Often, one thing leads to another. I was reading the draft of a friend’s book, which contained a quote by 4th century monk, Abba Moses: “‘Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” I was really struck by this quote, so I looked on Amazon to see if I could find a book with that and other sayings by Abba Moses.
Well, I didn’t find what I was looking for. Instead, I ran across a book of poems entitled, A Crown for Abba Moses by Timothy Bartel. The book is named for a series of seven sonnets, which give snapshots of Abba Moses’s life—from his days as a philandering criminal to his death at the hands of bandits. These poems vividly capture the savagery of Abba Moses’s early days and, as portrayed in the poems, show a man who was surprised by a God he wasn’t looking for. I think the quiet ease with which God seems to have conquered this raging bull of a man was what I loved most about these poems.
A Crown for Abba Moses includes many other sonnets but also free verse, some of which have unusual enjambment (the way lines break). Bartel’s poems employ engaging imagery and a strong sense of story. Best of all, they are faith-full as they are artful. One is left with a sense of something calm and settled but not complacent; a sense of a person who knows by experience that “He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters” (Psalm 23:2).
Below is the fifth sonnet from “A Crown for Abba Moses.” Please check out Bartel’s book. It is worth your time more than many things in this world.
A monk was caught in petty lies and lust
And so the monastery priest had called
A meeting in the church so each could chide
The wayward one. But Moses would not come.
The priest insisted on his presence there,
But Moses still delayed. Impatient, all
Marched out to find him at his cell. Toward them
He limped beneath a ragged sack of sand
Which slopped behind him by the bucketful.
He sighed: “My brothers, see this bag of sand?
It holds my many sins. They pour behind
Me, but I cannot see them, for I come
To judge my brother and ignore myself.”
And so they each forgave the wayward monk.
A Wandering Minstrel 