Tempered glass

Tonight, as I was putting away water glasses after finishing up supper dishes, one glass caught the uneven edge of a serving tray. It took a tumble, but did not break.

Had it been one of the glasses we used in the monastery dining room up until a few months ago, the glass would likely have either become chipped, cracked, or broken. But our new glasses are made from tempered glass. Tempered glass is stronger, tougher, more resilient. It is less likely to break. And when it does break, it is less likely to shatter into dangerous shards.

After an internal gasp of relief that the glass didn't break, I carried on with putting away the rest of the glasses, grateful for their tempered strength. As I put each glass in its proper spot (more carefully this time), I pondered the 'tempering' aspects of monastic life.

St. Benedict speaks of those monks who choose to live in community “where they serve under a rule and an abbot” as the “strong kind.” (RB 1:2, 13) Fidelity to monastic life, can, it seems to me, be likened to the tempering heat that strengthens glass. Serving under a rule and under monastic authority fortifies us even as we empty ourselves in humility, toughens us even as we bend our will in obedience, and strengthens us even as our hearts soften to the point of overflowing "with the inexpressible delight of love." (RB Prologue 49)

Our new glasses are simple in style. They are humble in appearance. But they are strong. I can only trust and pray that monastic life is tempering my heart such that I am one of the "strong kind," with the good zeal of which St. Benedict writes: "To their fellow monks, they show the pure love of [sisters]; to God, loving fear; to their abbot, unfeigned and humble love." (RB 72:8-9.)



Postscript: I love the way the light is shining on the dirty dishes in the picture above. It illustrates to me the way that simple acts of service, when undertaken with love, can shine with the Light of Christ. Here in the monastery, we all take turns with the various household chores, washing dishes being one of them. But it is never simply about getting a necessary task completed. Rather it is about the opportunity to serve one another in love.

The weather in London in a chapel in Cullman

It was time for Vespers, so I turned down the volume on the Retreat Center cell phone and headed upstairs to chapel, holding the phone in my hand. By the time I set the phone down in my choir stall the formerly-blank screen was somehow displaying the weather in London.

The weather in London? Somehow, a few random brushes of my hand against the screen as I walked brought the London weather report, with a grey sheen of fog, straight to my choir stall. I didn’t even try to stifle a smile over the strange life of cell phones - unruly children who go where you do not bid. But then I realized that the foggy weather report in London was actually a perfect entry into prayer.

When we gather for liturgical prayer, we bring the world with us. In chanting the Psalms – those ancient words which express the human cry to God in all its intensity and purity – we articulate words and worlds that are beyond us. We pray with and for victims of violence, those who suffer hunger, those who are experiencing loss, those who are filled with gratitude, those who lament, those who rejoice, those who mourn.... It’s as if they are in the chapel with us, so close are their concerns to our hearts.

We typically think of Benedictine hospitality in terms of welcoming those who come here to the monastery, or those with whom we interact in ministry. But I think there is also a kind of hospitality in prayer in which one’s heart expands to encompass the concerns of people and peoples you don’t even know in places you’ve never heard of.

Although this may be the sunny south, the fogs of London are truly not far away. And so, in our liturgical prayer, we welcome the world into our midst, letting the concerns of our brothers and sisters fill our hearts, and letting their cries to God be on our lips.

37-fold of a 100-fold

Last evening, I walked through our dishwashing area before supper and saw the strange site of a concrete block on a kitchen cart. Next to the concrete block was something flat and rectangular, covered neatly and precisely with a kitchen towel. My curiosity could not be contained and I lifted a corner of the cloth to take a peek. Underneath the towel was a stack of five serving trays.

A concrete block. Five trays. A towel laid with precision. On a cart in our dishwashing room. There was no telling what sort of project this could be. But whatever it was, it had to be the genius idea of one of the 37 of us dear souls in this community.

We get used to seeing each other’s projects here and there around the monastery, adorning the orderly surface of things. Seemingly random bits of this or that are left here or there - traces of someone’s personality or idea or genius project or not-so-genius project or maybe just evidence of someone’s forgetfulness scattered around our monastic home. It’s part of what makes this a home. As trace elements added to a base give greater strength to the whole, our personalities form our monastic home as surely as our hands have smoothed the banister rails and as certainly as our feet have worn creaks into the soft pine of the 100-year-old floors.

In our community there are 37 of us. That means there are 37 of us to have genius ideas, 37 of us to sometimes have not-so-genius ideas, 37 of us to sometimes fail, 37 of us to come to the rescue, 37 of us to need rescuing, 37 of us who need forgiveness for one thing or another, and 37 of us to lavish forgiveness as if it were a fountain that could never run out, and if the fountain ever spilled over, there would be 37 of us to rush in with towels.

With 37 of us, there are also bits and pieces of human failure scattered here and there – a word spoken in the wrong tone of voice, a promised errand forgotten, a good intention gone awry… But there are 37 of us to lavish forgiveness like an endless fountain.

I’ve heard monastic life described using the biblical term of “the hundredfold.” But really, in our community, it’s like a 37-fold of a hundredfold, or maybe a hundredfold to the 37th power, or maybe 37 to the hundredth power, or something extravagant like that. Our personalities may help make this a strong and enduring home, but God’s grace expressed in and through our day to day community life is the real element that gives strength to the whole – a 37-fold of a 100-fold of an infinite amount of grace, a fountain that never runs dry.



Postscript: The genius idea was truly genius. Some of our trays have gotten slightly warped over the years and no longer lay completely flat. One of our 37 geniuses had the idea to take them straight from the heat of the dishwasher while they were still a bit malleable from the heat, cover them with a clean towel, and lay a concrete block on top of the stack to flatten them out. Four or five at a time was the right number, she said. Genius. But the best genius part of this idea was what she said when describing the process to us at dinner – she made sure that she had the approval of one of our monastic leaders. Not just genius. Monastic genius.

As it is in heaven...

As simple and unplanned and unadorned as it was, our quiet ‘liturgy of the hallway’ last night felt, for me at least, about as close as one can get to the idea of our earthly liturgy as a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy.

It was about 3:00 am. Already our town’s tornado sirens had shrieked their warning several times, and for hours angry lightning had been shouting in the sky. On radar images, each new line of storms looked like yet another fiery arrow hurled across the Southland. Some of us had been up, and then back to bed, and then up again checking the latest updates. Finally the news reported a “rotation” headed toward downtown Cullman. It was time to awaken everyone and move to the safety of the 1st floor hallway.

The word passed through the monastery, Sisters quietly awakening other Sisters, and we made our way to the 1st floor in a procession as solemn as that of any solemn liturgy and a silence as grand as any Grand Silence of the night. Simultaneously sleepy and wakeful, groggy and alert, we sat along both sides of the hallway as if we were two sides of a choir. Once gathered, no instructions or organization was needed. Our Prioress simply began a prayer, and all followed naturally in recitation, our quiet, grave voices flowing through somber lips.

As I gazed up and down the row opposite me, my own voice in quiet recitation, it was a beautiful and touching sight - each Sister like a bead on a rosary, each Sister a prayer, each Sister a luminous mystery in a stormy night, each Sister occupied, or maybe pre-occupied, with thought, with prayer, with wordless waiting even as her words formed a timeless path through time.

As liturgy goes, in its quiet and unadorned simplicity and in the tension of waiting out a storm, it could hardly pass for heavenly – just a group of sleepy people gathered for protection from danger and reciting some prayers together. But in its genuine faith, its sure devotion, its spontaneous and natural turn to common prayer, and its utter trust, it did one of the things that liturgy does - it joins us to something beyond ourselves. A practical gathering for safety was more that that - it was an assembly of God’s people, the Body of Christ, offering prayer and praise and intercession, and asking that “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It lifted our earthbound efforts heavenward even as we prayed for the heavenly to be here on earth.

It seemed to me that the very spontaneity, the naturalness of our prayer, was part of its kinship with the liturgy of heaven. It was natural. Its what we do. We pray. We praise. We trust. We intercede. We adore. Like the saints in heaven. In that sense, our 3:00 am ‘liturgy of the hallway,’ in its simple and unadorned and quiet way, felt to me like a small foretaste of the heavenly liturgy…praising God’s name on earth, as it is in heaven.



Postscript: We were fine and safe from any damage here at the monastery. And while we were joined together in common prayer, I'm sure each Sister also held in her heart her own prayers and concerns and hopes. I’m sure many were thinking, like I was, of those in Tennessee who have lost so much in the fires, and those in danger elsewhere in the South last night, and all people everywhere who are in search of safety. We continue to hold in prayer those who have experienced so much loss in these recent days.

Hope whisperers

I am afraid of fire. Maybe it goes back to the time when I was five or six and my family and I, along with all our neighbors, were standing outside in our bathrobes in the middle of the night watching a nearby structure burn to the ground. Whatever the reason, I am skittish around fire and flame. So when I entered the monastery and was assigned to the sacristy, I found myself feeling some fear as day after day I worked with matches, lighters, candles, and wicks. Yes, I was afraid. And yet there was the necessity of my assigned work.

Somehow, over the years, at the intersection of fear and necessity, I developed a way with candles. Somehow I learned how to coax recalcitrant candles and how to tame ones that had become a bit overwrought. I don’t know how I do it or how I know what to do. I just take a candle and work with it. And somehow, the candle responds. Some in the monastery have called me “the candle whisperer.”

It happened again tonight. Two Sisters tried unsuccessfully to coax a shy candle into flame. I went up, looked at it, and stirred a bit in the wax. I tried again to light it, the wick caught, and the candle began burning steadily. “What did you do?” I was asked. “I don’t know,” I replied. Because somehow, at the intersection of fear and necessity, I had become a candle whisperer, and one can’t explain these things.

Today, many are afraid. No matter where in the world they are, perhaps they feel as if structures are burning down around them. Perhaps structures are burning down around them. They are unsure whether to hope, or how much to hope, or whether to let their hope snuff itself out like a wick that has collapsed in a puddle of wax, or whether to fan their hope into a steady flame that can light their way forward.

And yet, in the midst of fear and uncertain hope, there is still the necessity to keep working. No matter where in the world we are, there is the necessity to do one’s daily tasks with as much integrity, joy, compassion, and skill as one can bring to bear on the work God has called us to do, to walk with fidelity the path God has laid before us.

Perhaps somehow, at the intersection of fear and fidelity, a flame of hope can be lit. Perhaps by acknowledging fear, leaning into necessity, and being anchored in prayer, we can nurture hope both in ourselves and in others. Perhaps we can become hope whisperers – coaxing collapsing hope, trimming false hope, stirring a bit to let the spark catch the wick, and, with a steady flame and steadfast fidelity, light the path ahead.

Hunger

A hungry person does not inquire as to the recipe of the soup, nor does the thirsty person question the molecular composition of the water that slakes thirst. Rather the hungry know their hunger, the thirsty know their thirst. They gratefully receive what is offered – soup, bread, water, the sustenance of life...

Currently I am, and have been for a while, working toward a theology degree. My second, in fact. But my hunger is not for theology. It is for God. However study and information and ideas and analysis can sometimes cause one to forget one’s hunger. One begins asking about ingredients, and recipes, and things of the mind rather than the real spiritual hunger that leads us to God, and that draws us together around a hearth in a community of those who hunger.

The ingredients of the soup, the composition of the water can be a refuge for those who have forgotten their hunger, who no longer feel their thirst. Then the “recipes” – whether Christological, Eucharistic, Biblical, or other – can become recipes for criticism and comparison.

They can also distract us from our true hunger, and thus our true poverty. And yet our own emptiness is the birthplace of true knowledge, of true compassion, of true community.

I hope that in addition to sitting at the living room hearth with a book in hand, that I always sit even longer at the kitchen hearth - aware of my emptiness, receiving God's fullness, and sharing God's bounty with others - understanding that the 'recipe' is one I will never understand. Because true grace, true gift, is beyond understanding. My limited understanding, my words, cannot capture or contain the height and breadth of the Eternal Word. Nor can the understanding or words of the person next to me at the hearth. Our shared spiritual hunger brings us together to the hearth of blessing. May other, lesser, hungers not pull us apart.

"Three": the answer to two age-old questions…

If you were wondering how many monastery employees it takes to change a light bulb, well the answer is three. That is if the light is oh, say, 70 feet in the air and weighs oh, say, 70 pounds, and is oh, say, in need of more than just a bulb change but actually needs a bit of rewiring, re-coaxing, and reminding how to shine, and oh, say, needs to be completed by Vespers. Oh and by the way requires three levels of scaffolding to reach.

And if you are wondering how many Sisters it takes to herd a cat it is oh, say, three. That is if Kitty B, an outdoor cat, makes a mad dash through an open door after supper into Ottilia Hall and is miraculously confined in a parlor by a closed door before she has access to all three floors of Ottilia, the dining room, and so many other connected areas that we might not find her until tomorrow.

This was just what happened after supper tonight (which followed the well-lit Vespers). Three Sisters gathered in the parlor to try to catch, coax, entice, or otherwise lead Kitty B into the waiting arms of her most favorite of all her favorite Sisters. But she was resistant to coaxing, as cats will be.

Eventually the three Sisters, with the help of 13 coherent and 1 incoherent text messages along the way, were able herd Kitty B untouched out the back door of Ottilia Hall. Imagine a pass rush of three linebackers against one scrambling quarterback who eventually gets run out of bounds. It was kind of like that.

So if you are wondering about the answer to these age-old questions of ‘how many…’, the answer is three, at least for today and tonight here at the monastery where the lights shine brightly, the cat runs free, and good humor prevails.



Postscript - Yes, I will take responsibility for having let Kitty B in! Sister Emilie and I spent a good long stretch after supper sitting on the back porch of Ottilia, just talking together and watching the sky grow dark until it felt like time to come in. Well, Kitty B came in too. Argh!

While visiting on the porch Sister Emilie and I watched Sisters Treva, Regina, and Jane return from a post-dinner walk, Sister Tonette and later Sister Mary Adrian head down to the wood-working and pottery studio, Sister Eileen start out on a walk, Sister Magdalena come out and feed Kitty B, and Sister Bernadette take a stroll down to the pond for some quiet moments of water-side solitude. We watched the light go on, and then off, in the sacristy, and then on, and then off, in the dish room as various Sisters tended to evening duties.

It was a lovely, quiet evening of monastic life unfolding in the best way possible - together.