By Michael Barrington
After ten years as a busy religious missionary priest in Africa, I was driven by an internal compulsion to spend some time in silence, prayer, and solitude. I had spent three of those years in Nigeria, witness to unspeakable horrors and atrocities during its civil war. Delivering aid was a matter of life and death. Once in 1972, at a checkpoint on a jungle road, a group of drunken soldiers stood me up to be shot. Only my ability to speak a local language saved me and the others in my group. I didn’t just feel I wanted to seek respite; it was something I knew I must do. Nor did I know where it would lead or for how long, but I imagined it would be for a week or two. So, I asked my Father Superior for permission , then wrote to the abbot of a Trappist monastery in Portglenone, Northern Ireland, asking if I could become an “instant monk” in his community. He agreed and Father Jim, the novice master, became my mentor and guide.
I fit easily into a daily schedule of prayer, study, work and sleep, each marked by the sound of a bell. My body, however, needed time to adjust to this new regimen of going to bed at 8:00 PM and rising at 2:45 AM. to attend prayer 15 minutes later.
I entered deeply into the spirit and rhythm of the place and even learned a little of the Trappist sign language the monks used to avoid speaking. But instead of bringing me silence and solitude, the busyness of the monastery felt noisy. My spirit was calling for something else.
The monastery sat on about 120 hectares of pasture, where Brother Colum managed a herd of hundreds of beef cattle, a primary source of the community’s revenue. It housed 38 monks and a hermit, Father Kevin, who lived in a small caravan hidden in a wood. I’d seen this tall and bearded priest, when he arrived each Sunday to celebrate Mass with us and share the main meal, albeit in silence. Likely in his 40s – more than a decade older than I was – I learned he’d been a hermit for about seventeen years.
I knew I needed a spiritual guide, so asked the abbot if Fr. Kevinb might agree to act in that role. “You can ask, Michael, but it’s highly unlikely he will agree. He has always refused such requests.”
Father Kevin, skinny and tanned from working outdoors, looked surprised as he opened the door. “Come on in,” he said softly, then added almost apologetically, “I only have one chair, so what if we both sit on the floor?” The place was sparsely furnished but orderly and very clean. “I saw you in the cloister a few weeks ago and wondered who you were,” he murmured.
I wasn’t sure how to begin. I explained why I’d come to the monastery, that I had no idea how long I would stay, and that a spiritual hunger was drawing me deeper into a world of silence and reflection. I spoke for more than an hour.
“Why don’t we pray together for a while,” he said and, without waiting for me to answer, moved over to the end of the room, where he had a small altar with a tabernacle in the center covered in colorful Gaelic designs. He squatted on the floor in front of it, and I sat beside him. I’ve no idea how long we prayed in silence since neither of us was wearing a watch; I’d removed mine the day I arrived. The monastery bell rang in the steeple, and we both knew the choir monks would be going to the chapel to recite their short midafternoon prayers. Kevin got up to retrieve his prayer book, and together we shared and recited the Psalms.
“Michael,” he said, “I think the Holy Spirit is telling you something, and you need to respond. I suggest you ask the abbot if you can use the small hermitage down near the river for some time and see where the Lord leads you. I feel certain your vocation is not that of a hermit; however, but just like the Lord, you may be called for 40 days into the desert.”
I was shocked. “But even if he approves,” I responded, “I’m sure he’ll want some assurance that I meet with a spiritual director regularly. What should I say? You’re the only person I’ve spoken to. Will you be my guide?”
Father Kevin took a long pause. Then, speaking hesitantly, he replied, “First of all, Michael, I’ve nothing to offer you; I too am searching. Tell him if he agrees, we will meet and pray together for an hour each week?”
So, armed with a small library of books (I was interested in Eastern Orthodox spirituality and fully intended to do some research), several notebooks, a collection of spiritual and educational cassette tapes, a stack of magazines, a stock of food and a few sets of clothing, I headed out across the fields to my hermitage.
It was a small wooden, twelve by ten feet shed with a tiny window, a one-ring gas burner for cooking, a simple wooden table, a small electric lamp, a plug for my tape recorder, chair, a prayer stool, and a wooden bunk bed. In one corner were three narrow shelves for clothes, and hooks to hang my working clothes and religious habit. The River Bann was just 30 feet away.
I divided my day in the traditional way into three parts: prayer (meditation/spiritual reading/religious study) for eight hours, manual work for seven, sleep for seven and food preparation and other tasks, two. I drank black tea or water and ate twice a day. My main meal was hearty vegetable soup.
Since I could hear the monastery bells throughout the day, I always knew what time it was. The bells were only silenced during the night so as not to disturb the surrounding villages when an interior one was used for awakening the community. I borrowed a small alarm clock so I, too, could get up for the first prayer of the day. After celebrating Mass on my own at 7:00 AM, and eating a light breakfast, I began my manual work.
I had arranged with Brother Colum, who ran the farm to give me work. That translated into cleaning ditches, seemingly by the mile, trimming and laying hedges, repairing fences, building new ones, installing fence posts, planting trees, scything weeds, and any other work he required. Every day after dressing for work, I hiked across the meadow and checked my message box for work instructions and tools if needed. Every night, once the monks had retired, I walked to the monastery, took a shower and replenished my supplies. An hour later, I too, was in bed. I met Father Kevin every Friday for an hour. On Sundays, I attended community mass and joined in the silent midday meal. With no manual work, I wrote letters, prayed and studied.
The hut had no insulation, and often at night, it could get bitterly cold. I needed not just extra blankets, but later switched to a thermal sleeping bag and slept wearing two tee shirts and a sweatsuit. On winter mornings, I lit the gas ring to warm up the hut, just so I could function. After my years in Africa, my body was simply not attuned to the Irish seasons. Working outside was never a problem, since I was warm enough in a heavy parka, beanie and thick gloves.
I began my hermit’s life in early February. The naked trees and tilled land, often covered with hard frost, created a sense of peace. I enjoyed the quiet and the solitude and went to bed each day tired and content.
On day six, something happened. I was walking in a field, trying to pray the rosary, when my head seemed to explode with noise and distractions. Gone was my newly found peace and tranquility. I was bombarded with thoughts, images, and all kinds of distractions, both holy and profane. Intuitively, I knew what I needed to do. Gathering up my library of books, cassettes, magazines, and articles that I thought I needed, in fact, anything not essential, I threw them into my rucksack and later stashed them in my cell back in the monastery. I kept just two books for spiritual reading, New Seeds of Contemplation written by the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, and a French edition of Jean Pierre de Caussade’s, L’Abandon à la Providence Divine (Abandonment to Divine Providence), which, although written in the 18th-century, had made such an impression on me when I was a novice.
I shared my experience with Father Kevin, who nodded and said, “God calls us to silence and solitude, and we want to fill that precious time with noise and distraction, albeit with seemingly religious and holy things.” Then he quoted Merton, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. This is the man I want myself to be, but who cannot exist because God does not know anything about him. To be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.”
As my prayer life deepened, so did my self-awareness. I was extremely conscious of the presence of God in my life while realizing my body, mind, and emotions were pulled in a different direction. I felt like two different people. I craved food when I wasn’t hungry; I wanted sleep when I wasn’t tired; when I wasn’t tired; an inner voice urging me to cut down on my meditation and prayer time even though my purpose was to maintain both. There were times when I questioned what I was doing, and I wondered if I was just playing at being a hermit.
Father Kevin gave me the perspective I needed. “We’re not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves. Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self.” I bared my soul as we prayed together, and he gently guided me: “Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible, and the heart has turned to stone,” he said one day as we discussed contemplation. And in helping me understand my call to the hermitage, he explained, “In silence, God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.”
But another change was also taking place. Days were turning into weeks and weeks into months. With no expectations, no future plans, and simply trying to live each day, I just knew I was in the right place.
And then something happened. I don’t know the exact time since I had no watch, but I remember the month and the day and that it was in the evening since I later recorded the experience in my journal. I recorded it because I knew that such an experience could not last and that, over time, my memory would become hazy.
It was raining. It was a cold, blustery March night. I was trudging back to my hermitage after my shower. I was tired, the manual work had been particularly demanding, and my body was craving sleep. With my parka zipped up to my chin, my hoodie pulled on tight, and my backpack slung over my shoulder, I leaned into the driving rain. I can’t remember what was going on in my head, whether I was just daydreaming, trying to pray, or just grumbling to myself about the weather when it happened. An interior voice as clear as if the person was next to me simply said, “I am with you, Michael.”
I stopped, and straightened up, oblivious to where I actually was physically but riveted by the sense and experience of this somebody, someone around me, next to me. I knew intuitively who it was. It was an old friend I had spoken to for years, but as if from a distance, and now He was here. I instinctively knew it; I could feel His presence. He was real.
“Jesus,” I replied.
I have no idea how long I stood there in the pouring rain. I was filled with a sense of peace, calm, and presence that I had never before experienced. Tears of joy mingled with the rain streaming down my face. Back at the hermitage and into some dry clothes, I just wanted to revel in the radiated warmth of His presence. There was less sleep than usual that night; I kneeled using my prayer stool, transfixed. Meditation became contemplation as I basked in the sunshine of God’s Spirit. I didn’t need any words, scripture, or spiritual reading to begin my prayer to help lead me into His presence. I did not want to leave. But eventually, my body took over. I was exhausted and went to bed, wondering if this extraordinary spiritual experience would be gone by morning.
I tried to follow my usual routine, but it had all changed; the experience of my prayer time and celebrating the Eucharist were so very different. I was simply aware of a presence that radiated love, and it seemed almost to be within me, to envelop me. I didn’t want to do anything other than use my prayer stool; I no longer needed my faith. God was real. God was an experience.
As I started my manual labor that day, clearing several ditches that had been blocked by the previous storm, I only had to pause for a second to be reassured I was not alone. At one point in the afternoon, still working on removing fallen limbs and debris, a voice seemed to say, “Stop what you’re doing. I want to talk to you.” So, I stopped and walked slowly up and down alongside the hedgerow, back and forth for what seemed like half an hour, locked in His presence. We were beyond words. My heart felt it as if it was ready to burst with His love, the two of us simply connecting, becoming one. Only the monastery bell brought me back to earth, and I needed to follow my schedule and fix my main meal of the day, although I did not feel hungry.
As I prepared my food, a niggling doubt began to enter my head. Am I having a psychological breakdown? Am I going out of my mind? Is this solitude getting to me? I really needed to talk with Kevin, but that would not be until the following afternoon.
“God works in mysterious ways; the Spirit breathes where HE will,” he counseled with his usual brevity. “Let’s just pray about it and come back in three days or before if you are troubled. Meanwhile, just follow your normal routine.”
I didn’t want to work, to do anything except spend time in contemplation, but I did what Kevin had suggested. “You are blessed with an experience of God, Michael, and it will change you forever if you allow it. It is powerful and vibrant, but it will not last. Only the Lord will show you when He will withdraw Himself, and then you will have to rely solely on your faith and your memories. That might happen in a day, a week, only He knows. And be assured, you are not going out of your mind!”
Mediation was without distractions, and my contemplative prayer was beyond words. All I could utter at times was a simple, “Jesus” or “Father,” but emotionally, I was filled with a deep experience of the love of God. Scripture became alive. My eyes were drawn to and lingered over the texts, “Do not be afraid, I am with you,” “My peace I give you,” and “I want you to be happy. There is no need to worry. If there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving.”
As the seasons changed, so did my prayer life. For eight months, I was privileged to enjoy an extraordinary experience of God’s presence that was as real as the air I breathed and the land I walked on. But in the late fall, there was a subtle shift in my meditation, nothing dramatic, but a shift, nonetheless. I still enjoyed the stillness, quiet, and solitude of my hermitage, but my contemplation was no longer immediate, His presence no longer constantly felt as in the early days. I began to struggle again with distractions, but understood this was a return to normalcy. Now I really had to walk in and exercise the newfound faith I had been given. There was a new impetus, a call to share my experience, a call to help others. It was nothing sensational, just a gentle whisper at first, but an unmistakable voice, nonetheless. I listened to it for several weeks, then one Friday, after we had shared our prayer time, Father Kevin simply announced, “I think it’s time, Michael. The Spirit is calling you back to ministry.”
I’d been in the monastery and my hermitage for almost eleven months.
Michael Barrington lives near San Francisco & is the author of 13 books, mainly historical and literary fiction. Four Mile House and No Distance Between Us are his most recent novels. Magic at Stonehenge is a collection of short stories. Take a Priest Like You is a memoir. He has published more than 60 short stories and also blogs on his website: www.mbwriter.net.
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