What the Franciscan Monk Told Me About Our Store
Walking and praying, walking and praying
The door to the book shop opens and it could be anyone, maybe the mayor or a mom with three kids or an old friend stopping to say hello. It could be someone who will tell me about all the recent books they bought from Amazon or a person who explains why they don't buy new books. It could be the mailman or the landlord or the UPS driver. It could be a lovely customer about to buy $100 in books, or $200, or someone looking for a book on grief because their child died last year and they’re finally ready. Or it could be a young person asking for a book about heartbreak.
“My boyfriend and I recently broke up,” one young woman said to Maile, her eyes filling with tears. “Do you have something that would help?”
Every day, someone different. Every day, someone new, looking for something. We’re all looking for something, aren’t we? But in a bookstore the desire is laid bare, and we search for something outside ourselves to speak to these innermost longings. Fears. Desires.
When this man walks into the store, there is an air of joy and peace that comes with him. He has white hair and a kind smile. He asks if Maile is in the shop, and when I tell him no, he tells me to make sure I give her his regards. They have had long conversations before, about books and life.
I ask him what he’s read lately and we spend some time talking about these reads, the last books he bought in our shop, and then somehow in our meandering conversation he mentions that he is a monk, a Capuchin Franciscan, someone who lives a simple lifestyle and serves the poor. I’m surprised this hasn’t come up before; I’m sure Maile hasn’t said anything about it.
I ask him what it means to be a monk in the 21st century in a small city in the middle of Pennsylvania. He says he lives in senior living apartments and watches the birds roost in the building across the way and, most days, he walks the streets of our small city praying…for individuals he meets, for organizations he walks past, for the city itself.
It’s actually a comforting a thought, this idea that there are people making their way through our city in this way, that they care that much about the people and places here. I love the image of this small man wandering along, stopping at intersections, nodding a hello, and praying.
“With the way the world is now,” he says quietly, smiling a kind of sad smile, “prayer is one thing we can all do, perhaps one of the most important things.”
Prayer? I want to say. Prayer? What can prayer do in the face of all this madness and hypocrisy and hatred and cruelty?
But I don’t ask it, I don’t say it. I just smile and sigh and ask him if he’s ever read Umberto Eco’s massive book, The Name of the Rose. It’s a book that takes place in a 14th century Franciscan abbey, a murder mystery full of history and intrigue and, perhaps the best part, a labyrinthine library. I first read it in a Postmodern Lit class I took in college, and I absolutely loved the protagonist, the setting, the idea that being able to find your way through a maze of books might bring the answer everyone is looking for.
Just thinking about it makes me want to reread it, or become a monk, or move to Italy.
My Franciscan’s face lights up at the book suggestion. He asks if we have it in stock, and I point it out, and he looks it over and puts it on the counter. “Save that for me,” he says, then disappears into the store on his usual search for more books.
But none of that compared to what he said before he walked out the door.