Our locally owned and operated video store here in East Dallas, Premiere Video, offers not only by far the greatest selection of old, foreign and hard to find films, but also DVDs not yet available in the US. And when you rent those DVDs, they send you home with a DVD player that plays discs on the European system. Can your Blockbuster do that?
This I know because Julie rented yesterday "Into Great Silence," the German documentary about life in the Grand Chartreuse, the mother house of the Carthusian Order of monks. It's not yet been released on DVD in the US, but we were fortunate enough to find this European copy of it, and the means with which to screen it.
It is an amazing film -- in fact, this is probably the closest anybody will ever come to embodying prayer on film. The filmmaker spent six months living with the monks in their French Alpine charterhouse. The Carthusians, whose order dates to the 11th century, are perhaps the most ascetic of all the Catholic religious orders. They live like communal hermits, and spend most of their time in silence -- this for the sake of cultivating inner serenity. "Into Great Silence" contains no narration and no interviews; it just is. The film takes some getting used to, because it intends to reproduce the experience of being enveloped by the silence of that mountain redoubt. Except for prayers and chanting, you rarely hear the human voice, but you do hear the sounds of daily life in that ancient place. This beautifully shot film forces you to pay attention to the tiniest things: the way the light falls on a bowl of fruit, the sound of a monk's scissors on rough fabric as he prepares a new cowl, the Rembrandt-like pathos of a single beam of sunlight from a high window striking a monk preparing to chant in the Gothic chapel. There is about this film a quality of lucidity that takes your breath away.
The film is hypnotic -- in fact, it literally put Julie and me to sleep, but not because it was boring; rather, because it relaxed us so thoroughly. (We were watching it in bed, and after drifting off, I slept peacefully for the first time in days). We're going to finish it tonight. Anyway, as we were watching, I told Julie that the reason I'm so fascinated by and attracted to the monastic life is because it embodies what I so totally lack: serenity, quiet, and focus. "Purity of heart is to will one thing," said Kierkegaard. It seems to me that monks have the opportunity to live out purity of heart.
I remember moving to live in a country house -- Weyanoke, for readers of "Crunchy Cons" -- for the winter of 1993-94, and when I first moved in (I lived alone most of the time), I was unnerved by the silence. There was no TV, and no Internet. My thoughts were jumbled and disorienting. The first two or three weeks living there was like detoxifying my mind. And then I got into the rhythm of life there. I woke up when the sun came up, and went to sleep when it went down. I became adept at prayer. I became serene, for once in my life. It was a glorious thing, in the end, and when my children are all grown and gone one day, I hope Julie and I can recreate that great silence in our own house, wherever we live.
We need more monasteries in the world, in part to serve as spiritual centers to bring peace and direction to a world being driven mad with noise. After liturgy today, several of us at church made a plan to go spend a weekend at an Orthodox monastery in the hill country. I can tell I really, really need the quiet for prayer and contemplation, if only for a weekend.
The motto of the Carthusians is "The Cross is steady while the world is turning." In this film, "Into Great Silence," you not only can see that, you can feel it: this film draws you into that peace and steadiness. I found myself aching to be there with the monks, to spend a season with them, to learn from them and to come out better able to be steady and full of grace in this turning world. That extraordinary blessing is not given to most of us, but at least there is this magnificent movie offering us a glimpse.
Matthew Arnold wrote his poem "Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse" after having spent time there. Excerpts:
Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,
Ye solemn seats of holy pain!
Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round,
Till I possess my soul again;
Till free my thoughts before me roll,
Not chafed by hourly false control!...For what avail'd it, all the noise
And outcry of the former men?--
Say, have their sons achieved more joys,
Say, is life lighter now than then?
The sufferers died, they left their pain--
The pangs which tortured them remain.
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While Protestants have historically disdained monasticism, there have always been quasi-monastic movements for those who seek a contemplative life in community. Most recent is the "New Monasticism" movement: http://www.newmonasticism.org/.
There were other small movements as well, and I think it speaks to the desire many of us have for a deeper, richer life of prayer without ceasing.
It would be very interesting to see.
Films full of silence are also "Dolls" by Takeshi Kitano.
And "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring " by Kim Ki-Duk. But they don't impress so much as in the cinema. At home there are many distracting noises, not everyone has enough concentration to watch it at home, imho.
This reminds me of a poem I wrote about 2 or 3 years ago:
What Never Was is Gone.
For this poem to work, it must have no form.
How can it stretch itself into nothing?
How can it collapse the world of forms?
How can it silence the clatter of the mind?
Oh Beloved, One of purest beauty and love,
Make of me a silent testament.
Make of me a mirror, and break me into pieces
So that becoming formless, I reflect perfectly.
Snap the pen and the mind that hides you.
Burn the paper upon which I am written.
Sear these words in the fire of perfect love.
Leave not so much as ash behind.
Oh Beloved, in whom I have become,
Erase me within thee.
Let no-thing remain to witness:
What never was is gone.
If you wanted to read a book about the Carthusians, especially considering what they were like before some of the Vatican II reforms which affected even them, I would encourage you to read Nancy Klein Macguire's An Infinity of Little Hours. It follows the journey of five young men through the rigours of a Carthusian novitiate at St. Hugh's Charterhouse, Parkminster, East Sussex, England. Until the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration was built in the USA, St. Hugh's was the only Charterhouse in the English speaking world. (As a side note, St. Hugh's is named for St. Hugh of Lincoln, still the only Carthusian to have ever served as a bishop.)
There have been some reforms since Vatican II. The houses elect their own priors now. These were formerly appointed by the Reverend Father, Prior of La Grande Chartreuse. There have been other reforms, but the Carthusians still continue to live more or less as they lived during the times of St. Bruno. Visitors from other houses still check up on the daughter houses to see that they are still following the rule and living in the spirit of St. Bruno. And the fathers still continue to wear hairshirts under their heavy wool habits. Like the Trappists, they do not eat meat. When they die, they are, like the Trappists, buried in their habits right into the ground and not in a coffin. But even the Trappists have far more contact with each other than the Carthusians do.
The Carthusians have two mottoes. One is "stat crux dum volvitur orbis" (while the world turns, the cross stands firm) and other is "Cartusia nunquam reformata quia nunquam deformata" (The Carthusians have never reformed because they have never deformed.)
Being sent home with a player is one way. But real men hack their DVD players to play whatever region code they darn well please. :) But seriously, I'm geeky enough and hate being told what I can do with what I won enough that I did do that.
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