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.