Everyday Life: Nakedness and Mirrors

“…supporting with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior.” RB 72:5

Before I came to the monastery I read a wonderful book by a journalist who spent several months living in Trappist men’s monasteries. The Trappist’s are a monastic order that is strictly enclosed, they do manual labor to support themselves rather than ministries that require them to go outside. The author got to know the monks very well and writes about several in depth conversations including one with an abbot who said “you know, we walk around naked here.” Of course he didn’t mean physically naked, but naked in the sense that when you live with a small number of people, in an enclosed space, for years on end, pretty soon there is nothing you don’t know about them. You get to know all their moods, their pet peeves, whether you should even try talking to them before they have had their coffee in the morning. There is nothing hidden in a monastery.

After a few years of living in my monastery I thought that I could amend what the abbot said. I would say “we walk around naked in a house full of mirrors.” But pretty soon when you live with people day after day you realize that you aren’t just seeing them, you realize that you are looking in a mirror day after day. All the things that you see in another person that seem so irritating are really your own problems being mirrored back to you.

When I first came to the monastery there was one woman who seemed to have the power to irritate me to no end. I could tell it was irrational, she was a perfectly nice person, but there was something about her that felt like finger nails on the blackboard of my psyche. It took years of everyday living, seeing her in the hallways, chapel, dining room, living with her, before I realized what it was. Somehow, on some very deep, unconscious level, I saw in her my deepest fears about myself. When I saw her she became me at 12 years old, back in the deepest, most painful depths of junior high school, those years that I, and most people, shudder to even think about. Knowing this woman was like constantly walking by a magic fun house mirror that showed only images of my deepest insecurities.

Of course if we look carefully we also see what we can be. The mirror also reflects our deepest gifts, our wisdom, how we will be transfigured and transformed by our faithfulness to this way of life. There are many women in the same hallways, dining room and chapel that I hope to become. When I look at them I hope I am looking into a mirror of my future. A future when I no longer see that image of 12 year old angst, but a figure of patience, humility, ability to love even the most difficult people, able to inspire and teach.

This is the odd gift of the monastery. You can’t remain cloaked in your illusions about yourself. Most of us can manage to have our act together for large parts of the day, while we are at work, for long periods of time in our lives, but if you live in the monastery there are no illusions, you are forced to look in the mirror. Every day, reflected back at you are both the sags, wrinkles, scars and warts that you try to cover up. But at the same time there is the luminous reality that we are truly the image of God, the light of God shines in us and through us.

Is Benedict Morbid?

Day by day remind mind yourself that you are going to die. RB 4:47

In our culture death has become the ultimate obscenity, the one thing that we refuse to look at, talk about, or admit the reality of. It’s too bad. By refusing to look at death we are prevented from really living.

Benedict’s statement in chapter four of the Rule, “The Tools of Good Works,” is startling and rather repugnant in our culture. Remind ourselves that we are going to die? No way! We want to focus on how to prevent death, we constantly read articles on how medicine is going to keep us from dying. How horribly morbid to remind ourselves that we are going to die!

The reality though is that there is a tremendous liberation in reminding ourselves that we are going to die. When we remind ourselves every day that we are going to die it becomes easier to see what an incredible, ephemeral gift life really is. Our life is only a gift, not an entitlement, not something we deserve to have on our own terms. Our life is to be enjoyed, appreciated and used wisely here in this moment because the next moment may not come. If we look at life this way perhaps it becomes easier to focus on who we are in this present moment and less on what we have to accomplish before we die. Our being, rather than our doing, becomes a matter of gratitude rather than pressure to accomplish or to cling tightly to our expectations of what life should be.

Perhaps this is one of the gifts of a monastery, especially in this day and age. As most monastic and other religious communities decline in membership and the average age continue to increase, we worry about our corporate death, as well as the death of individuals. Perhaps, though, this is actually a gift. If we remind ourselves that not only will each of one of us individuals die, but some day our monastery will also die. Although some monasteries continue for many centuries, there will come an end. So what happens when we remind ourselves daily of that reality?

Perhaps it means that all of us, corporately and individually, are freed from the onerous task of worrying about survival. If I have to keep focusing on what I need to do as an individual or a community member in order to eek out a few more years for myself or the monastery I’m not really living, I’m only surviving, I’m merely existing. I’m simply holding on because I am afraid to die, not because I have a reason to live.

The daily reminder of death on the other hand is a call to rejoice and dance before God. All I have is this moment given to me by God, this moment to use my gifts and talents to bring about the Reign of God. If I know and accept and embrace the fact that I am going to die then I can be about the task of living, I no longer have to use all my energy on denying and avoiding death. If death is a constant reminder then the present moment becomes the moment of God’s grace and presence. This daily reminder becomes a liberation if I don’t have to cling tightly to life then I may be able to loosen up and simply revel in the joy of this day. Carpe diem!

Everyday Life: Bread

You can always tell it is bread day around here. People tend to walk around sniffing the air with smiles on their faces. Fresh bread smells permeate the house and there are glimpses of loaves cooling in the bakery.

We bake all our own bread. At one point we were making at least 50 loaves a week. I know the number hasn’t gone down and may be going up. There is always white and wheat and sometimes a special herb bread or other exotic new types.

There is something deeply appropriate and right about a monastery baking bread. As a community we are centered on bread. Our entire way of life is about celebrating the bread of life, Jesus who dwells in our midst. We share the daily bread of the Eucharist and we attempt in our fumbling ways to become bread for one another. When we share our community life with so many people who come as retreatants, guests, volunteers and visitors, we share our physical bread in the meals we offer and we offer to all the bread of our lives and our presence.

Living monastic life is a lot like baking bread. It is harder than it looks, it takes time, there are always holes and mistakes and the bread has to be carefully tended so as not to get stale and become useless. A good community is also like good bread. It is simple, not fancy, ordinary, solid and wholesome. Both bread and community are things that are usually taken for granted but are fundamental to human life.

So as the new loaves come out of the oven they hold so much. In bread our bodies are fed. Bread is the life we know in Christ. In broken bread is our life which we give for others. Another bread day comes and goes but in it we are reminded of how extraordinary and how holy is the ordinary.

Everyday Life: God and Little Old Ladies

These days it seems like our chapel could double for a rehabilitation ward. We seem to have had a rash of injuries, surgeries and medical problems lately. The folks who are temporarily or permanently incapacitated seem to overwhelm those of us who are still relatively intact mentally and physically.

To some extent this is temporary, a number of people have problems that will heal pretty quickly, but the deeper reality is that we are an aging community. Like most monasteries and religious communities our average age keeps increasing and the number of women entering isn’t enough to replace those who die. On bad days it seems like we are becoming a retirement facility for little old ladies and there isn’t much of a future for our monastery.

But then I realize that God has a very special regard for little old ladies, in fact God frequently uses little old ladies to change the world. This is very much in keeping with God’s deeply strange sense of humor. God likes to turn things upside down and inside out. God seems to be averse to the idea of the “way things are supposed to be.” I mean any God who can save the world by allowing the Son to die a shameful death does not think in conventional ways.

So it fits that God uses little old ladies to shake up the world. Sarah was barren, she was old, she no longer even dreamt of having children and yet through Isaac a great nation was born. Hannah was a little feistier, she kept going to the Temple and railing at God, so full of longing that she sounded drunk when she prayed. Elizabeth was a woman vindicated, she knew shame and she knew the part she would play in bringing about a radical new world order. Anna saw her patience rewarded, decades of waiting in the Temple were fulfilled in the sight of the divine child.

These are the little old ladies who set the world upside down. Little old ladies who were barren in a society that judged the value of women according to how many male children they could bear. Little old ladies who had faith in God when they had nothing else. Little old ladies who knew that God uses what is little, and marginal and unexpected in the world to turn the world inside out.

So I look at our chapel, at all the little old ladies, at the motley crew that is our community, a community getting fewer, and frailer and older, and I rejoice. I rejoice because God has a special soft spot for little old ladies who are barren. I rejoice because God often chooses little old ladies who the world has written off to give birth to the new reality of God in the world. I rejoice and I begin to feel the stirring of birth pangs.