Thomas Merton and the seventeen geese

By Conrad Beaubien

The century-old geranium by my kitchen window has a new flower this morning. I say century-old, give or take a few years. It’s been a family practise—think green inheritance—to carry cuttings or sections of the humble—certainly non-exotic plant—forward through generations from household to household, mother to son and daughter to cousin to aunt to friend and possibly back again because who knows, it’s easy to lose track of these things. All I remember is that the plant has always been referred to as Mom’s geranium; then it was her mom’s and then…and so on.

Seems like the geranium, more formally called pelargonium is a species born to run: originating in South Africa, selections out of the 250 natural varieties get to Europe in the 17th century and another century later someone there sends a few species to North America: But here is something I found interesting, at least for a lay person like myself.

Prior to WWI and then WWII, many species and cultivars had been sent to North America to be propagated by hobbyists and commercial growers. During the war years in Europe when food production took dominance over flowers and gardeners were enlisted in the armed forces, geraniums—pelargonium—left unattended began to be heavily eradicated, especially with the add-on destruction that only human warfare can bring. By the 1950s, the English Natural Pelargonium Collection was formed and began to repatriate species that had been lost in Europe. Many were retrieved from our continent and sent back to England in the country’s national effort to rebuild the collection, which today includes 1500 species and cultivars.

As I write this, it dawns on me that Maggie Brown, my maternal grandmother left Brighton Hove in England with her husband and young family to emigrate to Canada between the wars. No long stretch of the imagination to think that the ritual of preserving parts of the lowly pelargonium also began in my family in that era. I will train as a geranium whisperer to find out, to see if I can learn the story from the so called ‘horse’s mouth’, when I sit down next and have a conversation with my plant. You see, this is but one benefit of having time on your hands and wanting conversation when we are under health orders to stay at home. Who knows, my plant may be ready to have its own blog or website or at least prepared to dictate a memoir. I’ll be sure to share what I learn, and by now I know that you’ll know the motivation that goes with plant-based food for thought.

All of the above is in many ways tied to the idea of isolation. I haven’t mentioned that a cold north rain has been leaning heavily against the window, setting up in my mind the contradictions of all things. The sullen sky and wind is dark yet here in my dry refuge a single flower offers to stand in for the winter bird’s offering of pleasure and light of the day. Mind you, I talk to the flowers by habit so I don’t attribute a discussion with a geranium that has just launched a flower with a comet tail during lock down that much of a stretch from real time. But I have been curious to understand the effects of isolation from a range of perspectives that include cultural isolation, solitary confinement or lost in the woods.

In some cultures, a traditional rite of passage describes that when a person reaches puberty they are taken to a remote place to fast and be removed from society for a period of time. Here, seclusion is considered a symbol of death and resurrection. When the individual returns from remoteness, it is believed that the rite will have opened a search for personal truth and that going forward the individual will contribute inner gifts to their society that they may have come to recognize. But yet, so far the most engaging of my reading is that of the works of Thomas Merton.

Born in France in 1915, Merton was a writer, theologian, mystic, poet and lover of jazz when at the age of 26, while living and teaching in New York, he chose to join the community of Trappist monks. Merton was ordained to the priesthood and became a member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane in Kentucky, where he described his initial reception at the monastery entrance: “Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me, and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom.” Living there until his death in 1968, he authored 50 books of teachings and poetry and narratives on monastic life. His best known work entitled The Seven Storey Mountain held great influence while simultaneously contributing to Merton’s hidden struggle. He had chosen to seclude, to live in an interior spiritual world, yet the popularity of his oeuvre attracted more and more the outer world to him. The dichotomy fuelled his writing further and, not dissimilar in ways to our isolation of present, Merton concluded that while we are separate within each one of us, we remain a part of a universal spirit of love and want of understanding.

In the 1960s Merton went into a hospital in nearby Louisville for surgery and while there fell in love with a student nurse. She is referred to as M in his diary and for her he wrote poems as he dealt with the private conflict of maintaining his vows while being deeply in love; the duality of wanting to be solitary yet connected.

It’s now near 4 o’clock in the afternoon and the rain continues. I have arrived at the farm that is home to the donkey Thunder, who has become a true companion throughout the long hauls of isolation. It’s feeding time as I push the yellow wheelbarrow holding a fresh bale of hay down the muddied clay lane that leads to the lower paddock. The rain departs my hat brim like drops from an eavestrough; my worn canvas work jacket has seen the rain and mire before. As I approach the reach of land that extends into the wetlands near Bloomfield, the welcoming call of hee-haw donkey-speak is surrounded by the call of honking geese readying to land nearby. It’s damp and sludge-bound in places and the sky deep and flat like the bogs of Scotland. Being greeted by Thunder, his brother Joe and the horse Micah, I too realize that while we may be individually alone as sole beings throughout our journey, there is a wind of companionship everywhere, especially when we open to it.

For now the pleasure of muck and rain, the sweet scent of dry fresh hay and the steady sound of my animal friends eating have taken over from the red geranium and the sound of the seventeen geese passing overhead. All of it seems somehow orchestrated for inner peace.