The Way of Aquinas

It was all very distressing.

“But lobsters just don’t do such things!” said Wystan’s live-in mother Mum Olga, “It’s unnatural!”

The lobster was firm upon the point however: he was determined to become a Dominican, just like his personal hero St. Thomas Aquinas. At first, Wystan and Mum Olga thought that their lobster Pudges was simply ill and took him to the veterinarian.

“What is it, doctor?” Mum Olga said between sniffles, “A cold? Measles? Whooping cough?”

“I’m afraid not,” said the doctor, “Rather extraordinary; nothing quite compares. It took a while to know for sure, but it seems as though your lobster is determined to be an ascetic, a Dominican, more precisely. He’s professing Thomism at the moment.”

Wystan asked how one goes about treating a Thomism, but the doctor said it wasn’t that kind of a malady. Wystan and Mum Olga had always been strict Orthodox Quakers, with the occasional lapse on Mum Olga’s part to the old Eastern Orthodox ways, so the decision was quite distressing. Lobsters are pets, and, as Wystan and Mum Olga had assumed, unlikely to have enough volition to leave Orthodox Quakerism, but there they were, a threesome comprising a good Orthodox Quaker, an Eastern Orthodox Quaker, and a Roman Catholic lobster ascetic. Wystan took it very hard and turned to Harry Potter, a vice of which Mum Olga heartily disapproved. The lobster had kept long vows of silence and lived in a monastery far away but wrote often (as much as a lobster is really able) and tried to comfort Mum Olga to no avail. Brother Pudges of the Ascension had made a decision that was irreversible, and nothing would ever be the same. He had no way to do anything more; he was a lobster and a monk. Mum Olga left Wystan and decided to acquire a last name, which required being christened, marking the end of her involvement with Orthodox Quakerism and a returned to her Easter Orthodox roots. Wystan was greatly ashamed by Mum Olga Jenkins apostasy and started to write fan-fiction in order to spite her, but it was too late; she remarried Wystan’s father and became Mum Olga Jenkins-Greenfarley (her new last name was far too precious to give up after all that it had cost her, but Dad Benji Greenfarley was also quite insistent that she take upon herself the Greenfarley name once again, so the only way forward was the dreaded double-barrelled surname). Wystan was now the Lone Quaker, which was also the name of the main character to his first departure from fan-fiction: the intriguing yet cloyingly sentimental western novel There Ain’t No Name Like the One That Leaves You to Die in the Desert. Brother Pudges of the Ascension didn’t read the book; he was a lobster and a monk. Such books of low quality never darkened the walls of the monastery. In his days of solitude, study, and reflexion he tried to make sense of all that had happened to his family and life beforehand, the great downfall of the Greenfarleys. He took up paper and pen and could not carry it, so he asked his fellow Brother Ambrose to write to his dictation his memoirs: The Great Downfall of the Greenfarleys, or How I Became a Lobster-Dominican and Crustacean-Mystic. Perhaps you have heard of it, for it has touched the lives of thousands of people and lobsters alike, not to mention the influential Welsh corgi politician Appleface Gruffudd Applefacedauddigion, who used it when he was sworn into office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He went on to visit Brother Pudges of the Ascension in order to thank him for all that he had done for him in writing such a moving memoir about his life, but when he arrived at the monastery he was greeting by Brother Ambrose.

“I’m so very sorry, Your Most Masterful Highness Appleface Gruffudd Applefacedauddigion, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but Brother Pudges of the Ascension has passed on.”

“It’s Prime Minister Appleface Gruffudd Applefacedauddigion of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, France, Irish Newfoundland, French Newfoundland, and Canadian Newfoundland now; we did some remodeling. Oh my diggy-diggy-dog-dazzle! (We must forgive the Prime Minister; he was trying to stop cursing and still bad at remaining silent or just saying “crap!”) What did he die of?”

“Die! When?”

“I thought you said that he had ‘passed on’?”

“Oooh! Ha ha, humour! I merely meant that he had gone away as a special advisor to the cardinals electing the next pope.”

“Ah, well, I suppose I’ll wait here then, if it’s all the same to everyone else. I was quite moved by the Brother Pudges of the Ascension’s collection of memoirs, The Great Downfall of the Greenfarleys, or How I Became a Lobster-Dominican and Crustacean-Mystic.”

“Oh, are you Roman Catholic?”

“No thank you, I never touch the stuff myself. Welsh Baptist, sometimes Welsh Methodist, sometimes both, but Welsh all the same. His upbringing reminds me so much of my own. They said it was out of character for a corgi to be a politician, just like they said a lobster shouldn’t be a monastic. His work pushed me over the edge; now I preside over all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, France, Irish Newfoundland, French Newfoundland, and Canadian Newfoundland. Did I mention Merseyside and Jersey? Never matter. The point is, we’re basically the same animal just that I have a pince-nez and he’s a lobster.”

“Ah.”

Prime Minister Appleface Gruffudd Applefacedauddigion waited in the foyer for nine months until Brother Pudges of the Ascension arrived.

“Just like a pregnancy,” the Prime Minister said to himself more than to the lobster-monastic.

“I’m so very sorry,” said Brother Pudges of the Ascension, “If I knew you were waiting here I wouldn’ have scuttled all the way back and took the aeroplane.”

It was a grand old time! The corgi-politician and the crustacean mystic who changed his life forever, finally in the same monastery! It was time to begin something great.