Growing Young
Growing Young
Ben Crace
I was asleep. Between systolic and diastolic rhythms, neurons wove a complicated tale of an encounter with a bearded man in a long, brown robe. In terms of narrative dreams, this one was quite short and most of it faded ‘on the blowing of a horn,’ here my instrumental alarm. As I woke and my nighttime memory faded, I still grasped one frozen image: white beard, robe.
Even though I was a full-time faculty member at a university in Kuwait, I always felt a bit behind my colleagues because I was missing three little letters after my name. To remedy this, I began a distance program through a university in England. However, England wanted me to do another MA before the PhD, that culminated with a thesis on the charismata in the Coptic Orthodox Church. I then decided to go on studying the Copts for my doctorate. It was a quick and easy conversation with my supervisor.
“I think I’ll stick with the Copts. I don’t know much about them.”
“Me, neither. Let’s do it.”
The British matter-of-factness was reassuring, and I suspected that I had a lot to learn, too. Not only did I need to read a lot more, I was determined to master sociological methods as well, to do real-life fieldwork and not that boring library stuff my colleagues did. But what I was really after was the numinous; academia provided an excuse. “Research” opens many doors. Fancying myself as an Indiana Jones of sorts, looking for the Real in the sacraments of history and living people, I made vague, tentative plans to travel to Egypt. Initially, I didn’t think I would need to, but the pilgrimage was there, like Flannery O’Connor’s Christ, moving from tree to tree in the back of my mind.
The first part of my fieldwork included interviewing Copts locally in Kuwait. These interviews were fascinating, and one after the other I detected a depth of spirituality that my Southern Baptist background told me shouldn’t exist. These people had a “personal relationship” with Jesus; they also had his worldview. I may have had the first, but the latter escaped me. Through the process, I periodically encountered the name Matta El-Meskeen. Translated as Matthew the Poor, some of my interlocuters encouraged me to read his work. I was captivated by this monk who did most of his writing in a cave. I also found that the ones who recommended him seemed to carry something intangible, an ease of being and a humility that eschewed self-deprecation, bombast, and banality. Obviously, this Coptic teacher was a bright light.
One afternoon in my office at the university where I worked, I had an interview scheduled with an older man. He came quietly to my office, sat in front of me, and, after the requisite niceties (a little longer here in the Middle East), I went through my usual set of questions. As he responded, I knew I wanted to go off-script. My guest embodied a humble mystic and the structure of a Moment settled upon us. He told me of a time, when he was a child, that his parents took him to a small village called Zeitoun. It was here that the Virgin Mary appeared to thousands of people over a period of years—yes, thousands of people over years (most people have never heard of it). She would stand on top of the church. Some would see light, or doves. Many claimed to see her distinctly, and some even claimed to smell a certain aroma. Some saw nothing. My storyteller told me that, back in the 1960s when he was a young boy, his family had planned to spend the day there and picnic with the crowd in front of the church. He remembered sitting on their ice chest as they ate their meal. He could see Mary on the roof, his parents in front him, the others around him—a putatively “normal” lunch. After a while, they decided to leave, that they had had their visit with her and were ready to move on with life. He said, “I remembered it was an awkward feeling, like leaving someone’s house without permission who has hosted you.” This stopped me in my tracks. My commitment to sociological neutrality and my Protestant brain had a brief struggle, but the gentleness, the Nathaniel-like guilelessness, and, most of all, the complete absence of trying to “win” me over to Orthodoxy, resolved the cognitive dissonance and I fell back to listening.
We spoke some more, and I brought up El-Meskeen. Did he know of him? “Oh yes.” But he’s dead right? “Yes.” But wasn’t he part of a monastery? “Yes,” near Alexandria. Aren’t there people there still who knew him? “Yes. I go there all the time. It takes special permission. Would you like to go? I can arrange it for you.”
Not long after, I was on a plane to Alexandria.
Marylou Geiger
Having spent most of my adult life in the Middle East, it is hard to capture again that sense of wonder and confusion that accompanies travel in the region. But this time, things were different. I had mentioned my dream—the one about the old man—to one of my interviewees, who told me, “Who knows? Maybe you’ll find him in Egypt.” A part of me was eager for precognitive messages from the Beyond, God speaking to Joseph to go to Egypt. But the other part of me, the academic, chalked it up to being so focused on the subject of my dissertation. It’s natural to dream of what you’re writing, or so I’m told. After all, I couldn’t really remember the old man’s face, just the white beard and robe.
Driving in Egypt is, well, driving in Egypt. Thank God I wasn’t the one doing it. My driver, a young, devout Copt, drove me all over the place in a beaten-down car of no brand. He practiced what scholars of religion might call “folk religion,” that “bastardized” form of Christianity that uses icons and relics to ward off evil, talks to saints, and genuinely believes that if you talk to the white guy in Egyptian Arabic long enough, he’ll eventually understand. I spent a lot of time chatting in broken Gulf Arabic and using hand signals.
Through the ministrations of other local contacts, we ended up at the gate of St. Macarius Monastery in Scete, the ancient home to monasticism itself. Before Francis preached to the wolf in the 1200s and Benedict laid down his rule in the 500s, monasticism was already ancient here. They have doors that are older than my language.
Inside, a young, articulate monk spoke to me in English. Our conversation turned to El-Meskeen, and my guide asked me if I would like to speak to one of the older monks who knew him. In the meantime, I could go visit the scriptorium, the monastery’s library. Remember: the Codex Sinaticus—a seminal source text for the New Testament—was found as a doorstop in a scriptorium in Egypt. Who knew what would be in this one?
I was surprised to find neat, modern bookshelves, lined with books in Arabic, French, Latin, Greek, and English. Some of the titles I recognized: many Catholic and Orthodox writers, many more of the early Church Fathers and Mothers. As I walked through the stacks with my mouth open, I leaned over the shoulder of a monk, about my age, to see what he was typing. It was in English, and to my surprise I noticed he was writing footnotes in Chicago style! My chuckle turned his head. He smiled, and we discussed the joys of academic research abroad and the pain of Chicago style. He felt less like a secluded monk in ancient Egyptian monastery and more like a college roommate I might meet in the Appalachian hills where I was born.
As our conversation drifted from one thing to the next, two more monks walked in. One was standing straight. The other, an old, white-bearded, robed man, was bent over in half, supported by a stick. The man from my dream.
Between the volumes of the Church Fathers, I seized my moment, my dream. What’s it all about? Why are you here? What is the one thing needful? What is the key to the Kingdom? Am I saved? Are you working your way to salvation here? Are you glad with your choice to live here all your life with no family? Are you sure you’re saved? Did you repent? Did you find Jesus? What’s the point of it all? Am I on the right track? Is this Jesus real that you follow? Is it the same one that I follow? Are we brothers or am I just a heretic to you? What must I do to be saved?
I’m not sure which question I actually asked; I hope it was the one without judgment, the seeking one. Nonetheless, I heard his answer clearly. Straining to bend his neck up to look me in the eye, a neck that has bent in a million metanias over the decades, his sunken beads locked onto mine as he said, “Well, Jesus said that unless we become like children, we will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So, I guess that’s what we’re doing here, becoming children.”
Ben Crace
Writer & Professor
Ben is an Assistant Professor of English and an Anabaptist pastor teaching and serving in Kuwait with a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Birmingham. His short fiction has appeared in Kentucky English Bulletin and his poetry online at Cagibi.
Photography by Marylou Geiger