Unmasking in the Monastery

Mark Liebenow

Monday

I’m sitting in Gethsemani Monastery in Kentucky. Again. Every time there’s a major trauma in my life, I return here. I first came twenty-three years ago on a silent retreat after my wife Evelyn died unexpectedly in her forties. Besides losing her, I lost my identity as a husband and a caregiver, and I was floundering without a role to fill. My friend Steve noticed and said I needed to be here.

I turned him down because Thomas Merton, a spiritual writer I’ve long admired and who had been a monk here, died years ago. Steve wrote back: “Oh brother, you are wrong about Merton not being there. He is! or, rather, his ghost is. He creeps through the guesthouse at night, saying ‘OOOOOOooooooo… I am thomas merton’s ghooooostttt.’ Wailing, and all that. Pretty scary. Nah, you’re right in all you said about place. But Merton having been there is a sweet sidelight. The place, the quiet, the monks still very much live on in my mind and heart. Let me make reservations, and you can cancel later if you want.” “Okay,” I said, feeling a surge of excitement that had been absent for months, but I came feeling lost and angry with God.

Three years ago I was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and needed to figure out how I felt about dying, if it should come to that, and to prepare for the impact of radiation and hormone-deprivation therapies. Cancer is all I thought about, but I didn’t want it to become my identity. The treatments are over now, but my oncologist hasn’t said my cancer is gone, which worries me. I think he’s seen too many cases of men who are Stage 3b like me go bad. He will monitor my PSA number for five years before he will either say I’m cancer-free, or I need to begin chemotherapy. I don’t know whether to relax and celebrate or gear up to begin new treatments. I worry that every new ache is the disease coming back. Do I put on the mask of being okay or continue to wear the face of dread? I’ve come here to work through my questions. 

It’s early October. After seven hours on the road, I arrived late in the afternoon, still in awe when I drove around the bend in the road and the white monastery rose up on the hill before me that once housed two hundred monks. I settle into my room and make a quick visit to see Merton in the monks’ cemetery. I discovered his writing on a bike trip across Minnesota and Wisconsin some fifty years ago when I needed something to read at night and spotted his Thoughts in Solitude book in a convenience store. His words helped me accept my love of silence. He became famous for his story of coming to faith in The Seven Storey Mountain.

Here at Gethsemani, the monastery’s large bell rings, calling everyone to Vespers, then supper. Meals are at set times. If I miss one, I will go hungry. The food is simple and nutritious, with a lot of soup but no dessert. The twenty-six people, each on their own silent retreat, eat together, and the only sounds are spoons clicking against ceramic soup bowls.

The monastery puts no expectations on me. No one knows I have cancer so I don’t have to answer any questions about it. I can go through the week without interacting with anyone. I will sleep, read, go to some of the seven worship services each day, some which last only fifteen minutes, and walk in the woods when I feel like it. This will be different than being with my support group of men and women who have different kinds of cancer where we talk about everything.

After supper I sit in the empty sanctuary with the lingering scent of incense. My thoughts slow and I reflect on my journey with cancer. The unadorned sanctuary is long and narrow with white walls and two rows of blond wooden choir stalls on each side that face each other. By visually stacking monks on each other’s shoulders, I estimate the interior to be nine monks tall. The lowering sun slants in through the side windows and lights up the gray stone altar at the far end where a monk is kneeling in prayer. Laypeople like me are restricted behind the iron railing at this end.

I’m waiting for Compline, “the night office,” and the last worship service of the day, to begin at 7:30 p.m. The bell rings, and the monks file in and sing the psalms in Gregorian chant. They sing from memory because they have taken the tragedies, the struggles of a people living under duress, and the ancient assurances of faith into their hearts. They also sing the evening hymn I’ve come to love with its lilting melody — Before the ending of the day / creator of the world we pray / that with thy gracious favor thou / would be our guard and keeper now. The words are attributed to St. Ambrose who lived in the fourth century.

Then the monks disappear through the hallway down by the altar and go to bed in the buildings behind. At 8 p.m. the lights in the monastery are turned off, and the Great Monastic Silence is observed. Since it’s too dark to walk outside, I return to my room that is furnished simply with a desk, a lamp, and a bed. It’s hard to sit and not work on any writing projects, but I have no desire to work tonight. I write a few thoughts in my journal, read Merton’s book on solitude until I get sleepy, and turn in.

Tuesday

When I wake up, it’s 4 a.m. I’ve already missed Vigils, the day’s first worship service at 3:15. Walking quietly along dark hallways and down stone steps to the kitchen, I pick up coffee that has been kept hot overnight, return to my dark room, and sit in the yellow light of the desk lamp wondering if I would rather die than endure cancer treatments for the rest of my life if they left me physically or mentally unable to hike and write. Would life have enough meaning if I couldn’t do them? I would prefer to get my full health back, but that might not be an option.

These hours before breakfast were Merton’s favorite time of the day. He was free to explore his thoughts and feelings and uncover the questions that he would think about as the monks’ schedule of work and prayer began. The darkness of night erases the passage of time between us, and I imagine that he is writing in a journal at his desk in his monk’s quarters. Sitting at my desk, I write a few thoughts in my journal, and page through books I brought with me for guidance.

Silence can be a mask, and I feel its allure. It creates a place where I can hear my fears, but it also shuts people out. In this darkness that holds me in its embrace, silence reveals what has been hidden. While the heart wants what it wants, death is seldom one of its desires.

It’s a curious choice to be here. Gethsemani Monastery is run by the Trappists, the most austere monastic order in the Catholic Church, and I’m Protestant. Because talking is not allowed inside the monastery walls, no one gets to ask what parish I belong to or if I know their priest. I am incognito. Even the monks don’t talk to each other because of their vow of silence, although they do use sign language they developed over the centuries. I don’t know how one would confess one’s sins using sign language. The monks follow the Rule of St. Benedict that stipulates that hospitality must be shown to every person, male and female, who shows up at the door as if they were Christ, and the monks have built the guesthouse for people on retreat.

After breakfast and Terce, I go out and sit by Merton’s grave outside the sanctuary. It’s not hard to find. While every monk’s burial site is marked by an identical two-foot-tall white metal cross with a small name plate, Merton’s cross has rosary beads draped over, flowers, religious trinkets, and a few personal notes. I talk with him about how hard it is to let go of the fear that my cancer isn’t gone. I listen, not expecting to hear a response because of his vow of silence, and page through his solitude book until a passage speaks to me: “My Lord God, … I do not see the road ahead of me…. Therefore, will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for … you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

Standing up, I follow the path to the thick, wooden gate in the eight-foot-tall stone enclosure wall, slide the heavy iron bolt to the side, cross the road, and follow the path through the trees and out to the field where I had my God encounter two decades ago. Then I was frustrated that I wasn’t finding any comfort for my grief over Ev’s death, and worn out after days of trying to cope with the oppressive heat and humidity of a Kentucky summer, I was ranting and stomping around when a thunderstorm swept in over the hills and drenched me. I laughed as thunder boomed and rumbled and lightning flashed around me because I was foolish to expect God to give me any easy answers, yet I felt that God was grieving alongside me, and the rift between us began to heal.

Merton walked the trails through these fields and woods for twenty-seven years as he listened for God to guide his life. I try to discern what direction my life is going to take, but uncertainty remains. Besides the dying or not dying matter, I want to know how much the quality of my life is going to be affected by the aftereffects of radiation on my bladder and bowels that won’t show up for three years. Because of the hormone-squashing drug, I’ve lost bone density, muscle, libido, and have short-term memory problems. Some of these side effects should improve, but others may be permanent. The stress of possibly dying for three years has changed me, and I no longer entertain long term goals because I’m not sure I have a long term. My focus has shifted to doing what I need to do to get through today.

My body feels different. It no longer functions as it used to, and I don’t have the physical strength to help my friends on their organic farm. My oncologists furthered the body/mind separation when they tinkered around on the lower half of my body while the top half of me sat back and observed. Coping with cancer is an emotional struggle as much as it is physical. How do I feel about having cancer? The doctors haven’t asked. It’s difficult for me to accept that my emotions about this are important, or to believe that my value resides in who I am and not in the work I do. 

My German Scots American family taught me to stay busy and not think so much. I don’t recall them ever relaxing because we had roles and responsibilities to fulfill. They also taught me to refrain from expressing strong emotions, especially negative ones, as they got in the way of work. I learned to be serious and control my emotions, and I learned this so well that I had a hard time knowing what I was feeling. Was I angry or frustrated? Sad, depressed, or just exhausted from working all the time and not stepping away to dance? I couldn’t tell you, and this drove Ev crazy. She expressed her emotions freely and wanted me to do the same. “Just let it out! I know you have it inside you, and I want to share this!”

Back in the 1980s, I tried to break through my emotional logjam by freelancing as a clown. Wearing the whiteface unlatched my inhibitions and allowed my emotions to surface. When I applied whiteface, I put on the pallor of death and “died” to my ego. In service to others, I became whatever people needed me to be. If they were sad, I would act like an over-the-top, woe-is-me character who wobbles around, blows his nose into an oversized hanky that gets stuck on his hand, and sobs while sounding like a donkey. If they seemed too proud, I called on my pride and puffed up all high and mighty before I stuck a pin in that personality to kneel and play on the ground with a small child. It was exciting to live spontaneously and let my emotions flow, but it was also exhausting. I’m an introvert and being that emotional for several hours wore me out.

My inspiration came from circus clowns like Emmett Kelly and the movie clown Buster Keaton who confronted the power of the world through transforming acts of kindness. I gravitated towards Keaton because his deadpan face showed no emotion. When a house collapsed around him, he tumbled down three flights of stairsteps, or fell off a moving train, he got back up, dusted himself off, and continued on his way as if nothing had happened.

Like him, people had a hard time knowing what I was feeling by looking at my face. This worried me when I was trying to comfort someone who was grieving. I wanted my face to convey my concern, and I don’t think it did. Buster also wasn’t hesitant to whack an abusive bully from behind with a 2x4 and run away. I’d like to do that for cancer. If my cancer had been contained, doctors could have surgically removed my prostate and the cancer would be completely gone. But the PSMA-PET scan indicated that cancer cells had seeped into a seminal vesicle, and even after more than a year of radiation and hormone treatments, we aren’t sure all the cancer is gone. I go in every three months for a checkup.

Back at the monastery, I sit on the porch and watch birds fly back and forth between the trees and feeders. Like the birds, I go back and forth between uncertainty and assurance, knowing that I won’t know if I’m cured for several years. The bell rings for supper, then Compline, and the monks sing the closing hymn — From fears and terrors of the night / defend us Lord by thy great might / and when we close our eyes in sleep / let hearts with Christ their vigil keep. I once thought of becoming a monk here but decided I loved Evelyn more and made my vows to her on the day in December that Merton made his vows to this monastery.

Wednesday

I wake up at 3:30 a.m., closer to the time of the first service, but I won’t set an alarm clock because I can’t fall asleep before 10 p.m., and without enough rest I zombie-walk through the day. I learned this the first time I was here when I staggered disoriented to this service and swayed back and forth trying to stay awake. I also skip Lauds because the Mass is celebrated and I’m excluded from participating because I’m not Catholic.

As I walk down to breakfast, I feel the temptation to appear either religiously troubled or blissfully enlightened to the other retreatants, but I don’t want to wear a pious face or, God forbid, try to appear spiritual. I want to focus on the questions tumbling around inside me. My face can do what it wants.

I don’t think the monks care what they look like, either, or worry that we might think they don’t look enough like real monks and are playacting for our benefit. In worship services, they ignore us, and will cough, scratch an itch, and yawn if it’s an early service. They seldom smile as if they are always deep in meditation. Each of them is on their own spiritual journey that isn’t dependent on their brother monks. They are a community, but it seems so loose that it’s hard to tell if they interact or know anything about each other’s lives. Yet, I think that knowing they’re in this together provides them with needed support.

After breakfast I walk to the top of a nearby hill to hold devotions with the dawn as the sun rises over the horizon and sends light flowing over the knobs, fields, and a horse in the mist lingering down by the creek. It’s a cool autumn day, but the trees haven’t begun changing. I go and see Thomas. I tell him that I have a higher risk of developing another cancer, that I’m still recovering from the trauma of the first, and I’m not emotionally ready to take on a second. My question for him is, “How do I cope with this possibility?”

Every day I go to one of the places in nature that Merton mentions in his journals and listen for his answers. At Dom Frederick’s Lake, I sit on the shore where he often sat. Besides how I feel about having cancer, I wonder if my thoughts about cancer are controlled by how society and the mass media want me to think about it—that if you get it, you die. Everyone in my cancer support group felt this way when they received their diagnosis, and every character we could remember in movies who had cancer ended up dead.

Am I unconsciously living as a character in this stereotyped script? That I will lose weight, turn gaunt and gray, become bed-ridden, and need morphine to control my pain, before I die? It’s stories that set the boundaries of what we believe is possible, but because of cancer research the endings of our stories are being rewritten. Cancer seems like a taboo subject that we shouldn’t talk about in public. I didn’t know that any of my friends had prostate cancer until I started talking about mine, yet most of them had the mild kind where they are watching to see if anything develops. Only one acknowledged he had surgery, but no one I know has gone through the radiation and hormone therapies. I’m also in a clinical trial to see if less hormone therapy is effective enough. That creates its own wrinkled edge of uncertainty because what if it isn’t?

My oncologist said that if cancer is caught early and treated, you have a good chance of being cured. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was Stage 3 and had to wait seven months for treatments to begin, wondering if I was sliding towards Stage 4. Hearing the bell, I think about this as I head back to the monastery for Sext and dinner at 12:30.

When I first joined the cancer support group, I thought people would cry all the time. Yet each week, after we have shared our medical updates and console each other, we take off our masks of doom and talk about the other things going on in our lives, like playing with the grandchildren and how good the thumbprint cookies and pie tarts are at Trefzker’s Bakery, and we realize that we’re pronouncing the name differently. Is it Trefs-ker’s or Tref-ze-ker’s? We don’t know, but we each try to sound it out, and we laugh as we stumble around adding extra syllables. We joke about death, too, and how when we turn eighty-five, we are going to eat bacon every single day. One of us who has multiple myeloma jokes that he has already passed his doctor’s predicted drop dead date. They are teaching me patience, humility, and courage in facing the unknown.

I am moved by the strength I see in them as they endure their treatments the best they can and try to hold the pieces of their lives together, even though they might have only a year left to live. I doubt that they make movies about common people with cancer who get their lives back, thinking there is no drama in not dying. But gathering enough resolve and resources to cope with cancer is more dramatic and heroic than anything we have ever done.

Another change is that I cry quite freely, when I seldom did when Evelyn was alive. She would love to see me like this. I cry whenever someone ends up dying tragically in a movie, or when a stranger in real life stops what they are doing to help someone navigate stairs. I feel such empathy for anyone who is suffering that when I see a retreat person who looks like they’re struggling, I want to hug them and ask if there’s anything I can do to help.

When I’m shopping for groceries at home, and someone I haven’t seen in a while asks how I’m doing, it’s hard to know how I’m supposed to look. There wasn’t a mask that came in my cancer kit. Usually I wear an “I’m okay” mask. I don’t mention my cancer because it’s hard to condense three years of treatment and fears into what can be shared in the vegetable aisle.

With close friends like Steve, I try not to wear any mask and share as much as I understand about what’s going on. They will challenge me if they think I’m hiding from a problem, and they share the truths that they have learned from their own struggles. Sharing has become easier because cancer removed my reticence and emotions are waiting to be expressed—fear, terror, happiness, desires, hope. I am grateful for cancer for opening me up like this, yet it feels odd to thank cancer for anything.

Sometimes I think I’ve become too fixated on cancer, but I don’t want to miss any indication of a problem. Cancer returns in thirty percent of prostate men who’ve been successfully treated. Everything else seems unimportant when death is sitting across the table. I’m beginning to doubt that my fear of dying will ever go away. I also worry about my future because of my friend Molly. She was treated with a brain tumor and had good test results for almost five years. She was one month from when she thought her doctors would say she was cured when a shadow showed up on her very last scan, and she had to move to southern California for experimental immunotherapy. Two years later, her husband, Francesco, sent a message that Molly had become unresponsive and was near death. I drove five hundred miles to see her, knelt on the floor by her bed, thanked her for taking care of me after Ev died, and said that I would watch over Francesco.

The bell rings for Compline. The words of the hymn calm me: O Father, this we ask be done / through Jesus Christ thy only Son / who with the Paraclete and thee / now lives and reigns eternally. After the service, I return to my room and write down today’s insights. Because I don’t know anyone who had Stage 3 prostate cancer, I haven’t known what to expect, and I’ve had to listen to what my body was telling me. When I felt a pain in my abdomen that I hadn’t felt before, an itch along my legs that seemed deeper than the skin, and pain under one nipple, I sent an email to my oncologist and asked if it was something to worry about. Almost always it was something that needed to be checked out. In regards to the last concern, my research revealed that prostate men have a higher risk of developing breast cancer. The glandular swelling turned out to be from the hormonal imbalance. To head off potential problems, I need to stay focused on what is physically happening and stop worrying about what might.

Thursday

In the early hours, I read Merton’s book until this line stops me: “To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything…” Another reminder to be grateful for cancer. This is difficult.

The monks wander into worship services throughout the day from their work assignments dressed in their black and white robes, and stand in the choir stalls on both sides and face each other. Everyone looks focused. They don’t greet one another, but I can tell they are aware of each other’s presence by how they make room for them to pass by. One monk, who has quite a nice voice, sings the lead line of a psalm, and the rest of the monks sing the next line, and so on to the end. You don’t have to be able to sing to join a monastery, and the monks singing as one voice help the weaker singers. It’s hard for me to tell the monks apart from a distance. While a few look to be in their twenties, most of them are older and have short white hair, although a couple have long, white beards. Of course I wonder why. Are the beards symbolic to them? But if I asked, they couldn’t answer because of the no-talk rule, so we would stand there not talking until one of us got bored and wandered off.

When they came to Gethsemani, they took off every mask they’d ever worn and put on the Trappist robe and what they imagined the monk’s life was going to be like. They left their egos, relationships, occupations, and former roles at the monastery’s gate that has words chiseled in stone overhead: “God Alone.” They will continue to remove their masks until they stand naked before the faceless God. Some men come to get away from the meaninglessness of the modern world, the constant rush to get ahead, the abuse of power by politicians, or despair over a failed marriage. But there is no refuge from anyone’s personal problems in a monastery. The demons that afflicted them outside come in with them, and they still have to find a way to make peace. Some men can’t, and denying their emotions in an austere place like this doesn’t help. They stay for a year or two wearing the mask of a monk before they give up.

Merton honored his vow of stability and stayed. He took this limitation and went deeper into the solitude he desired, becoming a hermit in a cabin on a nearby hill. While I haven’t taken a vow of fidelity to cancer, I think it will always be part of my life, if not in my body, then in the back of my mind. Thomas, how do I live knowing that my aggressive cancer could start growing again? I hear the words, “Listen to the silence.”

Can I let my cancer be whatever it is? Maybe I’m not trusting my doctors enough to monitor the changes, yet I’ve listened to friends with breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers say their doctors missed something on a test or scan, and they slipped from treatable to terminal. In the beginning, I had no symptoms of a problem. Only a routine PSA test by my primary doctor caught it, and I was already in Stage 3. That’s the burr on my sock. I don’t want to ignore any indication of a problem in case something hidden is going on; cancer metastasizes to my bones or lymph nodes, and I become terminal.

While my doctors think they have killed all the cancer cells, they don’t have a test that can prove this, which leaves me feeling like I’m swinging on a trapeze above the center ring of a circus, waiting for the drop cord to be pulled. Down below in the ring on the right are the lions of death, and in the ring on the left are massive elephants that would stomp me. I’m trying to stay swinging in the air until they tell me I can come down, hoping that if I fall the net will catch me and not break. 

In the circus, multiple acts go on at the same time. They depict tragedy, hope, love, heartache, despair, and redemption. I am drawn to certain acts because they speak to something I need to feel, especially my beloved clowns who defy and make fun of death, and who remind me that in the end only compassion matters.

This week I’ve had uninterrupted time exploring my questions, and I realize that some of them won’t be answered until cancer does or does not return. I honestly do not know what will happen. I do know that without any treatment, I would have died a year ago, so things are looking up. I don’t have to scramble to complete items on my bucket list. I also realize that I don’t want to worry about what might happen every day for the next five years. That’s no way to live. Sitting outside in the warm sun, listening to the cawing of crows in the hollows of the oak woods, I delight in the glow of goldenrod and let myself feel the joy of this moment.

Friday

On my final morning here, I wake up at 3 a.m. with time to get to that elusive first worship service. While I’ve come to value these dark hours of solitude, I’m excited to be going home to my community of cancer people where we will talk about our disease and support each other. After breakfast, I walk into the sanctuary for Terce and listen to the monks sing of their trust in the unknown. I pack up the car and go to the cemetery to say goodbye to Thomas. Resting my hand on the ground above him, I thank him for being here.

I am a cancer survivor, and I will be until my doctors say otherwise.

Image © Europeana

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Mark Liebenow writes about nature, grief, prostate cancer, and the wisdom of fools. The author of four books, his essays, poems, and critical reviews have been published in numerous literary journals. His account of hiking in Yosemite to deal with his wife’s death, Mountains of Light, was published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, creative nonfiction at Bradley Uniersity, and can often be found writing outdoors at Cyd’s Cafe. www.markliebenow.com