Songs From A Room...

...Well if you guessed Leonard Cohen, you'd be wrong. Though I suspect the man himself, who has lived these many past years in a Zen monastery, would understand and appreciate.

Six years ago, newly diagnosed with cancer and reasonably fretful about the whole life/death thing, I happened to be driving back from some ecclesial get-together on the south coast.

In those halcyon days, before the advent of the ever-hectoring SatNav, I had opted for a back-roads route over the South Downs that aimed to be more pleasant if a tad slower than the highway.

As I trundled along, up dale and down again, I noticed a small simple wooden sign indicating 'Parkminster' the next left turning. Now if you are a cove who knows these things you will realise in an instant how exciting this was. There is but one Carthusian house in England, and Parkminster is its name.

As an ex-monk there could be no greater thrill than at the least to view from the outside the place where men live that most austere of semi-eremitic of lives; where blokes rise in the middle of each night to pray for themselves and for the world.

Let this point not pass un-remarked. Most monks, howsoever observant they be, once they are asleep remain so until the waking bell the next day. Not so with these Carthusian chappies, who take a few hours sleep of an evening before waking for Vigils and thence, after a good two hours of chant, retiring once again for but a few more hours kip then at it at dawn with Lauds.

Try that regime for a week, let alone a lifetime!

So there we were closing in on Carthusian Parkminster - something of a Mecca for any monk, ex or not. In little expectation of gaining admittance - guests are not permitted - I rang the sonorous front-door bell and was eventually greeted by an hospitable lay brother. ('Eventually' is no slight on their eager hospitality - Carthusian corridors can be a quarter of a mile in length, so one does not expect ready answers.)

The gnarled old fellow - for such was our lay brother - invited me to view the ante-chamber to the monks' choir and, as I gazed at some of the ferocious depictions of past Carthusian martyrdom under that monster Henry VIIth, asked almost in passing whether I would care to join the community for Vespers?

Well you could have knocked me down with napkin! (I had mentioned that I was an ex-Benedictine, but that's a bit like telling Richard Branson at a cocktail party that you had once made a couple of shillings selling bananas at Romford market.)

Yes I said at once I would be - and was - totally honoured and delighted. So a small door was swung open and there I was standing in the choir being shown how to lift - let alone use - the massive old Latin volumes these dear old fellows still employ for their liturgy.

A small bell rang and then one by one the coves themselves entered the place. Now having been a similar cove myself I was not necessarily going to get over-excited by a Carthusian monk, simply because he [and not shes H!] hove into view, but it was hard not to gasp as each one came in "Look there's one and another and another!"

There were as many - more than I had expected and delightful to record - young men as old. Monastic houses can be rather short of vocations these days sadly, but the signs were good for the future of Parkminster.

So Vespers began and, being as I say an old hand, I was happy to chunter along with psalms, hymns, et al. Good old sonorous Latin. But one thing did trip me up. Although we, in our place, were always suitably slow and solemn - no dashing through the liturgy to get to tea on time - I had never encountered such a drawn out and prayerful 'Gloria Patri' as these fellows gave it. I was half-way to the Amen before they were past the first line. Meditative, sombre, devotional - all that and more.

Twenty minutes or so later and I was out the door back into unreality. Absolutely, wonderfully marvellous - and a great story to recount to my gob-smacked ex-monastic mates: "Did I ever tell you about the time I sang Vespers with the Carthusians?"

I could dine in on that for years!