Pluscarden Abbey

Tara on Tour

Spending a couple of days at Pluscarden Abbey outside Elgin wasn't obviously part of a Tara journey, and was more of a case of "well, I'm so close, I'd love to go back for a quick visit". Pluscarden Abbey is a Benedictine monastery, the most northerly in the world and not altogether typical: Benedictine monks usually wear black habits, but the Pluscarden community wear white. They are part of the Valliscauldian Order, which was originally founded in France as an attempt to bring more austerity and simplicity to life in a monastic community. As such, they are similar in some respects to the Cistercians and the Carthusians with their greater emphasis on silence, solitude and very strict discipline.

However, when I caught up with Fr Augustine whom I met several years ago now, he explained that the wearing of white had to do with the community's strong devotion to Our Lady. At a time when the Anglican Church was moving away from reverence to Mary, the then Anglican Order made the radical decision to convert to Catholicism and to continue its tradition of loving devotion to the Holy Mother.

This seemed to explain why I was so drawn to Pluscarden and why Our Lady at Pluscarden has such a prominent place in the liturgical and spiritual lives of the community.

I love the Divine Office and the very last office of the day, Compline, ends with the most beautiful prayer to Mary - called Salve Regina. At Pluscarden, the Office is still said not only in Latin, but the psalms are all prayed in Gregorian Chant. The whole experience is moving and very spiritual; the atmosphere in the chapel tangibly "holy". Just walking through the doors, there is a heavy silence that hangs in the air, saturated with peace and with the kind of presence that automatically quietens the mind, stops all attention from straying outside the purpose for which the chapel stands - prayer to God.

Bearing in mind that the second Tara also protects from the suffering and sicknesses arising from the negative emotion of pride, I realised that such an environment was the perfect place to reflect on the value of humility and the problems of pride. In fact, St Benedict himself stressed humility above almost all other qualities in the training of a monk. The chapter discussing the "twelve steps" of humility in The Rule of St Benedict (which every Benedictine monastery follows and every monk or nun studies)is one of the longest and most detailed.

It's a hard one. It stresses, for example, that the Abbot of a monastery must be regarded as God's direct representative - and that obedience to his/her instruction is essential and absolute. Such obedience mirrors the ultimate obedience to God that is the perfection of spiritual life. Knowing how difficult I personally find it to be told what to do, and in particular how to do it (unless I've asked), I was reminded of the stubborn pride and ego that is a strong part of my own nature.

To surrender the individual will to God's Will is the path of a monastic, and it is also the path of any spiritual aspirant. Reflecting on this, I spent a sleepless second night in a state of acute discomfort and anxiety - dreading Mass the following morning and dreading the commitments I'd made for the rest of that day,all of which involved some level of surrender to the spiritual. I was also in a lot of pain with my monthly cycle which has changed in character over the past few months - and seems to be pushing me into a kind of surrender in its own way. My ego was in revolt and was literally clinging on for dear life. I couldn't get a sense of what it was clinging to, but since very muscle in my body was rigid, fear and clinging were definitely going on! I've experienced this before many times and always when something much more powerful than me (God, Spirit, an empowerment, whatever) is inviting me in. I KNOW it's a blessing and gives rise to greater joy, peace and light - but the unconscious resistance is huge each time, and that communicates itself as fear. So when the Bible talks of having "fear of God", this is exactly what it means to me. It's not really a fear of God, but rather a fear that the ego has of losing its control and being displaced in favour of God. Humility opens the door to receiving this power and this Grace without being burned in the process; once the ego has been removed from its self-created throne (and pride will keep it in place), the experience of such divinity is much more comfortable.