From pixels to pines

To paraphrase the writer of Ecclesiastes, there is a time for pixels and a time for pines. It is now the time for pines.

Tomorrow morning, I will log off the computer, climb into a car with Sr. Mary, and she will drive me to the piney woods of southern Mississippi for 30 days of retreat. For one month, my computer screen will be a darkened shadow, and the only glow in my eyes will be that of the sun, the moon, and the hermit stars scattered like solitary pixels across a darkened screen of southern sky.

Periodically, every Sister makes a retreat of some sort. Annually we have our community retreat, a week of silence for all of us. We gather for liturgy and talks from a retreat director, but otherwise silence reigns in the monastery as we take a break from work and other non-liturgical routines. Some Sisters make an additional retreat at some point during the year, perhaps driving to another monastery or retreat center to spend a few days in sustained prayer.

And then there are special times of retreat made at major turning points in one’s life – perhaps at the time of a major change of ministry, or some other significant transition point. For me, this retreat comes near the end of my period of initial monastic formation. It is to be a time of sustained silence and solitude in order to enter more deeply into prayerful communion with our dear Lord as I contemplate the major step before me – perpetual monastic profession. As is our retreat tradition, I will meet daily with a retreat director with whom I can speak about the movement of the Holy Spirit within my heart.

So, dear readers, this blog will be silent for a few weeks as I ‘live the tradition’ of preparing for the next step of monastic commitment. If you wish a few words of Living the Tradition while I am away, I invite you to explore the archives at left, just clicking on a random entry or so every now and again. Whatever entry you happen to encounter, I’m sure whatever it references will still be current in some way as our Community continues to daily live our Benedictine charism with faithfulness and joy.

I will pray for readers of this blog while I am away, and I ask for your prayerful support during these coming weeks as I seek God in a retreat hermitage in the piney woods of southern Mississippi. Please also continue your prayers for our monastic community, our renovation project and our capital campaign. Sr. Therese will be posting regular updates of renovation progress on our Community News page along with other news of the Sisters, so don't forget to check that page occasionally as well. May God bless you!

Extraordinary

Tonight, after dinner was over and the dishes washed, we arrayed ourselves in a half-moon around the shining star of a video monitor. It was time for our usual Wednesday night discussion, and we were gathered to view a conference presentation on a DVD.

On this cold winter night, arrayed around a TV screen, we all looked so ordinary. And indeed we were. Some of us held walking sticks. Some held the high-tech controls to a flat screen and speakers. For some, it was getting toward their usual bed-time and I could tell they were a little sleepy. Others were wide awake. Some still had chores to tend to before they could eventually retire for the night. Some held special concerns in their hearts. One held a cup of coffee.

We looked so ordinary, like any family drawn together around a common purpose and in common concern for one another. Yet as ordinary as we looked sitting in our home on a cold winter evening, we were nothing but extraordinary – as extraordinary as any family, as extraordinary as any person.

During Lauds on these first days of Ordinary Time, we have been reading the Genesis creation stories, stories which remind us that we are created in the image of God and are enlivened by the very breath of God. Beneath the walking sticks, the coffee cups, the sleepy countenances, the eager listeners, the concerned hearts, and the technical expertise lie an array of individuals shimmering with the glow of God's countenance.

Whatever our setting, no matter the circumstances in which find ourselves arrayed, may we see beyond the ordinary appearance of those around us, and know of the extraordinary wonder of their creation in the image of God.

Discernment

After a tornado passed through our monastery property last April, we labored for days and weeks clearing tornado debris from the central areas of the monastery property. We found wooden planks, plywood, shingles, metal siding, gutters, and all kinds of household odds and ends that had been swept into the sky and tossed willy-nilly across the landscape.

Within a few weeks of the tornado, the grounds around the monastery were in good shape, but we deferred clearing the heavily wooded areas and the high grasses of our back pasture until wintertime brought better visibility in the woods and a decreased chance of snake encounters in the high grass.

Well, wintertime has come, and yesterday morning, after Mass, I put on boots and work gloves and headed out to the pasture. The debris – difficult to see within the thick hay even last spring – is now even harder to find since it has had some months to burrow deeper into the pasture.

It was painstaking work. I walked slowly through the high grass, back and forth in a methodical pattern, scanning the ground carefully with my eyes. I tapped the earth with a hoe as I walked, listening for the tell-tale sound of metal against wood or shingle. I paid attention to the texture of the land beneath my boots, alert to the shape of a buried plank or board beneath my thick soles. Back and forth I went throughout the morning until it was time to break for noon prayer and lunch. After lunch, I resumed my slow, careful walk through hay that in places was as tall as I am.

As the day went on, I got better at finding burrowed shingles, boards, sheets of decking, and other odds and ends. I learned certain patterns of swirled grass or lingering moisture that were likely to yield a small bit of plywood or a buried shingle or two. Through experience and close attention, I became attuned to fine distinctions. I learned to find what I was seeking. I learned to discern.

I took my time. I went slowly. But the keys were patient attention and steady focus. These led me to that which I sought. Despite the disheartening immensity of the field and the thickness of the hay which, though beautiful, obscured my vision, I paid attention, and was rewarded by seeing the occasional glint of the corner of a shingle, or feeling through the thick soles of my boots the right angles of a board hidden in the grass.

Likewise in our spiritual lives, our interior landscape can become cluttered. In order to discern the voice of God we need to rid ourselves of interior 'debris' so that we can listen for God in a clear and open space. This, too, can mean painstaking, patient, and prayerful labor as we open our hearts to the breath of the Holy Spirit, the call of Christ, and the mercy of God. It means yielding to God that which lies burrowed in our soul - perhaps some 'debris' of sin and pain, but perhaps hidden treasure, too. And as we hold in our hands all that we find and give it to God, we know that we are held in God's hand, ourselves a stray treasure lost in a pasture for whom the Good Shepherd has searched, and now found.

Pre-game rituals

It’s a pretty big football night here in the state of Alabama. And how are we spending game-night here at the monastery? Well, our pre-game rituals are probably different from nearly everyone else in the state, because no matter the fervor with which we root for the home team, fervor for our monastic life comes first. No matter whether we plan to watch the game or not, our pre-game rituals have been just what our rituals are every night – Vespers, supper with the community, and then Compline. After Compline, four of us handled a community task involving flashlights and tennis shoes while Sr. Bernadette and Sr. Priscilla started the supper dishes. Sr. Lynn Marie and I then finished up the dishes while Sr. Benita readied the dining room for breakfast.

Right now, with kick-off a few minutes away, some Sisters are gathered around a TV, some are reading, some are relaxing with needle and yarn, some are tending to various evening tasks, some are catching up on e-mail correspondance… It’s just like every other evening here at the monastery – except for Sr. Lynn’s Roll Tide t-shirt, Sr. Ursula’s LSU garb, and a few cheers that will soon brighten up the night.

Meeting at the star

A time-honored tradition here at Sacred Heart is ‘meeting at the star,’ the star being a wooden inlay right in the center of Ottilia Hall’s first floor. The original star was in tile, and for generations served as a central meeting spot, as in “I’ll meet you at the star.” The star’s importance as an internal landmark is such that when the tile was replaced with hardwood some years back, the star was retained, this time in inlaid wood. It remains an important landmark.

Two thousand years ago, there was a far more important star, and a far more important meeting at that star – the star that beckoned the magi who asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”

Although the liturgical celebration of Epiphany is now behind us, perhaps the star can remain a landmark on our interior horizon, a reminder that we are continually called to seek Christ, to come into His presence and give homage, and offer to Him all that we have and are. We are daily called to journey to ‘meet Him at the star.’


And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. The prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Mt. 9-11

Epiphany

Tonight, as I walked from Vespers to dinner, the lights of the dining room shone like flares in the desert and the moon stood sentry in the eastern sky as if guarding a revelation. The moon was nearly full, but not as full as my heart, a heart that searches as if it were empty even as it is full to overflowing.

I opened the door to the dining room, to my Sisters, to guests, to the warmth of Christian community. I opened the door to the presence of Christ within and among us.

Seeking the Christ Child – in our hearts, in one another, in Scripture, in the Sacraments, in the endless ways in which He comes to us – is a never-ending journey of ceaseless arrival, of continually searching and finding.

May our desert eyes be ever on the eastern sky, our hands ceaselessly opening the door to His presence, our hearts ever ready to recognize the revelation of our Lord. May we search as if we are empty, even as we are full to overflowing.

Folk song

On the Feast of St. John, early in the morning, I turned a monastery car eastward on Highway 278 and headed toward the Carolinas to visit with family for a while. The sun lay tucked behind a veil of grey sky, the road fell and swelled with the undulating earth, and the gentle landscape of northern Alabama slowly gave way to the piney woods of central Georgia, and eventually to the Spanish moss-draped oaks of low country Carolina. Along the way, towns and cities rolled by like verses to a folk song being sung by endless generations. I passed through towns in which family members are buried, towns in which I’ve blown out birthday candles and ridden bikes, towns in which I’ve worked and lived and earned a paycheck… each town marked by the variegated tonalities of life – not just my life, but the lives of millions of souls who have sighed and sung their way across the land and the years.

Once here in Carolina, a family member put on a CD of American folk songs, songs with tonalities that ranged from whimsical to sad to heartbroken to festive. There were stories of courting and dying…of soldiers off to war and wayfaring strangers…of valleys and flowers and shady groves and landscapes of longing and love and loss and labor… The collection of songs, with their homespun lyrics and memorable melodies, was so evocative of the range of human experience that it made me homesick – not for the Deep South of my childhood or for the well-worn refrains of familiar tunes. It made me homesick for the monastery.

For those of us called to the monastic life, this is the place in which – and the community with whom – we sing the lyrics of our life. When we enter monastic community – a wayfaring stranger, each of us – we don’t forget the valleys and shady groves of our past. They are part of what made each of us who we are. Nor do we cease to walk through new valleys and fresh groves. We each weave our story with those of our Sisters, creating a community in which the variegated tonalities of life – joy and sorrow, labor and loss – can be experienced and lived with mutual support and love.

The daily praying of the Psalms anchors our stories. The Psalms convey the timeless human tonalities of longing and love and loss and labor. They convey the depth of human sorrow and the heights of human gratitude and joy. As our days fall and swell with the undulations of time and the rhythms of the earth and sky, the Psalms of the ancient Hebrews – better than any folk song, more memorable than any familiar refrain – are the song that we continue to sing.

Soon I will turn the car westward, traveling from the mountains of North Carolina back to Highway 278 and the gentle hills of northern Alabama. My refrain will be that of the Responsorial Psalm for today, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God: May God bless us in His mercy. It is a refrain that has anchored the songs of millions who have sighed and sung their way across the land and the years. It is the refrain at the heart of every song of longing and labor and loss and love.

In this new year, may God bless us in His mercy.


Postscript: When we travel, we do not cease praying the Liturgy of the Hours. We each take a prayer book (or books) with us - one of mine is depicted above - and continue the daily liturgical cycle of prayer.