Lo(w), how a rose...

Last night, Sr. Lynn Marie and I drove up to Huntsville to attend a performance of the Brass Band of Huntsville. In the midst of a variety of Christmas tunes and hymns arranged for brass, I was surprised to hear the inclusion of the hymn Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming. The tenderness of this hymn just didn’t seem suited to a brass band. And yet they played it with the gentleness of a lullaby.

About midway through, the tubas took over the melody. Who would have thought that four tubas could play as if they were cradling a cloud of fragrance and light? But their care of the melody was so tender, so sweet, so, well, angelic.

In this season of wintry darkness, with the night half spent and cold, may we remain watchful and wakeful for the Rose that ever blooms, even in such unexpected ways as the lowest of notes rising with the delicacy of a rose. And may we remember that even in our own low moments and dark nights, and no matter whether our particular notes are low or high or fast or slow, we, too, are called to tenderly cradle the blossom that springs forth like a cloud of fragrance and light.

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.

Gaudete, evermore and evermore

The past couple of weeks I’ve been reading a library book* about the Great Flood of 1927, when the Mississippi River inundated vast expanses of farmland and towns with up to 30 feet of water, flooding the homes of over a million people in 10 states in the greatest river flood in US history. It is a disastrous tale in which the forces of Mother Nature and the forces of human hubris collided and together created a catastrophe.

The portion of the book that I’ve been reading over this past week has focused on those stranded on the thin knife edge of the top of the Mississippi levee – the highest land in sight – with the churning river on one side and an ocean of flooded flatland on the other, the alluvial fields awash in water that covered rooftops and swept away barns, livelihoods, and lives.

The story of what happened to those who fled to the high ground of the levee – mostly black, mostly poor, mostly powerless – is tragic. As I read this tale of woe this week I was looking forward to the rejoicing and hope of Gaudete Sunday. I wondered what hope would have looked like and felt like for those stranded for days and weeks in such suffering, waiting for food, waiting for shelter, waiting for rescue, waiting for salvation to roll down as mightily as the mighty Mississippi.

I'm guessing that most reading this blog cannot really imagine what those on the levee endured and suffered. I'm guessing most of us live in a warm, safe structure with plenty to eat, surrounded by people who care.

And yet we, too, in our own individual ways, stand on the knife edge of a levee with frightening waters that swirl around us. Perhaps it’s physical illness, perhaps it is an inner anguish, perhaps it is on-going concern for the welfare of loved ones, perhaps it is a deep empathetic sadness with those who suffer elsewhere. So we, too, stand amidst swirling waters of one sort of another and we, too, need rescue. We, too, need hope. And we, too, need to be hope for others.

In some ways, Gaudete Sunday can seem an abstraction. It’s the third Sunday in Advent. It’s time to rejoice. But how do we rejoice on the knife edge of a levee? How do we rejoice in the face of suffering – our own or others? How do we sing a song of springtime in deep midwinter? How do we sing a song of the Lord in a strange land?

Liturgical time offers us a way to sing. In liturgical time, hope rolls down for us, mighty as the Mississippi, even as we stand stranded atop a levee surrounded a flood of concerns and fears. Liturgical time teaches us that even here, even now, even evermore and evermore, the Lord has, and does, and will prevail. The Lord will come. The desert will bloom. The parched land will blossom. The flood waters will abate. Salvation will roll down, mighty as the Mississippi.

Liturgical time offers us the gift of uttering and embodying a reality that is deeper than the reality that we can see. In the bleakness of midwinter, we don a color of spring. At the peak of waiting, we rejoice for that which is not yet. In the foreign land of our suffering, we sing the songs of Zion.

Liturgical time also offers us hope. Just as Mother Nature and human hubris collided and created a calamity, in liturgical time, divine promise and human longing fuse to enkindle hope.

Hope’s natural home is in the gap between suffering and rescue, between midwinter and spring, between desire and promise. It is hope that allows us to stand on the levee and sing, even when fears and concerns and pain surround us like a flood. It is hope that allows us to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Liturgical time always returns us to the Gospel, to the message of blooming deserts and abating floods. It is a message of hope that is mightier than the mighty Mississippi. It is a message to be shared with others who wait on the levee, who wait for rescue, who wait for salvation.

Those of us who have heard the message are to be, like John the Baptist, bearers of the message. We are to sing the song. We are to prepare the way. We are to carry the joyful message of hope, especially to those unable to sing in a strange land, whose human longing has not yet heard the divine promise. We are to carry the message that will ignite hope within their hearts.

The liturgical color for today is not pink, but rose. Rose is subtler, more nuanced, more complex than pink. It’s like a wiser shade of pink, or like pink in a minor key. It’s a shade that knows the complexities of life – both the thorny circumstances of chronos time and the infinitely tender unfolding petals of kairos. It’s a hue that knows how to stand amidst swirling water and sing a song of the Lord.

And so, on this Gaudete Sunday, in the bleakness of a grey and cold midwinter day, we rejoice and sing a song of the Lord. We sing for ourselves, we sing for one another, and we sing for all who stand amidst swirling waters, awaiting a message of salvation, a message of hope that is mightier than the mighty Mississippi.

* The book is Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John M. Barry

From a sycamore tree, beholding

There are times when my faith comes up short, and like Zacchaeus I am unable to see Jesus through the crowds of my concerns and through the shortcomings of my own nature. In times such as these I rely on my Sisters to help bear me up, to be trees of faith in whose branches I can find support and perspective in my search for God. Likewise, my Sisters sometimes need me to be the one to uphold them in time of need.

This picture was taken last week by one of our employees on the day that Gusmus was being taken down (see previous post). It depicts Sr. Therese on the right and me on the left watching the demolition. There is a pile of rubble before us, the new Retreat Center structures going up beyond that, and the monastic cemetery beyond that (just beyond the trees). It is, to me, a scene that speaks to the nature of monastic life – walking side by side through seasons of death and seasons of life, bearing witness to it all, and supporting one another along the way.

It goes beyond just monastic life, though. We are all called to grow strong and tall in our faith, to let our branches splay wide and free, to be like a sycamore tree in which others can find solace and support in their search to see the Lord Jesus. And when our faith is in short supply, let us not be so proud that we can't stoop to climb on the shoulders of another, finding among their branches the perspective we need. Because after all we are not merely bearing witness to seasons of death and seasons of life, we are beholding the Lord.

With loving eyes the Lord looks to us in mutual beholding, seeking a home in us even as we find our home in Him.


When he reached that place, Jesus looked up and said, "Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house."
Luke 19

All Saints, All Souls, All In

There was a hard poignancy in watching Gusmus, our little frame house out back, being taken down yesterday. It was especially poignant to watch it happen on All Saints Day.

This picture kind of says it all – the brilliant and beautiful leaves of autumn seemingly forming an odd counterpoint to the fractured timbers of Gusmus, yet somehow being all of one piece. Each represents a life fully lived, fully given to the cycle of death and life and the turning over of new leaves. Each represents a life given “all in.”

Our dear little house, which gradually acquired the appellation “Gusmus” after our long-time handyman who built it back in the 40’s, has given fully of itself in countless ways. In the years since serving as a home for Mr. Gusmus, this simple frame house has served as a guest house for Sisters' families, has housed Hurricane Katrina refugees, has served as home for a few of us during the renovation of Ottilia, has welcomed “Sister guests” from other monastic communities, has offered a retreat space for our own community members who needed a brief time away, and filled in admirably for innumerable other community needs. Now it is giving way to our need for new Retreat Center facilities.

If a house could be a saint, this house would be a good contender for canonization. It has lived its life “all in,” giving itself fully to whatever it was called to do, and now yielding like an autumn leaf to the paschal cycle of death to new life. Its namesake also lived his life “all in,” faithfully serving the monastic community for decades. I never knew him, but the stories that are told are recounted with a reverential, saint-like tone.

Today, on All Souls Day, we will process to the cemetery where we will recite the names of our deceased Sisters. I’ll also remember in my heart the name of Mr. Gusmus, giving thanks for a good soul, a giving soul, and a soul given “all in” in service to the monastic community and to the Lord.

Postscript: This morning at breakfast we were reminiscing about Gusmus, with Sr. Benita recalling her years as primary caretaker of the house, Sr. Bertha recalling the "quiet time" she spent there, me recalling a sweet note Sr. Benita had left for me when I stayed there as a vocation inquirer, and so on. With the loss of this dear, sweet house, I think our hearts are as crushed as the rubble, and it is particularly hard to look at the crushed timbers on a day like All Souls. Yet like the autumn leaves, we also look with hope to what is to come.

"The bones that were crushed shall leap for joy before the Lord."
Antiphon from the Office for the Dead.

Ghost bike, and other things that have been hidden since the foundation of the world

When we cleared every last molecule out of Ottilia Hall a couple of years ago to prepare it for renovation we thought we had completed the Move of all Moves. The building had been continuously occupied for over a hundred years so there was over a hundred years of accumulated hopes and conversations and prayers and plans and - well, more to the point - stuff. Lots of stuff. And we cleared out every single thing. We had one mega yard sale, then an auction, then another mega yard sale, and then give-aways and throw-aways and hide-aways and tuck-aways and, well, eventually the place got emptied.

But the emptying of Ottilia seems like a piece of cake compared to what we are doing now – emptying the basement that lies underneath our old kitchen and dining room. Everything in Joseph Hall’s ancient understory is also getting the heave ho, along with some other areas soon to be demolished.

In comparison to Ottilia, where the things that we saved or sold had actually been used in the light of day, some of the stuff we are now encountering seems to have been hidden since the foundation of the world...furniture so large that the building must have been built around it because there is no possible way to get it out, cabinets that surely must have been custom built for some specific purpose - because who would have ever thought of this?

There is nothing subtle or delicate or refined down here. It is all work-horse practicality and rough-hewn sturdiness. There are ancient rock walls and prehistoric pipes and bricked-in basement windows and all manner of oddities. A pantry cupboard was recently pulled away from the wall and behind it was a long-forgotten door. There are places in which the wall radiators are, for some perplexing reason, attached to the ceiling. There is a hospital stretcher that is used as a work table in the shop. A set of scaffolding serves as Kitty B’s dining table and cat food cupboard. Oh, and the bikes draped in old bed sheets. It may all sound very odd, but these are spaces that we who live here know so well that we can mostly walk through them with our eyes closed.

There is a strange beauty in the mis-matched tiles and dangling bulbs, in the thin-veined conduits that run like mazes around the walls and ceilings, and in the hulking cast iron pipes that grow like tree-trunks from the rough cellar floor. These are the hidden things that have powered our life above, a kind of architectural parable, a story in stone that reveals something of our search for God through a hundred years of daily life in monastic community. It is also a kind of metaphor for the inner mysteries that lie hidden within us, powering our choices and actions, our thoughts and conversations, our dreams, our prayers.

When we think of prayer, we perhaps imagine ascending to an upper room, or rising like incense into the ethereal heights of a soaring a cathedral, or floating our petitions and praise upward – cloudlike – toward heaven.

Yet perhaps the best prayer, the most honest prayer, happens in the work-horse spaces of our hearts when we ask God to walk silently with us into the hidden recesses and darkened crevices and ghost-like memories and mis-matched oddities of our souls, uncovering both sheltered beauty and hidden pain and, yes, mercy that courses unceasingly and unceasingly through maze-like interior byways that know no end because there is no end to God's mercy.

Prayer can be hard work…the work-horse faithfulness of simply showing up day after day to dwell in God‘s presence, and returning again and again to His Word.

Eventually it takes root so deeply that it’s as if our lives are built around it, like an entire building constructed around a single essential furnishing.

Eventually our eyes are so open to the mysteries of God - hidden since the foundation of the world - that we can walk in faith even in darkness.

Eventually the wisdom of God courses through the cave of our hearts, powering our choices and actions, our thoughts and conversations, our dreams, our prayers.

Eventaully our life becomes a parable, a story that reveals the mysteries of God's love.

“I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.” Mt. 13: 35

Postscript: Our hard work will find it's culmination in our next (and last!) mega yard sale to be held November 23. Here's the basic info, and here are some of the items that have been long hidden, and many not so hidden.

Somehow

“A monastery is never without guests.”

These words of St. Benedict have certainly been true this weekend!

First, there was the small battalion that arrived Friday night for a weekend of retreat.

Then there was the throng that arrived on Saturday morning to attend a day-long meeting.

Then there were the mission Sisters – not actually guests of course! – who arrived later Saturday morning and had trouble finding a place to park because we had so many visitors.

Then there was the thundering herd that arrived on the front lawn Saturday afternoon to take photographs, clogging the entrance drive with their knot of vehicles.

Then there was the cloud of witnesses that slowly formed – beginning with the first arrivals on Thursday afternoon and continuing through Saturday – to help the community celebrate Sr. Michelle’s First Monastic Profession during Vespers on Saturday evening.

And then there was the flock that gathered in our monastic Chapel for Mass this morning – Sisters, retreatants, some of our out-of-town guests, folks from here in Cullman Town...

Before Mass I stood in the back of the Chapel “counting heads,” adding bread to the paten as guests continued to arrive, and continued to arrive, and continued to arrive.

But now the parking lot is nearly vacant. The Chapel is empty. The Retreat Center is quiet with only a couple of private retreatants still present. I am breathing deeply of the quiet and relishing the silence and pondering the mystery that somehow our dear Lord’s arms are wide enough to encompass all of us. Somehow His shoulders are broad enough to bear all of our burdens. Somehow there is bread enough for us all.

Somehow.

Thanks be to God.

A sparkle in my eye

Today I had a few hours away from the Retreat Center office and Sr. Lynn Marie had an unexpected day off from her ministry and so we took an impromptu trip to a lovely park one county over from ours. We packed a picnic lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, apple slices, and leftover cupcakes that had been decorated with pink icing and pastel sprinkles.

In any ordinary light in any ordinary room the baking sprinkles would have just looked like baking sprinkles - festive and cute, but that’s about it. But in the noonday sun the translucent shapes gleamed, glittered, sparkled, shined - as if a constellation of gemstones had just fallen onto my cupcake out of the clear blue sky. But they were not gemstones. They were just ordinary sprinkles from an ordinary grocery shelf scattered across an ordinary cupcake.

My delight in seeing these ordinary sprinkles suddenly shine like pastel stars was a reminder of the importance of slowing down, of drawing silent, of pausing to let light see the light of day, letting it play and splay across the ordinary stuff of the ordinary days of my ordinary life, refracting into the most obscure of corners to reveal the constellation and distillation of light within. It was a reminder to look at the world with a sparkle in my eye, because even on those days when life does not feel like much of a cakewalk, somehow there is still light distilled in the darkness.


Postscript: There are times and seasons when we have to dig deep and go beyond our usual daily strive. The ability to slow down and draw silent and rest in God's presence can help us find the pearl within an ocean tide of striving and strife, and perhaps help us realize that sometimes the surging ocean is itself the pearl.

Stargazing

I imagine that the stars in the starry sky must have shared a smile when they first caught sight of the tomato vine that has sprouted through the construction gravel and broken cement between our old and new monastery kitchens.

I can imagine them watching together as the vine first emerged - arising like a hero from the concrete netherworld, or like a memory from the earth. And I'm pretty sure they would have smiled.

Perhaps the vine is a distant memory of our earliest Sisters who once collected kitchen scraps near that spot, saving the leftovers – surely some tomatoes among them – to feed to the hogs down at the old pig barn.

Or perhaps it is a near memory of the tomatoes Sr. Bernadette is growing this very year just a stones' throw away on the other side of the back drive.

Or perhaps it is a memory of what is yet to be, the fertile promise and abundant hope that lie gestating beneath the rocks that will be plied away later this year when the old kitchen is demolished and the good ground, and all that lies within it, is restored to the nightshade gaze of the starry sky.

Or perhaps the flourishing vine is simply a reminder to keep watch with the stars, and to smile at the grace that is always ready to burst forth even from the rockiest earth.

Here in the monastery we keep watch with each other day in and day out for a lifetime. We can grow so accustomed the sights and sounds and routines around us that even our Sisters can sometimes begin to seem to us like rocky ground. We forget to be surprised, astonished, amazed at the beauty that is also there, the vine that is always ready to burst forth and flourish amidst the routines of daily life.

Our newly-sprouting tomato vine, emerging like a hero from the earth, invites us to keep watch, to be astonished, to smile, and to remember – to remember both that which has been, that which is, and that which still lies gestating beneath the nightshade gaze of the starry, starry sky.

Postscript: Pope Francis spoke beautiful and knowing words about community life when he spoke last week to a community of Poor Clare nuns on the Feast of St. Francis. As quoted in the Vatican Information Service e-news the Pope said: "The second thing I wanted to say to you, briefly, relates to community life. Forgive and support each other, because community life is not easy. Make sure that the monastery is not a purgatory, but rather a family. Look for solutions with love; do not harm anyone among you to solve a problem. Cherish community life, because when the community is like a family, the Holy Spirit is among the community. I beg for you the joy that is born of true contemplation and of a beautiful community life."

Whether we dwell in a monastery or within a family home or in a small apartment by ourselves - or even in a stable in Bethlehem - may our gaze be one of true contemplation. And may joy be born.

Papa Francesco and the homely hum

Our Retreat Center housekeeping routines got a little off track this week. Consequently I spent part of last evening cleaning guest rooms. I dusted with the thoroughness of a Benedictine – up and down, back and forth, with the grain, over and under, not missing an inch of exposed surface on desk after desk and dresser after dresser and chair after chair...oh, and the lamps and mirrors and picture frames and so forth as I tried to make things just right for our next set of guests.

As a Benedictine, I was content. Monastics value manual labor. St. Benedict says, “when they live by the labor of their hands…then they are really monks.” It was satisfying work.

This morning I was back at it, moving room to room accompanied by the homely hum of the vacuum cleaner. As I worked, I started thinking about Papa Francesco. Much ink has been spilt on Pope Francis and many pixels have been pixed and parsed. But for me, it was the homely, humble hum of the vacuum that brought to mind our new Pope.

I think that Papa Francesco would also find satisfaction in setting things right for the next pilgrim who comes to our door. Although a Jesuit, and though bearing the name of Francis, I think he would like the words of Benedict:

All guests are to be received as Christ.

And then this:

Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received. (RB 53)

So it seems that it’s not really about manual labor after all, as satisfying and contemplative as that may be. It’s about setting things right in the household of God, preparing a place of solace and rest for all who come. And so desk by desk, dresser by dresser, room by room, I do my small part to help prepare a place of mercy.

The Sister(s) at the end of the tunnel

Last Thursday, four of us flew up north to attend a conference at Sacred Heart Monastery in Yankton, SD. Our three-legged flight itinerary from Huntsville to Sioux Falls required that we depart for the airport at 4:15 in the morning. We were set to arrive in Yankton via Sioux Falls by mid-afternoon. Other than the early departure, it all sounded good on paper.

But “sounds good on paper” is not exactly what happened. We encountered (in no particular order because I can't even remember the order) one plane sent back to the hanger for maintenance, two delayed departures, one missed connection, one broken pair of prescription eyeglasses, three failed eyeglass repair attempts, one missing flight crew, three missing seat assignments, one closed stretch of Interstate, one hold-your-breath search for an alternate route, one 28-gate sprint after a last-minute unannounced gate change, one 30-minute wait on the tarmac for some late-arriving passengers, one unscheduled eight-hour layover, eight concourses memorized like the back of our hands during one unscheduled eight-hour layover, one hunt for three suitcases missing from the luggage carousel, one missing cell phone left on the other side of security, one dash to find it, one repeat trip through security, one emergency intervention for someone we found in urgent need, and umpteen phone calls to Cullman and Yankton keeping them informed of our (lack of) progress.

We finally arrived in Sioux Falls at 11 something at night and eventually arrived in Yankton shortly after 1:00 in the morning, 21 hours after departing Cullman and about 22 hours after we had originally awakened from sleep.

At the Sioux Falls airport, as I floated down the escalator from the concourse to baggage claim, I recognized the Sister who was there to greet us by the Benedictine symbol that she wore. At that moment of immense fatigue, I could not imagine a more welcome sight. It was truly like seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Although I had never met her before, I made a bee-line and instinctively hugged her. She ushered her exhausted passengers through the airport, located our luggage, and drove us safely through the Dakotan midnight.

The Sister from Yankton was not the only light at the end of the tunnel on what felt like an epic day of unceasing mishaps and delays. The four of us travelers were lights for each other…keeping each other’s spirits up; finding humor in the midst of frustrating circumstances and flagging energy; expressing gratitude for the fact that we were safe, nourished, and cared for by those on either end of our journey; and seeking to care for one another in our various moments of need...

Although the circumstances were unique, we were really just doing for one another what we seek to do every day here at the monastery – seeking to let the Christ Light shine through us as a beacon to others.

Each morning at Lauds we sing the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zechariah from Luke 1. The canticle speaks of Christ as the “dawn from on high” who shines “on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.”

Even when our darkness is merely one of fatigue and inconvenience, it is still a blessing to find the Light of Christ shining through others. May we each be for one another a light at the end of the tunnel.

A recipe for glory

Yesterday two recipes arrived in my email inbox. They had been sent to me by one of our Sisters who is not one of our usual "Sister chefs." I was so startled to receive the recipes from her that I wrote back humorously questioning what had happened. Knowing she had been on the road for part of the day, I asked “Did you crash into a cookbook?” Of course, part of my surprise was that I am not a good cook so I was startled to be on the receiving end of recipes – as if I would know what to do with them! She wrote back something along the lines of “One never knows...”

And it’s true, we never know. No matter how well we may know someone and know their usual habits of thought or patterns of behavior, we all have the capacity to surprise each other as we grow and change and develop new interests and skills and even new aspects of our personhood over the course of a lifetime.

Encountering unexpected aspects of others or watching them grow in new ways can serve to remind us that the other is a mystery that we cannot grasp. We cannot hold onto the ‘being-ness’ of someone else as if they are something static, forever confined to our image of who we think them to be, no matter how well we may know them.

We can also become confined to our own image of ourselves and refuse to grow beyond who we think ourselves to be. Yet each of us is a living, growing being who, in the words of St. Paul, is called to “grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ.” (Eph. 4:15)

Here in monastic community, even though we lead a common life, God still guides each one of us along our own unique path as we daily give ourselves to our monastic practices and to the common monastic endeavor. An “un-grasping” attitude – toward both ourselves and others – is vital in order to give God’s transforming grace full freedom to flower and flourish within the life of each Sister as she experiences conversion of heart, the fruit of a well-lived monastic commitment.

Experiencing the gradual transformation of my own heart and witnessing the work of God in others is one of the graces of monastic life. Even such a simple event as a recipe in my inbox can shine with the glory of God when I un-graspingly see in it the gracious gifts of those who are traveling with me on the road to eternal life. When I witness in the lives of my Sisters the mystery and reflected glory of the Lord, then I can exclaim with the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration – “It is good that we are here.”


From the Gospel reading for the Feast of the Transfiguration: "Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up the mountain to pray. As he prayed, the aspect of his face was changed and his clothing became brilliant as lightning." Luke 9:28-29

Prairie fire

Between the recent heat wave and lots of schoolwork I did not walk out to the arboretum for over a week. When I finally walked out there yesterday I was startled to see how much the prairie grasses had grown in just a week’s time and how they had blossomed out into glorious color. Grasses that had been ankle and knee high last week were now up to my waist, and some even to my shoulder. The colors were vibrant, rich, lush, spilling over with glory.

There is a small interpretive display at the entrance to the trail that references the role of fire in keeping a prairie healthy. Periodic fire – whether natural or through an occasional controlled burn – keeps predatory and invasive plants at bay and clears away the deciduous overgrowth that can crowd out the native grasses.

Reading about the role of fire in keeping the prairie so healthy and beautiful reminded me of times of retreat, of those periods of sustained silence in which God can clear out the interior overgrowth that prevents the flourishing of the good seed of God’s Word. in our hearts

Of course faithfulness in daily prayer accomplishes much the same. Psalm 101:8 reads, “Each morning I clear the wicked from the land, and rid the Lord’s city of all evildoers.” Whenever we come to that verse during the Liturgy of the Hours, I think of offering my heart – the Lord’s city – to the cleansing work of the Holy Spirit, clearing out and ridding my heart of all that crowds out the love of God.

From now on when we chant that verse I will probably think of the prairie, of the colorful and beautiful grasses that cover this good land, and of the purifying power of prayer to clear away all that keeps my heart from spilling over with the glory of God.


Postscript: The photo above is from back home at Sacred Heart.  One thing I did not bring with me this summer was a camera.  I have been content to use photos either from my previous summer here or from home, but yesterday I was sure wishing for a camera to capture the many hues that covered the land.  Here's a link to a picture of one of the great variety of flowers in the Abbey Arboretum.

I'm headed back home in just a few days. Cannot wait to return home to my dear Sisters in Cullman!

Dance card

Each morning when I awaken it seems that all the minutes in the day are already claimed.

Even here at school, where my hours of reading and writing papers are less structured than they are back at the monastery, there is still a sense of fullness, as if all the hours are spoken for and I am stranded alone on the sidelines, unable to break in and ask an hour for a dance.

But I realize I've been thinking about time in the wrong way. It is not time whose dance card is full, with me as the quiet wallflower too bashful to break in and ask for a dance. It is my dance card that is full, with every dance already committed, every partner already penciled in, every hour accounted for.

Meanwhile, time stands still at the open window, waiting for me to stand still too, to leave my dance card on the dance floor and cease the ceaseless motion that keeps me far from the stillpoint of prayer.

The stillness of time beckons me into the fullness of time, to sit with all the time in the world as together we watch eternity spread its wings across the horizon.

Course selection

When it comes to life lessons, wouldn't it be nice if there was some sort of course selection process and we could just hand-pick the lessons that we would like to learn? Or maybe we could choose to just audit some of our life lessons and let them kind of slide through our consciousness like water off a duck. No grades. No papers to write. No attendance taken. No worries.

But life just isn't like that. And God isn't like that either. Our dear Lord knows us better than we know ourselves and He knows the lessons that we're ready for and the courses that would best keep us traveling toward our heavenly home.

The monastery is a good place for such lessons to unfold. There we are not alone in being students, nor are we alone in sometimes stumbling through the lessons that come our way. Our Sisters are right there with us, both supporting us as we learn and grow, and in turn needing our support as they learn.

Sometimes our Sisters are the ones challenging us, seeing in us gifts that we never knew were there, abilities we never imagined or talents lying hidden under the stone we'd never bothered to turn.

This summer at Saint John's, I'm learning at least as much outside the classroom as inside - mostly lessons about myself. I didn't get to choose these classes as I did my academic courses, and some of them I'd just as soon not be taking. But St. Benedict calls the monastery a "school of the Lord's service" and I have committed myself to being life-long student in it, no matter the class.

Even though I cannot hand-pick my life lessons as if from a course listing, and I certainly can't audit as if I were a by-stander in my own journey to God, I know the monastery is the right school for me.  In Christ, I have the truest of teachers, in the Rule of St. Benedict the surest of guides, and in my monastic community at Sacred Heart the very best of classmates.  May Christ lead us together to everlasting life. 

Happy Feast of St. Benedict to everyone!

Incandescence

A stippled greywhite sky of colorless incandescence lit up this afternoon’s walk through the prairie grasses of the Saint John's arboretum. Burnt orange and yellow wildflowers burst like sparks into the ashen air and the silvery sky made them seem even brighter than usual. As I walked, I thought about Hugh of Saint-Victor, whose work I am reading for a paper that I am writing.

Hugh was a 12th century Augustinian Canon, which is a kind of urban monk who lives in religious community at a parish in a town or city. As a student, Hugh left his native Germany for Saint-Victor in Paris where he spent the rest of his life.

With this background, he knew something about the value of being away from home, but he also knew about longing for home. In the Didascalicon, his guide to the Christian life, he proposes “foreign soil” for practice in developing spiritual detachment and goes on to write about our relationship to place and about being at home and not at home in the world.

My season of study in Minnesota is indeed valuable, like a golden flower bursting from the earth. But I miss my monastic community with a sweet longing that hovers over the prairie like a stippled greywhite sky.

With Hugh as my companion I feel myself to be in good company, knowing that this earth is both home and not home, and grateful for the incandescence that makes even “foreign soil” glow with the presence of God.

Keep reading

“Keep reading,” my teacher said when our class was working its way through some challenging theological writings. We were told that if we just kept going, kept turning the pages, eventually it would start to make sense. So I kept reading and kept turning pages, waiting for understanding to lift itself from the page like a golden swan lofting itself skyward with wisdom on its wings.

Eventually, understanding came. But not the golden swan variety. Rather it came like a blue collar crow moving branch to branch, steady and workmanlike, nearly hidden within the dense foliage of the maple outside my window, making its dark presence known only by the occasional caw and cry.

Study is not a glamorous pursuit. It takes place hidden amongst the foliage of folios and the branches of books. There may be an occasional caw and cry, or even the rare glimpse of a golden swan. But mostly it’s just the steady and workmanlike turning of pages and writing of notes, moving slowly from branch to branch amidst the rustling summer leaves of dog-eared texts.

I can’t yet say how well I understand the works I’ve read. But I can say that I have kept reading with a steady, workmanlike perseverance, moving page by page like a blue collar student seeking to build a home for wisdom.

325th Street

As campus settings go, Saint John’s University is as rural as I’ve ever seen. I-94 runs nearby and there is a small town within the distance of a good 10K jog, but for the most part the campus is surrounded by water, woods, farmland, and prairie grass. So imagine my surprise when along the rural entrance road I saw a side street with a sign that read 325th Street.

325th Street? If this was 325th, where the heck was 324th? I looked around and saw nothing but row crops anchoring one side of the road and unruly prairie grasses swaying on the other.  325th Street cut a narrow grey streak through all the green like a side crop of asphalt.

Of course all I could wonder besides “Where is 324th Street?" was "Where is 1st Street?" Where was the point of orientation from which 325th originated? Clearly it was somewhere far from the surrounding pastures and prairies and interstates and small towns.

Despite the obvious distance from its point of origin, I couldn’t help but realize how connected the street must be to some other place…and how even standing in the middle of the Minnesota countryside how connected I remain to Alabama, to Cullman, to Sacred Heart, and to the Sisters in my monastic community whom I miss so much.

Somehow, standing on 325th Street made the world seem a little smaller, a little more inter-connected. It was if I were standing at the intersection of 325th and Everywhere, somehow feeling right at home on a country road in rural Minnesota, which after all is only a few streets away from Convent Rd. in Cullman, Alabama.

Postscript: The liturgy also connects me with home, and at a far deeper level than my geographical imaginings. As I pray the Liturgy of the Hours and attend Eucharist with the monks of Saint John’s Abbey, I am aware of my Sisters back home who are also at prayer. We may be praying at different times, but nevertheless I am united to them in prayer and praise. Truly the liturgy places us not only at the intersection of time and eternity but at the intersection of heaven and earth as we gather as one Body, distant in time and space, but one in prayer and praise to God, the origin and destination of us all.

In the company of saints in the classroom of silence

Today I received an email from Sr. Bernadette who was reminiscing about her summer school experience up here at Saint John’s some years back. Sr. Mary has studied up here, too, and other Sisters have degrees from other places…some from Catholic U, some from Notre Dame, some from Dayton, as well as other schools, generally following our usual community dictum when it comes to working on a degree: “go Catholic and go north.”

Over the past week, as I’ve tried to wrap my mind around the writings of various theologians, I’ve known that I’m in good company not only with my fellow students here but also with the Sisters in my community who have studied along the way.

But no matter how important and beneficial the formation of my mind may be, it is of no real account if it is not accompanied by education of the heart, and in this I am in good company, too. Sr. Bernadette, a saint if I’ve ever met one in her care of our infirm Sisters, wrote today of not only of the courses that she took but also of the loons and the deer and the time spent alone in her room.

I, too, have a quiet room, and in addition to long hours of study I am also spending time

in prayer and taking leisurely walks in which I listen to the cry of loons and exchange glances with deer as we size one another up along the edge of the woods.

So even as I seek to understand the classroom thoughts of saints such Augustine and Aquinas, I also join them in the classroom of silence, seeking above all the education of my heart.

It’s a good thing to be from the South when you are studying theology. A very good thing. I’m up in Minnesota this summer studying theology at Saint John’s University and reading works filled with words that I know but that are arranged in such a way that what they say is not always what they seem to signify, as in that which “signifies that which sanctifies, it must needs signify the effect, which is implied in the sanctifying cause.” Yes, that is truly what the sentence says.

Thankfully I am from the southland and I know what to do with a sentence such as that. I already know how to move very slowly through impenetrable air that is heavy with the humidity of summertime, thick with the mist that hovers between one tree-line and the next. I know how to make my slow and careful way through the fog that rises in the hollows of the Great Smoky Mountains, or that settles into the Tennessee River Valley. I know how to sit on a front porch and shell butterbeans so slowly that the gnats don’t even know that I’m there. And I know how to sit quietly and let a sentence work on me for just as long as it takes.

So Aquinas is a piece of cake. Schillebeeckx, no problem. I’m used to moving slowly and letting the profound beauty of a summer evening – or a summer sentence – unfold in its own sweet time. After all, I’m from the South.


Postscript: We southerners may have a summertime advantage in knowing how to sit still in the heat. But it doesn’t take being from the southland to see the Beauty toward which the words of the theologians point. North, south, east or west, we are all called to pause and perceive the glory of the Lord that unfolds like a summer rose in the mist of morning.

Plate glass window at midnight

Last week, Sr. Benita took a bus trip to Kentucky to visit a couple of Sisters at St. Walburg Monastery in Covington. She’s known these Sisters for years but hadn’t seen them in a good while so she talked with our Prioress, made some arrangements, and off she went.  On her return trip, the bus schedules got tangled up, her arrival was several hours later than planned, and Sr. Lynn Marie and I found ourselves taking an unexpected midnight trip to Huntsville to meet her in the wee hours of the morning. 

During meals over the next day or two, various Sisters asked about our late night trip and I told them about downtown Huntsville at midnight, what the bus station was like, how many other people were there waiting, and so on.  At one point, while describing the plate glass windows of the bus station, I became aware of the rapt attention with which people were listening.  It was a far greater raptness than one would expect for such a mundane topic.

What could account for such high interest in such a lowly subject?  It’s not that the bus station was such an unusual place.  It’s not that downtown Huntsville at 12:30 in the morning had much of a story to tell.  And it’s not that I’m a great story teller who could pull even a sleepy bus station to vivid life.  

As I watched the intensely interested faces I realized what accounted for their focused attention.  “They care,” I thought. They cared about Sr. Benita and her travels, and they cared about Sr. Lynn Marie and I and what we had experienced waiting in a parking lot at midnight. They cared, and they listened intently.

This kind of caring for one another is characteristic of monastic community, the kind of caring that makes even a quiet bus station and empty midnight streets come to vivid life. It’s the kind of caring in which a plate glass window at midnight can become a prism through which the love of Christ shines forth.  Let us be such windows for one another!

Postscript:  St. Walburg Monastery is one of the two communities from which we were founded in 1902.  We remain connected with them both at the Federation level (we both are members of Federation of St. Scholastica) and at the personal level with ties of friendship and concern for the other's well-being.  Speaking of caring, when it became apparent that Sr. Benita's departing bus was going to be signficantly late, one of the St. Walburg Sisters waited with her until her departure.  Thanks be to God for the gift of friendship and loving concern.

I began this Palm Sunday morning like I have begun the past eight Palm Sunday mornings, by sweeping magnolia leaves from the front chapel steps, readying the pathway for our procession with palms. We had a heavy rain last night and the dark, slick leaves were hard to brush from the sidewalk into the shade of the twin magnolias that flank the chapel doors. As I swept leaves and picked up a few small branches that had fallen with the rain I thought about the branches cut by those who met Jesus upon his entry into Jerusalem, and those who spread their cloaks across the road, readying the pathway for a procession.

Our trees here in the southland are different from those in Jerusalem, magnolia and dogwood rather than olive and palm, but still, we ready the pathway. And our cry is the same: Hosanna to the Son of David!

No matter where we are from, no matter how we ready the pathway, no matter what type of branches we cut, sweep, or carry, we who greet the Lord Jesus as King are kin to those who ages ago turned their eyes to the city gate and saw the King of Glory enter, clad in humility, riding on a colt. Their cry still echoes on our lips, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, hosanna in the highest!”

A puddle of glory

Things have been a soggy mess around the monastery lately. For weeks, we’ve had rain, rain, and more rain. The ground is staying far too wet for completion of the drive to the covered entrance of the new Retreat Center meeting rooms. Scouting trips to plan the placement of new trees require rain boots and umbrellas. Smears of mud make their way far indoors, well beyond the dampened door mats.

But somehow all this mess gives me hope, especially in light of the Transfiguration narrative which we heard in yesterday’s Gospel reading. The puddle and muddle of my own life – sometimes as messy as mud, sometimes as tired as water collapsing into a puddle, sometimes like boot-prints tracked onto clean carpet – is ever in need of transformation in Christ. The puddles and muddles can be places in which we encounter His transfiguring presence.

The work of God is often hidden, as if in a cloud, and so we may not be aware on an experiential level of our on-going transformation into the likeness of Christ. Or even if we are aware, the mystery of God’s presence and action may simply render us silent, like the apostles on the mountain, or like Abraham looking at the numberless numbered stars and falling into the silence of obedience and faith.

More rain is expected tonight. Puddles will form. Rivulets will flow. Yet in the midst of the clouds, the glory of the Lord still shines forth. And it is good that we are here, standing in a puddle of glory on the mountain of transfiguration.

"And behold, the star..."

If you were a visitor from another planet, you might not recognize the broken glass in this picture. You might simply admire without interpretation the shiny gleam, the translucent shades of grey, the sharply hewn edges, and pieces so precisely crafted that they could be assembled like a puzzle and formed into a beautiful and useful shape. In other words, you might see it as something other than simply a broken drinking glass.

The glass pictured here is the first casualty in our new dining room. During the unpacking of our glassware last Thursday, the day of our move, this glass hit the floor. Later that day, during our first dinner in our beautiful new dining room, I looked around at the other diners, my Sisters. I saw a new dining room, but the same diners, the same motley crew that ate breakfast in the old dining room that morning. We were the same folk with the same struggles and troubles that go with being human and breakable…just like we were in our old dining room.

Our new dining room is gleaming, beautiful, finely wrought. And even with broken glass and spilled milk, so are the diners. And so are all God's children, each created in His image. But when we look at one another, sometimes we only see the troubles and miss the gleam, the beauty, the finely wrought edges, and the delicate pieces so finely hewn. We see the other, but do not behold.

“I am like a shattered dish,” wrote the Psalmist in Psalm 31, in an image that probably all of us can relate to. Yet beauty persists, because the transfiguring work of Christ lends beauty to even our failures and frailties.

On the eve of Epiphany, as I bring to Jesus my finest gifts, I want to also gather the shattered fragments of my life. These, too, are gifts to bring. And as I journey toward the east, as one from another land, I want to shed interpretation and simply behold the Christ child wherever He may be born, even in shattered places. I want to see the gleam that shines like the star in the east, leading toward the Christ who dwells in us in transfiguring love.

Postscript: If you haven't seen the photos of our new dining room and kitchen on our Community News web page, I encourage you to click on the link. It truly is a beautiful space, and yes, filled with Sisters who are beautiful, each in her own unique way.

Savoring the moment

It feels as if we have moved all of heaven and earth over the past couple of months so you’d think that moving our kitchen and dining room would be a piece of cake (pun intended). It seems simple enough:

• Move some tables and chairs from one large room to another large room.

• Load food and dishes onto a bunch of carts and roll them all from one pantry to another pantry.

• Move the final few pieces of kitchen equipment.

• Look admiringly at all we’ve accomplished.

• Phone for pizza delivery and then call it a day.

But it will not be that simple, and one of the reasons it won’t be simple is because of the sheer importance of mealtime here at the monastery. First, there’s the important practical effort of keeping all of us fed and nourished. That in itself is a logistical feat, especially when you add in retreat guests that sometimes number into the 50’s or 60's and beyond. So we have alot of equipment. 

Then there’s the practical issue of 40-something of us learning our way around a large, new kitchen. Where are the crackers? And where is the milk? What’s the best route to take out the trash? And by the way, where are the trash bags? Where will Sister Mary Cookie Monster find her cookies? Where are the bowls? The plates? The napkins? The recycling? The orange juice? The oranges? The stirring spoons? The pots? The pans? And for heaven’s sake, the cookies? We have been told to expect “chaos…utter chaos.” But knowing us, there will be an underlying orderliness that will get us through, even if we wind up looking like bumper cars for a while as we learn to navigate this new space.

But that’s just the practical side of things. For us monastics, a meal is never solely about physical nourishment. Gathering to break bread as a community holds a sacramental dimension that transcends the merely practical aspects of a meal. The place where this happens day after day eventually takes on a unique character and comes to hold a special place in the heart of the community. Next to the chapel, the dining room would surely be considered the most prominent interior symbol of our common life.

The building that houses our current kitchen and dining room was constructed in 1912. It has been added on to many times, giving it a roof line that has confounded architects and planners. Over the years it has served not only the monastic community but also countless students, retreatants, family members, and other guests. It is a special building that symbolizes more than the sum of its parts and encompasses more than its ever-spreading roofline.  This "more" is what makes this such a momentous move.

Each of us has readily adapted to our new bedrooms  and community rooms even though it required a herculean effort to get us all moved. But tomorrow's move is arguably the most complex move of all – both practically and emotionally. In this room we have celebrated, mourned, and given thanks. We have sung hymns and recited prayers. We have laughed until we cried.  We have decorated Christmas trees and set the tables for Mardi Gras. We have eaten in monastic silence and chatted endlessly about the concerns of the day. We have baked bread and chopped vegetables and snapped beans - for years upon years upon years.  Memorial candles for deceased Sisters are kept here, as is our portrait of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, whose protection we implore each night. 

The center table, usually decorated for the liturgical season, is barren tonight, and if all goes on schedule tomorrow, tonight’s dinner was the last dinner we will share here. There is a feeling of wistfulness, but we are so grateful for the beautiful new dining room and kitchen we will inhabit tomorrow. We’ll take our candles and crucifix with us, our statues and sacred art, our celebrations and our sorrows, our paring knives and stirring spoons. And although we may not be able to find the milk and cookies right away, I don’t think there will really be chaos. Because on this once-in-a-lifetime day, we will still be living our ordinary monastic lives, dwelling together in the peace of Christ as we savor the moment on this momentous day.

Postscript:  Thanks be to God for this beautiful transformation of our former auditorium. For those acquainted with this space you will recognize the familiar arch of the stage.  Our serving line is in what was formerly the stage area.  The new kitchen is through the door at the rear of the serving area, and the new Retreat Center dining room is on the far side of the kitchen.  By the way, we do plan to order pizza tomorrow night and let Friday breakfast be our first cooked meal in the new kitchen. But I don't think we'll be able to simply call it a day.  After all, it will be a momentous day!