Angels

Colin and I were referred to as angels today.

Fr (frère – Brother) Blaise and I had a nice long chat over a bowl of Tchuc today. I needed to reach out and talk to someone that I trust, other than Colin or my mom, for advice. He got the French version of the previous rant about the school along with a few other minute details. Except this wasn’t a rant. It was a plea for help, from a friend.

After trading experiences and stories dealing with situational problems he told me that the best thing to do would be to talk to Boniface when he comes for Noel. If anything he still holds the “founder” position of the monastery and has as much if not more power than the prior, although they often work together. He also confided in me that the school has long been known to have problems. It is not just Colin and I who recognize them, but in the backwards f'ed up world that we live in, it is only us who can do anything about it.
Place a frog in a boiling pot of water and it will realize that it will die if it stays there so it jumps out. But if you place that same frog in cold water and slowly heat it up it will acclimatize and slowly allow itself to get cooked to death. – Dante’s Peak (paraphrased).
It is a part of the culture here. You do not speak of things that you see. You see and you quietly go on your merry way, for fear of the negative ramifications that will come your way if you do stand out. But for me, the stranger, there are no ramifications, which is why I must tread carefully. I know that my feelings and ideas about what needs to happen are right, but I have no idea what will come about if I speak. Add an increasing amount of tension to an already strained mind.

I also found out from Blaise, and this gives me even more of a peace of mind that my self discerned mission is in fact my mission, that the prior is only away from the monastery because he has to be. He is a new prior, part of the power change and reason why the BVC got lost in the paperwork, and thus has to travel and learn about all of the other monasteries so that he can best accommodate others when they come to visit. He also has to see who he will be working with and allow them a chance to meet him. And it is for the sole purpose of being able to protect us in the time of need that he is lockdown tight on Colin and my whereabouts. He wasn’t just some power hungry man who tinkered around outside of the monastery while traveling the world and leaving us to deal with water, power, and food issues. The look in Blaise’s eyes and the long “ahhhhhhhhh” when I told him that that was all I needed to know to give me a peace of mind about that specific situation. A simple two-minute explanation cleared up hours of conversation between Colin and I. The confusion, the frustration, the talking, the distress all could have been avoided by knowing things like that.

It is a simple matter of miscommunication in most regards, with the exception of the school, and I aim to correct that, to leave this site better than I found it with a solid foundation for making future keys for other young men.

As for the angels, Blaise was telling me about how he was working nonstop to get this garden started and up and running and how difficult it was getting support for it amidst the power and water problems while still having the demand for fresh food at the kitchen and he was overworked and didn’t want to see his hard work wilt away in the African sun after a year of intense labor….(enter Colin and Greg stage left). We are the new monastery work horses that power the garden machine responsible for supplying visitors and monks alike.