The Good, The Bad and The Holy
Great thing about living in a wild place like Big Sur, on the edge of a continent, is that you notice every sunset is unique. You can be at the same spot, at the same time, with the same eyeballs and same camera, and see something totally different. It occurs to me that this is probably true of someone you love: if you pay attention, you’ll perceive some unique aspect of their individual beauty that perhaps you’ve overlooked in the past or…just never noticed. Try it sometime: look at your love as if for the first time, with curious eyes. What do you see now that escaped you before?
Now, I personally see many more sunsets than sunrises due to some strange aversion for getting up before dawn, but I’m sure the Big Sur sunrise is just as magnificent and varied. Sure.
Another awesome aspect of Big Sur, whether you live here or not, is the silence. Silence in Big Sur doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of sound; the silence here has a definite, palpable sound to it. You feel it as much as you hear it. It’s a silence your heart and mind can hear, more than your ears. It echoes over the ocean and through the canyons, swinging around to vibrate your eardrums with its vastness, saturate your being with its grandiosity. The silence in Big Sur isn’t to cut you off from sound; it connects you to the sounds that matter. Stir that into your Starbucks latte.
But the beauty of Big Sur can also be terrible. This winter, the rains have come with a vengeance not seen in the 102 years records have been kept. Five feet of rain in just one month. Parched as she was, Big Sur could not drink fast enough, and water-soaked mountains began to crumble and slide onto roadways and into the sea.
The only highway connecting Big Sur to the north was covered with so many rock and mud slides that officials stopped counting or naming them. Residents were, and are, trapped with no way to get out. What were once paved roads are now in many places fallen into the ocean, or covered in feet of mud and rock.
Here at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, our 2 mile long driveway that winds 1300 feet up a mountain to the monastic buildings has buckled and broken in several places. We cannot leave, nor can we accept truck deliveries of food or fuel. As a non-monk, I was hella worried. But I looked around me and noticed something odd: the monks seemed to carry on their daily routines, content and happy, as if my concerns about Big Sur turning into some kind of Planet Of The Apes were nonsense. Huh?
So as I observed these monks more closely, I began to take their lead. I started to enjoy the extra quiet and solitude from the usual crush of tourists banging down our doors and racing up and down the highway. As I walk along our driveway, over a thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, I revel in its majesty. I think to myself as I stand high above the ocean and wracked land that from a distance, disturbances quiet and wounds disappear.
One of our monks, Fr. Isaiah, suggested that worry can be defeated by acquiring the art of living one day at a time. The art…..yes, I guess it is an art, isn’t it? “We have the grace to meet today; we don’t have the grace to deal with tomorrow”, says he. Yes. Yes.
This is Brother Emmanuel, one holy monk. Literally. He has holes in his robes, holes in his body from operations, and holes in this silly hat he likes to wear. Emmanuel has been a monk here for over 50 years. At 90 years old, he still likes to tinker with tools and diesel generators, given half a chance. I say that because our head monk, called a “Prior”, is continually trying to slow Emmanuel down and keep him from doing unsafe things. Usually to no avail.
Br. Emmanuel is one of my favorites; he is sweet, gentle and has a sense of humor. He likes to tell you that he grew up on a farm in Kansas, and that Kansas produces more wheat than any other state or country. I don’t know if that’s true, but I don’t argue with him. Once I questioned him on that bit of trivia; he looked at me and asked where was I from. When I told him (for about the 5th time) Santa Cruz, California, he let out a half laugh and said “right”.
Whenever I would sit next to Br. Emmanuel at lunch (the staff and monks eat in community in a dining hall called a ‘refectory’), he would ask me where I grew up (Santa Cruz), how long I had been at the monastery (3 years), and if I wasn’t born a human, what kind of animal would I have liked to have been? I thought he was just forgetful, so once I decided to play with him and told him I was born in Chattanooga. He looked at me sideways and said “what happened to Santa Cruz?”. Huh. Spunky old monk, that Emmanuel.
Not too long after our first heavy storms of January 2017, Br. Emmanuel decided he was going to drive one of our trucks up a 1.5 mile fire road complete with sheer drop offs on one side, to inspect a pond that is above the monastery. Now keep in mind that the before-mentioned Prior had told Br. Emmanuel that he was not allowed to drive anything other than his little green golf cart.
So there goes Emmanuel, up the steep, dangerous road on a merry adventure. He may be 90, but no one told him that meant he had to stop living. Br. Emmanuel is creeping around the edges of the pond when he gets stuck in mud. He punches the gas pedal and gets the truck stuck even worse, up to its wheel wells in water. It just so happened that the Prior was on a hike with a visitor near the pond, and he relates that he saw a truck in the water. He did a double take and there, standing next to the truck thigh-deep in water, was little Emmanuel. He said Emmanuel told him “I guess I got stuck!” and began to laugh.
One night not too long ago, maybe around 10pm, I came into our large community kitchen to get something to eat. Br. Emmanuel was at the back counter, munching on some tavern crackers someone had donated. He likes to snack at night, even though he’s supposed to be in his monk cell (what they call their small rooms) by 9pm.
Emmanuel was dipping the crackers into a tub of peanut butter and then munching on them. Double dipping! No! I gently suggested to him that other people got peanut butter from that tub, and that maybe it would be a better idea to get a spoon, dip it in the peanut butter, and then dip his crackers into the peanut butter on his spoon. He mumbled “oh yeah, good idea”. Grabbing himself a spoon, he proceeded to dip it into the tub and then into his mouth. Over and over. *sigh*
Yesterday, February 23, Br. Emmanuel slipped and fell. His brother monks noticed him missing and found him lying on the ground in his ‘cell’. In obvious pain, we called for medical help. Since we are over an hour away from the nearest city and the roads are still blocked by mud slides, a helicopter had to respond and airlift poor Br. Emmanuel to a hospital some 80 miles away.
Before the helicopter arrived, I knelt down next to Emmanuel, who was surrounded by monks and staff, his head cradled in the lap of the Prior who was stroking his forehead lovingly and reassuringly. In shock and pain, Emmanuel’s hands trembled and shook, but he maintained his smile. “How are you doing?”, I asked him as I touched his shoulder. “Well, I’m still here” he replied with a grin.
Br. Emmanuel, it turns out, suffered a fractured hip in the fall. An irregular heartbeat currently prevents doctors from operating on his hip. This does not bode well for Emmanuel, and I am worried. I don’t want to loose him. So I think back to what Fr. Isaiah said: worry can be defeated by acquiring the art of living one day at a time. I shall try now more than ever to acquire that art.
In honor of the loving kind tough laughing gentle Br. Emmanuel, I will try.
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