The Inspired Monk

He dreamt about home again last night. He was walking down a puddled path, in shorts, holding a stick, rain turning his blond hair brown: his childhood in Cornwall.
His stomach was so round that he rolled out of bed like a sea lion. He splashed his face with water from a white chipped enamel basin and wished he hadn't drunk so much after dinner. Ciders, beers, ales, meads and hydromels (when there was honey)were all brewed at the abbey. Some of it was sold to the two local dingy pubs in town, the money going to grounds maintenance. But most of it was consumed by him and his holy brothers. There wasn't a well at the secluded abbey.
He rubbed his eyes and then put his hands on either side of his navel and thought about what Father Phillipa said the night before, "Beekeepers are the happiest men on earth." And he did notice that ever since taking over the responsibility (with regret at first, he preferred studying) of over-seeing the seven hives on the grounds, that there was more blood flowing to his head and he really was happier.
He rocked back and forth on his heels, looking down at his rotund stomach quite content with it. He remembered seeing his brother for the first time five years after joining the clergy, when his mother was ill, and finding him looking so thin and poor. His chin came to a point from taut jaw bones and he thought he looked absolutely frail and poverty stricken. His eyes had grown accustomed to filled-out bodies, faces as round as melons. His brother poked his stomach with a finger and a wink, "As the soul expands, so does the body."
He wondered how he would have been had he married and taken over the family wool textile business. Studying, ideas, understanding things were just so much more important to him than making garments that would wear away with time. He couldn't afford school, so he became a monk.
In the beginning, he'd dream of the sheep in Cornwall, the craggy bald cliffs, the sea, long walks with Glippy his dog.
He had many nightmares as a child. In a recurring horror, he'd sink into the sea in slow motion as a caped man threw all around him mewing kittens trapped in bags made of woven human hair. The water was black and the sky was swirling muddy and the caped man walked away leaving him stuck to the earth, just his torso above water. He couldn't move and he cried and howled and his mom came in to his bedroom at this point, confused as to why he just wanted to see and touch his feet and legs.
He hadn't had a nightmare in years, he thought, as he put on his robes hung on a hook on the door. He went through the courtyard and into the chapel for morning vespers.
He remembered when he first first arrived at the abbey as a twenty year old. He heard the other holy men talking about hearing "the call" and it had worried him that he'd never remembered being called by God. But he didn't think about that anymore. He looked down at the floor in front of the pew in front of him and saw a dead moth, powdery gray with wings outstretched. He closed his eyes.
He strode out buoyantly out of the chapel, crossed the sunny grounds, past the medicinal herb garden, and approached the elderberry grove where his seven hives were placed and smiled.