to describe the services at Pluscarden. The language combines so powerfully with the sensory dazzle of the abbey, the incense and the echo and the dark and the soft cool of the air, that it creates a kind of a still space inside me, sat small and human on my bench beneath the great vaulted roof. As the space inside me grows it becomes a place where I can reflect on things with unusual clarity. I daresay there are better ways of describing this. After Vigils & Lauds we walk back down to St Scholastica's in near silence. This is really the great benefit of rising so early for prayer: one has not had time to cripple oneself with the rubbish of human life. Also, everybody's shattered. Some go back to bed for a while but I dress, have breakfast and find someone I've got a strange amount in common with. It takes this kind of time and space to do that. Some of the conversation on Sunday is unusually genuine. We reflect on whether or not we're really happy, and though that conversation spirals off into semantics, I can't help feeling that we had briefly followed the line of something really important, something I had almost grasped yesterday during the hillwalk. Something of unearthly simplicity. As we descend into the grim humanity of the wordgames, the purer element we'd almost touched continues above us like a silver thread of smoke across the clear sky. And then, much too quickly, we have to go. There is a flurry of hoovering and laundry, and we're out into the day. It takes us four hours to get home, and I sleep a lot of the way. I also realise with amazement that I have surrendered the thing I brought with me, and had been hoping to keep. The loss is still a grief to me, but it's okay now. That's the difference. There is a kind of sadness which is worth hoping for. More pics should follow below! .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
sunday afternoon walk

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halfway up the hill

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stained glass panel from the area we sat in for the services - showing Elizabeth and Mary, I guess

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Monks' Cemetary

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st scholastica's (women's retreat house, where we stayed)

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pluscarden abbey under snow

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me outside abbey at 6.45am after 2 hour service!

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view from the hill, abbey on right, st scholastica's far off on the left by the trees