“Listen” fence sign posted for Buckfast Abbey’s Millennial Exhibition (1018-2018)

The next Day of Recollection for oblates and friends of Portsmouth Abbey is scheduled for Sunday, August 28, a week before the Labor Day holiday weekend marking the end of summer. And as I begin to gather these thoughts on “Sea Sunday” in mid-July at historic Buckfast Abbey in southwestern England, a presentation theme has yet to be chosen. But given the topographical similarity of this area – the coastal county of Devon, fifteen miles from the coast of the English Channel – to Rhode Island, and to Portsmouth in particular, don’t be too surprised if somehow that becomes the basis for our topic. It may well also be shaped by a theme insistently recurring for me over the past months: the fundamental Benedictine call to “listen.” Listening and paying attention are certainly at the forefront for me at the moment, as I join Abbot Michael at Buckfast for the 99^th General Chapter of the English Benedictine Congregation. My laptop file for this 10-day gathering has grown to over three dozen documents, including minutes, a 19-page agenda with supplements and an appendix, house reports, resolutions, checklists, papers with amendments and final amendments, and so on. Suffice it to say, this all has afforded many opportunities for reading... and listening. In retrospect, I can discern over the previous months a kind of repeated reminder to listen, reaffirming Benedict’s admonition to all monks. 

Anticipating what lay ahead at General Chapter, I imposed on myself last spring a hiatus from tackling any books which were too heavily theological or spiritual, or even simply too heavy. Instead, I turned to “beach books”, like Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. In 1979, I had been involved in the premiere production of a stage adaptation of the novel, which eventually opened on Broadway on January 4, 1981. Conventional wisdom remembers that it was a major flop that closed on opening night. My interest in re-reading Shelly’s original was sparked when, on the play’s 40^th anniversary in January 2021, a flurry of feature articles and interviews appeared, primarily in the New York Times. (Sample headline on Jan. 7, 2021: “Exhuming a Monster of a Flop”). My friend Victor Gialanella, the playwright, was interviewed and photographed, and it was reported that he still owned a number of stage props from the production. In fact, I still have my copy of his typescript from the St. Louis production, although I had also read the novel at the time, for additional research, background and general atmosphere. In reading the novel again four decades later, I cryptically made note of one particular phrase in the passage in which “the being... narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers” to Victor Frankenstein. “The Creature”, as he was billed in the stage production, has just read a found copy of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werter and says, “As I read, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a listener.” Within days, it became clear to me that the concept of listening, and of trying to become better at it, would occupy many of my thoughts and waking hours this summer. 

And as I reflect, I can readily discern a call to listen permeating my summer. The next book into which I took a summer dive, Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1856 work, The Old Regime and the Revolution, led me to make another cryptic note (in pencil) on the page where he writes: “In a community of free citizens every man is daily reminded of the need of meeting his fellow men, of hearing [or listening to] what they have to say, of exchanging ideas, and coming to an agreement as to the conduct of their common interests.” Transfer that into a monastic setting and it sounds very much like something St. Benedict might have written centuries earlier, and sound advice for all of us in this context of General Chapter. The leitmotif of listening also emerged from another unexpected source: a modern, up-to-date stage production at the Trinity Rep in Providence, an Equity house similar in scale and quality to the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis where I worked for several decades. A St. Louis native and a former student of mine at Webster University, Christopher Windom, directed a play titled Fairview and I obtained a ticket to its final matinee performance on June 19. Calling it a generational play is embarrassingly simplistic and superficial, but at one crucial moment a grandmother says to her granddaughter, “I am here to listen.” Nothing cryptic there. 

 

 

Mural Graphic in Buckfast’s Millennial Exhibition

The Rule of St. Benedict itself came to mind while pondering this. The very first word of his Prologue is typically translated as “Listen” in most of its editorial iterations. Abbot Patrick Barry of blessed memory began his translation with, “Listen, child of God...” – the version I most often refer to. The widely used RB80 edition, with its copious notes and simultaneous Latin/English translation, starts with “Listen carefully, my son...” (Obsculta, o fili...). That Latin phrase is “Hearken, my son...,” in the 1895 book titled Life and Rule. The very first copy of the Rule that I ever bought for myself is a small pocket-sized booklet, now well-worn, purchased at St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania on July 22, 2000, just shy of five years before I began my postulancy in St. Louis (The Liturgical Press, 1948). It begins most directly: “Listen, my son…” Br. Joseph recently produced for the Portsmouth Institute’s Humanitas Symposium a handsome booklet of the Divine Office, also used by the religious of the Diocese of Providence who graced us with their presence when we hosted the Annual Summer Picnic for the Office of Religious. The main heading on it first page echoes this teaching, recalling Benedict’s exhortation to: “Listen ...with the ear of your heart.”  

From the Sunday New York Times Magazine of that same Symposium weekend, as I was about to photocopy the crossword puzzle, an item jumped out at me, offering another bit of sage wisdom for General Chapter. Under the heading of “How to Attend Camp as an Adult,” a 68-year-old retired abdominal surgeon from Albuquerque named Bill Syme, suggested this: “Listen to other people’s stories and don’t just talk about me, me, me all the time. I made a number of new friends by listening.” Halfway through, the General Chapter itself has taken on the feel of a summer camp in the Catskills. Sudden allergies for some, calls home to mums and dads for others, and daily afternoon cooling-off breaks (essential during a record-breaking heat wave) for what the Brits call “wild swimming” above the weir on the River Dart. An added bonus while swimming was to see two salmon arc out of the water and through the air just yards away on two consecutive days. And running through it all, like the river, is serious listening. 

Neither had my travels earlier in the summer allowed me to escape the call to listen. Prior to departing Logan for Heathrow, I spent time in the Poconos with my friend Michele in her family’s summer cottage, cooking, reminiscing, missing the people we miss. Music played a big part of that week. One evening while enjoying the music of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), much of it from my college years, we heard a favorite song which puts a different spin on listening. The song has been interpreted in many ways and one take sees it as a conversation between a father and a son, thus the song’s title. The key verse has a lyric midway through: “From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen.” Driving back to Rhode Island on July 7, with the Poconos receding in the rear-view mirror, afforded me rare time to play with a radio. NPR was airing a program called “Think” which featured a discussion with author Bo Seo about his new book titled, Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard. I haven’t read the book yet but, based on the interview, it sounds like a good read. And a good listen for anyone who is able to access the interview in the NPR archives. 

 

 

 

 

In fact, these recurring reminders were hitting on a message that has always been at work in me. On the occasion of my Simple Profession in 2006, a St. Louis Oblate, Ted Ehrmann, presented me with a small wooden medallion which he crafted based on a gold medal which I used to wear. One side has a Benedictine cross in relief, and the reverse side spells out the Latin word, AUSCULTA, a variant of obsculta. I always wore the medal with AUSCULTA facing my chest as a constant reminder to listen. Ted’s medallion now lives on a small easel in my room as a gentle daily reminder to be a better listener. 

The General Chapter has also turned to some of the most critical areas where listening is needed. Abbot Mark Barrett of Worth Abbey was the principal celebrant for the Mass of Reconciliation on July 13 when the business of General Chapter was suspended for a Day of Reflection and Prayer. We focused on, and prayed for, the survivors and victims of the sexual abuse scandals which have rocked the worldwide Church. Sessions included:  

• How have abuse and its management impacted survivors? 

• How has abuse impacted us in our communities? 

• How has abuse impacted us as a congregation? 

• How should we adapt our attitudes, behaviors, and decisions for the future? 

The homily honed in on a news item Abbot Mark had heard earlier that morning, as well as the First Reading from the Prophet Isaiah (55:1-3; 6-9). He made a dozen references to listening and, with his permission, I include a brief excerpt which particularly moved me: 

 

 

And, lastly, it would be a sin of omission if I failed to mention the 2005 book by Abbot Robert Igo of Ampleforth Abbey, elected on March 22, 2021. Before his election, Abbot Robert was for twenty-five years the prior of the Monastery of Christ the Word, Ampleforth’s dependent house in Macheke, eastern Zimbabwe. I had made his book, Listening with Love: Pastoral Counseling, A Christian Response to People Living with HIV/AIDS, my own mandatory reading when I was at Macheke for a three month mission stint in 2008, and again for another three months in 2016. Abbot Robert is attending General Chapter, and it is pure joy to hear his infectious laughter throughout the conference center halls on our tea breaks. As principal celebrant at the Conventual Mass on July 18, he offered a moving homily prefaced by the reading from Micah (6:1-4, 6-8) which, just like the title of his book, begins with the call to Listen: 

By the time anyone reads these thoughts in early August, I shall have returned to Portsmouth, but I have kilometres to go before I rest, as they say here. It will be good to be back on Aquidneck Island where the seagulls do not squawk with an English accent. But perhaps I will, nonetheless, listen more attentively to what they have to say.