A CARMEL IN SCARBOROUGH

The first time I saw the building I call home now, it looked so big, foreboding, stark, and grey.  Like an out-of-place-mountain at a major intersection in the suburbs of Scarborough.  But I was drawn to it too.  For reasons unknown it reminded me of a Carmelite monastery. It would become my "Carmel." And I am grateful for that.

Recently, I was blessed to be deeply listened to while I try to explain how my soul needs beauty. I explain how I'm not living in a physically beautiful neighbourhood or historically beautiful and charming apartment building. I say I still long for shaded, quiet, tree-lined streets, and beaches, and an ocean. But still, where I am feels right. Why?

An unexpected answer is given to me, "God is drawing you to himself, into His own beauty."

Later, I search my bookcases for Ruth Burrows' memoir, "Before the Living God".  I have a feeling this now very old Carmelite nun might have written something that will shed light on the paradox of beauty.  She has. I'm going to quote the whole passage below (it's long).  Sister doesn't appear to be a big fan of paragraphs.

Here is the entire passage as it appears in her memoir:

Breathe.

"Following the long-drawn-out-ice-bound winter of 1952, which tried our patience to the limits (I'm thinking of Covid-19; italics mine), came the most glorious summer I have ever known, stretching from May, when the last streaks of snow melting in our garden revealed spring already there, until the end of October.  It was harvest-time when M. Agnes took me on one of her house-hunting trips.  She had conceived the daring idea of moving the Carmel into the country.  Considering the total absence of funds, it was a courageous decision but wholly in line with her determined character, which could remain untouched by criticism or contrary opinion.  This was my first glimpse of the countryside since my entry into the monastery seven years earlier.  I was enchanted with the golden scenery, the corn cut and cocked, the stubble gleaming in the sunshine.  There was an air of richness, contentment.  The house in question, beautiful in itself, stood in gracious surroundings.  Yet it was without regret that I returned to our poor little Carmel (I'm thinking of our Flagcrest Community; italics mine), shut in between houses.  The thought of a Carmel in the country was lovely but I never found myself setting store by it.  I realized that Carmel was independent of situation and it was Carmel that held me.  What did I mean by 'Carmel'?  It is too early to define this, for at this stage in my life I would have been incapable of defining it.  The years that followed were an exploration of this concept and an attempt to establish it in its purity.  I found in my heart that sense, I could call it experience, that I really had everything.  All that lovely countryside, and other vast ranges of it that I would never see save in magazines or in imagination, was somehow mine.  I had no sense of loss.  The fact that I could not see or feel it did not matter.  Dimly I was experiencing that having God one had all things.  I was not in the least aware that I had God-- all was dark and empty-- yet this corollary revealed to me that, hidden he be, he was truly there."  {Before the Living God, by Ruth Burrows, 2008, p87-88}.

I resonate with Sister Rachel (Ruth Burrows).

Below is a picture of my "Carmel" in Scarborough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72q0E7SXfDg

Amen 

 

neighbourhoodwalks.wordpress.com 

Thank you to Linda who came on apartment-hunting trips with me