A Monk’s Alphabet by Jeremy Driscoll is one of the best reads I’ve had in quite a while. The book isn’t long on plot or blood and thunder. Its 210 pages contain ideas, essays and anecdotes, all short and each listed in alphabetical order. Sounds mundane. But what soaring ideas! What whimsical stories! What common sense observations! They can be read at random, but please, don’t try to finish the whole book at once. The pieces are much better enjoyed in moderation, like caviar and vodka before dinner or rich chocolates after.

With Christmas looming, copies of A Monk’s Alphabet make for easy gift giving, and recipients probably will remember the giver long after they’ve forgotten where the Argyle socks or cashmere sweater came from. My wife says we’re getting five.

A Monk’s Alphabet is subtitled Moments of Stillness in a Turning World. The moments do wind down your inner clock and dampen some of the brain chatter that comes with modern living. But there could have been another subtitle--A Man of the Cloth Gets Naked.

The author has lived a quarter of a century as a Benedictine monk and an ordained priest. He spends part of the year living at Mount Angel Abby in rural Oregon and the other part in bustling Rome, teaching seminarians theology. I’ve met Father Jeremy at Mount Angel on two, possibly three difference occasions, for maybe six hours total. I met his mother who is rightfully proud of her son. But until I read his book, I had no idea that he used to be a cowboy. That he’s known as Je in a coffee house and bar where noisy Italian patrons expect straight-forward answers to rudely formed metaphysical questions, questions that we all ask in our own ways. That he can be disarmingly honest about his own doubts and fears regarding God, Christianity and his calling. He wears a habit but doesn’t hide behind it. He honors all things and manner of men with dignity and innate modesty. His “nakedness,” then, is not of the Sixties variety, “Let it all hang out.” It is absolutely who he is. His kind of transparency is a rare, rare thing. It is how most of us would like live, rather than behind masks and under expectations. Thus as Father Jeremy shares himself, his writing radiates a kind of universal blessedness, making all readers a bit holier no matter what they believe.

The following excerpt is but one taste of the many flavors of A Monk’s Alphabet.

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FIRST LOVE. When I was five years old, my brother and I burned our garage down. It was a big accident.

In the small town where I grew up in north Idaho, the fire department was volunteer. This meant that a loud siren had to sound in the town to call the volunteers from their scattered posts so that they could go rushing to the firehouse and then to the fire. The local radio would announce without delay where the fire was. This was so that, hearing the news, some volunteers could go directly to it. But the announcement was also made to satisfy the immediate curiosity of all in the town; for, of course, we all cared about and were interested in a fire.

My brother and my sister and I were having lunch with the babysitter when the siren began to blow. My brother jumped up and ran into the kitchen to turn on the radio and learn where the fire was. From the kitchen he could see the garage, which was a separate building from the house. He cried out, “It’s our house!” Panic immediately entered into me. Running to the window with my sister and the babysitter, we saw huge flames leaping out of the roof of the two-story building. Yes, it was on fire! It was our house. Someone had seen the smoke and leaping flames and had reported the fire.

A crowd gathered on the lawn to watch the drama unfold. It was a stunning scene for a five-year-old boy under any circumstances, but the effect was ten times the stronger for it being “our house.” This effect would be further intensified later when in my young mind I finally put two and two together and realized that what my brother and I had been up to in the garage earlier in the morning was the likely cause of this blaze. But in the first phase, that awareness had not yet dawned.

During this same period of my life, there was a girl in my kindergarten group whom I liked, and she liked me. I noticed I felt about her something different from what I felt about the other girls whom I also liked. I suppose it was a sort of first love, though I didn’t know to call it such at the time. But the fire provided evidence of my unique feelings for her. I saw her in the crowed gathering to watch the spectacle, and I remember thinking, “Oh no! Oh no!” Just then she saw me and came running over excitedly. She grabbed my hand and held it as we both gazed toward the blaze. She was thrilled and asked in solemn wonder, “Whose house is it?” I realized in the midst of my panic that she didn’t realize it was mine. So, trying to match in the tone of my voice her own pleasure at the flames, I said, “I don’t know.” But I could bear the pressure of this lie only momentarily. I snatched my hand from hers and went running off in a panic down the street to the house of my aunt and uncle. It was never the same between us after that. Our love could not survive a lie. That was a good lesson. I learned also another classic lesson at this moment of my life: not to play with matches.

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A Monk’s Alphabet: Moments of Stillness in a Turning World was first published last year by Darton, Longman & Todd of London, was printed this year for the North American market by New Seeds of Boston and is distributed by Random House. The list price is just short of 20 bucks American, which, for Sergeant Preston of the Mounties, translates into 26.95 Canadian.

Two days ago fifteen news services from the The Seattle Times to The Hollywood Reporter featured articles on The Proverb, a ten-mnute film that I wrote for Todd Albertson, the producer and director. We pulled in all favors to get our friends and their friends to pool their talents to give us a free day of shooting. After a week of editing and post production we entered The Proverb in a local film festival in 2004, placed in the top category (which really meant that there were twenty-plus entries topping ours), sold less than a dozen DVDs, and watched our work languish in obscurity until this year and a film festival on the East coast. There it rolled over and died.

The judges couldn't make up their minds whether it was the acting, writing or directing that made The Proverb a stinker. They said that they didn't know whether it was meant to be a comedy or a drama. Perhaps that had something to do with the ability to read. The Proverb purports on its disk cover and in all of its promotional material to offer chuckles and thigh-slappers. But then, this supposed humor is aimed at religion and journalism in contemporary America, which are serious subjects per se, and maybe that's where the confusion lay.

Then came howling from an Indian.

It was a glowing review that I thought Todd had made up. I offered to re-write it with some genuine-sounding Tontoisms: "Me like-um heap much. Kimosabe like-um too." But Todd said, "No! This is an Indian from India. His praise is genuine."

We suspect but don't know that the reviewer then entered the film in a festival in Calcutta. (Apparently Calcutta is spelled with a "K" these days, but Beijing to me is always going to be Peking, and I don't care what whose continent we're talking about.) I never heard of the festival, but it seems as if The Prover hit like a Jerry Lewis movie in France. I now quote from:

Kolkata International Spirituality Film Fest

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- In garnering Grand Prize honors at India's annual Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) International Spirituality Film Festival (KISFF) on Oct. 7, 2006, short film The Proverb had to break a few barriers: In the festival's three-year history, no other English-language films, short films, Western-made or Christian-themed films had won the coveted award.

The festival, held October 5-7, 2006 in Kolkata, had over 800 participants this year--an impressive 21% increase over last year's entries. Prior to being named Grand Prize winner at KISFF, The Proverb was a finalist in the 2004 168 Hour Film Project in Los Angeles.

"The Proverb has, in the past, been more popular overseas than in America," stated director Todd Albertson. "I attribute this to a trifecta--it was short, used wry humor, and would only be funny if the audience had strong knowledge of geopolitics, history, and religion."

The Proverb, a ten-minute mockumentary that takes on contemporary journalism and religiosity, easily draws in the audience with its spot-on send-ups of media figures that take themselves too seriously and the oh-so-pious folks for whom the appearance of being spiritual displaces true faith. Completed in 2004, the experimental piece was produced and directed by Todd Albertson and written by Jeff Andrus, the late Pope John Paul II's screenwriter. The Proverb was shot in just one week and stars Tony Award winner Scott Waara (The Happy Fella), Nancy Stafford (Matlock), Lauren E. Roman (All My Children), Christopher Prizzi (Law & Order), and newcomer Anna Michelle Wang.

"On behalf of all those involved in The Proverb, I'd like to thank the organizers, judges and participants of KISFF for recognizing The Proverb with their Grand Prize award," Albertson said. "I'd also like to thank whoever went to the huge effort of subtitling into Bengali and Hindi as well as submitting our film to the committee."

To learn more about The Proverb visit IMDb.com.



So now we have our fifteen minutes of fame. Where Mother Terresa started no less. Todd actually used the word "trifecta." And what was that about only educated and sophisticated foreigners?! I could have made him sound more proletarian, but no, ignore the writer, overshadow him with the Pope and make a statement that isn't accurate. That's the way it is in show biz. The director says, "Action," and, "Cut," while the cameraman is doing the real work and I'm shoveling dog crap off the lawn and handing up props out of frame. That's what really happened. Hey, Todd, why didn't you thank "all the little people behind the scenes?"

Problem: Kim Jong-Il is the dictator of North Korea. It is a very poor country, and he is a textbook paranoid schizo. He is fond of torturing dissidents and has forced millions of his subjects into starvation, taking resources they might have used to live and redirecting them for a nuclear weapons program and delivery system. He has just touched off his first successful underground A-bomb, and although it’s big and unwieldy, he’s working on getting it small enough to missile into the wild blue yonder. He says the United States is the enemy and has forced him to act the way he does. Japan and South Korea understandably are worried that he regards them as friends of his enemy. That probably should give pause to Australia and New Zealand because once Nut Boy begins pushing buttons, who knows where the missiles will come down?

Solution: Make Pyongyang, where Kim and most of his handpicked generals have their mansions, one big smoking hole in the ground. Adios, MF. RIP a lot of innocent people. But that’s better than death to you and me and lots and lots of our neighbors.

Of course, there would be international outcries and saber rattling from the Chinese, but maybe we could work a deal beforehand. Not a deal with the United Nations: it bows to Arab oil money and never lifted a finger as genocidal regimes from Africa to Asia did their bits to imitate North Korea. Hence Greenpeace would be billowing and squeaking, but maybe the Commie Chi would be reasonable. “We play the bad cop,” we say. “You take over what’s left.”

The alternative is to keep talking. We can blame President Bush for insisting on six-party negotiations when he should be sitting down with Kim for some one-on-one face time. For crying out loud, treat him like a human being! Or maybe it’s Madeline Albright’s fault for when she was President Clinton’s Secretary of State and waltzed with the madman. He’s short! What do you think that did to his self-esteem? Maybe if we treat him better or differently or something, Tinker Bell will fly, and Kim Jong-Il will stop laboring away.

We got started late for a number of reasons. The first was that the steering of my buddy’s car required “adjustment” because, although it had been fixed the day before, turning the wheel created bothersome noises. Metal grinding against metal noises that made you think bits and pieces were being left behind on the roadway. “But it’s perfectly safe,” the shop owner assured us.

My friend’s car is a secondhand but classy model. I like it better than his brand new car that was destroyed several months back by what we have taken to call The Flaming Mexican. Actually, it was the van the Mexican was driving that was aflame. The Flaming Mexican drove the van down Van Nuys Boulevard then veered into a nearly empty parking lot. Of all the spaces he could have stopped, he picked the one just behind my friend’s new car, whereupon he leapt out, made a quick call on his cell and beat cheeks. My friend was watching a matinee when cops entered, calling out his name. By then his car was black and smoking. Witnesses were able to ID the Mexican, and wouldn’t you know? He was an illegal alien who didn’t have insurance. As events transpired, the investigating officer discovered where The Flaming Mexican lived but said, “I got a thousand of these cases on my desk already. Nothing is going to happen.”

When I first heard this tragic story, the only thing I could think to say was, “Other than that how did you like the show?” In the heat of loss that didn’t go down well, but the friendship survived. Thus there we were, getting a late start, waiting for documented workers to fix the replacement car that hadn’t been fixed properly the day before. Afterwards we had to take my friend’s dog to a horse ranch outside of town. We took a wrong turn and needed to get back on the freeway.

It was at the intersection to the on-ramp where we spotted a teenage girl wearing a pullover. There was a stop sign but no light. More notable was the pullover: it was decorated with a sequenced pentagram cut nearly in half by a zipper pulled low. I’m not really attracted to teenage girls, but whether feminists want to admit it or not, men do notice what females wear, and most of us process the information sexually. So I made the editorial comment, “No tits.” When my friend turned to look, the girl started to wave us through the intersection with a casual flick or two of the hand, like she knew what she was doing. The driver of the car in the adjoining lane must have thought so too because, as we went straight, he turned left. We exchanged bumpers. Everyone was a gentleman about it, including the motorcycle cop who was right there to take it all in.

Four men, one girl. We didn't stand a chance.

Once we were on the open road sans dog, my friend mused, “Do you realize how many instances, changes in plans, traffic patterns led up to that one girl being at that exact spot the same time we were?”

It has been over ten days since the incident, and it occurs to me now there had to be some free will involved. Rather than focusing on the zipper, I could have more clearly thought about the significance of the pentagram and prayed for the girl’s immortal soul. My pal could have picked a different repair shop. Heck, he could have spent a few extra bucks and taken in the six o’clock show.