Yellow pine

I was a little tired today, which means my mind was a little more prone to wander, including during Mass, so after hearing the Gospel reading from Matthew about the wooden beam and the splinter, my mind wandered off through a forest of trees, wondering from which sort of wood my wooden blinders were most likely to have been hewn. By the time the gold-plated chalices were being placed on the altar I had settled on yellow pine.

Yellow pine is familiar, ubiquitous even, to someone who grew up in the southland. Golden-hued planks of old-growth yellow pine framed the ancestral architecture of my childhood. I walked miles on pine floors, and more miles through piney woods, and attended family events at places with names like Pine Grove. Today, golden-hued planks hewn more than a hundred years ago form the floors of our main monastery building, Ottilia Hall. Thus, I concluded that the wooden beam in my eye must be yellow pine.

After Mass, a little chagrined over my wandering mind, I realized there is actually a kind of logic to a beam of yellow pine. Sometimes it is that which is most familiar that can form the greatest hindrance to our vision. We become accustomed to seeing things in a certain way, with certain blinders on that are so familiar we don’t even notice them. Like the wooden beam of the Gospel, we do not perceive it. Nor can we perceive beyond it with true vision.

As a child, pine wood was ubiquitous. It wasn’t anything particularly special. But today, reclaimed pine lumber is prized in the home industry. Similarly, perhaps in removing the beam from my eye I can not only see more clearly, but also can find something precious in the old plank itself. Perhaps that which blocked my vision can cast a new golden hue when I offer my blinders to God to be reclaimed and restored.



Postscript: The picture above was taken several years ago, just after the renovation of Ottilia Hall. We were so gratified to see these beautiful floors shine once again after having been covered with tile and carpet for many years.

Lighter than air

I spent the past several days attending a conference where I sat at a table listening, thinking, talking, and praying. The table held my papers, my elbows, and occasionally my gaze. It also held the holy conversation - heavy with the weightless fragrance of hope - that flowed across and around the table, and that flowed amongst other tables in a room filled with monastic women gathered to listen, think, talk, and pray.

Today, back at work at my desk, an employee came to tell me she needed help. She had been assigned to move tables, but they were too heavy for her alone. I got up to help her.

We moved tables, one by one, the two of us. They were too heavy for one alone. Working together they seemed lighter than air.

Lifting and moving the tables, I knew that the work of sitting at yesterday’s table was meaningless without the work of these tables. I can think and talk and pray about monastic life for days on end, but unless I rise from my chair for the work of community, the talk is lifeless. And moving tables without the holy intention that lifts them beyond themselves is mere motion.

The manual labor of moving tables and the spiritual labor of being at table each breathe life into the other. Each makes of the other a sign. And each makes the other seem lighter than air, heavy with the weightless fragrance of possibility.

Home, like the evening

A still summer evening. Effortless air. Light so relaxed it has no need to be lit. The earth quiet and unselfconscious in the pale twilight that lingers around the straight, still pines. The promise of dawn resting beside the hearth of nightfall.

Stepping into this evening is like stepping into home. It absorbs my restlessness. It welcomes my wandering thoughts. It lets me sit still, or slowly pace the porch, or shed a beautiful, shining tear that reflects the beautiful, shining cloud above the treeline to the north. The evening welcomes me, a stranger, to its hearth.

This evening has something to teach me. I think it is about how to be home, like the evening. About being a still, effortless, unselfconscious home that can absorb the restlessness of others, welcome their wandering thoughts, let them sit still, or pace the porch, or shed a beautiful, shining tear.

In the stillness of evening, the earth is actually spinning in space. But the evening holds the gift of gravity with a graciousness that seems effortless, that seems lighter than light, that glows with the infinite radiance of a single tear.

A monastery is kind of like that. In a whirling, swirling world that feels the tilting of its axis as if it were a listing ship, a monastery is like the stillness of evening. Holding the gift of gravity and light. Unselfconscious and quiet. Absorbing restlessness. Offering a hearth to wanderers. Treasuring the infinite radiance of a single tear. Resting in the promise of dawn.

It is home, like the evening.

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.