How to be a monk – Lesson three: Balance

It is possible that there are some people today who don’t dream about having a more “balanced” life but I don’t think I’ve met any of them.  The longing for “balance” seems to be a deep, heartfelt theme for many people.  Many of these people also see balance as an integral part of Benedictine life and spirituality.

I wonder whether people have taken much time (have much time?) to really think through what this “balanced” life would look like.  Perhaps for many people it is simply being less out of control, having a little more time for God and family and being less consumed with work and busyness.

All of these are very worthy goals but are they really Benedictine, monastic goals?  Benedict never uses the word balance in his Rule and if we look closely at the schedule he sets out for his monks we would probably blanch.  Benedict has his monks pray eight times a day, do two to three hours of individual prayer (lectio) every day as well as work in the field, do kitchen duty and all the various chores that make up everyday life.  Basically Benedict had his monks praying most of the day, either in chapel or in their private prayer times.  Most modern people are not looking for a “balanced” life that looks like the extreme prayer schedule of Benedict’s monastery.

But perhaps as modern people we miss the point of what Benedict was trying to do.  Benedict created an outward structure in the monastery in which people had to drop everything, interrupt their busy day and go to prayer eight times a day.  He had them devote prime hours of the day to their personal prayer.  Life in Benedict’s monastery was about constantly interrupting daily activities in order to prayer.  What was the result for his monks of this constant interruption day after day, year after year?  Perhaps eventually the habit of prayer would become so internalized in his monks that everything became prayer.  Eventually monks would no longer need to go to chapel to pray, they would no longer need to have scheduled times of lectio to have their personal prayer.  They would still do it, but the monks would come to see all of life as a constant prayer, a continual attitude of awareness of the presence of God.

Perhaps this is the true nature of Benedictine balance.  Balance isn’t about more time for things we like or even more time for prayer and God, it is about a life in which faith and our awareness of the presence of God permeates absolutely everything we do.  Balance is who we are, people who are aware of God in everyone we meet, everything we do, in all our thoughts, words and actions.

Balance is indeed a gift of Benedictine spirituality today, but it is a gift of living a life in which there is no longer a distinction between God, faith and the rest of our lives.

Benedict and the Unmentionable Topic

OK, it is time to speak of the unspeakable. When I first came to the monastery I noticed something very odd and frankly rather disturbing. I first saw it working in the archives. For a while I was working on scanning old obituaries. I noticed that it seemed like whoever wrote them had an obsession with death. The obituaries didn’t tend to say a lot about the life of the sister but rather seemed to dwell on how she died. Interestingly enough everyone apparently died a wonderful, happy death full of faith, just waiting to leap into the arms of God. Admittedly I am cynical by nature but I thought “yeah, right!” When I entered the community I certainly didn’t have much experience of death or dying but I knew that there was nothing nice about death even if you were a person of great faith. I thought these sisters were either seriously naïve or had some strange, romantic idea of death.

Well it is now fifteen years later and I have seen quite a few sisters die and even written a few obituaries (although none of them described anyone’s death). That, together with the fact that today we are celebrating the death of St. Benedict our founder, makes it seem like a good time to reflect on a subject that is unmentionable in our society, namely death.

We live in an odd society that seems to have no trouble talking about sex, the beginning of life, but seems unable to talk about the other constant in life which is death. If someone were to drop in on our planet, at least on the developed world, they would probably think we were either massively deluded, massively in denial or just plain dense. We spend huge amounts of money on health care for people in the last days of their life, as if somehow with enough extraordinary measures the person will not eventually die anyway. The industry of death, mortuaries and related services, seem to be based on a fundamental need to deny reality with making everyone seem “life-like” without any sense of irony. Even the awful trauma of violent, unexpected death of all sorts is treated with a sense that it should never happen, as if we all have a fundamental right to be free of death in general or at least certainly from violent or traumatic death.

So where does Benedict fit into all this? According to tradition Benedict died on this day, March 21st, in the year 547 which was Holy Thursday. In the only source we have about his life, by Gregory the Great, he is depicted as foreseeing the moment of his own death and then he goes to prayer one last time before “…supporting his weakened body on the arms of his brethren, he stood with his hands raised to heaven and, as he prayed, breathed his last.” This tradition then led to Benedict being a patron of a “happy death.” And to commemorate this event the modern followers of Benedict celebrate him (and his death) today with readings that talk about his glorious passing into eternal life.

So which is it? Is death something horrible, to be denied and resisted at all costs? Is there such a thing as a “happy death? Are those the only two choices, complete denial or Disney-esque romanticism?

Perhaps an honest look at Benedict’s death might provide a third way. Even in the 6th century account Benedict’s death can’t be mistaken for “happy.” As soon as he predicts his death he was said to be overtaken by a terrible fever which completely sapped his strength. He had to be held up by his monks at community prayer for the last time. Death did not come easily, but in weakness and dependence. Benedict didn’t welcome death with open arms, he simply saw it coming and accepted it in faith. There was neither fear nor denial, simply an open recognition that death is no easier than life, but we are born in hope and we die in hope. Neither birth nor death is easy, they involve suffering and pain but both are enfolded in hope of new life, on earth or after this earth. For Benedict, for all believers, death is an end and a beginning. It is not to be resisted at all costs and it is not to be embraced before it is time. Death will not be easy or pain free or fair. It is simply what happens and the best we can hope for is to die in the midst of our community while praying to be received into the arms of our new community, the life-giving Trinity of love. So perhaps today we remember Benedict as the patron saint for accepting death with grace, with hope, with peace.

Confession When Everybody Already Knows What You’ve Done

A weekly commentary on the Rule of Benedict: The Fifth Step of Humility (RB 7:44-48)

“The fifth step of humility is that we do not conceal from the prioress/abbot any sinful thoughts entering our hearts, or any wrongs committed in secret, but rather confess them humbly.”

In Benedict’s fifth step on the ladder of humility he says that we have to disclose our sinful thoughts and wrongs we have done to the abbot or prioress. My gut reaction whenever I read this is always “no way!” But my second reaction is to remember a quote I read from an abbot of a Trappist monastery who described community life by saying “we walk around naked.” Obviously no one was physically naked but when people live together in close proximity year after year, there are no secrets. This reality changes what it means to confess thoughts or actions to the abbot or prioress.

My first reaction may be that I don’t want to tell the prioress all the thoughts that are going through my head or the various actions that I’m not proud of but if I am honest I have to admit it isn’t likely I can tell her anything that she (and the whole community!) doesn’t already know. I tend to imagine the prioress responding: “yeah, what else you got?” when I think I am telling her some deep, dark secret. The point and purpose of this disclosure is much deeper.

Several things happen in this process of speaking out loud things that come from within. When I come before the prioress I am consciously stripped of my illusion that I have it together, my illusion that no one is going to notice my short-comings. I am also stripped of my illusion that I am alone on this journey and that everything is up to me. To say out loud what is deep in my heart, especially when it involves things that I don’t like about myself, is to create a new, transformed reality. This stripping of illusions is the basis for humility, creating room for God in my heart.

It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we have it together, that since everyone else has the same issues mine don’t really matter. I can get caught in a trap of saying that all my faults are just peccadilloes and the prioress really has better things to listen to. The reality is that one of the most profound things we can experience is to be vulnerable before someone and experience the reality that we are still loved despite what we may have done, said or thought. Without the action of actually saying what is going on in our head and having someone hear it with love, we don’t change, we simply re-run the same thoughts, actions, patterns on our mental hamster wheel without ever changing. To come before someone and say out loud what we would rather not face is the beginning of change.

This disclosure of thoughts is also a correction to the feeling that many of us have that somehow our spiritual growth is entirely up to us. Our culture tends to reinforce the idea that each of us is autonomous and responsible for our own fate. Benedict’s ladder of humility is a reminder that while we are responsible for ourselves we are also responsible for one another. This in turn means that I have support on the journey. The prioress listens not to chastise or punish but to remind each sister that she does not walk this path alone but is supported by an entire community. Benedict has his monks talk to the abbot, we talk to the prioress, to be reminded that we are not alone. When we walk this path together we all share each others burdens and the joys.

Perhaps the most profound lesson for humility in this step is how things change when we say them out loud. Reality changes when words are spoken out loud. Our deepest fears, joys, feelings of guilt or happiness, change when we express them. Joy that is shared expands in the telling. Shame that is exposed to the light of day in the telling begins to dissipate. Thoughts and actions that are shared with the prioress in love take on a new shape. They begin to form the soil of humility, the soil of transformation.

Benedict’s admonitions have an application far beyond any monastic community. We are called to share deeply of our thoughts and actions with someone we trust. It is in risking, trusting, speaking and listening that we open our hearts and cultivate the soil of humility in our lives.

Feast Days and Black Fridays

Do you sense a deep longing or emptiness deep in your heart? I suspect that most people, if they are able to be deeply still and honest have such a feeling. It’s that feeling of something missing, something incomplete deep in our being.

The question is what we do with that feeling. Recently I spent a little while in a shopping mall. I’ve never been big on shopping, the walls seem to start to close in after about 15 minutes, but something new struck me this time. In this temple of consumerism there was a palpable energy. Large numbers of people were busy, milling about, searching as they plowed through the infinite variety of things they could buy. And all of these people were looking for some kind of satisfaction. Maybe it was something very simple, a new pair of slippers or the fun of watching a movie, maybe it was the more complicated shopping list of Christmas presents, but they all wanted something here at the mall. They all came with some need.

The foundation of our contemporary society is then based on the fulfillment of these sorts of needs. We are told over and over that the economy will not improve until people start to spend. Soon, the day after Thanksgiving, will be “black Friday.” This is the key barometer of our economy, the beginning of the Christmas season. If consumers spend enough on this key shopping day then the stores will be in the “black” and all will be well in the global market place. We live in a world in which we think that our most important needs can be satisfied by spending and consuming.

Before I had gone into the mall I had been reflecting, or maybe worrying, that our monastic life isn’t really that different from anyone else’s. Contrary to popular mis-conception we don’t float around all day smiling beatifically and doing nothing but praying. We work too hard, we aren’t always nice to one another, we may watch too much TV or read trashy books and yes, go to the mall once in a while. So I’d been worrying that our monastic way wasn’t monastic enough.

But today I can see that there really is something different about our way of life. Today is the Feast of St. Gertrude the Great our patroness here at the monastery. We celebrate with a special liturgy, festive meals and decorations and we remember Gertrude, a Benedictine nun in 13th century Germany. Gertrude was above all a mystic, her experience of God was deep, personal and sustaining. Gertrude knew that the need longing of her heart was for God and that in God alone would her longing be satisfied. She expresses this in her writings. “Although my heart distracts itself with perishable things, I must add that even after hours, days or weeks, when I returned to my heart, I always found you there…. My you forever find me living in you as you live in me.”

Today we celebrate a woman who knew the depths of her longing, her sense of incompleteness, her desire to be fulfilled and complete. But she had entered deeply into the source of her need. Gertrude knew that all the things that distract us cannot satisfy us. Even in a 13th century convent there were distractions and temptations, other people to gossip about, food to complain about, work schedules to be overwhelmed by, off-key liturgies and material goods to desire. But unlike most of us Gertrude had a gift of cutting through the illusions of her desires to enter into the reality that her deepest hunger is for God and God alone will satisfy the vague, persistent longing of our hearts.

This is the essence of monastic life whether lived by those in monasteries, oblates living in the “world” or by people everywhere with monastic hearts. To be a monastic is to recognize that what we want cannot be found at the mall, that a healthy society cannot be built on consumption, that in God alone do we know our rest, our belonging, the satisfaction of our desires.

In one of her books Gertrude addressed her readers: “Almighty and most generous God of all goodness, deign to nourish us sufficiently along the way of our exile, until we look upon the glory of the Face of the Lord, no longer veiled and going from glory to glory transformed by your most sweet spirit.” May this be our prayer too as we celebrate this amazing woman and anticipate celebrating Advent in a way that satisfies our deepest heart’s needs.

Monastic Prayer: For the World

What happens when monks pray? It is easy enough to simply say: that is what we do. We gather multiple times a day to pray in common because that is what Benedictines have been doing for over 1500 years. But of course that begs the question. What does this prayer mean? What is happening as we come together several times a day, day after day, year after year, with the same Psalms, the same prayers? Benedict isn’t much help. He outlines precisely which Psalms and other readings to prayer at precisely what hours of the day, but he doesn’t do too much to explain what is happening when monks pray.

Maybe it is helpful to simply start with the experience of praying. Multiple times a day a bell rings and the world shifts. When the bell rings the world no longer revolves around me and my needs. I am called to give up being the center of my own private little universe and come in silence, in openness, to a place that is only about prayer, a place where all of us come to sink into the presence of God, to open our hearts to the needs of a hurting world.

I may come into our chapel, the oratory, place of prayer, as an individual, but I become part of a community of God-centered people, a community that jokingly calls itself a “motley crew.” Together this motley crew gathers to enter into the presence of God, of one another and the world. In stillness we become present, allowing ourselves to let go of all that has come before and will come after. We enter the reality of prayer.

In this reality we strive to be one voice, our “minds in harmony with our voices.” (RB 19) The Psalms and prayers become one mind and one voice lifted together in praise, in supplication, in despair and joy. In the Psalms we pray words that that have been prayed across three thousand years, throughout our world, across religious traditions. In prayer we lift up to God words and feelings that may not be our own at the moment, but may be the words of people who have no words, people who do not know how to pray, people to engulfed in despair to pray. For these people we chant and recite words calling to God from the depths, words imploring God to act and bring about justice where there is only injustice and suffering. In the midst of our comfortable world we enter into the pain and despair of people we will never know lifting up our voices as their voices, praying for healing and justice.

In coming together in our prayer we recite the Psalms that remind us how much bigger our world and our God is than our limited ability to imagine. We come together to stretch our hearts in proclaiming the tremendous joy of the Psalmist in praising the God who is creator, sustainer, source of all life and power. The confines of our flat, gray universe are shattered as we join in a wild, exuberant dance of life and energy celebrating the God who reigns and sustains our universe. Our joy becomes the joy of all who celebrate, hope and come singing to the mountain of the Lord.

When we come together we enter into the world of prayer where the deep hurts and divisions of our community are brought to a truce. Together as we pray the Psalms, the prayers of an ancient community, and the Our Father, the prayer of our Christian community, we experience a tentative reaching out to one another, a holding of hands, the beginnings of healing. We come into prayer as broken people, as the stubborn, stiff-necked people of the desert, the Pharisees who have safely domesticated God, the people who cannot see their own limitations and lack of forgiveness. Here in prayer the people of hardened hearts are given another opportunity to receive a heart of flesh, to forgive and be forgiven. We do it for ourselves, we do it on behalf of people who have no such opportunity to come together, in community, to pray multiple times a day, to have their hearts broken open.

And so the rhythm continues, day after day, year after year. The bell rings, we drop everything, come to the place of prayer and silence. Together we pray ancient words, ancient prayers. We pray for those who cannot pray, for those who have no words. We pray for ourselves, lifting up our brokenness in order that our slow, painful healing may be offered for a hurting world. We pray in joy, present and hoped for, that the world may see a glimpse of the Reign of God breaking into the world.

Together we pray.

Advent Week Three: What Did You Come to See? The Motley Crew Comes With Singing Into Zion

So what does the coming of the Lord look like in Advent? Like the disciples of John the Baptist we have to ask ourselves what we have come to see in this Advent season. I suspect most of us resonate with the straight-forward wonder of Isaiah’s reading, the joy and rejoicing as the ransomed people coming singing into Zion. But the reading from the Gospel is odd, puzzling, ambiguous. Jesus is talking in riddles, pointing to a strange, coming reality of the Kingdom of God. John’s disciples are skeptical about the coming of Jesus. He doesn’t look like what they expected, where is their triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the vengeance and divine recompense? Jesus reassures John’s disciples and the crowds who came to see him that something amazing is indeed happening, starting with the appearance of this strange prophet in the wilderness.

I suspect Benedict would identify with the questions Jesus asks. In his Rule Benedict has set up the structure for a group of people who are also looking for the Kingdom of God. Monastics are those inside and outside of monasteries who are seeking the deeper reality of God in their lives. Monastics are those who have come to the wilderness of Benedictine life looking for the new reality of transformation and like the followers of John and Jesus in the reading they are sometimes confused by what they see. Did you come to Benedictine life seeking an easy life of comfortable prayer and cheap grace? Did you come to make the journey with a perfect, companionable group of people? Benedict stands in the wilderness and responds that we find the prophetic, we find the way leading to the Reign of God in the midst of the mundane, daily reality of our lives and the motley crew that composes the community that each of us belongs to.

In his Rule Benedict says that he intends to set up “a school for the Lord’s service.” He is equally clear that this way of life, this school, isn’t a post-graduate course for the spiritually talented. His school, set out in his “little rule for beginners” is more of a kindergarten than an advanced degree program. Benedict knows that we are all beginners in the spiritual journey and like a group of kindergarteners we need to be holding hands if we are to make progress and not get lost on our life-long field trip to the Kingdom of God.

This is where we get confused. How can this motley crew of people I am connected with on my spiritual journey really be part of the Reign of God? My monastic community, my oblate community, my Church, my faith sharing group, they aren’t any further along on the journey than I am! Where is the wonderful vision of Isaiah? When I look around at the people with me I’m not seeing much glory and splendor and miracles. Is this what is to come or shall we await something better?

But here is the paradox of the Gospel, of the Reign of God, of Benedictine life. The coming of God does indeed happen with glory and singing and the irruption of God into our daily reality, but it rarely looks like our expectations. The coming of God requires us to learn a new way of seeing, listening, acting and being. Miracles happen in our little kindergarten of the Lord’s service. God enters our lives when we slow down and hold hands with those who are on the way with us. The Reign of God comes about when those of us who are deaf learn to listen to God, one another and our hurting world with the ears of our heart. There is singing in Zion when those of us who are blind come to see the image of God in those who unfailingly get on our last nerve day after day, year after year. The lame will leap for joy when together we take action to bind up the wounds of the world in the name of God’s love.

What did we go out in the wilderness of Benedictine spirituality and the Rule to see? A sophisticated, perfect set of people living without conflict? A way of life that brings instantaneous spiritual progress to my self and the world? No, we go to the wilderness of the monastic way to look around and see a motley crew of people who are frequently lost, scared, anxious and disagreeable who have agreed to hold hands with each other and with God so that together they will know that they are journeying together into everlasting life.

So, fellow children, this is our invitation of Advent. Stay together, hold hands, listen carefully to the instructions of God’s word and pay attention to the sights and sounds of the amazing, unexpected, wonderful birth of God in our lives and in our world.

Advent Week One: Benedictine Readiness

Benedict has a chapter in his Rule about the life of a monk being a continual Lent, but implicit in the Rule is the reality that the life of a monk should also be a continual Advent. Advent is a season of readiness, becoming prepared, alert and awake. Advent says “get ready,” “be on your toes,” “watch out.” Something amazing, earth shattering and unexpected is going to happen.

The sense of this Sunday’s Gospel is apocalyptic. The coming of God will not be nice, easy or expected. The coming of God will happen suddenly and turn our world upside down. The reading implies that the coming of God is a cataclysmic event that will happen suddenly. This is not a standing invitation, it happens quickly, unexpectedly. No one knows when it will come but everyone will look back and remember the signs, the invitations like those of Noah that were ignored until too late.

To be a monastic, in the monastery or the world, is to be girded and ready for the day of the Lord, for the sudden coming of God in our life. Benedict expects that being a monk means all aspects of life are about being awake and ready. The monastic day is designed and structured to be about constant interruption. Secular work is not the primary aim or purpose of monastic life, the real work is the Opus Dei, the Work of God. For the monk the coming of the Lord happens several times a day, in the midst of a busy schedule and the unending, hurried demands of life. Right then and there, in the midst of important demands the bell will ring. It is time for God, time for prayer, time to drop what had seemed so important just a minute ago. Communal prayer is our daily Advent, our daily readiness for the unexpected moment when God comes and our lives are forever changed.

Benedict’s monks are even to sleep in their clothes so as to be ready in the middle of the night when the bell for prayer rings. The Prologue of the Rule has multiple, urgent images of God calling out, imploring, inviting, coaxing and calling. Wake up! Listen! Respond! Come! Today is the day the Lord is calling you, right now, not next week, next month, next year, when the children are grown or after retirement or when life is less hectic. In Advent and in Benedict the time is always now. The opportunity to respond to God’s invitation is always fleeting and always present.

But in today’s first reading from the lectionary we see the purpose, the reward of our vigilance, our willingness to be awake at the times when we would rather sleep. The passage from Isaiah is a vision of people flocking to Zion, the Lord’s mountain where a new reign of peace will be ushered in. Here on the Lord’s mountain a new day will dawn, the old order has gone and a new day has dawned.

So too we as Benedictines strive to create a new reality, we invite others to become a light of a new way of life in our broken, disordered world just as we too have responded to the invitation. Together as we live the monastic life and monastic values, in our monasteries, in our homes, in our families and monastic communities. Together we become the light that shows a new way, the promise of the Lord’s coming. However we live out the Rule we are witnesses to an Advent way of life. In our lives we seek to manifest the continual invitation of Advent, the urgent summons that today is the day of God’s coming. Today is the day of inviting God deeper into our lives that we in turn may be the presence of Christ in our world. Benedict creates the structure, the values that create a new way of being in the world. Together we model what it means to be a community that is awake, ready, alert and listening. When we live as monastics, both in the world and in the monastery we support one another to be awake, ready for the coming of the day of the Lord. We encourage and support one another, knowing our weaknesses, since as Benedict says “…the sleepy like to make excuses.” (RB 22:8)

During this time of Advent may we be awake, ready to respond to the invitation of God’s coming in our life, the invitation to be light in the darkness, the invitation to the hard and life-giving work of transformation.

Subversive Benedict

It is probably just as well that Benedict doesn’t live in our time or that nobody other than a few monastics and fellow travelers read his Rule today. Benedict has some pretty subversive stuff in there. Today the reading from the Rule was a little short chapter entitled “Distribution of Goods According to Need.” Now that right there is should send tremors down the spine of anyone well acquainted with our culture. The old Tina Turner song was “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” The theme song of our culture should be “What’s Need Got To Do With It?”

Our culture is based on desire and consumption. When was the last time you bought something that you really, truly needed? OK, maybe that loaf of bread, but probably not necessarily the extra fancy, 7 grain artisanal bread that you like so much. Perhaps your last pair of jeans, but did they have to be that one particular brand that frankly makes your butt look less big? Yeah, probably not. We are trained from our earliest days to want more, to desire just the right thing and think that it is our God-given right to have that one particular thing, or masses of things, that we have been conditioned to want.

This in turn is what drives our economy. When we do not consume enough stuff, stuff that most of us don’t need, stuff that we have been conditioned to think we can’t live without, then our economy suffers, and some of us may begin to experience the strange phenomenon of actual need.

Benedict would have no clue what to make of this strange, dysfunctional culture we live in. His community was based on a very simple, very radical premise. First, everyone knew (or should know) the difference between what they wanted and what they needed. And second, they would then be able to get what they needed. Then in turn each person was supposed to be satisfied with what they received.

How can we even begin to unpack what that might look like in our lives? Most of us, even those of us who struggle to live simply, are bombarded with so many choices, so many enticing, intriguing, beguiling forms of “stuff” that we probably can’t really distinguish wants from needs. Just as the abundance of food makes it hard to know when we are really hungry, the easy availability of everything our hearts may desire makes it hard to know how little we really need.

Would you like an easy, quick lesson in humility? Simply look around your house and see how few things you really need to live. It shouldn’t be a lesson in guilt, we did not create this culture and we may be doing our best to change it. The point is what do we do with the reality of all that we have? Benedict says that those who have been given more should feel humbled on account of their weakness, a weakness that has lead to their greater need. Perhaps in our culture of tremendous abundance this is where we should begin, with overwhelming humility and perhaps compunction that our needs, whether real or perceived, are so great.

Perhaps out of that deep realization of having too much at the expense of those who are truly in need, something new can be born in our society. Benedict imagined a society that would imitate the early Church community of Acts: Distribution was made to each one as he had need (Acts 4:35). In a society that has drifted so far from this early ideal maybe the ever ancient, always new ideal of monasticism can bring us back to the society we were meant to be.

Chores and Love

What do chores have to do with love? Unless we are talking about the occasional person who has a passion for cleaning or doing dishes the two don’t seem to naturally go together. But as is often the case Benedict in his Rule for monks understood that the most ordinary activities of everyday life have a profound significance.

In writing a chapter about kitchen servers he says that no one is to be excused from kitchen service except for a very good reason because “…such service increases reward and fosters love.” (RB 35:2) In a long chapter he explains at length how monks are to serve at meals. There is a ceremony at the beginning of the week to install the kitchen servers of the week and the ceremony echoes the way new members enter the monastery. In other words every week as they begin to take their turn serving meals the monks are reminded of why they entered the monastery, their commitment to seek God and serve one another in community life.

I have been thinking about this because last week a new chore list came out. Like every group of people living together we have to decide who does what chores to keep the place going. There are always dishes to do, rooms to clean, floors to sweep and a thousand other little tasks. Everyone except the most infirm has a job or usually several jobs to do. The chores are changed periodically as peoples schedules change, they move or simply can’t do the job any more.

Of course today or in Benedict’s time probably no one ever came to enter monastic life because they were drawn by the spiritual significance of being a kitchen server or a dish washer. Most of us came with lofty expectations of how we would find God through prayer and ministry. But if we stay here long enough we eventually realize the wisdom of Benedict. It isn’t hard to find God in the chapel and the daily prayer, but the real trick is to find God in the pots and pans, the vacuuming, the common work that makes up daily life.

We don’t have a ceremony anymore at the beginning of the week to designate who will be doing what service. Perhaps that’s too bad, it is easy to lose sight of the purpose of common work. Benedict was certainly worried that the soup would be served hot and on time but he was more worried that the monks realize that by mundane acts of service they were demonstrating their love for one another. The point wasn’t to hurry up and get through the chores, it was do the chores in a way that each monk was serving his brothers as Christ would.

In our chores we are given daily chances to get past ourselves and our sense of self-importance. It is hard to get carried away with yourself while sweeping a floor, re-stocking napkins or being up to your elbows in greasy pots. And that is the way it should be. Each of those things and many more are critical to creating a place where we can be about the spiritual life, where we can be about the work of transformation. Each of the little daily chores gives us a chance to demonstrate love and service in ways that are humble, unspectacular, but necessary. The chores are a way to help us realize that no matter what we may have thought, monastic life is not about great feats of asceticism or spiritual grandeur it is about love that is demonstrated every day in my small, unnoticed ways.

Why Have Benedictines Survived?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how Benedictine life has both changed and remained consistent over the centuries. In 1980 Benedictines celebrated the 1500 year anniversary of the birth of Benedict. During these 1500 years the sons and daughters of Benedict have spread to every continent and have continued to live according to Benedict’s Rule, a guidebook for living the Gospel.

One might think that people all living according to the same guidebook would look very similar, that Benedictines in England in the year 1000 would look a lot like Benedictines in Cameroon in 2000. Or at the very least Benedictines in Australia and South Korea in the year 2010 would have a pretty much identical way of life.

But the reality is that Benedictine monasticism has proved to be both extremely flexible and extremely resilient over the centuries. It has managed to hold on to the essential while adapting to changing times and circumstances. Whether in the year 1000 or 2000, whether in Europe, North America, Africa, or Asia, Benedictines have managed to maintain a life focused on God in a way that fits with the time and circumstances.

So I wonder what is essential about Benedictine monasticism? What is it that unites Benedictines across centuries, cultures, and types of commitment? I suspect that the answer is very simple and prosaic. We are united by a practical yet flexible structure that allows us to live a common purpose, a life focused on God. The exact nature of the structure changes with time, circumstances and needs, but the key is that it is a way of life in which we get the support we need to seek God. With a flexible structure we can live a life in which prayer is possible, we are accountable for the commitments we have made and we can more easily do the hard work of transformation that draws us deeper into the heart of God.

The scaffolding of Benedictine structure is community. Most of us like to think that we are capable of building our own structures but to be a Benedictine is to admit that we need help in our journey, we need the support and structure of a community. All Benedictines across the centuries have shared this sense of community. For some community may be the very traditional, enclosed, vowed community of everyone living under the same roof their whole adult lives. For others it may be being part of a community at a distance, living and working away but united in commitment and purpose. The key is the commitment to being part of a particular group of people all living this particular way of the Gospel. To be Benedictine means that we go to God together with the unique, motley crew that we have said we would journey with until, in Benedict’s words, we come “altogether to everlasting life.”

If the scaffolding of Benedictine life is community then the foundation and building material is prayer. Prayer, simply being in relationship with God, is the essence of this way of life, this way of living out the Gospel. Prayer is both the Divine Office chanted seven times a day in the common oratory and the prayer muttered while driving to work in the city. Prayer echoes across centuries and continents in an unbroken chain of men and women uniting their hearts and their longing for God in this way of life. Prayer is the structure of our daily life that allows the God whispers deep in our souls to urge us on, to push us ever deeper into the journey of transformation. The ways in which we pray may not be uniform but is the foundation of the structure of our life.

So across continents, centuries and types of commitment we Benedictines are united by simple things, by structures and practices, by a deep, unceasing longing and hunger for God. We journey together knowing that we need one another’s help along the way. Together we are united in the foundation of prayer, formal or informal, eloquent chant or inarticulate groaning, we come before God in our need, and together we will go to God in this ever ancient and ever new way of life.

Cutural Immersion Experience

Earlier this month we had a volunteer come for a week who wanted to do a “cultural immersion experience” for a class she was taking. She thought it would be interesting to immerse herself in our monastery for a week. She had a very good time and was thoroughly immersed in weed pulling, dish washing, other chores as well prayer and community life.

It did make me want to stand back and take a look at what our particular culture is like. Those of us who live at the monastery day in and day out for years can easily lose perspective about how different and unique this culture really is. So I tried to think through what is really different about us, what would someone coming into this new culture notice?

Perhaps the first and most obvious thing is that we are a large, single-sex group living together permanently and voluntarily. There may be other places where large groups of women live together but it may not be voluntary, as in correctional institutions (!) or college dorms (are there still single-sex college dorms?) or perhaps military installations, which are not permanent. Here in the monastery we have a group of women who have chosen this way of life, who have committed to live with, love and learn from one another for the rest of their lives. The fact that we do this permanently and voluntarily means that we are open to being transformed by the experience of community. By living with others we have to face the reality of our own limitations mirrored in those we live with.

Whenever volunteers come they also get quickly thrown into the daily round of chores. When people are only coming for a couple of weeks as a volunteer there are a lot of jobs that won’t be able to do, but there is always a lot of common work. Hopefully new people see that in our culture everyone helps with the common work. There is no one who is too busy or too important to be excused from helping out with dishes, clean-up or the large projects that come along. Living in community is a matter of willingly pitching in and not grumbling about who is or is not shouldering her share. This is an area we struggle with, but perhaps our integrity lies in the struggle, continuing to try to get it right even when we know that we aren’t always measuring up.

Simplicity is another value that people will notice about our culture. We live together and share things in common. Everyone has the same size, small bedroom, which discourages the accumulation of “stuff.” All the money that each of us earns goes into the common pot to support the whole community. We each have a very minimal amount of personal spending money and rely on the community to meet our needs rather than remaining in control of our own money and property. Again, simplicity of life is a goal, not an accomplishment. “Stuff” has a way of accumulating in our lives, a creeping sense of entitlement is something that we always have to watch out for. But in a broader culture that seems obsessed with money, possessions, and control perhaps we can at least be a small witness of another way.

One of the things someone coming for a short period of time may not notice but is an integral part of our culture is how we make decisions. There is very little hierarchy in monastic life and a lot of collaboration. We live together very closely for long periods of time. As a result we try to make sure that everyone is consulted, heard and their needs and desires considered. One of the things that many people do notice about us is that we move slowly and only after interminable meetings! This is very true, but perhaps as a result when we do move we tend to have a maximum number of people invested in the decision and the outcome rather than having a substantial number of people disenchanted and disenfranchised. As our society seems to be increasingly polarized and unable to communicate the frustration of the slow moving monastic way may be an alternative that isn’t easy but offers a way for everyone to be part of decision making.

Among many differences that a new person will notice about our culture perhaps the most important is one that most people pick up on quite quickly. The whole day is ordered around prayer. The key parts of the schedule are the times for communal prayer. Other events revolve around the prayer times. Not only that, but it is expected that people will drop what they are doing and come to prayer when they hear the chimes. Work isn’t the priority, work can wait. The purpose of our life is prayer, seeking God together in community for the rest of our lives. The “interruption” of prayer in our daily schedule, at the times when we were just starting to accomplish something, is the wake-up call that hits us in the head three times a day. This interruption is what brings us back to our center, our purpose. We immerse ourselves in a culture that is about God, together we swim in the ocean of God.

Stability: When the going gets tough...

As Americans we are always on the move. We go away to school. We frequently change jobs. We change churches and political parties. Staying in one place, literally or figuratively, does not seem to be part of our makeup. Whether it is because we desire change, we get bored, want new challenges, get frustrated, for whatever reason we tend to be always moving on.

In some ways this is fine but the problem is that when we don’t like how things are going we immediately think of moving or changing. Frustrated with how things are going on the job? Change jobs! The relationship with our spouse or our friends isn’t what it once was? Get divorced or find new friends! Our church or political party has changed and we don’t agree with what they are saying? Leave the church or the party!

In this culture of constant change Benedictines point to another way. One of the promises that we make at profession is “stability.” This means that we commit to be part of this particular community, this monastery, for the rest of our lives. We will change, the community will change, the world will change but we say that we won’t leave.

Making this promise is probably a lot like marriage vows. At the time you make them it doesn’t seem like it could be that hard. But of course the insidious challenge comes years down the line. We don’t live in the same community we enter. We change, everyone else changes, the world changes around us. Our enthusiasm may fade, our understanding of this way of life might change radically. We begin to see the limitations, the brokenness, the pettiness of a group of people trying to live together and frequently failing to be their best selves.

But the real issue is what do we do with these struggles, this disillusionment? To be a Benedictine means to stay and work it through. This is stability. Stability means doing the hard inner work of refusing to leave when things are not what I expected or hoped for. Stability is a source of deep humility when I recognize that my desire for something different, my anger or frustration stems from my own limitations as much or more than anyone else’s. Stability also forces me to realize that I cannot be self-sufficient, I need the support of others. The journey is about us. We are in this journey together and cannot venture off on our own.

We live in a society that encourages us to think that we don’t really need to do the hard work of transformation. We often feel that instant gratification takes too long. But Benedict knew that the spiritual journey is one that happens when we go ever deeper in the same place. By making the public promise to stay with our commitments, to stay within what may feel like the confines of our lives and limitations, only then will we really face our problems which are usually staring back at us in the mirror. In stability we don’t take the easy way out, we stay and face our need for grace. Through stability we come to embrace our limitations which are the source of our need for God.

Finding God in the Dishes

As I do more spiritual direction with people I usually talk to them about how they find God in their prayer life, in Scripture, in worship, in nature and other ways. I don’t think I have ever asked how they find God in the dishes, but I think I might start.

A contemporary Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn once asked someone who was visiting his monastery and had volunteered to help wash the dishes: “do you want to wash dishes to wash dishes or do you want to wash dishes to have clean dishes?” He meant do you see washing dishes as a means to an end or are you willing to simply be present in whatever you are doing whether washing dishes or going to prayer.

Benedict doesn’t ask that question but I think his attitude is similar. For Benedict every aspect of life is about God, every aspect of life reflects how we are journeying toward God. Everyday tools are to be treated as “vessels of the altar.” There is an elaborate ceremony to acknowledge the monks who will be the kitchen helpers of the week and it echoes the liturgy for welcoming new members. In Benedict’s monastery the most mundane tasks are as important on the spiritual journey as the daily hours of prayer.

Benedict spends a lot of time explaining how the daily tasks and chores of everyday life should work. There are chapters on how much food and wine to have at meals. The clothing and bedding for monks has a place in his Rule. There are lots of “non-spiritual” details that people tend to skip when they read the Rule. But the reality is that these chapters are just as important as the ones that explicitly talk about God.

At first glance many of the provisions of Benedict’s Rule don’t seem to have any immediate bearing on our faith life. What difference does it make what kind of food we have or why does Benedict feel he has to make provision for how many clothes the monk should have or what kind of bedding they are to be given? As modern people we usually skip these parts of the Rule and see them as anachronistic. But perhaps some of the most “non-spiritual,” concrete provisions of the Rule contain some of the most profound wisdom.

Benedict knows that in the spiritual life it is often the most ordinary things that trip us up. We say we want to live a life focused on God but then we get so consumed by the everyday details of life that God is quickly relegated to the occasional special time or place. Perhaps this is why Benedict knows that details matter. He tries to set up an ordered way of life so that all the basics are taken care of and handled in such a way that people can indeed see God in everything.

Everyone, monks and married people, people in the 6th century or the 21st, need to have enough food, enough clothing, a realistic schedule, meaningful work, specified times for prayer, common expectations and consequences for breaking rules, in order to be able to see God in everything. Benedict wants to set up a way of life in which there will be no excuses for not being aware of God. If the monks basic needs are taken care of, if the monk knows that he or she is living a life of security, then there will be the time, the space and the energy to focus on the real work of life, coming to know God ever more deeply and coming to be remade in God’s likeness.

So what does this have to say to us today, to those who live outside monasteries or even those of us who live preoccupied lives inside monasteries? Perhaps it is simply a call to mindfulness, to be aware that we do indeed have space and time for God. Do we have to be preoccupied about the necessities of life? For most of us living in middle-class comfort in an industrialized country the answer is yes. Most of us have enough food, clothing, access to medical care. Most of us already have the life Benedict wanted for his monks, one in which we do not have to be preoccupied with getting the necessities of life.

Most of us are fortunate that we do not have to wash dishes while preoccupied with hunger. Most of us live lives that have achieved Benedict’s ideal of a life with the time and space for God. Now the question is our attitude. How do you wash the dishes? Is it to have clean dishes or to be aware of the presence and gifts of God in the moment? So, how do you wash dishes? How is washing dishes a reflection of your life with God?

Monastic Practices: Bona Opera

In his Rule Benedict makes specific provisions for how the monks are to observe Lent. He starts out by saying that: “the life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent.” He goes on to recommend that everyone undertake some ascetical practice to get ready for Easter. But he also says that the monk’s intentions have to be disclosed to the abbot who offers his prayer and approval of the Lenten practices.

Fifteen hundred years after Benedict wrote his Rule we are still practicing this. Every year during Lent we go through a process we call “bona opera,” which is Latin for “good works.” Every sister writes down what she intends to do for Lent and submits this to the Prioress who reads and blesses the intentions.

Part of this process involves having a meeting with the Prioress during Lent. It is a chance to talk about your spiritual journey, your ministry, the fact that this year, absolutely, without a doubt, you will give up chocolate. (This last one requires a courageous display of self-restraint on the part of the Prioress not to dissolve into giggles.) But seriously, talking to the Prioress is a chance to evaluate your life, whether your monastic life is truly “a continuous Lent.”

I suspect that the Prioress is considerably less interested in the specifics of our intentions regarding fasting, almsgiving and prayer than she is in knowing how we have internalized those practices. Giving up chocolate may be admirable, even if impossible, but the real question is whether we are fasting from the sort of murmuring and back-biting that destroys any community. Are we giving up a little bit of our budget money for a charity but failing to give of our time and energy to someone in our life who needs our support? Additional prayer has very little meaning if it does not translate into a transformed life.

Fortunately the Prioress already knows us very well. She knows where we struggle and where our gifts are. The point of the yearly bona opera isn’t about guilt and the memory of past good intentions. Bona opera is the gift of sharing our struggles together on this journey to eternal life with someone who understands that we are trying the best we can and who will bless us on the way.

What Constitutes Holiness?

What makes a person holy? Hopefully all of us are striving for holiness, hard at work on our spiritual way, becoming more Christ-like as we grow in our faith. But we also know that certain people are clearly farther along on the journey toward holiness. The saints are obvious examples of people who have led transformed lives, their witness has been formally affirmed by the Church. But we also know ordinary people whom we recognize as having achieved what Benedict would call the heights of humility.

In our community one such holy person has just died. Those of you who knew her won’t be surprised to hear Sr. Wilma Schlangen described as such a person. Of course if anyone had told her that she was holy she would probably say “Oh no!” in her inimitable Minnesota accent. But for the many people whose lives she touched there was something very special, very holy about Wilma.

Sr. Wilma had an ability to make everyone feel special. So many people came through her old kitchen and were warmly embraced, accepted and loved. Each person was made to feel absolutely unique. Many visitors would encounter Wilma in the course of a few days or even a few hours and feel like they had just met a friend for life. I never had the heart to tell any of them that Wilma made everyone feel that way and that she may not remember them because she met so many people and was so present to each one.

Perhaps the key to Wilma’s holiness, or any other exceptional person, is that God’s light shines through them exactly as they are with all their limitations. Holiness does not mean perfection, a lack of flaws, a person who is “too good to be true;” holiness is a quality that simply means that the rough edges have been smoothed out, they haven’t been eliminated.

Like all of us Wilma had her edges. In her 94 years Sr. Wilma walked a path of holiness through work. She worked incredibly hard, set herself incredibly high standards and expected other people to meet those standards. Many people shared memories of working with her in the kitchen and having her exclaim “oh, you’re not going to use that pot are you?” Many more people came through the old kitchen assuming that they already knew how to string beans, sort raspberries, crack walnuts or any one of multiple tasks, only to be very clearly told by Wilma exactly what they were doing wrong.

But Sr. Wilma was also a Benedictine in whom there was no guile. She was absolutely honest in all her interactions whether that was making someone feel absolutely loved and welcome or telling them they were cutting apples all wrong or saying with great concern “you have gained weight haven’t you?” But whatever she said there was only truth, and even if you were a disaster in the kitchen or garden you knew that Wilma still loved you.

Perhaps holiness is about having experienced God’s love without reservation, having come, through long years and perhaps difficult experience, to the place where the reality of God’s unconditional embrace is the clearest reality. In her life Wilma knew suffering, rejection, doubt. She struggled with what it meant to be a good religious, a good community member. But by the time she died, tired and ready to go “home,” she also knew that God’s light shone through her, not as a reward for her many years of hard work, but as the reality of God’s free gift of love. The holiness that Wilma manifest for all of us was that light, that love that simply radiated from her deepest being.

Wilma has completed her journey toward holiness. For those of us that come after her Wilma has given us the gift of seeing that holiness isn’t a denial of our fallible humanity but it is a celebration and transformation of our deepest selves. To be holy is to rejoice that we have been give the gift of being made in the image of God and that on the journey of life we become ever more like the God whose image we share. And so, with every raspberry we pick, with every person we meet and love, we remember Wilma, and know as she did, that we are embraced and loved by God just as we are.

Writing Our Communities Psalm

I have to confess I have always thought that the Psalmist was a bit of a drama queen. The Psalms always seem a little "over the top," heavy on hyperbole and drama. Perhaps it is just because I come from a culture that tends to value the "stiff upper lip" approach to life's problems that the Psalms have always seemed rather exaggerated.

Recently though I've had a new insight into the nature of the Psalms. In a class I'm taking we were given an assignment to write our own Psalm. We were supposed to do a "lament" Psalm and make sure it included the standard elements of a Psalm: an invocation of God, a complaint, a petition and a vow to praise.

I decided to write a Psalm that reflected the fears of our community, the reality that like most religious communities we have fewer, older members and our future is not certain. The process of expressing our "lament" in this way was eye-opening. I tried to make my psalm as "over the top" as psalms usually are. It was an exaggerated plea for help painting a dire picture of our situation. And then at the end, like all Psalms, I included a vow to praise God no matter what may happen.

The result was very interesting. By the time I finished my deeply pessimistic view of our situation and ended with a vow that nothing will shake our faith, I felt different. Somehow expressing deep worries, articulating the fear we often feel but often don't state out loud, was very liberating. By being rather melodramatic and exaggerated in voicing the fear it becomes less powerful. By claiming the "vow to praise," stating to God that nothing will shake our faith and knowledge of God's presence, I felt deeply energized and renewed. No matter what the future may hold God is present in our midst, upholding and guiding us.

So, the Psalmist may have been a drama queen, but it is a transformative drama!

A Communal Lament

O God why have you abandoned us?
Left us crushed and desolate in this place of sorrow?
Answer God, listen to our plea,
attend to the sound of our cry.
Are you not a God of mercy,
a God who gives life to those who revere your name?

For you have abandoned us and broken us,
left us without hope or promise.
Respond now, raise your holy arm,
look upon us and save us.
For our community is dying,
our life blood poured out like water.

We stagger like a lion's prey,
daily we are diminished, we shrink and stumble.
We waste away like a land without water,
like animals in a drought we thirst for the waters of life.
In diminishing choirs we struggle to sing your praise,
in the dryness of prayer we crave your presence.

We remember the days long past,
we long for the splendor we once knew,
how we would fill the chapel with voices of praise,
in ranks strong and overflowing we sang hymns which are your due.
We were a beacon of hope to all who knew us,
the light of our faith shown in the darkness.

Though darkness may fall and despair overcome us,
still we will sing your praise O God.
Though none may enter and we sleep in the grave,
on our lips will be songs as we close our doors.
In dying breaths we will remember your name,
for in your praise alone is our life.

Monastery Advent

In his Rule Benedict says that the entire life of a monk should be a continuous Lent. He never mentions Advent, but I suspect that the same principle applies.

In Advent we wait for a new birth of God in our lives. Sounds simple, but you may think about it and ask, “isn’t God already in our lives?” Perhaps that is the question of Advent. Is God truly in our lives? Is God a compelling presence in our lives or is God like a piece of our spiritual furniture that we take so for granted that we barely see it any more?

The God of Advent is not a comfortable God, not a God of complacency and easy reassurance. In Advent we are told that everything is about to change. The fortunes of the oppressed will be reversed, God will restore Jerusalem, a savior will be born.

In the monastery we prepare for this coming in silence, waiting and anticipation. We ritualize this sense of preparation as we enter deeply into the profound listening that characterizes Advent.

At the beginning of Advent we went to our woods to cut the boughs for the Advent wreath. In the cold and snow evergreen branches are a sign of continuing life, green in the midst of a landscape that appears to be sleeping. Many volunteers then gather to form the boughs into a wreath. Advent is not a solitary event, it is a communal endeavor, God comes in the presence of many people, into the midst of our world. And so we work together, on behalf of the world to construct the wreath, the sign of our waiting and hope.

The Advent wreath is about three feet and diameter and is suspended on ropes from the ceiling. It hangs in the middle of chapel above the readers stand. Like the wreath we are suspended in time and space during Advent. It is a time of waiting, watching, being silent and open, neither here nor there as we await the new coming of God. The wreath is round, a circle that has no beginning or end. It is a symbol of eternity, our God who is beyond all human measurement of time and space but who will come and be born in humility and limitation into human reality.

The wreath is suspended above the Advent candles of the four weeks of Advent. When we gather for Evening Praise we begin in darkness. After the clock chimes we sing, still in the dark: “holy darkness, blessed light, heaven’s answer hidden from our sight, as we await you, O God of silence, we embrace your holy night.” The leader lights the candle and prayer begins.

Darkness is very appropriate for Advent. We wait without seeing, without understanding exactly what will happen, we wait in hope and trepidation. What will happen will be the initiative of God. It is our job to be still, to be open and let God come in God’s own time. As we light the candles we manifest our hope and assurance that God has come, is present and will come again into the darkness of our lives and our world.

These are profound mysteries and so during this season of Advent we set aside time to cultivate this attitude of silence and waiting. In the afternoons there is a special time set aside for lectio, the Benedictine practice of prayerful reading. It is a time to let go of the frantic busyness that this season tends to evoke and to be still, listening in hope for the coming of our God who will make all things new.

Visitation

When Elizabeth heard that Mary was going to come and visit, did she start to clean the house? That is one of the questions about Luke’s version of the Visitation that I’ve never heard asked. But it makes sense doesn’t it? That is what women tend to do, get the house ready for guests, make sure that the nice towels are put out in the bathroom, the good plates are rescued from their cupboard and everything is dusted and shined.

I’ve been thinking about the visitation of Mary and Elizabeth because we are having our own “visitation” this week. Just as Mary visited Elizabeth to be with her, support her and to be supported and encouraged in return, so too we have holy women coming to share with us. In Benedictine monasteries every 5-6 years sisters from other monasteries come and help us evaluate how we are living our monastic life. This process is called “visitation.”

We welcomed our “visitators” on Monday night with a special prayer service and party afterwards. And of course with a tour of newly cleaned and shined monastery! Since then they have been meeting with most of our departments and committees and reviewing piles of documents. They meet individually with each sister who wants to talk with them. They share our life, coming to prayer, meals and meetings with us.

This is a week of listening. Like the visit of Mary and Elizabeth it is holy listening. Holy listening isn’t always easy listening. I always imagine Mary and Elizabeth exchanging tips on how to cope with vicissitudes of pregnancy, what helps for morning sickness, what to do when you feel like a whale and can’t get comfortable, how to handle perplexed husbands who are still trying to understand what is happening. In the same way we share our hopes and frustrations with our visitators about what it means to bear God in our world today. As monastics we live in community, and that never ending process of rubbing against one another day in and day out, year after year, is how we come to transformation, to new life in the Spirit. Just as Mary and Elizabeth supported one another so we, too, need to be able to share with people who know this way of life, and can reassure us that there is indeed new life gestating in our midst.

At the end of the week, after reviewing and reflecting on all they have heard and seen the visitators will write a report of their impressions that they will share with the community. In many ways this visitation report will be our common “Magnificat.” When Mary and Elizabeth greeted one another Mary’s response was her beautiful, challenging hymn of praise. She sang of what God was doing in her life and in the lives of the people of God. At the end of this week we too will be able to share the great things and the challenges of how God is working in our lives here in the Monastery of St. Gertrude.

Like the Magnificat the report will contain both affirmation and challenge. Mary sang of a God who turns the world upside down and upends the complacency of the self-satisfied. This will be a good thing for us to keep in mind as we hear some specific recommendations for how we can better live into our call to progress on this “Gospel way” as disciples of Christ and daughters of Benedict. At the same time we will hear what we already know but need to be reminded of, that we are a deeply faithful group of women who are doing amazing things for the Reign of God and our faith will continue to flower, mature and bear fruit in our world for many years to come.

Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months, our visitators will only stay for a week, but in each case we will all be transformed by the event. Together we will retain the memory of a new song of praise to God, a new vision of God working in our lives and a new and renewed sense of hope for the future.