Monks of Tamie

Last 2013, I programmed my GPS and went to the monastery of Tamie.  Suggested by a friend, I first looked them up in the internet, and through their website, I was able to contact Br. Didier through e-mail and make a five-day reservation.  The abbey was just two hours drive from La Mure and so I packed a valise and headed there.  Just to be sure, I bought some snacks I can hide at the trunk of my car, if ever the food they offer isn't to my liking.
When I was but a mile away, my GPS brought me to a hill-side village and I got lost in its narrow alleys.  I parked my car and started to reprogram my GPS when an elderly lady smilingly approached me and tapped at my wind-shield.  Smilingly, she offered to give me directions to the abbey.  Apparently, she's been helping lost visitors to find their way on a daily basis, and like me, we had but one culprit for the misdirection: the GPS.
When I arrived at Tamie, I really don't know what to do.  I just found myself wandering around a big gift shop.  The bearded man behind the cashier didn't look friendly so I tried approaching one of the monks.  It turned to be Br. Didier, the one I contacted through email.  He told me to bring my car to the next building, just over the hill that blocked it.  When I drove to it, I was surprised how beautiful the monastery was.  The spring-time flowers covered a field sprawling before it and the towers looked old and imposing (Later I learned that this was only a 19th century construction).
Most of my days in Tamie are spent wandering at the woods, identifying beech, oak, poplars and evergreens.  I felt the cold rush of water by cascades and falls around the monks' property and had known how it is to be mildly brushed by the leaves of poison ivy.  I walked miles to see blooms and greeneries and cows and all the elements of spring.  I visited the monks' bookshop and even bought some souvenirs.   With the zoom of my camera, I spied on monks by my window and saw the abbot, dressed in a blue over-alls and a woolen lumberjack shirt, preparing a big wooden post, the purpose of which, I would not know for certain.  I also admired the way the building furniture were arranged by someone who has, no doubt, a flair for ikebana and interior design.  But what marked my stay are prayers, the monastic prayers. Most of the time, I would just be listening to them, along with other pilgrims and visitors who are as mesmerized as I was by the singing of the monks.  Psalms after psalms, the hair at my arms and at the back of my neck prickled at the haunting beauty of their voices, interpreting age-old chants in a rehearsed but still prayerful pace.

Lord, I am deep within your heart,
as dark as the night
and million times as lovely.
I sat by my window,
 your forlorn lover,
for I often mistook your silence
as a painful absence,
an emptiness other than
that which you are, that sweet
expanse of a space that breeds
love.  Yes, I am
in that place where you
embraced me and assured me
that I, your beloved,
am truly profoundly loved.

Blessing the Heat

I'm happy that it has been almost a year and my blog hasn't been discovered yet.  I guess it is true;  it is easier to hide in the crowd, and what could be more crowded than the blogosphere?  Everyone has something to say, and, flooded with words after words after words, I am forever lost in my preferred anonymity.  After all, who knows where would my thoughts would be if the world is oblivious of it?  I did not exactly hide:  I gave away hints, used old names and common tags, referenced subjects that would give me away.  But after some time, I know my new blog has passed the test.  I am officially anonymous.  I can now bear my soul, as I do before my Lord.

My first confession:  I'll do everything to be home.  Yes, to go back to my home country and suffer the tropical heat and the third-world inconveniences, but at the same time, be close to my family, my friends, my people who have this goofy charm that borders between nobility and kitsch.  I'll taste again the heavily salted cuisine of the islands, that rejoices on the flavors of the sea, the the clear soup of meat and vegetables that I knew from childhood.  I'll swim through the haze of the polluted mornings where women rush for the commute, with hair still wet and perfumed well with cheap shampoo, alongside men, that smelled of fresh shirts and cigarette stains, to open the day with a hopeful hum and a hurried prayer.  I wish to swelter in midday heat that glared through streets and corrugated GI sheets, and probably curse the climate change, but at the same time, consoling myself with the colors of halo-halo and the fury of an old electric fan.  I wish to watch TV shows that are infantile but of very high entertainment value, song and dance and crass jokes that have brought me up to who I am: sentimental, spiritual, tacky.

More confessions to come...



Christmas Wish

When sorrow dims the heart
as winter dusk does to the earth,
and the ache of solitude pierces
like an arrow from nowhere,
then Master, I fall as a warrior
by Your door, imploring
if defeat would still find me
 a place at Your table.
Lo! And see how opened his dwelling
to reveal at the core a meaning:
In this world, where the lonesome
is shunned, a leper in spirit,
there is a refuge that awaits me
where I can leave my mourning
by the door and find, among things,
joy, peace, rest.

The Funeral of a War Hero

I left early to be at Pierre Chatel, a village about 7 km from the rectory.  I had with me my black bag containing just about everything I'll need for a celebration of a funeral rite.  It's actually an overnight bag, practical, elegant and spacious.  The church was closed but there are already a few people by the front steps.  As I made my way to the back-door, I passed by an old man and greeted him bonjour but he seemed lost in his thoughts and didn't reply back.  As I entered the building, I was greeted by the comforting warmth of the thermostat and the dim silence of the sanctuary.  I set up my CD player by a side altar, at a piece of instrumental music, Gabriel's Oboe which I have used as entrance song to practically all of my funerals since last June.  I donned my robes and was greeted by a war veteran.  He said he'll be saying a few words during the celebration and that three other war veterans will be there to carry flags.  You see, our beloved deceased, Georges, has participated in the battle of Montfroid in Savoie on a  resistance against the Germans, during the Second World War.  Apparently, he received many medals for for his courage, leadership and patriotism.  It should be noted though that while he's a local hero, he's not French.  He belonged to a family of Italian immigrants who escaped Mussolini's regime and settled in the mining community of La Motte d'Aveillans.  Foreigners were viewed with contempt those days and Georges worked hard to belong to his new country. From the number of people who went to his burial, I can say his efforts paid off.

The funeral service was just like all other funerals in Matheysine:  quiet.  The congregation, when greeted, would respond with nods and a mumble.  To songs and prayers, they join me by mouthing the words without producing any sounds.  Their lips would enunciate the difficult French words but you'll not hear a single squeak.  If some person would dare to sing any louder, he will be hounded with stern stares and well-placed nudges until he'd step back and sing the rest of the song in awkward silence.  I thought at first that it was only in my funerals that the people are like that.  It turned out, my confrères have the same experience at all funeral services they made.

The coffin was covered with the tricoloured national flag and is flanked by two candles lighted by the grandchildren of Georges.  At the song, Ave Maria, the deceased's daughter trembled with emotion and sobbed in a peculiar way: it had all the trappings of a full-pledged sob, with all the shoulder and head motions, but none of the sounds.  It actually impressed me:  an all-out cry on mute.  

We all went out at the song, Amazing Grace and went to the cemetery.  The high noon sun is melting last night's heavy snow and there's water and mud everywhere.  The three war veterans, these fully decorated flag bearers were cautious to walk over the melting snow while balancing their flags.  The coffin was placed near the mouth of the tomb which Georges shares with his wife, Simone.  I made a reference on how he died on a Valentines day, and how these two, separated by death, are now reunited in death and in the life after, and then everyone lined up to bless the coffin with holy water, a simple gesture of solemn goodbye to a beloved friend.

Tree branches looked

like lifted hands holding up snow

towards the high heavens.

As the first signs of spring begin

to bud on the leafless twigs,

the white icy holocaust melted

and dripped, the sun trapped

at each crystalline drop.

Lifeless, but we know it isn't

true, because days from now,

all the snow will be gone,

and these branches will again

be furiously teeming with life.

It's been a while

It's been so long since I wrote in my old blog and I just decided to make myself a new one.  Nothing fancy.  Just trying to find myself an outlet.  Or rather a drainage for my clogged thoughts and feelings that haven't seen the light of day, but rot nonetheless at stagnancy of wordlessness.

To you who somehow found my blog, I wish to introduce myself.  I am Fr. Utoy.  Five years ago, as a seminarian, I have a blog at Wordpress that I just got tired of keeping alive.  I got busy with studies and also, Facebook came along and so divorced me from my once exciting love affair with words.

And then I became a priest.  A week after my ordination, they sent me to a small country village in the Rhone-Alpes and I'm here since 2012.

I'm not claiming to be a good writer.  I never was.  I don't even speak English that good.  But the English words are my best friends and have kept me sane when I am confronted with another language that never seemed to love me back: French.  The English language is the one that consoled me when la langue francaise just treat me as a stupid and awkward foreigner that does not even merit pity or politeness.

For today, I just want to share a free verse I doodled while attending a diocesan clergy retreat in Annecy.

Knitted jumpers heaved at each breath,
the spoken words flowed like a sinuous serpent,
or perhaps, it is the solemnity of this air
that declares each moment a verdict,
a law spoken by angels, carved on rocks.
We stared ahead, an illusion of attentive gaze,
but our mind raced for something witty,
something cliché to blurt out, in hopes
of breaking the heavy atmosphere of boredom,
or just an attempt, a misguided wish
to funnel all attention to one's levity.
White hair that shouted haughtily of cynicism,
low-key snobs on faded jeans,
the current and the retro collide
and not a rat's behind was ever given.