Sister Gee, Sister Haw, and the cultivation of a monastic heart

Here in the southland (and maybe other places, too) we have an expression for folks who don’t exactly see eye to eye.

“They just don’t geehaw," we say.

Or perhaps they do see eye to eye, but they still somehow manage to work at cross purposes despite their best intentions.

The phrase comes, of course, from the days of mules and plows and the farmers who steered them to the right and to the left with a “gee” and a “haw.”  When two folk "just don’t geehaw” it simply means that one of them heads one way while the other heads another and nothing much gets done except for the intentions that get tangled and the footfalls that get scrambled and the stubborn necks that get sore from pulling too insistently and hard.

Monastic formation – both the initial kind and the kind that goes on until the day the Prioress calls the funeral home for you – can be seen as a kind of parable in which Sister Gee and Sister Haw get teamed up to cultivate a pasture but wind up getting cultivated themselves. It’s kind of like Haw trying to get Gee to become more Haw-like, and Gee trying to get Haw to become more Gee-like, but each becoming transformed into something entirely different in the process. Somehow amongst all the miscues and crossed purposes and tangled footfalls, absolutely nothing gets planted in the field but something manages to get planted in each of them. And it grows. And bears fruit. And they are transformed.

Each of us enters the monastery with our own particular experiences and outlooks and all manner of certainty that our way is the best way. It’s natural. And it’s very human. But the monastic call requires of us a pliability of spirit in order to be formed more and more closely into the likeness of Christ. In the monastery we often refer to this as a docile heart.

This docility doesn’t come overnight. While some may have more natural docility than others, for each of us it takes some time to stop pulling Gee when we’re asked to Haw, or to stop Hawing (or howling!) when we’re asked to Gee.

None of this is merely about compliance. While to a certain extent monastic obedience is oriented toward an orderly community life that allows contemplation to flourish, a far deeper principle is at work. A docile heart is directed as if to Christ and is ordered entirely to learning to hear and respond to His voice.

This deeper orientation is part of what makes the monastic endeavor so completely different from other forms of the common life. And it is what makes our relationships with Sisters with whom we don’t naturally “geehaw” so vital and ultimately life giving. For each of us, the true pull isn’t against the other, or toward the center, and not even toward compromise. The pull, the voice, the draw, is toward God, and that gives the tangled footprints and miscues a sacramental character.

The Rule of Benedict is full of practical guidance on how to seek God together in mutual love and service. Benedict recognized full well our human weakness, and I would guess that he perhaps did his own share of geeing and hawing in his time. He tells us to not be presumptuous, to be the first to show respect for the other, to let mercy triumph over judgment, to show unhesitating obedience… And he reminds us that it is love that impels us.

In Benedict’s day, an era in which Barbarian tribes were overrunning a falling and failing Roman Empire, he sought to integrate these rougher individuals into the life of a monastic community. Today, we generally think of ourselves as civilized and cultured.  Yet we still, interiorly, have hearts that are, to one degree or another, stubborn and uncultivated. We resist the yoke of the Lord.

The ‘yoke’ of monastic community life doesn’t always feel easy, because even with those we know and care for best, we may still feel at times as if we are Sister Gee to their Sister Haw. At those times, it’s good to remember that we are plowing together in the fields of the Lord, and it is our own hearts that are undergoing cultivation in a living parable of trust and love.           

Winter lullaby

When the earth trembles, is there someone to hold her hand? When she shivers with cold, does the firmament drape a warm wind across her shaking shoulders? When her hidden springs well up into a torrent of tears, do the heavenly hosts comfort her with a lullaby?

On these cold, cold days, when the earth seems to need a blanket as much as we do, I pray for those who tremble in the cold – whether from the icy blast of an arctic storm or the icy isolation of loneliness or fear, because we don’t need just physical warmth. We need the love of others.

Life in the monastery is filled not just with sisterly camaraderie but with mutual love. St. Benedict and the Gospel call us to no less.

The “monos” of “monastery” means “single” or “one.” It means not that we live alone, but that we seek God with a single-hearted devotion, and that our entire life is oriented toward God alone. For those who are called to monastic life, this takes place within the community in which we make our monastic commitment. Here in this community we experience our own times of trembling and times of tears, and we learn to walk with others through their own times of suffering.

So as the earth shivers along with us, I think not just about the physical cold, but about the loneliness and fear that are part of every human life, and I pray for all who tremble in the cold, no matter its nature. I pray, too, that I can learn to sing with the comforting warmth of a winter lullaby.

For weeks now, even since the early days of Advent, my thoughts have been filled with the anticipation of Epiphany. My thoughts were partly sad, because I felt that all I could bring to the Infant Jesus were empty pockets and counterfeit coins. But there was also joy, because the Feast of the Epiphany is a kind of icon of all my hope and all that I yearn for and journey toward.

Yesterday, on the eve of Epiphany, I took a journey of a different sort, returning to the monastery after several days of visiting with family in South Carolina. As always, I was driving a community car.

We don’t have GPS in most of our cars, and I am glad for the ambiguities and uncertainties of GPS-less travel. Instead, I usually drive with a map spread out on the seat beside me and an eye open for a new back road or an unexpected turn that suddenly looks compelling. It keeps my quizzical brow from softening into certainty and keeps me alert to ways in which the Lord bursts into this incarnate world like a star tumbling from the heavens.

Yesterday I took an unplanned right hand turn in Blackville, SC. A few piney woods later I stumbled across the loveliest country store you can imagine with a welcoming wooden sign that promised sandwiches and sweet tea.

The store was run by members of the local Mennonite community. It was a simple place without all the commercial accoutrements of most convenience stores. There were women in bonnets and men in beards and loaves of just-baked bread and a few locals and a few passersby and more than a few kind and cheerful words.

The store anchored the turn to a place called Healing Springs. But I was so ‘healed’ by the store that I didn’t even bother to look for the springs. I had already found a kind of icon of what I yearn for and journey toward.

In these days of GPS travel and authoritative electronic voices, the story of the magi reminds us that the journey toward our true destination is marked with uncertainty and ambiguity. Yet it is also marked by the certain hope that that the Lord ever bursts into this incarnate world, the joy of our beholding.

I journey to Him with counterfeit coins bleeding from empty pockets as I forget things and drop things and take endless wrong turns and let the glory of God slip through my fingers and fall to the side of the road as I stand by helplessly wondering what happened.

But I travel in hope and I travel in joy, knowing that even my sorrows can be transformed into a gift fit for a King.