On Retreat
This week I have been staying at Pluscarden Abbey, near Elgin in the Scottish Highlands. It was my first retreat and the first time that I had been so far north since childhood, when we boarded the sleeper train to Inverness for a family holiday. Clutching my precious train tickets and my Railcard, my journey up the east coast was spent reading, taking in the view, listening to the guard remind us again about tickets, luggage and refreshments, hoping that I would meet my connection at Edinburgh on time, checking to make sure that I hadn't dropped any of my tickets and worrying about whether I had enough money to afford a train sandwich and the taxi fare from Elgin station. By a small miracle, I did.
Such anxieties about time and money don't arise at Pluscarden, at least for the guests, who are always coming and going. The Abbey lies in a valley six miles from Elgin, but the steep forested hills and folds of earth, water, wood and stone seal it from the outside. The Church is ancient and hallowed and the living quarters basic, but comfortable – a mixture of boarding school and youth hostel.
The monks have their own enclosure, which guests may not visit. Even in the Church you sit in a side chapel that is roped off from them. Their habits, socks and sandals are a further difference. You feel conscious of being an outsider, though a very warmly welcomed outsider. This emphasis on separateness is designed to maintain the sense of holiness. To be holy you are called to be apart, to live differently with a different focus. You feel rather flat-footed in such a place and anxious not to clumsily disrupt their serenely ordered sphere of silence, work, study and prayer. Next to such difference you look at yourself with fresh eyes. We go away to lose ourselves, but whom do we find instead?
The only time when you enter the enclosure is to eat with the monks. You sit at a separate table and eat in silence, but it is a glimpse into a communal way of life that goes back unchanged over centuries. The fare is simple and filling; bread and butter, boiled eggs and apples, soup and potatoes, corned beef and baked beans, tea and sponge pudding. An exception was the Feast of St. Andrew: venison curry, organic beer and apple pie.
The monks at first seem quite unknowable, living as they do. Who are they? Who were they? Where do they come from? How did they come to be here? It seems rude to ask. Outwardly they all look self-contained and self-disciplined, but they must contend with problems both real and petty, even here. I don't know if I could learn to wear such discipline lightly, such a highly ritualised world could end up feeling restrictive and burdensome. The test, of course, is to submit yourself to it.
Upon leaving the Abbey, I realised that I had gone for five days without listening to a radio, reading a newspaper, or going online. Quite an achievement in this day and age. Anything could have happened and I wouldn't have known. I hadn't left the country, or gone into a different time zone, yet I had been further away and more out of it than ever before. There may be a world out there, but it is shrinking all the time. It is increasingly difficult to feel that you have escaped. But here was an entirely different world, hidden, yet close at hand. To return and shoulder worldly cares was quite a surprise. The old priorities of time and money reassert themselves again; deadlines must be met and pennies counted.
