Spencer, MA

 

 

 

 

Ever try Trappist jams? They're absolutely killah! The problem is that they charge you an arm and a leg for a 12 ounce jar. So, on occasion, if Stop and Shop is willing to drop the price, I'll pick one up.

 

My last bit of heaven was their Blueberry jam. It was thick as tar, full of blueberries and sticky as hell. If you're not careful, it sticks to everything. Beautiful!

 

So, who the hell are these Trappists? Where do they come from? Since I read constantly I learned they're up the road in Spencer, MA, where they make all this jam.

 

There are some hard core Catholics that live there, but in the most quiet of ways. Silence. Solitude. A strict observance of the time of day and prayer. Repetitiveness in daily activities that supposedly brings calm is practiced.

 

In my search for Trappist Jam I came across a blog by one of the monks who lives there. Reading it was sort of boring as most entries were tied tightly with passages from the Bible. I do however give this guy a pass as he's made this his life's vocation. My initial distaste for it is due to being harangued by Jesus freaks who use passages like a light saber. I've come across too many of them in my life.

 

What was interesting, were his comments on the fields, the season and the weather around him. He claims once you quiet your life down, you cannot help but notice the slow and small changes that occur day to day.

 

He was walking along a path with another monk when this friend points out a new, small sprig of ivy growing out of a stone wall and remarks, “Ah, a small poem!” You have to have removed all that damned clutter in your mind in order to see just what is around you.

 

Other sections speak of the scent of July meadows or fields of snow that glow at night from a full moon. It's those times, he says, that he feels closest to God. It occurs when he's alone too.

 

“Hmm...this guy isn't a shallow, Bible spouting jerk. “ I think.

 

 

*****

 

I'm not religious. Nor am I “spiritual.” Spirituality as it's kicked around today encompasses far too much New Age crap to be meaningful to me. But, there have been those moments when I came “close.” It had nothing to do with Jesus, Buddha or Whoever.

 

I was reminded of the times I had come close when I read about Frank Beazley, a paralyzed man who lived at Burrillville's Zambarano Hospital. Burrillville is where most of us call “out there.” Beazley's life was portrayed by the ProJo back in 2006. In it they tell his story of being sent to a Halifax orphanage, finally getting on his own, married and during some stupid luck mistake, fell down a flight of stairs where he snapped his neck for good.

 

There was one passage in the article where he wrote down a few lines he wrote as a teen while living at the orphanage. He was walking across a snowy field late at night, in those bitch winters Canada is known for, watching the aurora flit about and he was completely alone with his thoughts. He said a calmness overcame him out of nowhere. It wasn't contrived nor sought for. It evolved on it's own. He wrote a small poem about it and it stayed in a notebook for decades till he ended up in Rhode Island.

 

I knew this feeling. I have had it.

 

It's happened when I was alone. I wasn't looking for it either. It's happened while I sat on a rock escarpment overlooking a lake near Thompson, CT. There was another time while I sat next to a meandering river here, the Ten Mile. The leafless trees were being whipped around by a passing cold front that had quickly dropped the temperatures into the upper thirties and I didn't mind it at all. I thought of nothing but what was happening around me. My life at the time concerned itself with book reports, homework and the “career” I had trying to maintain an A- average. That all fell away. My mind then became concerned with the empty woods, the clacking of the tree branches and how wildly blue the sky gets when the sun sets in late autumn.

 

I'll tell you where I can sense it too sometimes. Right here in my own house. If it's very late at night, preferably winter and a passenger jet is starting it's turn over Seekonk on it's way to TF Green, there is a strange whooshing sound that it'll make in the freezing air. At times, I'll get that “calm” from it. You know why? Because this is a constant, common event that I can rely upon. I can count on it. It's been happening since I was a child. There are a few things in my life I have always been able to count on. Even if it's damned flight path.

 

You and I know many people, who are harried by life. Bills, the kids, old childhood wounds that still need care and all the pressures daily life throws at us. Hurry! HURRY! Get this done! Get THAT done! Rush! We're running out of time!

 

No wonder people seek the beach, the woods, a Trappist Abbey or a snowy field. Or even perhaps a single plane cutting the air on it's return over Seekonk.

 

“You're home now” those all say.