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.

How to be a monk: Lesson Two – The Journey

Do you ever wonder what the purpose of your life is, where you are going?  At the beginning of Benedict’s Rule (his guidebook for monks) he uses the phrase: “let us set out on this way with the Gospel for our guide.”  In that brief phrase he captures a tremendous amount of wisdom.

We are all on a journey.  Many, perhaps most of us, spend a lot of time blithely putting one foot in front of the other without any real thought of destination beyond the next meal, paycheck, crisis or other immediate, concrete goal.  But often there comes a point in life when something hits us upside the head and we start to wonder about the deeper meaning and point to our life.  We wonder what life is really all about, whether there is a meaning that we have neglected to consider or that we have been oblivious to.

These are precisely the questions that Benedict answers in his Rule.  He is writing for Christians who want to follow the Gospel as a way of life, people who want their faith to inform all aspects of their life, who want their faith to be more than abstract belief or ethical behavior.  Benedict writes a guidebook for people who want the Gospel to permeate all aspects of their lives, who want to listen to what Benedict calls “God’s delightful voice.”

So what is the nature of this journey?  First we have to consciously begin, to set out.  This sounds simple enough but it is a radical step.  To set out on the spiritual journey means that we can no longer take our faith for granted, it can no longer be something that we dabble in or think about once in a while.  The journey is a journey to consciousness.  We seek to become aware of God’s presence in our life at all times and in all ways.  When we set out on this journey we can no longer compartmentalize our faith, putting it in a box that is separate from work, family, leisure and the many concerns of our life.  When we decide to set out on this way we have to look at every aspect of life from the perspective of the Gospel.

But fortunately we have support on this journey.  Benedict assumes that we don’t do this alone, we will be with others and as community we will make the journey together.  We have a road map, Benedict’s Rule, guidebook, is eminently practical and inspiring.  We don’t have to blaze our own trail we read a map that has been used by many generations.  And we walk in the company of the monks who have gone before us and shown us that the journey is possible.

Perhaps it is time: are you ready to set out on this way, the Gospel for your guide?

How to be a monk: Lesson One – Listening

What is a monk?  Above all a monk is someone who listens.  In a world flooded with nattering, chattering, vacuous noise the monk listens deeply and responds fully.  Monastic listening is rooted and grounded in silence, in the place where we let go of the many competing voices and demands of our lives and find a place to hear the voice of God that is heard in silence.

The call to be a monk may first manifest itself in a desire to listen or a realization of how rarely most of us actually listen.  The noise of our lives is pervasive.  There are jobs to go to, children to care for, spouses to pay attention to.  If that isn’t enough the cacophony of the internet, smart phones, television, all the screens in our lives compete for our attention and scream with distractions.

And most of us are happily distracted.  We secretly glory in our busyness, we’re delighted to have one more excuse to avoid the hard work in front of us.  The hard work may be jobs or family or it may be something even deeper.  Listening is hard work but it is the foundation of soul work.

In listening we begin to hear our deepest desires, those secret hopes that we may be afraid to articulate.  In deep listening we hear our desires to be loved, to have meaning, to care for others.  In listening we hear the whispers of God beckoning us to follow our desires to the place where we can all become whole.

St. Benedict, the founder of western monasticism began his guidebook on the monastic way with these words: “Listen my child to the master’s instructions and attend to them with the ear of your heart.”  Many people are called to be monks, to seek God above all else in their lives, and listening with the ear of the heart is the first step.

Perhaps it is time: Listen.  Be silent.  Be open.  What is your heart saying?

Art and Monasticism

September seems to be a season for the arts here at the Monastery. We are privileged to have 6 artists, writers and filmmakers joining us for the first ever “Artist Residency” program. Today we welcome back the Gonzaga University Choir for a concert. The arts are everywhere!

At first there doesn’t seem to be much connection between art and monasticism. But by bringing the arts into this sacred space the intersection between people living a life focused on God and the lives of those who are focused on creativity begins to become clear.

Those of us who are monastics lives a simple, disciplined life focused on God. All aspects of monastic life are structured to allow us to make faith the focus of our lives. We order our lives in such a way that we can focus our energy on being open to God’s re-creating, transformative power. We live simply, in community, sharing all our resources and creating structured, consistent time for prayer and contemplation.

 Perhaps the life of the artist, writer, musician is not so different. For people serious about their creative work there is a monastic asceticism as they structure their life around their discipline. To enter deeply into any kind of art means to sacrifice other things. An artist isn’t one who dabbles occasionally but is the person who is drawn, even driven to create, to bring something new to birth. The artist is a person of vision and vision requires discipline, sacrifice, commitment to be made real.

Both monks and artists of all types are drawn, perhaps driven, by the transcendent. Whether the force that beckons them on is named God or is a more personal vision, it is always something beyond, something that transcends the complacent here and now where many people seem content to dwell. Both prayer and creativity are expressions of a primal feeling that there is something more, something that may be hard to express or articulate but powerful and compelling. In prayer and creativity we are drawn to enter the deep realization of trying to express our deepest longings, joys, fears and insights. In prayer and creativity we take the risk of opening ourselves up, of listening, of being transformed and offering our gifts on behalf of the world.

So today and in these weeks the monastics of St. Gertrude’s are given the gift of sharing our way of life. The musicians and artists join us for prayer and Eucharist. We are able to give of ourselves by offering space and the sharing of who we are. And in this mutual gift giving something new is being born as together we are witnesses to what it means to live lives focused on the transcendent.

Monasticism, Young Adults and Building Structures of Faith

Recently I reflected on the fact that many people attracted to Benedictine life today seem to be middle-age seekers. While that is certainly true it isn’t the whole picture by any means. There is a whole set of people who also seem to be finding our monastery in particular and Benedictine spirituality in general to be something that feeds a deep hunger in their souls.

We have always had a trickle of young adults coming to the monastery and that trickle seems to be on its way to a small stream. People come and then they come back and bring their friends. This summer we have had a very good response to our first “Monastic Immersion Program” with several young women participating.

It makes me wonder what appeals to 20 and 30-something women and men who come and spend some time with a group of women who are the age of their grandmothers or great-grandmothers. Our music isn’t the same, most of us think social networking is something that happens at parties and all of us not only remember typewriters but we used them well into adulthood and very few of us even know how to spell much less connect to YouTube. So what is the attraction?

In general younger folks seem to be fascinated by the idea of a whole way of life that is structured around faith and the desire for God. Praying three times a day, having time and space for silence, living simply, being committed to a community, these are all novel and impressive characteristics to younger people. This is appropriate since the life tasks in our 20’s and 30’s are mostly about engaging in the external work of becoming a competent adult in the world. During these decades we need to learn how to handle relationships, work, independence, how to be a competent, self-sufficient adult. In other words we need to build ourselves up and create the inner and outer structures that will allow us to be mature and be successful.

Maybe that is why it seems to be the lifestyle and structure that is so appealing to these youngsters (there comes a point in life when anyone under 40 seems like a youngster!). Patterns and habits are still being set. Common questions involve how do I develop a prayer practice that works for me, how do I hold on to my values if they aren’t shared by my peers, is there a way of life that values faith as central rather than peripheral? And these are all questions and issues that are central to monastic life. Perhaps the genius of monastic life and the reason it has survived for centuries is that it addresses the faith questions of every generation. When we are younger we need structures and common values. When we reach middle age we need the support to undertake the inner journey of dismantling the hard won ego accomplishments of youth. In old age monastic life will help us sort through the struggle to make sense of what our lives have been.

It is wonderful to see a parade of young adults participating in our Benedictine balance of prayer, work and community. Those of us who will still be here when they leave are reminded that we offer an experience and vision of a life focused on God for people of all ages and backgrounds. That is a wonderful experience even for those of us who remember when computers required punch cards.

Monasteries: Schools of Middle-Age Meaning

An interesting thing happened somewhere along the line in recent monastic life. Monasteries seem to have become largely about middle-age. Most of the women who are attracted to our way of life are middle-aged. Most of our retreatants are middle-aged. Most of our oblates are middle-aged. If you throw in the employees and volunteers there might be a little more variety but it would still probably average out to middle age. What on earth is going on?

When most of our sisters entered St. Gertrude’s they were quite young, most of them teen-agers or at most young adults. A few of them still talk about being one of the “old” ones if they entered at the ripe old age of 28 or 29. Now today it is a popular topic to wonder what happened to young people entering community or participating in other ways. So what happened to our “chronological diversity?”

As with most questions it is dangerous to posit an easy or simple answer, but perhaps we have trouble seeing the possibility that just as monasteries have always done we are responding to the needs of the times. Monasteries have never been about just one type of ministry, one way of being community, one way of being monastic. The flexibility and adaptability of Benedictine life has been one of the keys to the survival of monasticism. In the Church prior to Vatican II there was a tremendous need for Catholic education. Young women came to religious life, to St. Gertrude’s, to engage in an important, clear, tangible ministry. If you were a young woman who came to our community in 1960 you pretty much knew that you would serve the Church as a teacher or a nurse. It was a commitment to a life that seemed clear, that had answers, that had a specific ministry, that was set apart from and even above that of other people. This promise would have a great appeal to young people. Youth is about certainty and answers. Heroic self-sacrifice for a common ideal is something that stirs deeply in young hearts.

So what happened? Sisters aged along with the incredible winds of change in the Church and life become less simple, the answers less clear, a depth of understanding and maturity began to be required that had not been before. Ministry became a broader concept than it had been and choices proliferated. Religious life began to speak to new needs, new callings, new hungers. And so the world needs the witness and ministry of monastic life today as much as it did fifty years ago, but witness is of a different kind.

Perhaps that is why we often seem over-run with the middle-aged. Middle-age is the fruitful, scary, disconcerting, exhilarating time of life when everything seems up for grabs. Unlike youth this is not a time of answers or trying on new identities. It is a time when the answers seem to dissolve in your hand like cotton candy on a hot day. Middle age is a time when the mountains of achievement have either been climbed or abandoned and it is time to go deeper, to go inside and look for answers that used to be outside. In middle-age is the time for reflection, questions, wondering, slowing down and evaluating. In the middle of life it is time to look for meaning.

This is where monasteries come in. What is a monastery about if not meaning: deep, profound, fundamental, essential meaning. What is my faith; how do I pray; who is God; how do I love; why do we suffer; the questions of meaning that were ignored and passed by blindly are now huge stumbling blocks that seem to loom suddenly out of nowhere and threaten to hurl us headlong into our fears. But what is the school for the middle-aged, the school of meaning?

Perhaps modern monasteries are the new schools for meaning for the middle-aged. Benedict called his monastery “a school of the Lord’s service” and this is really the same thing. When people come to a monastery they are able to ask and explore the important questions of their life. Monasteries are necessarily not about answers but they are about being able to ask and live with the questions. And wrestling with questions that have no answers is perhaps the hallmark of middle-age.
Looking around the monastery there are lots of middle-aged fellow travelers, people on a new journey to know God and their faith in a new way, people who are beginning to suspect that the old answers and certainties are never coming back. Here at the monastery we just stand by the door and welcome people to the first day at this new kind of school.

Giving Up Complacency For Lent

So what do monastics, whether monks, nuns or oblates have to give up for Lent? Most of us lead pretty simple lives, not a lot of possessions, a dedication to prayer and faith. I’m reminded of the joke that priests tell, that hearing the confessions of nuns is like being stoned to death by popcorn. No one is going to be startled by our attempts to be more holy. In his chapter on Lent Benedict emphasizes ascetical practices for Lent, giving up extra sleep, adding more prayer, that sort of thing. Personally I’ve never been sure that I end up being that much more holy or even that much more prepared for Lent through these kinds of practices.

I suspect that what I need to give up for Lent is something much more fundamental, much more foundational in my spiritual life. Over the years as I’ve read and re-read the Gospels the more I am convinced that for Jesus one of the most fundamental sins was that of complacency. Over and over in the Gospels most ostensibly holy people, the Pharisees, those who observed God’s commandments in the greatest detail and depth, were the ones that Jesus most often took aim at. The Pharisees were the good, holy people of their society but they took the presence, the action of God in their lives for granted. They did everything right, they did what God asked of them but they ceased to be shocked, amazed, stunned, overwhelmed and surprised by God. They were always in control in their faith lives, they had God all figured out. They were complacent.

In the face of this complacency Jesus came along and stripped, shattered and dismantled all their hard won faith and sense of control. Jesus shattered the safe, comfortable faith world of the Pharisees. He said that God cannot be taken for granted, God’s love and grace are meant to shock us and knock us flat on our backside every time we encounter them, day after day. What the novelist Flannery O’Connor described could easily apply to the message of Jesus: "When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures."

I won’t assume to speak to the experience of anyone else, Lent and conscience are very personal things. But I know that I tend to wince pretty hard when I encounter the Gospels and the self-satisfaction of the Pharisees. My faith journey tends to become nice and even and well paved, it is easy to coast or to assume that my hard work is the work of transformation rather than just the daily work that needs to be done. I find it easy to become the complacent Pharisee keeping God safely in a box.

So perhaps my Lenten challenge will be to cultivate a renewed sense of the power of God’s presence in my life. Thankfulness, awareness of the gift of God’s presence ought to cause me to tremble down to my toes. The knowledge of how deeply and indiscriminately I and all people are loved by God should take my breath away every time I think of it. The reality of grace is something that should knock me over every time I realize the wonder of the gift.

Perhaps this is the real gift of Lent, the gift of the ashes of Wednesday. Our repentance is not for the trivial sins that characterize most of our lives but for the big sin of taking God for granted. May our asceticism, our penance and our awareness during this season truly lead to the intense joy of Easter, the startling gift of God’s presence in our lives.

The Monastic 24-Hour Buffet in a Spiritually Hungry World

People today are spiritually hungry. That insight has almost become a cliché. We know it, we say it, but what are we doing about it? If we aren’t careful we are in danger of being like the people that the Letter of James warns about, walking by the hungry and naked while encouraging them to be warm and well fed. Monasteries especially might need to be careful to look at whether we are hoarding food in the midst of a famine.

So what is the purpose of a monastery? What are these places of prayer, silence and community doing in our increasingly fast-paced, individualistic and secular world? What is the meaning of this odd, counter-cultural place and way of life? Monasteries today are not well known or understood. People often seem to think a monastery is a place for the spiritually elite to escape from the world or simply an anachronism from the middle ages.

But perhaps the purpose of monasteries is something that both our hurting world and the declining numbers of monastics need to look at. A monastery is not just about the small number of people who live there and take vows. A monastery is salt, light and leaven in a dark, flat and tasteless world. A monastery is a dynamic center for the spiritual journey, a place of hope and prayer. The monastery is provides support and community for people who are called by God to go deeper in their faith, in their relationship with God. Today monasteries are called to be all night buffets in a spiritually starving world.

Monasteries have always been places for people who have felt a call to put God before all else in their lives. Monastic life has always been centered around God, a life of prayer and service in the context of community. Both in the past and still today this monastic way has been seen as something where only a few could dedicate their life in a company of a small group of others. Monastics have traditionally been seen as a hidden, spiritually elite few.

A monastery is a collection of people, whether sisters, monks or oblates, who commit themselves to put God at the center of their lives. They aren’t people who have perfect spiritual lives, people who don’t struggle and sometimes feel like their relationship with God is in need of some relationship counseling. Monastics are simply people who are committed to the spiritual journey above all else.

Today our ministry as monastics is changing. Monasteries have always been of service, in the Dark Ages providing hospitality and learning in the chaos of the time. More recently many monastic communities have provided services in education and health care. But today those of us who are monastics need to share not just what we do but who we are on a deep level. We need to share the banquet of our spiritual life. It is time to open the doors to our banquet table through retreats, spiritual direction, expanded ideas of membership, forming people in their relationship with God.

It is a time of famine in our land, a time of darkness when all food has lost its savor and lies flat and unleavened on our tables. Into this time of starvation the monasteries of the world need to throw open their storehouses, reveal their light and become a salty, yeasty presence on the banquet tables of the world. Where there is spiritual hunger the monasteries need to become the 24 hour buffet table to feed a world that does not always even recognize its hunger for God.

Advent Week Two: Wisdom and a Swift Kick in the Complacency

What do we hear when we listen? The invitation to listen, be awake, be prepared came in the first Sunday of Advent. And now the message is being revealed in this second week. In Isaiah’s reading we see the figure coming to establish a new order. This shoot from the stump of Jesse will judge with justice and righteous and inaugurate a radically new reality where the wolf shall lie down with the lamb and a little child shall lead them. This call to a new order is echoed in the Gospel reading. John the Baptist is the herald of a new order, calling people to repentance in preparation for the one who is to come for the final judgment.

These readings of Advent call us to radical change, change that will come from the root of our being. In these readings a figure will come and shake us out of sleep, calling us to a life with God is at the center, a life in which all that we do, manifests the reality of God’s transformative presence.

The insistent invitation of these reading are echoed in the Rule. The Rule of Benedict seeks to establish an entire way of life that calls us to live the Advent readings on a daily basis. The Rule creates external structures and practices that guide us on the journey to transformation, the journey to becoming remade in the image of Christ. Over time the practices of the Rule will eventually become a deep and natural part of our selves.

The Advent readings focus on the one who is to come, the figure who will challenge people and judge with righteousness in order to bring about the new Reign of God. In the Rule we see this wisdom figure personified in the abbot or prioress. This is the person chosen by the community to be the one to support and challenge, guide and judge as a way to call all members of the monastic community to become who God is calling them to be. The abbot or prioress is the figure who calls everyone to accountability so that the monastic community may become a group of transformed people who manifest God’s love in the world.

For Benedict the abbot or prioress has to carefully discern the needs of her flock and treat each person individually: “He must know what a difficult and demanding burden he has undertaken: directing souls and serving a variety of temperaments, coaxing, reproving and encouraging them as appropriate.” (RB 2:31) The abbot or prioress is the person in our life who calls us to the hard, inner work of faith. The abbot or prioress is the one who encourages us when we are struggling to see ourselves as beloved of God. They are the ones who call us to accountability when we take our faith for granted, when we are no longer stretching and growing in our journey toward wholeness.

As Benedict indicates this job is difficult because so many of us are unaware of how we need to grow in faith. The abbot or prioress has to support the many people who cannot see themselves as being worthy of God’s love, who struggle with guilt, always finding themselves lacking or unworthy. In any group there are also the Pharisees that John warned so strongly. How many of us are blind to our complacency, like the Pharisees we are good, holy people who do all the right things but take God’s mercy for granted, as an entitlement rather than being overwhelmed by such an undeserved gift?

All of us, those who struggle to believe we are made in the image of God and those who take God’s love for granted, need the presence of the abbot or prioress to nurture and challenge us to growth. The image of the people of God as a flock of sheep resounds throughout Scripture, throughout the Rule of Benedict. We are not individuals before God, we are part of a people, bound together in our journey, needing help and accountability.

The Rule of Benedict is a way of living out the call of the Gospel in everyday life. It speaks to professed monastics and anyone seeking to live a life of deeper faith. Benedict has set up an external structure but the structure is not an end in and of itself. The monastery is not just a building it is a way of life. The abbot or prioress is not just a person in a building, they represent the people and ways that keep us on track in our spiritual journey. The abbot or prioress is the wisdom figure in our life who has been instrumental in our faith life. They can be anybody who is a guide in darkness, a support in despair, the one who challenges our assumptions, who calls us to accountability.

The abbot or prioress is also the deep, interior voice of God in our life. When we listen, are silent, open and awake we will hear the invitation of new life. The abbot or prioress is this deep whispering of God in our soul. When we hear the whispers of restlessness, the deep realization that we are loved, the call to change, this is the voice of the abbot or prioress of our life, the call of the righteous one of Isaiah, the one to come spoken of by John the Baptist. The call is always the call to listen. The call is to live as Advent people, always awake, always ready, because the coming of God in our life is a daily reality.

Past and Future, Through the Desert

Last weekend I gave two days of presentations to a group of Benedictine novices about the early desert fathers and mothers. These are the texts about the men and women of the 4th century who desired to live the gospel to its fullest, to stretch themselves and to fully experience the call of God in their lives. These men and women went to the deserts as a way to escape the shallowness of conventional life and to truly test their faith and resolve.

As I talked to the novices I encouraged them to see themselves in these ancient stories of men and women who left their conventional lives to serve and seek God. I told them that as monastics they are the modern inheritors of the early desert monastic tradition.

Over the course of the weekend these women were able to make profound connections between their lives and the lives of their monastic foremothers and forefathers. They too experienced the call of God as well as the struggles, the “demons” and the aridity of life in the “desert” of formation. But like the early desert monastics they too are living the integrity of the struggle. Transformation is neither cheap nor easy. God’s grace is real and sustaining but we also experience the parts of ourselves that hold us back, make us want to give up and distrust the presence of God.

Throughout the weekend it struck me that the struggles of the early desert monastics, the struggles of these modern Benedictine novices, and the struggles of modern monastic life are all of one piece. As most monasteries and indeed most religious communities see a decline in numbers we tend to think that this is something new. But perhaps the reality is simply that this is our particular desert, our particular struggle and challenge.

Whether in the 4th century, in the 6th century of Benedict, in the middle ages or 21st century Idaho, monastics have always been called to a life centered on God above all else. The word monk comes from the word “single,” we are the ones who seek God alone. In order to do that we give up things that the world thinks of as indispensable such as possessions, marriage, the ability to always make our own choices. We live in community. We pray at set hours. We try to love and honor those we live with and those we serve. These aspects of our life aren’t easy, they don’t necessarily make sense to “the world” or they may seem too difficult for people to do. This is our desert, this is the place of our struggle.

For the early desert dwellers the desert was a place of asceticism, fasting, vigils, prayer. This asceticism was their means of transformation, of doing the hard inner work of cooperating with God’s grace, being remade in God’s image. Perhaps today our desert is the hard work of sharing the ancient and modern good news of monastic life. In a culture that seems to lack commitment, when people are hungry for spirituality but not religious life, we have to remain and ponder the lessons of the particular desert we find ourselves in. The early desert fathers and mothers tell us that the desert is a place of demons, struggle and doubt. But they also tell us that the heart of the desert is paradox, for truly it is where God is found.

The novices who joined us for two weeks know what the desert is like. They are joining an ancient way of life that sometimes looks like it is in jeopardy. But hopefully throughout their time they learned that monasticism has never been an easy choice, the desert is the place of the deepest challenges, but at the same time we go into the desert seeking the God who alone can make the desert bloom. In the desert we will follow the God who will lead us back to the garden.

Are You a Monk?

Are you a monk? Most people would laugh if they were asked that question. “Monk” conjures up pictures of men in archaic dress who live a deeply ascetic lifestyle in a building removed from “the world.” But I wonder whether we tend to put monks and monasticism in too small a box.

I recently did a presentation about Benedictine spirituality for people in a spiritual direction training program. I suggested that “monk” is really an archetype, a concept or image that crosses time and cultures. Over centuries many cultures, faiths and religions have had some version of monks, people who put the quest for God or the divine above all else in their lives. Monks are people for whom faith is the most important thing in their lives and they structure their lives to make that seeking for God or the transcendent the focus of their lives.

This way of looking at monks and monasticism is very different from focusing on monasticism as one of many versions of vowed religious life in the Roman Catholic Church. While many of us, men and women, are vowed religious, perhaps it is time to really stretch the boundaries of the way we think about putting God at the center of our life.

Books about the spiritual life seem to be proliferating. More and more people are going to retreats, forming groups for prayer and spirituality and joining Third Orders. In a world that seems more and more secular and material there is evidence of many people who feel they are thirsting for God in the desert of our predominant culture.

So perhaps it is time for a renewal of monastic life. The first monks went to the desert to lead a more intense, dedicated Christian life after Christianity became legal and acceptable under Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century. Benedict of Nursia wrote his Rule in the 6th century, a guidebook for monks who wanted to live intense Christian community at a time when the Roman Empire was falling apart. In the Roman Catholic tradition monks have continually adapted to the changing needs of the times.

Today there are still those of us who are called to go to a physical monastery and make the same life promises that Benedictines have made for over 1500 years. But there are many more people, men and women, Catholic and Protestant, single and married, who are being called to monastic life on its most fundamental level, monasticism beyond a traditional, institutional structure. Being a monk is a habit of the heart, a way of loving and a desire to seek God. Being a monk means a focus on God above all else and a commitment to walk on the narrow path of the Gospel, journeying towards transformation and taking on the full stature of Christ.

Being a monk outside the institution is not easy, but neither is being a monk inside a monastery! It is about dedication, creativity and finding the structures that help you seek Christ above all. Being a monk is about gathering with like-minded seekers and making a commitment to the struggle, to always starting over and knowing that God is with you on the journey.

It is an exciting time for the monastic way of life. New ways of being monastic are being born. There will be birth pangs and doubts, struggles and deaths as this ever ancient, always new way of life continues into the future.

Benedict begins his Rule with the word “listen.” It is an invitation, listen, are you a monk?