Crossing the Jabbok

22The same night he got up… and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 24Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me."
Genesis 32:22-32

The other day at prayer we read the passage from Genesis of Jacob wrestling with the angel. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. There is something about Jacob’s wrestling that is a deep metaphor for monastic life, especially entry into monastic life.

Jacob was in a liminal space, a boundary between his old and new life. He is trying to reconcile with his brother Esau and yet is afraid that Esau will try to kill him. He has sent his family, servants and animals on ahead and is alone, camped by the river. In the night he wrestles with a mysterious stranger, demanding to know his name and thus to have power over him. Jacob prevails in the fight and is himself given a new name to suit his new life.

In coming to monastic life, indeed to any commitment of faith, we have to cross the Jabbok, not just once but again and again on this journey. I remember the last night in my home before I left for the monastery and the last night before I finished driving to Cottonwood. They were nights of anxiety, hope, fear and wonder, nights of wrestling with the mysterious forces that led me to this place. I was standing by my own river, the boundary between my old and new life, demanding a blessing as I went into the unknown.

The monastic life requires giving up possessions, money, previous employment and networks of friends and family. It entails crossing a boundary into a new land, a new culture, a new way of being. When we enter this new way of life we wrestle with mysterious forces in the night, demanding that we be blessed for our willingness to seek God in this new way, demanding that we know the name of the forces that keep us awake at night wondering whether this was the right decision, wondering what we will face in the morning when we cross our own Jabbok.

Perhaps more than anything I resonate with Jacob who came away blessed but who always limped because of the blessing. Every day as he limped, his hip hurting, he was reminded that even though he had “’…striven with God and with humans, and …prevailed’” there was a cost to his wrestling, he prevailed at a price. This was not a cheap blessing, Jacob had to surrender a part of himself at the Jabbok, the blessing was won at the price of loss.

In the journey of monastic life, of any life of seeking God, we will cross and re-cross our Jabbok. At night we will face our fear of the unknown, of being called ever deeper into this life of following God at whatever price, to an unknown destination. In the night we will wrestle and demand that we be blessed by this fierce God who leads us to a fearsome unknown. Again and again we receive a new name, a new affirmation that we are not alone, we are indeed blessed. But each time we limp. We are reminded at each step on the journey that it is God alone who grants the blessing, God alone who gives us our new name and God alone who brings the daybreak and the light by which we will cross our Jabbok again.

Across Continents and Centuries

What makes us Benedictines, across time, continents, cultures and languages? What are the fundamental similarities that unite people who have a made a commitment to live according to the guidelines set out by Benedict in Italy in the 6th century?
Recently our community had some new insights into the gift of unity amid diversity that characterizes monastic life.

Back in the 1930’s the Benedictine Sisters of St. Andrew’s Convent, Sarnen, Switzerland founded a new monastery in Cameroon, West Africa. That monastery is still there, now consisting entirely of women from Cameroon. The Benedictine Sisters of Sarnen previously founded our monastery in 1882. That makes us sisters or cousins perhaps, with the sisters in Cameroon.

Recently we became acquainted with our “cousins” for the first time. Sr. Josephine, the prioress of the Cameroon community stayed with us for four months, from October to February, working on her English so she could attend an education program in Rome next year. She lived and worked with us, taking informal classes from Srs. Evangela and Cecile and participating in all aspects of community life.

It was clear that many things separated us. The language of her community is French, and her country lives with the legacy of French colonialism. The complexities and challenges of English were formidable. One night at dishes one of the cooks had left an Avon catalogue. This lead to some very funny, and rather odd, discussions about Avon products amid our attempt to explain what “Avon calling!” means.

Her community still wears the habit. They are much smaller, consisting of about 12 members, and their average age is much lower than ours. Their challenges are those of the developing world, they don’t deal with the issue of “affluenza” and too many possessions that we have here. They only recently were able to get a consistent supply of clean water thanks to a non-profit organization from Switzerland. They have recently taken in several children who are orphans or whose families cannot care for them, including some with HIV.

But together we are monastics. We come together without fail to pray the Divine Office several times a day. We struggle with common issues of community life and the reality of people who cannot seem to live up to the standards we set. Sr. Josephine has been prioress for 12 years because they do not have enough people who can take over leadership just as we also face a dwindling pool of potential leaders. We all laughed together at the experience we have in common as Sr. Josephine showed the slides of their garden and beautiful carrots. Together we are united to our land. We shared the reality that every day and every meal dishes have to be washed. We resonated with the stories of how they try to come up with creative ways to support the monastery economically.

But there is much that ties us together. For all of us it is together that we seek God. Our monastic “family” stretches across continents and centuries. Together we trace our roots to Benedict and 6th century Italy. Together we claim as our motherhouse a group of women that dates to the 17th century in Switzerland. Our community is an expression of a time when European monasteries were sending missionaries to the new territory of the United States. Sr. Josephine’s community is part of monastic life from a new century on a new continent and a new way of being monastic. We don’t share the same language, the same culture or the same way of interpreting monastic life. But every day we come together to pray, every day we listen to the Rule of St. Benedict and Scripture, every day, for the rest of our lives we will live together and seek God. Together we are united in faith, in monastic life and the realization that we are bringing about the Reign of God in our midst and that transcends all our differences.

Social Networking - Web 2.0

When I first came to the monastery no one had e-mail, there wasn’t a monastery web site and the people who invented Facebook were probably still in elementary school. Back in the Dark Ages of the late 90’s much of what we take for granted today was still relatively new. Admittedly we at the monastery were still slow on the technology curve even then but it was a different, much less connected world.

Today our community communication is largely by e-mail, everyone who needs a computer for work has one and we focus on keeping our website up to date. However, the new phenomenon of “social networking” is a little slower to catch on. A few of us are trying Facebook, although personally this “friending” business gives me some very traumatic flashbacks to the junior high school social pecking order. As far as I know there have not been any “Tweets” coming out of the monastery although someone may have a secret Twitter life I don’t know about. Some of this reluctance or cluelessness about the new networking styles may be age related, some this stuff makes more sense if you’re under 30. But I also wonder about how all this fits with being monastic.

In some ways Benedict invented social networking. When you live together, 24/7, for the rest of your life, you don’t really need a virtual post to tell everyone what you are doing at any given time. Even if they had computers I suspect that Brother Maurus never would have needed to answer the Facebook question: “What are you doing right now?” Everybody would know what he was doing, he would be at prayer, he would have his week as kitchen server, it would be time for lectio (prayerful reading) or everyone would know that he was sneaking behind the kitchen for a cigarette or trying to get a few more minutes of sleep before the bell. In community everyone knows what you are doing at any time.

But our society in general has lost any sense of connection. We live alone or in small families. We value our separateness, our “space.” We want lots of land around our houses, sound-proofing in our apartments. We value our autonomy and independence. We bristle at anyone making decisions for us. We hop from one relationship to the next while both fearing and longing for commitment. In the web of social relationships we are society of spiders dangling from the end of the web not sure how to get back to interconnectedness.

This is probably where the new social networking phenomenon comes in. We have become so isolated, so independent that we don’t really know how to relate in person. We don’t live together. We are fearful of strange people while at the same time we don’t live close to our friends and family. And so we reach out in “virtual” relationships. We long to feel connected, to share ourselves, to know we aren’t alone, that someone is interested in who we are and what we are doing. We are assuaging a deep loneliness we don’t want to admit we have.

In the monastery there are real connections. Not easy connections, not always “nice” connections. The relationships can be as painful as they are profound, sometimes they are superficial, sometimes they reflect a deep sense of God’s presence. But they are very real. This monastic version of social networking is how we are transformed. We live together, pray together, work together and hopefully learn to see the presence of God in one another. It is a struggle, it is hard work, but what is at stake is nothing less than life. Our “network” in the monastery is nothing less than how we travel together on the spiritual journey. In the words of Benedict: “Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us altogether to everlasting life.” This is the ultimate “friending.”

Room for God in Lent

In chapter 49 of his Rule Benedict says that the life of a monk should be a “continuous Lent.” Next, being the realist that he is, he allows that most monks can’t manage to live at such a level of intensity. He urges his community to take Lent seriously, to “wash away the negligences” of other times and to give up some eat, drink, sleep or idle talk during Lent and to add to the usual measure of private prayer. He says that all of this will allow us to approach Easter with “joy and spiritual longing.”

At the monastery every year, following Benedict’s advice, we tell the Prioress what we are going to do for Lent, what spiritual practices we will undertake. This process is called “Bona Opera” meaning “good works.” Benedict mandates that people tell the abbot/prioress what they are going to do for Lent so that there will be accountability. Otherwise he feels that if monks take on some spiritual discipline without approval and blessing it is “presumption and vainglory.”

It has taken me a while to figure out what Benedict means and what Lent is really about for that matter. I’ve always struggled with how giving things up would make more holy. My limited experience has been that it just makes me more cranky. I’ve never been quite sure what to say I’m going to do for Lent, self-discipline is not my strong suit and there are days when I think deeper holiness is a lost cause.

This year though it is making a little more sense (I’m a slow learner.) Lent is not about extra spiritual practices to remind me how undisciplined and far from holiness I am (although that is true) the sacrifices and disciplines are simply about making room. The “negligences” that Benedict refers to are just the little accommodations of daily life that squeeze out God. The television, web surfing, fluffy books, craving for sweets, all those sort of things that seem too inconsequential to worry about, much less give up for Lent, do add up. They add up to time and psychic space that becomes increasingly crowded and busy with less room for God.

Perhaps Lent is simply a vacare Deo, an open space for God. We rein in the busyness, the compulsions, the distractions that consume us and allow ourselves some more breathing space, a retreat space that is carved out of daily life, in order to breath in the love of God that surrounds and enfolds us. Lent becomes a gift, not a burden or even a creative exercise in self-sacrifice, it is a resting place where we pause and realize that indeed we are looking forward to Easter, to new life in God with a deep, aching joy that we usually cover up with the compulsions that creep into our lives the rest of the year.

So this year I’m sure I won’t be any holier at the end of Lent, probably not much more self-disciplined, and there will still be too many distractions. But perhaps there will also be a glimpse of what Benedict was talking about, a deeper sense of the “joy and spiritual longing” that continually help us move toward the reality of Easter and our new birth in God.