Monday, July 18, 2005PRECARIOUS ENGINEERINGI started reading the texts of the mystics when I was doing summer work for my engineering degree. I was working with a road inspection crew out in the country. In the crew there was Big Val who had the most potent body odor I've ever come across. His face was a strange bristly, rolling thing that... Sign in to see full entry.Sunday, July 17, 2005HOSPITAL VISITATIONSOnce the novitiate year was over I was sent back to Melbourne to continue theological studies. Little emphasis was placed on pastoral experience in the course of studies. I used to go to a geriatric centre once a week to visit and pray with the sick and give communion to those who wanted it. Every... Sign in to see full entry.Saturday, July 16, 2005BORN 24 JULY 1967 TIED TO A LION'S BACKIf I was to suggest a vivid symbol that would capture the essence of my sense of self and experience of life, I'd return to a dream I had as a child. At the time my bedroom was a in the back of the house. I shared it with one of my brothers. One morning I woke up to the sound of shattering glass. A... Sign in to see full entry.Thursday, July 14, 2005SEX IN THE MONASTERYIn the expansive grounds of the monastery there was a rather putrid area where the septic tanks tended to overflow whenever there was a full house of people on retreat. The fetid waste, in turn, provoked an abundance of green marshy life which grew to overflowing. So the more people aspired to the... Sign in to see full entry.Tuesday, July 12, 2005NEWS FROM HOMEWhen I was a novice I made the trip, every morning, down to the letterbox hoping to receive news from home. I would have been happy with anything at that time: a postcard; a photo; a message scrawled on the back of a shopping list. I have never entirely shrugged off the fear of being lost and... Sign in to see full entry.Monday, July 11, 2005THE IRISHThe first formal stage of monastic training was a year long period called novitiate. My novitiate existed in the midst a kind of little Ireland wrapped in the package of religious life and positioned on the western fringe of Sydney. The prior, at the time, was an Irish dramatist with a love for the... Sign in to see full entry.Friday, July 8, 2005MIDNIGHT MUSICIt was late at night. He was lying in bed, two rooms along, and drumming his fingers against the wall. In that dark hour his ultimate frustration came home to himself alone. He lay with his wide awake dumb stick stirring, confronted with the fact that he wanted another man's arse. And so he lay... Sign in to see full entry.Thursday, July 7, 2005DRIVING LESSONSWhen I first knew him he didn’t know how to drive. It became an issue as studies continued and he commenced pastoral work. Someone had to teach him and nobody else in the monastery gave a dam, so the task fell to me. Behind the wheel he quickly wound himself into a state of aggravated stress. I... Sign in to see full entry.Wednesday, July 6, 2005CHAPTER OF FAULTSHe saw me talking to another friar late in the morning. It was after a systematic theology lecture and my head was busy with ideas. As I was speaking to the friar, he was lingering in the hall and trying to gather whatever evidence he could to prove that I was yet again betraying him. He could... Sign in to see full entry.Saturday, July 2, 2005is closure our new mythical heaven?It's Sunday afternoon. I started writing last night. Old memories flared up. Isn't it amazing how emotionally potent a memory can be? My dark memories seem to be far more potent than the pleasant ones. I feel like I'm an orchestra suddenly stirred out of silence and the music is sharp and loud and... Sign in to see full entry. |
