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.

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.

Prayer of the Monastic Elders

Recently one of our elder sisters has taken a turn for the worse and it is hard to see her become even more diminished. It struck me though, that all of our elders, despite their challenges, come to prayer with us every day, three times a day. They participate to the extent they are able and we help them participate.

They are an example of an important aspect of monastic prayer, it is prayer to the end, the prayer of endurance, the prayer that continues through diminishment, suffering and letting go. For these elders prayer has become the essence of prayer, it is simply being before God in the presence and with the support of community. For many of them it is now prayer beyond words and concepts, it is the prayer at its most simple and real.

Perhaps this kind of prayer is the ultimate fruit of monastic life. Most of us we are about being busy, priding ourselves on how much we are accomplishing and sometimes being secretly resentful of having to interrupt our day with the call to prayer. But this busyness is an illusion, we think that all this work is really accomplishing something, that we are the important people in the community. But that is the advantage of praying in the midst of community. Those of us who are (relatively!) young and active are allowed to see the example of those whose entire lives have become prayer. They don’t interrupt their days to pray, their being has become prayer.

Our culture tends not to value people who whom it considers marginal, people whose diminishment due to age or disability makes them unable to compete in our work and results centered society. But of course monasteries should be an alternative to that culture. Hopefully we can be at least a small witness to that ultimate, alternative society, the Reign of God. In this Reign of God it is not the obvious people who are central but instead the margins become the center. The people who come closest to manifesting this new society are not the ones with the most degrees, the most important titles or who get the most work done. In this little group of people struggling to make the Reign of God become manifest the people at the center are the ones who look like they are on the margins.

I have a ways to go before I really enter into this new reality. I would rather pray with all my distracted faculties, conscious and aware of what I am praying, or at least conscious of my distraction. There will probably come a time when my prayer is as simple as some of our sisters and someone else will take me to prayer as a new generation prays the same Psalms and the same prayers and someone I’ve never met will give me the Body of Christ. I’m not ready for that yet just as probably none of our sisters ever thought she would be ready. The prayer of diminishment, the prayer of simply being is something that usually comes gradually. And that is appropriate since God’s grace is something that works on us slowly and gradually and it transforms regardless of how hard we work and indeed grace transforms us at the deepest level when we are unable to either resist or cooperate with it. So this is the prayer of our elders, the prayer of presence, the prayer of simply being, the prayer of witness. And this is their gift to us, a gift that if we are all lucky, we too will one day experience.

Silence

How do we feel about silence? Is it a welcome gift or something that evokes a deep uneasiness? Silence is such a rare commodity in our society and our lives it is possible that we haven’t experienced enough silence to really know how we feel about it.

Silence has always been a deeply monastic value. In the stories of the early desert fathers and mothers silence is one of the principle practices of their life, the rush of words and noise one of the things these early monastics sought to flee. They knew that silence is an integral part of the difficult journey toward transformation, the central metanoia of the Christian life.

It is clear that Benedict assumed that silence would pervade monastic practices. He taught that speech was to be the exception, that monks would speak as they needed to, mindfully, aware of what they were doing rather than unconsciously and constantly. Silence and awareness go hand in hand for Benedict. Without chatter the monks could reflect on why and how they were living their life. Silence is an antidote to unconscious and routine activity and busyness of our daily life.

In the last few months here at the Monastery we have revived the practice of “Recollection Sundays.” These are days of silence from Saturday evening Vigils to Sunday Evening Prayer there is silence in the house and a chance to open a space, a time for reflection and renewal. It can be a hard wake-up call to help us realize that even in a monastery there is an inordinate amount of chatter, noise, busyness. An occasional day of silence may simply be the invitation to awareness of how little silence we all have in our lives.

We have to be honest that silence can also be intimidating. There is a comfort in noise and activity. Silence forces to be aware of what is going on in our lives, deep in our hearts and we may not like what we see. The sharp edges, the shallowness, laziness, anger, and a host of other sharp-tongued demons have a way of manifesting themselves in the silence.

But God is also in the silence, whispering softly beneath the cacophony of our internal chatter. Perhaps God whispers in silence wanting us to stop and strain to hear. Most of us have spiritual attention deficit disorder; we can’t focus or sit still or listen without a great struggle. But fortunately God gives us the gift of silence, a gift that requires practice and patience but one that will root and blooms in our soul.

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.

Would Jesus Tweet? Would Benedict?

Yesterday at prayer we had a difficult reading from 1st Timothy, about household codes and the respective roles of men and women. I began thinking what a challenge it is to look at Scripture in the context of our culture and the culture of the time the New Testament was written. As I was pondering this all of a sudden a question popped into my head: Would Jesus tweet? Or maybe another way to put it: would Jesus think that people who tweet are twits (I couldn’t resist that one).

I don’t use Twitter and I don’t follow anyone’s tweets, but I know that you can only use up to 150 characters and this has become one of the newest examples of social media, allowing people to share with other people almost instantly. Twitter has developed a reputation for allowing people to share their most insipid thoughts instantly with hundreds or thousands of strangers. In the Doonesbury cartoon strip the journalist Roland Hedley famously tweeted: “my shorts r bunching. thoughts?”

All in all such a vapid way of communicating wouldn’t seem to be something that would fit into Jesus’ challenging, life-changing proclamations of the Reign of God or Benedict’s guide for living a life centered on God. But the more I thought about it I realized that maybe Twitter could be a deeply monastic, Gospel centered way of bringing us back to the center who is God.

Profundity has nothing to do with the number of words. Benedict has very little good to say about people who talk too much. He says that silence should be the norm in the monastery and a sign of advanced humility is to be very chary with words. So maybe wisdom can be contained in 150 characters or less. Certainly many touchstones of both Scripture and the Rule of Benedict are short, pithy sayings that would qualify as tweets.

In an early monastic text one wise monk said that the much of monastic life could be summed up in the verse from Scripture: “O God come to my assistance, O Lord make haste to help me.” What would happen if that appeared on our Twitter feed every day? Perhaps that could bring us back to mindfulness, our awareness of our dependence on God in the midst of our busyness and self-centeredness.

Maybe just before time for prayer we could receive a tweet that says “O Lord open my lips and my mouth shall proclaim your praise” as we begin to focus on the task of prayer.

Would it help if periodically you could check your Blackberry during the day and see something like: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,” or “I am the true vine.” We could stand in solidarity with Mary as we check in and read: “Let it be with me according to your word.” Perhaps Benedict could bring us up short by quoting Psalm 95 used in the first prayer of the day: “If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your heart.”

Perhaps we take Paul’s advice and encourage one another, not just with “Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” but with short tweets of thanksgiving, insights, quotations and prayers. Could we simply remind one another and ourselves to simply “Listen!”

Perhaps it is quite appropriate that the name of this new application is Twitter. Unless we stop, pay attention, listen deeply and gratefully, the twitter of birds can simply be more background noise, something we don’t notice or appreciate. But twitter can also be a profound gift of sharing the music of creation. Maybe as we twitter we can also appreciate the gifts of God and call ourselves to mindfulness of God’s presence and love all around us even in the midst of noise and distraction.

Of Time and Bells

Before I entered the monastery time seemed to be bounded primarily by work and weekends. Monday morning was the beginning of the work week and Friday night was a time of anticipated break and relaxation. There were other markers of time but like most people my experience of time was focused on work.

Time in the monastery is quite different. This week I am “on bells” which has made me reflect on what monastic time means. To be “on bells” means this week I am responsible for the signal to community that it is time for prayer. Ten minutes before each scheduled community prayer time I will ring a chime over the phone system signaling everyone to stop what they are doing and come to prayer. I will then ring one of the four big bells in the sacristy that will let everyone in the area know it is time for prayer.

According to Benedict when anyone hears the signal for prayer they are to stop what they are doing and proceed to the chapel for the appointed office of prayer. In other words the day is not defined by work, it is defined by prayer. Work is what is fit in between the times for prayer. Prayer is the primary work of the monastic and everything else is what has to be done in order to support that time to stop, gather together and come before God in praise and supplication.

It can be hard to get used to the “interruptions” in the monastic schedule. It never seems to fail that just when you are finally settling down and getting something accomplished the bell rings. All of us in the monastery are products of our predominant culture, we tend to define ourselves by the work we do and how much we accomplish during the day. So the constant interruption of the bell can be a constant shock and reminder that we have chosen to live in a different world.

The bells say stop, listen, pay attention. What is your priority? What is your real work? Why are you here? The bells create a rift in the seamless day, the bells force us to stop, they can be a violent invitation to a profound gift. The bells say stop, enter another world, a world of silence where God will whisper to your heart, a world where everyone strives to speak in the same voice of praise and lament. The bells puncture our routine, our safe and controlled world and let in our unpredictable God who invites us to transformation.

Listen for the bells in your life. They are all around. Perhaps it is your turn to be “on bells” for the people in your life. The invitation is always there, the chimes are sounding, it is time to go and pray. It is time for the real work of your life.

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.

What Are The Bells In Your Life?

“I’ve got to go, the bell just rang.” More than once I’ve ended an e-mail or phone call with those words. Three times a day we hear the bells here at the monastery. Ten minutes before prayer or Mass a designated sister rings the chimes that are broadcast through the phone intercom to the whole monastery and retreat center. It is a time to finish what we are doing to go to chapel.

This is an ancient monastic practice. Benedict didn’t use the phone intercom system but he had designated people and designated times for everyone to get ready for the “Work of God,” for the hours of prayer. Benedict wrote at some length about how this was supposed to happen, how to give people enough time to get to chapel, what happens to people who can’t seem to arrive on time no matter how much time you give them and so forth.

Benedict knew that outward practices are what lead to interior transformation. At first the bell is an interruption, an irritation. We are busy, important people. We have lots to do, things to accomplish. The bells invariably ring in the middle of an important task. Prayer can happen at any time, why can’t I just go ahead and finish what I’m doing? I’ll pray later. Or at least that is our justification, our rationalization when the call to prayer interrupts our work.

But perhaps that is precisely the purpose of the bells. The bells strike at the heart of our most cherished illusion, that we are in control of our life, that we determine our own schedule, our own priorities and we can make our own decisions as to what is most important. When the bells ring and we have to drop everything there is something more important than our own desires, there is something more important than being in control.

The bells are a tangible reminder that our time, our life, is not our own, all that we have is a gift from God. At first the bells seem like a conditioned response. We hear the bell and like Pavlov’s dogs we automatically proceed to chapel for prayer. But unlike the dogs salivating at the bell signaling food, we are able to go deeper, the conditioned response can become an invitation. After many years the bells are no longer a command. The bells become an invitation. The bells become the whisper of God: let go, listen, rejoice, do not fear. I give you all good gifts, I am with you at all times, in rejoicing and in desolation, I am with you says the Lord.

The bells are an invitation, and like any invitation we can choose whether to respond. Frequently I don’t respond, I show up to chapel in body but not in spirit, I don’t always put everything down but carry it with me as I remain preoccupied and distracted. But fortunately God shows up for prayer even when I don’t. God waits in infinite trust and patience for me to catch up, to respond to the meaning of the bells. And so tomorrow the bells will sound again, God whispering: “Come, I am here.”

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.

Praying Together

Over Christmas I tried recording some of our common prayer in order to try posting it on the web. What surprised me the most was how good we sounded. Well, we sounded better after I made sure that I didn’t sing while I recorded the community singing. But despite the occasional cough and background noise we were remarkably clear and together. No one would mistake us for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but for an average bunch of women trying to sing together we weren’t bad. It also made me think about what it means for us to pray together as a community.

Most people think of prayer as a solitary activity but for Benedictines prayer is a community practice. Our communal prayer shapes, molds and transforms us from a collection of individuals who happen to pray together into a community united in heart and mind through prayer.

In our American society we tend to value the individual above all else. We pride ourselves on being independent and self-reliant. Americans celebrate the myth of the rugged individual single-handedly conquering all odds. Community is often an afterthought, working together is not as prized as going it alone.

But for Benedictines the heart of our way of life is community and perhaps nowhere is this expressed more clearly than in our practice of prayer. In our monastery we gather morning and evening to celebrate the divine office, the ancient prayer practice of psalms, hymns, readings and blessings.

Common prayer is truly a practice. We practice day after day, month after month, year after year. We practice because we hope that through the long work of years we will no longer be a collection of individuals who happen to be praying at the same time and place but we will become one body at prayer.

Through the unity of our prayer we express our unity as a community, a small manifestation of the greater Body of Christ. In praying together each of us has to put the needs of the whole community first. The best singers have to make sure they are not standing out and trying too hard to lead the rest of us. Those of us who are not natural singers have to try hard to listen and blend in as well as we can. All of us have to learn to be patient and forgiving with those who are not only musically impaired but also rather loud and oblivious about their impairment.

All aspects of the prayer encourage us to become one heart, one mind. We all strive to come to chapel when the bell rings, dropping what we are doing and making the common prayer a priority. We come and sit in silence, becoming present to what will happen. When the clock chimes we rise as one and the leader lights the candle to signal the beginning of prayer. We bow in unison at certain points and remain seated for a while even after prayer is finished.

Most of the unity in prayer is external. Even when we sing and pray in unison our minds may be busy wool gathering in complex and unique fantasies. But the discipline slowly, gradually and with great effort leads to transformation. Through practice, through daily, small exercises of becoming one community in prayer we are slowly transformed. In prayer, in the rest of community life we grow into the reality that we not simply isolated individuals who happen to live with others but through the course of our life together we are transformed into a community, into one body knit together in Christ, struggling to love as we have been first loved by God.

Monastic Prayer: Dwelling in God's Tent (part 3)

In the last installment we discussed how Benedict used the image of dwelling in God’s tent from Psalm 15 as an image of contemplation and the goal of monastic life. But there is another important tent image that Benedict may have had in mind. Maybe Benedict thought that as monastics we would be able to do what Peter wanted to do so badly.

Tent of the Transfiguration

In Matthew’s Gospel the account of the Transfiguration Jesus goes up to the mountain where he is “transfigured.” He is in the company of Moses and Elijah and his face and clothes are radiant, transformed. Peter, who is on the mountain along with Jesus, James and John, wants to stay there. Peter offers to build three “dwellings” so they can remain on the mountain in the midst of this transforming experience.

The Latin translation of the Bible which Benedict would have been familiar with uses the term tabernacula for Peter’s offer to build three “dwellings.” Benedict must have remembered Jesus on the mountain in the Transfiguration, a mountain like the holy mountain of Psalm 15. In the account of the Transfiguration Jesus is in the company of Moses, the one who lead the people on the journey with the portable tent of God, and with Elijah the prophet frequently invoked in conjunction with the coming of the Messiah. This combination of symbols could easily be seen as similar to the idea of dwelling God’s tent found in the Psalm.

Peter wanted to build a tent on this mountain and dwell in the presence of the glory of God. In this case though, the invitation and vision of the tent or tabernacle on the mountain was a fleeting one, Jesus and Peter were called to go back down the mountain to fulfill their destiny. But the vision of God’s holiness on the mountain would have been one that stayed with them. Indeed in the spiritual tradition of the Eastern Church the account of the Transfiguration is the basis for the spirituality of the “Taboric light” a personal encounter with God like that of Jesus on Tabor.

Conclusion

So perhaps this is ultimately what Benedict wants us to remember. Although we need to live lives that are blameless and just, the whole point of the running, the journey, is so that we can dwell with God. Monastic life isn’t about whether we live in a monastery or are monastics living outside monastery walls. That isn’t the key to the Benedictine way of life. Ultimately we come to the monastic spirituality to listen and respond to that most delightful invitation, the voice of God, our beloved, who says: come dwell with me, share my tent, abide in my love.

Monastic Prayer: Dwelling in God's Tent (part 2)

Benedict sees that monastic life is all about the journey to dwell with God, to know God deeply and intimately in this life as well as the next. To help his monks understand that this is the goal of their life he uses Psalm 15.

The Tent in Psalm 15

In verse 23 of the Prologue Benedict quotes Psalm 15:1: “Who will dwell in your tent, O Lord, who will find rest upon your holy mountain?” The use of this psalm evokes several layers of meaning. The Latin word for tent in the psalm is tabernaculo. His audience, who knew the psalms and the Bible much better than we do, would have recognized that the psalm referred both to the worship in the temple at Jerusalem but also evoked the memory of the wanderings in the desert.

The word tabernaculo in the psalm was also used for the portable tent or tabernacle of God in Exodus. This tabernaculo, accompanied the Israelites as they wandered in the desert, on their journey from slavery to freedom. God dwelt in their midst in this tent. The tabernaculo, or tent, was the tangible symbol of the reality that God was going with the people on the journey. God did not desert them but was present in their midst, dwelling with them in the desert.

By using Psalm 15 Benedict ties together the journey with “the gospel for our guide” with the journey of Jesus’ forbearers. We are part of a long line of pilgrims accompanied by God on our journey, from slavery to freedom, our way set before us by the Gospel of Christ. The second part of the quotation “who will find rest on your holy mountain” then speaks to the end of the journey. The people of Israel didn’t die out in the desert, they made it to the promised land, they were finally able to rest because God kept God’s promise. They inherited the land and worshiped God in stability. While the psalm alludes to the exodus, it is also liturgical psalm of the Temple in Jerusalem, the center of worship for the Jewish people.

Given the way Scripture was interpreted in the 6th century Benedict wouldn’t have seen this psalm as simply a part of a historical reference to the practices of Jewish temple worship but would have interpreted it from a Christian standpoint. So the question posed by the psalm becomes a question of Christian believers. Are we worthy to worship God? Do we put our faith into practice and not take God presence and action for granted?

This takes us to the second important part of the tent image. We don’t just wander in, plop down and live in the temple. Listen to the verses 24-27:

24 After this question, brothers, let us listen well to what the Lords says in reply, for he shows us the way to his tent. 25 One who walks without blemish, he says, and is just in all his dealings; 26 who speaks the truth from his heart and has not practiced deceit with his tongue 27 who has not wronged a fellowman in any way, nor listened to slanders against his neighbor.

So dwelling with God and being in God’s presence, is something that requires some action on our part. Benedict has built up to a rhetorical peak in this section. The Prologue began with the call to listen, God calling out in the marketplace, setting out on the journey. The questioning seems to build in intensity as we get to verse 23, the quotation from Psalm 15: “But let us ask the Lord with the Prophet: Who will dwell in your tent, O Lord, who will find rest upon your holy mountain?” The answer for the disciple, the climax of the series of invitations and questions, comes in verse 25, the center of the fifty verses of the Prologue. The words of the psalmist provide the answer of God.

The journey to dwell with God is not an intellectual assent of faith. It is made up of concrete actions. We are to “walk without blemish,” and to be “just” in all our dealings. The psalm seems to be speaking of a pattern of behavior and lifestyle. The actions mentioned speak to what it means to live in community don’t they? Do we speak the truth? Do we try to be just and fair and not act out of old hurts and jealousies? Do we listen to “slander against our neighbor?” We hear an echo of Benedict’s prohibition on murmuring. In community it is easy to find all kinds of things negative to say about our neighbors, and it precisely these sorts of actions on which we will be judged worthy, or not worthy, to dwell in God’s tent.

But ultimately the psalm is not meant to scold us, a form of abbatial finger shaking trying to get us to be good. Benedict wants us to dwell in the in God’s tent, to listen to the invitation of the delightful voice. It’s possible that Benedict had in mind another allusion to the tent.

Final installment: Dwelling on the mountain of the Transfiguration

The Psalms: A 2x4 Moment

Praying Psalm 95 is like unexpectedly being hit upside the head with a 2x4. I think that is why Benedict wants monks to pray Psalm 95 every morning and why we don’t.

In his Rule St. Benedict provides extensive, specific provisions for how we are to pray the Divine Office, the Liturgy of the Hours every day. The Office is primarily Psalms and while some are distributed randomly others are prayed everyday at the same time. Psalm 95 is to be prayed every morning.

Psalm 95 certainly starts innocently enough, the first several verses are a paean of praise to God the creator, a reminder to give thanks and praise for all we have been given:

1 O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
6 O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

So far so good. We have an important call to celebrate our relationship with God, a humbling yet joyful reminder that all we have and all we are is from God. We are the sheep dependent on the shepherd and we acknowledge our humility. We would certainly all feel pretty good if the Psalm ended there. It would be a good and appropriate way to start each day.

But then comes the 2x4 upside the head:

7 O that today you would listen to his voice! 8 Do not harden your hearts,
as at Meribah as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray and they do not regard my ways.” 11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”

What on earth happened!? Our nice, safe, happy Psalm of praise got ugly didn’t it? We are brought up short by the admonition: “O that today you would listen to his voice.” The Psalm tells us, shouts at us, that the people of God tend to not listen to the voice of God. The Psalm is forcing us to see that the disobedience of the people during the Exodus wasn’t just a far off historical event. Every day we face a choice. Will we listen and respond to God’s voice or will we be like the people in the desert who didn’t trust God, who didn’t listen, who murmured and complained.

This is not an easy Psalm. It is not a safe or comfortable view of God. If we pay attention to this Psalm we will be left uncomfortable, uneasy, chastened and worried. Does this mean that we should fear a terrible God of anger? Should we simply reject the Psalm?

Perhaps Benedict mandated that this Psalm be used every morning simply because he was so deeply aware of human nature. Human nature is not inherently bad or evil, we are created in the image of God, but we easily slip into complacency. We begin to take things for granted. We begin to take God for granted like a building we pass by everyday without really seeing.

This is what Benedict wants us to avoid. He wants us to begin each day with this clashing, discordant Psalm, this beautiful call to praise and disturbing warning that we cannot fail to remember the God of our salvation. Benedict says listen! This Psalm says listen! Listen and pay attention. Listen today. Give praise to God today. God is always present, may we always be open, always thankful for the gifts of God.

Starting every morning being hit upside the head with a 2x4 isn’t easy, but perhaps this urgent wake-up call will allow us to start each day with a new depth of gratitude to the God who will lead us through the day with love.

Why The Psalms?

With all the popularity of Benedictine spirituality these days one topic doesn’t seem to be mentioned very often. Lots of books put an emphasis on balance, humility, respect for the material world, silence and all sorts of other things but the Psalms are rarely mentioned. That’s odd because for Benedict the Psalms permeate the life of the monk, the air of the monastery is suffused with the words of the Psalter. Benedict has his monks repeat the cycle of 150 Psalms, in one week. The formation of new monks emphasized memorizing the Psalms. Benedict spends several important chapters of his short Rule setting forth which Psalms are to be said at which prayer times.

So why doesn’t contemporary Benedictine spirituality focus more on the Psalms? I suspect that we don’t really know what to make of the Psalms these days. Most people have a few Psalms that they especially like, usually the ones that seem comforting and hopeful. Some people have a few Psalms that they think really shouldn’t be part of Scripture at all since they are perceived as too violent and bloodthirsty. For the most part we tend to take the Psalms for granted and don’t make a connection between the Psalms and our desire for a deeper spirituality.

How the Early Church Read the Psalms

The understanding of the Psalm in the early Church was much different from our own. Modern people see the Psalms as 150 unrelated little poems that don’t have much in common. We read the Psalms as unrelated to the rest of Scripture or even to other Psalms. Scripture study today emphasizes discerning exactly when the Psalm was written and for what original purpose in the original context of Israel some 3000 years ago.

This way of reading Scripture would be completely and utterly foreign to the readers of Benedict’s time. They saw the whole Bible, all of Scripture, being a single, organic whole. The Bible wasn’t a collection of basically unrelated books composed over a period of a thousand years for a variety of different purposes and audiences, for them it was one book that was to be read as the whole, complete story of God’s plan of salvation. In other words Genesis and Revelation weren’t separate stories they were all part of one story. To these readers everything in the Old Testament, foreshadowed, was a hint of what was to come, in the New Testament. An image from the early church writer Iranaeus helps us understand this idea. He said that the entire Bible was like a mosaic, innumerable individual tiles make up the larger picture of salvation history. In other words each verse or story from Scripture wasn’t to be read as a single entity, each piece of Scripture was a small piece of the whole picture of God’s plan for salvation.

Against this idea the early Church considered the Psalms to represent an especially clear synopsis of the rest of the Bible. The book of Psalms was read to be a summary of all of salvation history. The early writers could see the Paschal Mystery, the saving event of Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection contained in the Psalms.

By this point most people reading this are probably wondering whether the early Church writers were reading the same book of Psalms that we do! The reality is that we probably can’t really re-capture the way that our foremothers and forefathers read Scripture. They knew Scripture much better than we did and would form chains of association based on individual words or phrases that are extremely hard for us to even follow today. On word or phrase in a Psalm would remind them of something in Genesis which would in turn remind them of something in the Gospel of Matthew. As an example, try reading some of St. Augustine’s commentaries on the Psalms in which he seems to wander in a stream of consciousness from one apparently unrelated topic to another. Our modern mind set is just very different and we probably cannot delve into Scripture in the same way or to the same depth as these great early writers.

Psalms as “Mirror of the Soul”

However, there is a way the early writers read the Psalms that can be helpful to us. The Psalms were called the “mirror of the soul.” The Psalms reflect the depth and breadth of human experience and when we read the Psalms we see ourselves reflected in their words. You don’t have to know the Psalms very well to see that the Psalmist never holds back in his relationship with God! The Psalms are shouts of effusive praise, they are cries of deepest despair, they recall the wonders of history and call for vengeance against enemies. There is probably no aspect of human experience that is foreign to the Psalms. Early writers saw this and encouraged people to see their own experience in the Psalms and to use the Psalms for the healing and transformation of their soul. The Psalmist always comes back to God, whether is joy and praise or despair and hopelessness, God is the foundation of the Psalmist’s life.

So how can we modern people pray the Psalms? Perhaps the most important thing is to simply slow down and immerse ourselves in the Psalms. We pray with Scripture by not reading it quickly for information the way we would a newspaper, but to read it slowly and let it speak to us. We can allow the words of the Psalms to become our words, they can express our deepest feelings, feelings that we don’t want to express or have trouble articulating. We can let the Psalms speak to us, we can listen deeply as the Psalms speak to us about the action of God in our life and world.

In monastic prayer the Psalms are an ocean of God’s presence. Go ahead and dive into the ocean and see where the tide takes you.