Abbey Library of Saint Gall(Today’s article is by guest writer Rick Heller. For a brief bio, see below.)
This summer, I visited the Abbey Library of Saint Gall in Switzerland, a beautiful space filled with books that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On exhibit in the Vaulted Cellar was a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. And I don’t mean a modern copy but a handwritten manuscript produced a millennium ago. I knew that copies made by medieval monks were responsible for the preservation of many surviving texts by ancient Greek and Roman author—the original ancient copies having crumbled into dust—but it was a thrill to see one such copy—a history lesson come to life.
Although I have more of a Buddhist than a Christian orientation, I imagine I’d have enjoyed being a medieval monk. I wouldn’t have missed the conveniences of modern life any more than we today miss the conveniences that may become available in the year 2100. Among the monk-like activities I’d enjoy are gardening, meditation, and eating in silence. I probably wouldn’t be enthusiastic about chanting. But given a choice between being a peasant, a noble, or a monk, I’d go for being a monk.
Exercise
Find a text that is meaningful to you. It could be one perhaps by Henry David Thoreau, Pema Chodron, Toni Morrison or John F. Kennedy. Now copy out a selection of that text word-for-word. You can retype it on an electronic device or perhaps write it out with pen and paper. Handwriting would be more monk-like but if you are far from being a calligrapher, typing can be rewarding too.
As you copy each sentence, reflect on its meaning. If the sentence contains a concrete visual image, after copying it, perhaps close your eyes and visualize the scene. If you are ambitious, you might even try drawing it, like the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages such as the Book of Kells.
In my book, Secular Meditation, I have a Meditative Reading exercise in which I selected a passage from Thoreau’s, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The same vivid passage can serve for meditative copying:
Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight,
and the woods were gained again,
and we rowed slowly on before sunset,
looking for a solitary place in which to spend the night.
A few evening clouds began to be reflected in the water
and the surface was dimpled only here and there
by a muskrat crossing the stream.
We camped at length near Penichook Brook,
on the confines of what is now Nashville,
by a deep ravine,
under the skirts of a pine wood,
where the dead pine-leaves were our carpet,
and their tawny boughs stretched overhead.
But fire and smoke soon tamed the scene;
the rocks consented to be our walls,
and the pines our roof.
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Bio:
Rick Heller is the author of the book Secular Meditation (New World Library, 2015) and leads meditations for the Spiritual Naturalist Society. He writes a newsletter on Substack covering mindfulness and wellness.
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