A week ago or so, the roof of the chip barn caved in. Days and days of unusually heavy snow piled up and the weight was finally too much. It's a fifty year old barn and has long served as storage for the wood chips we burn to generate steam that heats the monastery. A barn this old — you assume it will be there forever. Strolling out past the Quarry Field and around the bend I was unnerved by the spectacle of the folded roof which triggered an uncanny association with the famous "folded Christ" in Van Der Weyden's painting "The Deposition". We were in a bind. Brother Ephrem makes several trips a day to the chip barn as he continually stokes the boiler to keep it running hot. But the roof was actually being supported by the wood chips. If Ephrem started taking big bites out of that pile of chips with his end-loader, the whole roof could come down on him. But we needed to keep the boiler going; it was going to be below zero that night. I had a queasy feeling realizing the basic structures necessary for our survival in this frozen landscape were breaking down. I had a similar feeling when, at Vespers on Saturday I heard Dom Brendan pray for "the victims of the Arizona shooting." "Uh-oh", I said to myself, "what happened in Arizona?" Shortly after supper, I learned there had been a shooting rampage with 13 wounded and 6 people killed. As the monks began our observance of the "Great Silence" at 7:45 p.m. the tragic event seemed to "reverberate" through the cloister and in my heart. The next morning, I show up for work, and Sam, the lay manager of Trappist Caskets asks me: "Can you bring your religious habit with you to work this afternoon?" "Uh – o.k. . ." I say, " . . . what for?" "The family of the little girl killed in the Arizona shooting has contacted us about a casket. I'd like to get a photo of you blessing the casket." "Little girl . . . " I say to myself, "Oh no . . . " I show up at 2:15 with my habit and find the little casket waiting for me in the chapel of the Welcome Center at Trappist Caskets. Sam and I recollect ourselves a moment and I begin the prayer. I'm looking down at the lid of the casket, engraved with the name "Christina Green" and in the middle of the prayer notice, inscribed beneath her name, her birth date. "Does that say September 11, 2001?" With the fleetness of a single thought, the words pass through my mind: "Born on a day of terror, she lives nine years and dies on a day of terror." I'm momentarily distracted and my prayer becomes confused as I stumble over my words. It's happening again — big time: the feeling I had as I gazed at the collapsed roof of the chip barn. It's the feeling that something I thought was secure, steadfast, and predictable is buckling and swaying. As I'm looking at Christina's dates, something is giving way, something of the basic structure of a recognizably human society. Something has "folded". The real world doesn't seem quite real because it's not obeying the laws I presume govern human life. Later, I come across her photograph pinned to the monk's bulletin board. She's beautiful. Her face in the photo is radiant with joyful expectation. Lingering before the image, I am somehow reassured. Christina is communicating something to me about human life and human destiny. This little girl, even now, is somehow very much alive. An image of Van der Weyden's "folded Christ" flashes behind my eyes and it occurs to me, Christina sees him. She sees what I can't see. I see the painting. Christina sees the reality — she sees Christ's triumph over death as I cannot. She knows, as none of us in this broken world can know, that Love is the deepest meaning of it all.

Father Raphael

This is the image that Fr. Raphael refers to in this entry.