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Rite at the Top:
Some days later Father Athanasius suggested that I attend another celebration–this time at the little stone shelter at the top of the mountain where I had earlier encountered the outlaws.
This was to be another all night session but I would be the only person from Saint Anne’s to attend. He said I should carry a blanket since the nights got cold at the top.
After the evening meal but before the light faded on the day of the celebration, I made my way once more up the slope to the summit–but what a change had taken place!
Where before there had been only the three outlaws and myself, now there were maybe a hundred or more priests and monks milling about. The ceremony was to take place in the same little stone hut that I had so casually occupied with the outlaws for tea and biscuits but now there was such a crush of monastics that I could scarcely approach.
A fierce monk was guarding the water cistern and food and he very grudgingly allowed me a cup of water and a piece of bread
These celebrants, I thought, could only be the bureaucrats so scorned by the outlaws.
And, of course, there was no trace of my outlaw friends.
After I received the bread and water, I spent most of the long, dark night hanging around the edges of the celebrants—never again entering the little building-- but it was cold and miserable for me and not at all the uplifting ceremony I had experienced just a few days earlier at Saint Anne’s.
In the small hours of the morning I crept away from the noise and commotion at the hut and climbed down from the summit. It was bitterly cold so I found a sheltering crack in the rock, wrapped myself tightly in my blanket and slept.
At first light I found my way back to Saint Anne’s and joined my familiar “brothers” for breakfast.
Tomasito 2009
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