Content to be solitary

Sir Thomas More, now a canonised Saint, spent the last months of his life imprisoned in the Tower of London. His adult life had been spent immersed in the affairs of the world. It was an affair of a different kind that led him to famously clash with his master, King Henry VIII, on a matter of conscience. As a prisoner, he made good use of his time preparing for the inevitable, for he was other-worldly too. In a ‘Godly Meditation’ written while he was a prisoner in the Tower in 1534, he wrote, ‘Give me the grace, good God, to set the world at naught; to set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths; to be content to be solitary; not to long for worldly company; little and little utterly to cast off the world and rid my mind of all the business thereof; not to hear of any worldly things but that the hearing of worldly phantasies may be to me displeasant’.

With these sentiments in mind I took off recently for my annual retreat from the ‘business’ and ‘phantasies’ of the world. I am generally content to be solitary but it is much easier to enjoy the solitary life when the surroundings are different, pleasant and stimulating. For that reason, I took myself out from under the ever-present blanket of cloud that is the Irish sky this summer and I holed-up on the side of a mountain in Austria. The ‘Sound of Music’ scenery, the long walks and the opportunities for exercise made the likelihood of getting ‘cabin-fever’ a little less. The prospect of even a little sunshine lifted the veil from my heart.

I took a room with a small balcony within which I could try to escape “the blast of men’s mouths”. These quarters became my ‘cell’ for the week. As wise old Abba Moses told his monks, ‘when you remain alone and in quiet, your cell will teach you everything’. My balcony, about two metres by one metre, was carpeted with artificial ‘graveyard’ grass; an unintentional reminder of mortality.

The grass on the slopes of the needle-sharp mountains is the ‘real thing’ and this time of year, it is being harvested as hay for winter fodder. This harvest-time is marked by community celebrations in which even the tractors go in procession, decked out and decorated with garlands and ribbons. The mountains dominate everything in the valley, including, it seems, the architecture and even everyday artefacts. The houses are tall and steep-roofed, and make good use of the wood from the pointed, tall pine trees in the local forests. The church steeple is one of the tallest, finest, thinnest steeples I have ever seen; Even the beer-glasses are tall and fine. The valley is a little like an outdoor Gothic cathedral, drawing the eye ever upward and skyward, if you can take your gaze off the window-boxes and overhanging profusions of flowers.

At ten to nine in the morning, the sun has climbed a mountain-side and makes its triumphant appearance over the summit on the Eastern skyline. The psalm that I am reading from my Breviary describes the sun, in a most memorable image, as, ‘coming forth like a bridegroom coming from his tent’. The clouds give way eventually and the mist patches dissolve. Looking out from the side of the valley, it is possible for a while to see clouds above and below; to live with one’s head in the clouds; to shake hands with a passing cotton-wool cumulus. The bells of the local Catholic Church ring out a rhythm to the day and from its ancient tower, they call attention to its timeless, tabernacled, tenant. In my cell I have established a pattern to the day; a routine that helps one day roll into another. This is a neat and ordered environment, conducive to putting shape on the dis-ordered interior life. Mornings are for matters of the mind; afternoons for exercise and exploration and evenings are for rest and absorption. I have managed to make my usual world ‘go away’ and I remain ‘content to be solitary’ in a strange place.

It is a different world and a long time to that of London Tower in 1534 and the circumstances in which More found himself. The only constant is the struggle of the human heart to replace the phantasies of fallen human nature with something better, something more redeemed. In another meditation, written around the same time called ‘A Devout Prayer’, Sir Thomas used an image that had become ever too familiar to him. He prayed that his ‘lukewarm fashion or rather key-cold manner of meditation’ might be replaced by ‘warmth, delight and quickness’ of spirit. His involuntary retreat from the world and the wisdom of his cell had clarified for him the inner dispositions or ‘minds’ that were most to be desired; ‘more’, he said, ‘to be treasured’ than all ‘the treasure of princes and kings’… ‘were it gathered and laid together all upon one heap’.