Being There 101

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

Sometimes we take existence for granted and become oblivious to the sheer wonder of being. That’s why I recently took a couple of remedial courses on how to be. My tutors included rock stars, writers, and monks.

The Beatles started the tutorial. They have not been a group for over 50 years and two of them are dead, but there they were again, on my television, streaming on Disney+ as they worked together on their last concert and final two albums. It was amazing to be a fly on the walls of the film’s venues.

Many reviewers of this new Peter Jackson documentary (The Beatles: Get Back) have dissected it for clues about why the Beatles broke up in 1969. Was it George Harrison’s creative differences with John Lennon and Paul McCartney? Bad blood between McCartney and Lennon? Yoko Ono?

I found the documentary fascinating for other reasons. In over six hours of film, viewers see the Fab Four at work together, creating—almost from scratch—great music like “Get Back,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” and many of the songs from the classic Abbey Road and other albums. We even learn the origin story for the real anvil/hammer used in “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

By 1969, the Beatles were wildly successful, but none of them were older than age 29. They were kids! We see Lennon and McCartney strumming and laughing together like schoolboys. We see Harrison hurt by band member comments critical of his more mystical music. We see Ringo Starr, largely silent in the background, but arguably the kindest and most grounded young man in the group.

In other words, we get to see the Beatles being with each other while they…well, be Beatles.

My other recent tutors were the journalist Judith Valente and Kentucky Trappist monk Brother Paul Quenon. They recently wrote the lovely new book How to Be: A Monk and a Journalist Reflect on Living & Dying, Purpose & Prayer, Forgiveness & Friendship(Hampton Roads Publishing 2021).

The book is a series of letters the authors wrote to each other ruminating on various topics such as work, time, silence, and purpose. Valente calls it “two friends sorting through their vulnerabilities, bewilderments, and uncertainties in search for unvarnished truth.”

I read the book and attended their zoom cast about it. Expressing gratitude for his correspondence and relationship with Valente, Brother Paul said, “Friendship is the most important thing in life.”

The authors intrigued me. Judith was kind enough to write an early review for my own book, Monastery Mornings. I grew up with the Trappists in Utah—and am still friends with the surviving Utah monks—so I also was very interested in what Brother Paul had to say.

The Trappist monk got right to the heart of it by responding to a novelist/friend of Valente, who had postulated that “the purpose of life is to discover your purpose.” Quenon countered that the purpose of the monastic life in the modern world is “to show you don’t need a purpose. The purpose of life is life. You’re to live your life.”

Valente expressed a feeling I often share, noting how there always is a small voice in one’s head warning about wasting time. Brother Paul had a wonderful response, “Indeed, a good way of getting over the feeling that you are wasting your time is to go out and waste more of it. Waste it intentionally. Take a walk in the neighborhood and see the trees; notice how people keep their yards. Smell the air. Get free of what seems urgent and necessary; get away from the feeling that the world will crumble without you.”

What about the current crisis in the Catholic Church related to the sex abuse scandal and coverup? Valente has said my book Monastery Mornings gives hope to many who are “hanging on by our fingertips” when it comes to the church. Brother Paul calmly noted, “Church history is full of blunders. Somehow we survive.”

Speaking of surviving, during the zoom cast, I asked Brother Paul about the future of the beautiful monastic life. He explained how it is like “a desert plant” with “a knack for hanging in there and coming back to life when the rains arrive.”

His calm acceptance of the current decline in monasticism mirrors his attitude towards life itself as expressed in his letters to Valente. “The whole of life is a dying process, and we waste much of it being something other than what we really are. It is a wandering into the need for this, or away from fear of that. It is an impersonation of whatever role the moment demands. Rarely do we settle in to be.”

It may seem incongruent to lump Valente/Quenon and Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starr into the same search-for-the-meaning-of-life category. Or perhaps it is a mere cosmic coincidence that rockers and monastics have offered a message, at the same moment, about being.

I think the universe intended it, at least for me. Here’s my proof. The title of Valente’s/Quenon’s book is How to Be. The name of the album the Beatles developed during the documentary? Let it Be.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.