The Patient Pages of Books

I love Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. Mostly because I got to know him in the pages of a book that I can hold, a book in which I can flourish my pen and engage physically with his words written there; a book I can bang shut in sudden wonder and awe, with a grasped understanding at last. On whose opened pages I can lay my forehead when it is late at night and I silently thank him with a weary, grateful sigh for unexplainable consolation when I needed it most.

Erasmo is Father Simeon now - a Cistercian monk. He is hidden away in a Monastery in Massachusetts. Who, at this very moment, might be sweeping an empty, sunlit room in deep silence. My book helps me find him there - thinking his beautiful thoughts all alone with God and allowing me to stand in the doorway quietly waiting for a crumb to fall.

I don't have an old, ornate bookcase to put him on, as he deserves. I have only kept my modern, red bookshelf that Thomas built for me one late winter afternoon while we drank coffee and laughed at the foibles of being human. It was a bookcase built with Thomas's love and I think Father Simeon would understand how his ancient, incensed words fit there quite nicely between silent, fervent Elisabeth Leseur and Dame Julian - his friendly company on either side. Sometimes, when I am in a hurry I just walk by and pat the books in gratitude and to assure myself they are there. To have and to hold.

Facebook can be fun. But the distinct essence of its scroll makes life seem an endless onward without a backward glance. You may see something quite lovely one day and determine to go back and it - disappears. You never find it again. This makes life always a disorienting, frazzled present.

It is fun to get likes and comments and shares. But sometimes you feel like everything is going so fast past your eyes. That onward scroll seems to make the heart beat in nervous uptick wondering vaguely if it is missing something - or missing out on something new and supposedly important - but it doesn't have time to ponder those questions too deeply because it is being....swept.

New enthusiasms rise up every day - people share them onward and onward and onward into cyberspace. You feel like you should be enthusiastic, too. But some days feelings like that cannot be mustered and you wonder why - everyone seems so excited and in the know, and in the thick of things you find so thin all of a sudden.....

You want to step out of the rushing stream and quietly seek the consolation of books - steady with thoughts old and well conceived in patient toil. Words that engage but do not demand instant reaction. They have time - they will be here tomorrow. You can find them right there on the shelf. Books that looked back at other books more ancient when they were being written. Books that know what other books have said and where they inspired a new vein of ideas, adding to the rivers that run to the sea of human pondering. That deep, lovely water on which to sail almost endlessly as slowly or as quickly as you will.

Father Simeon feeds my soul. His words are manna for me. They are not so much sweet, as savory, because they are beautiful but they also demand that change must happen now because of them. There is always a slight, bitter taste of the cross to his inspirations. He also is quite patient if you can't take too much at once. He smiles and says he will see me tomorrow perhaps. He doesn't mind that I put him back on the shelf.

I love Father Simeon. I love all my books. They calm my soul and my emotions. They do not change. They are content with my comments in the margins - both the WHATS? and the WOWS!

I go there when I feel unsteadied by enthusiasms or trends or political agendas scrolling by me on a computer screen.

I sit in my old blue chair, sip my creamed coffee, hug my books and kiss my holy cards that hold the page. The afternoon sun seeps into my skin along with the words as I read - making physical associations that will eventually remind me of what I was thinking that day - all slow, steady, with the feeling that this is a cycle back to yesterday's thought and not an endless scroll forward.

Father Simeon speaks of Our Lady. She seems to join us with her gentle presence. I can stop and pray if I want. The book always waits. The book always takes me to Father Simeon's doorway. I am grateful.

It is the present and then the backward glances of leafed pages that bring the peace, the security, the understanding of who I truly am.

I thank God for books.

………………………………………

I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull