In monasteries, time is measured not so much from sun to sun as from prayer to prayer. Imagine a medieval winter. The hush of early evening. A cold wind blowing. People hasten to find shelter around a humble fire, the only source of light and warmth when daylight fades so quickly. Behind the monastery walls monks pad quietly in to a stone chapel, breaking their silence only to chant the evening prayers. This evening office is called vespers.
We do not have a monastery in our town, but we do have an abbey. The nuns farm, make cheese, work a forge as smithies and pray six times a day. They wear the traditional black habit and are cloistered behind screens much of the time, although from time to time we run in to them at the market or the hardware store. I once ran in to a nun at the health food store buying black cohosh for her menopausal sisters, and the blacksmith nun shows up now and again at life drawing class.
I stopped by the chapel this evening, nestled deep in the Bethlehem woods. Difficult to find, even in daylight, unless you know just where it is. Tonight when the bell rang at 5, as it does every evening, they ceased to be the blacksmith nun, or the cheese making nun as they padded softly in to the chapel to chant vespers. They chanted in one voice. Perhaps they shared one intention—I can't know this without looking in to their hearts, but I believe they must try, otherwise they couldn't be nuns. I sat in the shadows and listened to the Gregorian chant. Doing so I fell almost immediately in to a deep meditative state. I thought that I had been there for ten minutes, then looked at my watch and realized that forty had gone past.
We do not have a monastery in our town, but we do have an abbey. The nuns farm, make cheese, work a forge as smithies and pray six times a day. They wear the traditional black habit and are cloistered behind screens much of the time, although from time to time we run in to them at the market or the hardware store. I once ran in to a nun at the health food store buying black cohosh for her menopausal sisters, and the blacksmith nun shows up now and again at life drawing class.
I stopped by the chapel this evening, nestled deep in the Bethlehem woods. Difficult to find, even in daylight, unless you know just where it is. Tonight when the bell rang at 5, as it does every evening, they ceased to be the blacksmith nun, or the cheese making nun as they padded softly in to the chapel to chant vespers. They chanted in one voice. Perhaps they shared one intention—I can't know this without looking in to their hearts, but I believe they must try, otherwise they couldn't be nuns. I sat in the shadows and listened to the Gregorian chant. Doing so I fell almost immediately in to a deep meditative state. I thought that I had been there for ten minutes, then looked at my watch and realized that forty had gone past.
How strange that time in this cloistered abbey is so strictly portioned out by the offices of the day. Lauds at 6AM, Terce at 8, Sext at noon, None at 4, Vespers at 5 and finally compline at 7:30. I believe they wake in the night as well, for prayer and reflection. They live by the clock, but their chant allows them to transcend linear time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGGo6I5v8i0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGGo6I5v8i0
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