Three Books: Stones Laid Before the Lord

Three books set in contemplative spaces, two fiction, one non-fiction.

I picked up Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood when I was in London last year (it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). It is set in Australia, in an isolated monastery. It reminded me very strongly of In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, both in style and themes. So much so I went back re-read Godden's novel (which I'd first read in high school.) 

Both follow a group of women living in a isolated religious community. Overall the plots revolve around an older woman who comes into the community by a unusual route. There are mysterious deaths. Threads from the past that pull at the future.  A member of the community that doesn't quite fit in, she is a bit too high profile, a bit too polished. The style of the two is also similar, slightly disjoint, jumping in time, demanding that the reader fill in the gaps.

Wood's descriptions of the mouse plague in Australia were epic (and epically disturbing), and track actual event. While cold feet might have been a trial to my vocation as they were to Godden's Dame Phillipa, I think I could have toughed it out. The mice? I think I would have fled in horror.

Aflame, Pico Iyer's memoir of his experiences with silence and contemplative monks (Catholic and Buddhist), takes us inside a non-fictional monastery of men who cling to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur. I have been to this monastery and stayed in the hermitages there. I recognize some of the people and many of the places.  For all that I love this place and sacred silence in general and appreciate Iyer's writing, the book felt oddly thin. Admittedly it can be hard to wrap words around silence, to reveal what might be moving in heart and soul. Perhaps that why fiction feels more real? 

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The title was inspired by Stones Laid Before the Lord: A History of Monastic Architecture, a focus on the buildings, less so on the people who inhabit them. 

More books from my shelf that are related: An Infinity of Little Hours (Nancy Maguire, an anthropologist looks at the journeys of novices at a modern-day Carthusian charterhouse in England); Love on the Mountain: The Chronicle Journal of a Camaldolese Monk (Robert Hale, O.S.B. Cam., just what it says, autobiographical account of life as a monk at the monastery Iyer describes) and The Hermits of Big Sur (Paula Huston, a history of the Camaldolese monastery at Big Sur).

 

Swept clean

I picked up a well-thumbed manual for some of the software I used for my computational chemistry research. It bristled with sticky notes of work arounds and advice. Failing to converge? Try this. Need to queue up a job on the cluster? Here's the standard script. Check your permissions! Asterisks marked material that I used every year to train students. And on every one a plea, please don't take these books: "FRANCL LAB - DO NOT REMOVE" was printed in black Sharpie on spines and covers. 

Once upon a time, if I could have chained them down or written curses in the covers like a medieval scholar, I might have. (Well, ok, I certainly could have, though I imagine my students might have been a bit put off. And the group transitioned long ago to electronic materials, so these manuals were old. Though there was the odd sticky note of advice still stuck to the wall.)

They were irreplaceable and last week I threw them out. Intentionally. Into the big blue recycling bin behind the science building. They made a big thunk as they hit the walls. I could feel that thump in my bones. 

I could have found a spot on the shelves in my office for them, or at home. I could have put them on the library "free books" table, pretending that there might be someone else who would want them. Or packed them up for the local thrift store, spinning a similar tale for my conscience. I pitched them.

Clearing out my research space was hard work, emotionally (and physically — paper is heavier than you think, margins might be paper-thin, but stacks of paper are like bricks). All those irrevocable decisions about things that were once so important to me. I cannot now call back my drafts of journal articles, or jotted thoughts about weird molecular topologies that I and my students might explore. It was a lot.

I hadn't realized how much of a luxury this was. 

A couple of days later, I ran across this article, "I have lost everything," at ProPublica. It's a series of handwritten notecards responding to the question, "What is something that was important to you that was taken away in a sweep?" Unhoused people lamenting was lost when their encampments were swept clear without warning. Wedding photos and a grandmother's letters. A mother's ashes. Irreplaceable things, irrevocably gone. 

Until that moment I hadn't realized that my trundling cart after cart of paper to the recycling bin was an enormous privilege. I still feel the pale shadow of the aching pain of these people.

I had the privilege of choice. I have the luxury of space. Everything in that research space could have been boxed up and brought home to be stored in my garage or attic. (Though I rather think my children would not have thanked me, but still — my space, my choice.)

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This has sat open on my desktop for a couple of days. I don't quite know how to end it. It feels trite to say don't do this to people. Perhaps all I can do is sit with this uncomfortable knowledge. Advocate when and where I can and continue working to shelter the unhoused in my neighborhood. That feels hopelessly trite, too. 

Fifty ways to leave your lab

 

"...Oh, you hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan..."

As I headed across campus to the main library this morning to pick up a book I had ordered from interlibrary loan, Simon and Garfunkel's Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover started playing. (Is this an improvement over Cecilia? Not sure.) Midstream, "..you don't need to discuss much, just drop off the key, Lee..."

In the summer of 1986, I opened the door to my assigned research space, next door to my office. My department chair was with me, the task was to see what  needed to be done to make the space usable for computational chemistry research. My predecessor had been gone for more than a year, so the space had become...storage...disarrayed...ugh, a mess. 

There was an old tire on one of the lab benches, and a dead pigeon on the window sill. Two window air conditioners were wedged with plywood into the windows, wheezing as they tried to keep up with the midsummer heat. We stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene. My chair said, "I will take care of it." He cleared the lab out — tire, dead pigeon and all — with his own hands. The space got kitted out with all the modern necessities for mid-80s' computational chemistry. Phone lines and modems to dial into the VAX computer up the hill. FORTRAN manuals. A couple of Mac Plusses which doubled as terminals. Racks to store magnetic tapes.  Tables. Chalk.

Over the last 40 years I have had several labs, this last one tucked into the round floor of the biology wing. And this is — was — the last lab. 

Last week I recycled the few hard copy manuals that remained. Gifted a nice large monitor to a young colleague who does some computational work. Recycled boxes of paper files, drafts of papers long ago published, data from projects that didn't quite bear fruit. CDs of software I will never need again were pitched in the trash. And a desk was piled with tech to be picked up by our IT folk. Including a 1986 Toshiba laptop, that was the computer I started my work on. I packed a couple of boxes to take home, but most everything else went into the trash.

I left no old tires, nor dead pigeons. I dropped off the keys, slipped out the back, and was free.

There must be 50 ways to leave your laboratory. 

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I am moving to part-time teaching beginning next fall, then retiring all together at the end of next academic year. This was the first major step toward that transition.

Chasing Down May

A friend noted in an email that the previous week had gotten away from her. Same here, I said. I was chasing the previous week down the street, too. (If you see it, please send it back in my direction!) That's actually an understatement, it's really all of May that has sped past like one of those rapidly flipping calendars in a movie. What happened to May? The answer is what happened in May:

Week 1: I went (virtually) to a conference in Assisi. There was also the small matter of a papal conclave, which I live blogged for the Philadelphia Inquirer, along with four other local Catholics. Oh - and two tea related events. Motto for the week, most of it spent on Rome time: "All the jet lag, none of the gelato." Math Man did take me out for water ice when all was said and done. Habemus papam!

Week 2: There was a wedding! Math Guy, my youngest, got married. There were dinners and lunches. Philly food (more water ice) and family. Despite travel travails, everyone got here and home. We all celebrated the happy couple, we karaoke-ed (is that a verb?) and danced under the disco lights. There were 30 people at my house on the day after. We ate some more and hugged a lot. I definitely cried more than once.

Week 3: Wedding recovery. Whew - could I fit all the stuff from the reception in my Mini Cooper? Props to the staff person at the venue who did not say, "You can't possibly get all that in." I did, including the enormous disco ball which occupied the passenger seat. I chauffeured people to their flights. There was...laundry. Because there is always laundry.

Week 4: I facilitated two retreat days for staff from Catholic Social Services programs. Respite and reflection for 130 lovely folk, framed around pilgrimages and hope.  Reunion at the college. My students are writing books and talking about them. I talked to alums. I packed up and shuttered my research space after a 40 year run as an independent scientist. I definitely cried again.

It's been a lot. But I am welcoming what I hope will be a gentle June. Hi, June!

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Photos are of my sibs (The Wookie, The Reverend, The Artisté, my aunt, my sister, Geek Guru, and me. All in our disco best. I am so short.); a plant with a bloom peeking out at the retreat house, hope for sure; and the very first computer I had at the college.

Little changes: papal flower pots

I am thinking of all the little things that will change in Rome, after this big change. In the papal gardens at Castel Gandolfo the terra cotta pots all bear the coat of arms of the pope who reigned when they were made. New pots are made in house (or in-garden?). When a pot breaks now, the gardeners will replace it with one with Pope Leo XIV’s coat of arms.

I try to spot the oldest one when I walk there. This one is for Pope John Paul II. Looking forward to spotting one for Pope Leo when next I am back!