Some months ago, there was a 60 Minutes story about male renunciates—Eastern Orthodox monks of some sort—at a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. There were men of all nationalities, who took new monk names and otherwise assumed the trappings of a new life. Their essential business was mystical—to contemplate God while living a generally ascetic life. There were Americans there, who had so renounced their old lives that one of them, when his father had died, had chosen not to go to his funeral, or such. Bob Simon, the correspondent, seemed to find this rather bizarre, if not appalling.
Well, to each his own, we can say. But there was one thing I found amusing. To deal with the basic needs of the community of men there, there was a medical facility of a sort…and there was a workshop, for doing fixes wherever needed, manned by a man of…guess what nationality? German.
Of course. The German could have as much religious zeal in going there for that monastery’s purpose as anyone else, and would, initially trying to adhere to the schedule, do the contemplative exercises as faithfully as anyone else.
But after a while, being German, he would say [phonetic spellings attempted], “I gcan’t chust gontemplate Gott all Day long. Sometimesz, I havf to vork mit my Handsz, usze zum Toolsz. I vill go vfix der leak fvrum der Toilet Tank that’sz been botheringk Everybody” [nouns capitalized per German style].
And thus he became the go-to monk for getting things fixed.
