Oh, Shenandoah

Bristow, Virginia lies slightly to the east of the Shenandoah Valley. Nevertheless, the lyrics and melody of this plaintive ballad have come to mind again and again since we received the Sunday afternoon news that a Sister of St. Benedict's Monastery in Bristow was tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident. Two other Sisters were critically injured. Since then, our hearts have been heavy as we mourn with our Sisters in Virginia.

Although these Sisters live hundreds of miles away, they are family to us. Many of our Sisters know various Bristow Sisters. Some of us have spent time in Bristow. Some of their Sisters have visited here. Yet even beyond these personal connections, a Benedictine bond is present that connects us to the Bristow Sisters and to Benedictines around the world. We are family. A very large family, but a family nonetheless, and when one mourns, we all mourn.

In Matthew 18:20, Jesus tells us that "where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." There is a kind of Benedictine corollary. Wherever one of us travels, the rest of the community is with them in a kind of spiritual presence rooted in spiritual kinship. When I attended the recent workshop at Annunciation Monastery in Bismarck, I felt the prayers and support of my Cullman community so strongly that it was almost as if they were present with me. When Sister Lynn Marie attends the funeral of Sister Denise later this week, the Bristow Sisters will know that she is not there just on her own behalf, but that the love and support of our entire Sacred Heart community is present with her.

Our connection is deep and real, rooted in our common faith and in our rich Benedictine heritage. We have a bulletin board filled with the newsletters of other Benedictine houses, as well as announcements of their professions, deaths, and other significant events. When one rejoices, we all rejoice. When one mourns, we all mourn.

Ultimately, though, this Benedictine connection is not merely insular. Our common faith and love for God impels us ever outward, to embrace the joy and suffering of the entire world through our monastic prayer and the needs of our local communities through our work and ministry.

And now, we rejoice in the life, the faith, and the loving ministry of Sister Denise. We mourn her tragic death. We hold the injured close in prayer. And always, we walk humbly through this life - sometimes through a verdant valley like Virginia's Shenandoah, and sometimes though a vale of tears - yet always walking together, with our Lord here among us.

Postscript: The lyrics of Oh, Shenandoah, while not religious per se, nonetheless convey well the sense of longing we Christians would see as a longing for our heavenly home, for the courts of the Lord, for the loving embrace of God with which Sister Denise was surely welcomed...

"Oh, Shenandoah
I long to see you,
And hear your rolling river...
[and] see your smiling valley..."



(Note: First and third photographs are from the Shenandoah Natl. Park website - used per site permission.)

Art project

The workshop I recently attended in North Dakota included an art project. Even though I am not very ‘arty,’ I gamely picked up a paint brush and over several days periodically wandered into the monastery studio to work on my project. Gradually my work took shape and eventually I realized I was enjoying it. The finished product was pretty rough around the edges, but nevertheless it conveyed something of my experience of the prairie.

During our community meetings last week I was asked to present a reflection about my experiences at the workshop and I had to decide: do I or do I not show my not-very-good art project to my monastic Sisters? Gamely, I pulled out my project and propped it on the table beside me as I spoke. Although I intended to use it to help illustrate my words, it occurred to me that it was an illustration of something deeper. I realized that the act of sharing with the community my rough around the edges project was somewhat similar to the monastic enterprise itself.

When we are called to monastic community we commit ourselves to being formed and shaped within a particular community for the rest of our lives. The goal of this on-going formation is to become more and more conformed to the image of Christ. Benedictines typically refer to this as “conversion through the monastic way of life.” No matter how multi-talented, finely wrought, spiritually mature, wise, or loving any one of us may be, we all remain rough around the edges in one way or the other and we all have to work at the lifelong task of conversion. Our vowed stability, an element of religious profession that is unique to monastics, allows for the constant rubbing of shoulders in work and prayer that helps smooth our rough edges as we become transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ.

I know that my unskilled ‘artistic’ efforts were appreciated by my community, and especially my willingness to share them. It's part of allowing my community to know me - rough edges and all - as we walk together day by day, seeking to have our 'roughness' smoothed and our hearts transformed through fidelity to the Gospel and to the monastic way of life. The Rule of St. Benedict and the Gospel of Christ call us to no less.


Postscript: It has been a busy week around here! We had a wonderful celebration last weekend when Sr. Sara Aiden made her first monastic profession. We then had a great week of community meetings, followed by a celebration yesterday of Sr. Brigid’s 25th Jubilee. Yes, we’ve been busy, but oh, so blessed. Photos of Sr. Sara Aiden’s profession are on our Community News web page, with photos of Sr. Brigid’s celebration to soon follow.

Big events, quiet moments

We have three big events on the horizon and the entire monastery has been abuzz with activity and anticipation. On Sunday evening, our Novice, Sister Sara Aiden, will make First Monastic Profession. On Monday, our annual summer Community meetings will begin. These will last through the week. And then, next Saturday, Sister Brigid will celebrate her 25th Jubilee, a significant milestone in the life of a vowed religious.

It seems that everyone in the community has been doing something to prepare for one or the other of these events. Programs for the profession and jubilee have been printed and delivered. Parchment paper for handwritten profession documents has been taken from its special file. Committee reports have been prepared, or are nearing completion. The refrigerators are stocked for festive meals. Tables are arranged in the meeting and dining rooms. The LCD projector is at the ready. Guest lists are settled. Table cloths have been ironed. Music rehearsal has begun. Yes, we have been busy…

Yet within the busyness, a stillness remains. Last evening, in the moments before Vespers, silence filled the chapel. Everything, everyone was still. It was the kind of emptiness that is paradoxically rich, an absence of sound that felt like the fullness of presence, like a single flower that fills the eye with color in an otherwise empty room. It was the kind of stillness that reminds one of what the motion is all about.

This time of year can be particularly heavy with activity. Yet even in the midst of big events we are always called back to prayer, back to the silence of our hearts, back to stillness before the God who is, who was, and who will be. Back to the One who calls us to prayer and work, to stillness and motion, to silence and celebration within this monastic community.

Postscript: For photos of these events, check our Community News web page from time to time over the next week or so.




Afternoon Addendum... Sr. Therese, who has been working with tables and tablecloths for much of the day along with finishing up a report for community meetings, just went outside with the camera and found Sr. Mary Adrian down at the creek gathering greenery. Here she is with some of the bounty that will grace our tables for tomorrow's celebration...

A warm welcome

I am finally back home in the warm, sunny South. My three and a half week conference and retreat at Annunciation Monastery in North Dakota was followed by a weekend meeting at Mount St. Scholastica Monastery in Kansas. And now I’m back home. All told, I was away for four weeks.

In both Bismarck and Atchison I was the glad and grateful recipient of warm Benedictine hospitality. Sometimes it's good to visit another Benedictine house and to be on the receiving end of the welcome. The experience gives a good reminder of the importance of welcoming the guest as Christ, which is what St. Benedict enjoins us to do in his Rule.

When I returned home Sunday evening I experienced yet another warm welcome, this time from my own community. Sr. Regina met me at the airport and caught me up on all the community news. Sr. Tonette helped me haul a month’s worth of luggage up the stairs to my room. The Sisters on my floor greeted me with festivity and listened to my initial burst of stories. I’ve also received countless hugs in the past day and a half from my monastic Sisters who are eager to welcome me home and hear about my time away.

Their warm welcome reminds me that Benedictine hospitality is not just for the guest. It is for everyone we encounter – both those arriving from far away and as near as hand as the Sister next door.

Travelin' shoes

The Benedictine Spirituality Workshop and Retreat (BSWR) has concluded and tomorrow I will begin making my way south from Bismarck back home to Sacred Heart.

My stay in North Dakota has spanned three and a half weeks. Although I will be glad to return home, there is something bittersweet about leaving Bismarck. The Sisters here at Annunciation Monastery have welcomed us with open arms and have embodied Benedictine hospitality in a way that is both inspiring and humbling. During BSWR we have not only studied Benedictine spirituality through classes and discussion, we have experienced it daily as it is lived by this wonderful monastic community.

It is also a little bittersweet to be leaving the prairie, the Missouri River, and these wonderful bluffs above the Missouri. The meditative landscape has complemented well the reflective nature of BSWR.

And yet…I will be glad to get back home, back to the Sisters who have supported and nurtured me throughout these years of initial formation into the monastic way of life and who have made it possible for me to put on my travelin’ shoes and make my way to North Dakota.

In many ways I have not traveled up here alone. My community has been with me in Bismarck through prayer, practical support, letters and packages, and through taking on my various responsibilities back at the monastery. Most importantly, they’ve been with me in the program content itself. As I’ve listened to lectures and participated in discussions I have done so with my community in mind and heart.

Although they have been with me in spirit, and though I will miss the prairie and this monastic community, I will be so glad to wake up tomorrow, put on my travelin’ shoes, and follow the Missouri on down to Mount St. Scholastica in Kansas, and then the rest of the way back to the beautiful Tennessee River Valley and the rolling hills of northern Alabama.

Postscript: The highway sign numbered 1804 is so numbered because that is the year Lewis, Clark and the Corps of Discovery passed through here on their journey westward. The highway stretches along the eastern side of the Missouri. The highway on the western side is numbered 1806, the year the Corps passed back through on their return to the east. Over these few weeks I’ve taken many a walk along Hwy 1804, engaged in my own journey of discovery. I’ll have more to say about BSWR in a later post…once I’ve taken off my travlin’ shoes.

Northwest Passage

(Still writing from the Benedictine Spirituality Workshop and Retreat [BSWR] at Annunciation Monastery in North Dakota...)

This is Lewis and Clark territory. The two explorers traveled the swift-flowing Missouri through these parts in search of the Northwest Passage. They didn’t find the fabled passage, but they did encounter the Missouri, the Columbia, the Yellowstone, and so much more. And then, the ocean...

On Monday evening, a week of silent retreat will begin for those of us attending BSWR. Each of us will meet daily with a retreat director, but otherwise we will be wrapped in a robe of silence as we spend sustained time with God exploring regions of the heart.

A silent retreat is always a journey of sorts. You get in your boat and push away from shore. You may imagine what you hope to discover, but you cannot know where a journey into silence will lead. You’ve got to be willing to go where God takes you and find what’s there to be found, even if it’s not where or what you expected. The director’s supportive, and occasionally challenging, presence helps make sense of the terrain.

As I write this on Saturday evening, I am sitting on a bluff above the Missouri, watching the sun make its own silent passage. I’m thinking about Lewis and Clark. I’m imagining them covered by these same skies, this same setting sun, this same prairie nighttime. Like them, my gaze is northwest. My heart, though, is inclined toward God, and soon I will begin my own silent journey, opening my sails to the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God upon the waters of the deep.

Postscript: This blog will be silent for about the next week and a half. In the meantime, you can keep up with monastery happenings on our Facebook page (Friends of the Benedictine Sisters of Cullman, Alabama).

I should add that this is not just Lewis and Clark territory. It is the land of the Mandan and Hidatsa, coyote and fox, bird and buffalo, immigrant and native, and all who have sought life and breath here on the bluffs of the Missouri River.

Shelterbelt

Still blogging from the Benedictine Spirituality Workshop and Retreat in Bismarck, ND.

Here in North Dakota, linear stands of trees called ‘shelterbelts' are inscribed like wooded hieroglyphs here and there across the prairie. Sometimes they form a three-sided square around a homestead. More often they stand as long, parallel lines that cut through, or alongside, cultivated fields. I’ve learned they are planted as wind guards to reduce erosion in this wind-scoured landscape, as well as to form a natural snow fence in winter. In the field, the ‘fence’ allows precious moisture to accumulate for springtime planting. Around homes and structures, the shelterbelt offers protection from the buffeting wind and blowing snow of blizzards.

As a kind of side benefit, the trees often serve as a haven for deer and other wildlife. Earlier this week, I watched two deer dart into the protecting foliage of the shelterbelt depicted here, which stands just beyond the monastery. This particular belt is three trees deep, with beautiful Russian olive trees standing tall to the left (northeast).

These past days I’ve been meditating on shelterbelts and on the ways in which we seek, create, and offer shelter - both shelter from and shelter for. There is something deeply humble about the way the shelterbelts lie so quietly across the land. It brings to mind St. Benedict’s ladder of humility, as if his ladder had been planted like a row crop of goodness along a stretch of barren earth.

St. Benedict’s 12th step of humility is that a monk “should always manifest humility in his [her] bearing no less than in his heart.” The shelterbelt reminds me of this humble stance. It is silent, yet full of right speech. Still, yet full of right action. Humble in its bearing. Fruitful in its work. I pray that my words and actions may be like a shelterbelt on the windswept prairie, offering a safe haven and protecting presence, standing humbly yet firm against the scouring winds and swirling snows that so often buffet and blow.

“You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and fortress, my God in whom I trust…’” Psalm 91: 1-2


Postscript: See chapter 7 of the Rule of St. Benedict to read more about the ladder of humility.