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.

Is Modern Technology Making Us Stupid?

Is modern technology making us stupid? That was the thrust of an article I read recently. The author argued that the amount of reading we do on a screen, rather than with physical books, is making us very prone to distraction and detracting from our ability to do “deep reading.” He contends that the illusion of being able to multi-task and the nature of modern media with its emphasis on links, ads, and other attention grabbers is slowly rendering us incapable of being able to truly read and focus at a deep level.

This fascinating article, which I read online! (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/06/20/INL91DU44K.DTL) never used the term lectio divina, the monastic practice of prayerful reading, but the application is clear. In his Rule St. Benedict provides for two to three hours a day of praying with Scripture. This was a practice of spending deep time with the text of Scripture, being open to listening to the Word of God. Benedict doesn’t assume that this focused listening and reading is easy, he knows it is not. But it is essential to the life of a monk. To truly undertake the spiritual journey, to walk the narrow path of the Gospel we have to be willing to do the hard work of being still, open, listening and responding to this voice of God in our life.

This is an invitation to all of us today, monastics as much or more than anyone. It is easy to spend hours a day looking at a computer screen, a TV, a cell phone or any other of the myriad distractions we have at our disposal. It is hard to be still, to try and quiet the incessant chatter of our thoughts, to face our deepest fears and longings that we try to anesthetize ourselves with distractions.

Perhaps the key paradox of the spiritual journey for modern people is that the hardest work is to not work so hard. Reading from screens, whether computers, iPads, cell phones or anything else, and the distractions that come with them, is simply a symptom of our busyness. We easily pride ourselves on how busy we are, using this as a measuring stick of our importance. We can judge others and ourselves by our level of activity. What would we think of someone who took Benedict at face value and spent two or three hours a day in deep contemplation of Scripture? Chances are we would castigate that person for being a slacker and wondering how he or she could get away with not doing enough “real” work.

But that is probably precisely our problem. The work we tend to wrap ourselves up in, the frenetic activity we engage in, is not real work, it is usually a distracting illusion that keeps us from the real work of transformation. Real work is the slow, hard work of cultivating the soil of our soul. The deep reading of lectio divina, taking the time and discipline to allow the Word of God to permeate the clay of our soul is the work that matters.

So I am writing this on a screen and you will read it on a screen. There will be distractions, and pictures and links, but perhaps, for a period of time during the day we can all unplug and spend some time alone with the printed Word that will needs to be written on the page of our hearts.

New Ventures

Benedictines have survived for over 1500 years both because our way of life speaks to the deep desires of the human heart to get to know God more deeply and because we continue to change and adapt to the needs of the times. The ways in which we seek God and share our life with others continues to respond to the needs of the times.
On example of that adaptability is the amazing new project starting here at the monastery. We just opened our new bed and breakfast to the public. We have taken the ground floor of our guest house, totally remodeled it and opened the Inn at St. Gertrude Bed and Breakfast. So far as we can tell we are only the second monastery in the country to operate a bed and breakfast. (The other one is in Chicago, so I don’t think we are competing with each other).

Opening the bed and breakfast has been a long process that highlights both our response to changing times and our continuing values. About six years ago we decided that as a community we need to focus on income development as one of several goals for our future. With fewer members we knew we needed to be creative in generating revenue to support ourselves.

Benedictines do not do things without extensive collaboration. Decisions are not made unilaterally or without consultation. Community is our core value, our future is in the hands of all of us. With this in mind we formed a committee to explore new ideas. One early idea was to take an under-utilized building and turn it into a bed and breakfast. Two of our very creative oblate members proposed what this building could look like if it was re-done. The proposal was discussed by the whole community. Every member was invited to talk about the idea and to give feedback to the committee.

After feedback and more exploration the committee concluded that the building we were considering wouldn’t lend itself to a bed and breakfast. So after more committee meetings (do you sense a pattern here?) someone came up with the idea of using the ground floor of our guest house. Much discussion ensued, the community as a whole was consulted, the advice, help, time and energy of many people went into almost two years of very practical work on this project.

The result is a beautiful set of rooms that are now open to the public and are already proving very popular.

But perhaps the most important piece of this whole project is how we have done it. Opening the bed and breakfast has been an amazing model of generosity and collaboration. There were many frustrating moments when we tried to create a business with a committee, probably not a model that is taught in most MBA programs! But through everyone’s patience we managed to create a new business that combined the efforts and creativity of our monastic community, our employee, our volunteers, our oblate community and many others.

I think this is Benedictine values at their best. Together we are able to create something new that honors both the concerns and the gifts of everyone. None of us got exactly what we wanted, no one was able to impose their will on everyone else. All of us who worked on the project had to practice patience, flexibility, forgiveness and tolerance. This has been a truly collaborative project.

And thanks to the gifts of so many people we are able to share the gift of our hospitality to new people. We will give them a small taste of the gift of the gift that Benedictine community is able to offer to our fragmented world.

Want to experience it yourself? Check out www.innatstgertrudes.org

Stability: When the going gets tough...

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

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

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

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

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

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