Story upon story

Sister Magdalena has returned from Wales along with the Benedictine Journeys tour group that she led for two weeks. I met them at the airport, which meant that I was the fortunate one who was able to hear the first rush of stories. They told of Cardiff and Snowdon and Hay-on-Wye and old churches and warm, friendly folk and wonderful tour guides and beautiful countryside and green upon green as far as the eye can see.

For two weeks the travelers formed a community, and by the end of their shared journey they had shared stories to tell.  Delayed luggage meant an airport dinner, and over a grilled cheese sandwich and iced tea I listened happily to their animated conversation.  Their individual remembrances darted here and there, yet converged to create a larger story of a common journey.  As I listened it seemed as if both shared experience and shared remembrance helped create their pilgrim community.

Our monastic community has been here in Cullman since 1902. Our stories are countless, and while we live in the present and prepare for the future, our conversation is constantly peppered with remembrances of the past, both recent and distant. Our common life and monastic commitment constitute us as a community, yet the telling of stories helps to sustain and form our monastic bond over the decades and generations.  The stories move ever forward, incor-porating new characters and new events along the way, while remaining embedded within a larger narrative that      reaches beyond the present moment and transcends any single individual or event.

Yet the stories we tell are not just ours. We are Benedictine, and share in the legacy of St. Benedict and centuries of Benedictine life. More importantly, as part of the Body of Christ, our story belongs not just to us but to the People of God and to the world. We are woven into the fabric of the Church and share in the Church’s story. Our liturgy is marked with the stories of those who preceded us in the faith, and images from the narrative of scripture and the lives of the saints fill our chapel and monastery. And daily we encounter the story of salvation history as it unfolds through the liturgical year. 

It’s like a set of nested dolls – our individual stories held within the community’s story held within our Benedictine story, and all held within the grand narrative of God’s salvific love that forms and shapes us as a community in Christ. May we always tell this story with the enthusiasm and wonder of a traveler returning from a distant isle, who has experienced green upon green as far as the eye can see.


Photos:
1) The journeying Sister Magdalena 
2) Sister Therese took this photo yesterday as Sister Mary Jude described to her the original parish school where our founding Sisters once taught
3) Sister Tonette reviews upcoming plans with the community as we carry our story forward
4) Our chapel is full of images of the Christian story, as well as images that convey our Benedictine heritage.

A house at rest

A quiet afternoon here at the monastery, full of stillness and muted light...  I know that the earth turns and the wind blows, but the weekday wheels of the monastery have come to a Sabbath halt and everything appears motionless.

Tools are in their places.  Offices are empty.  Lights are off.  Guests have departed.  Sisters are at rest. Even sound seems to be taking a break, and the air is full of silence and calm.

I wander around with the camera.  All is so quiet that even the click of a shutter shatters the hushed afternoon. And then Vespers, with a minor chord calling us to prayer, and our chanting voices rising tranquilly within the quiet walls of the chapel, as to the vault of heaven.

Our house is at rest. Our eyes are turned to God.  And our prayers rise like incense, our hands like an evening oblation.

Postscript: Each Sunday evening, we begin Vespers with Psalm 140..."Let my prayer rise before you like incense, the raising of my hands like an evening oblation...To you, Lord God, my eyes are turned, in you I take refuge..." 

Indeed, this day of rest is a time to turn to God in a particularly intentional and attentive way, to put our house at rest, and to focus our eyes upon the Lord. 

Hope you enjoy these photos of our house at rest today.                      

 

 

Trust and transition

Last night I walked through the monastery kitchen. A pan of beans sat on the counter, partially shelled. No one was around. It was all I could do just to keep on walking, to leave them out on the counter, and to trust that whoever had stopped mid-task would return.

In any home, but especially one as big as a monastery with as many people as we have, things are in a constant state of transition. Someone brings something so far, stops to tend to something else along the way, and soon picks back up on the original errand. During a quick walk through the monastery I might find a book on the stair landing. A small ice chest on a table. A set of keys outside the chapel. Someone’s mail stacked outside a door. A camera on a side table. A partially-shelled pan of beans on the kitchen counter. All are out of place, but only transiently so, on their way to their ultimate destination. If I make an identical trek 30 minutes later, all these things might well be gone, the various Sisters  having picked back up on their original tasks or errands.  When something seems out of place, we all just trust that it will soon enough be carried to it's destination.  And soon enough, it is.

A recent retreat group had “transition” as their theme, and although I was not part of their sessions I’ve been thinking about transition ever since.  I've also thought about the trust required during those times that we feel ourselves to be out of place, betwixt or between, or otherwise out of sorts. This, of course, is our human condition, at least for now. St. Augustine put it so well: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” We may sometimes feel like a book transiently on the landing, but nevertheless we are always en route to our home in God, always trusting that we are being carefully carried in our Lord's merciful arms.

Over easy

I awakened early this morning, walked for a bit, prepared guest books for Lauds, made the first pot of Retreat Center coffee, and then paused for a while. Later, at breakfast time, I served up grits and carried pans of eggs from the kitchen – over easy, hard cooked, and everything in between.

And then, Lauds and Eucharist.  During Mass, sunlight was a mild distraction as a delicate shade of lavender radiated from the cut-glass decanter as if through a prism. Following Mass, I roamed around the monastery for a bit watching the sun wrap the earth in a radiant cloak of light and shadow.

All is quiet. The monastery is peaceful and relaxed. The two retreat groups are well underway with their programs, both quietly ensconced in their respective meeting rooms. Sister Kathleen Christa just wandered by the office with a question. Sister Benita just called with a message. The morning is slow, easy, peaceful, at rest - as if the sun itself had kicked back in a chair just to take it all in and watch the day roll slowly by.  

Relaxed.  Light.  Over easy.  Nothing hard cooked about this beautiful day. 

Postscript: Today’s Psalm response fits the radiance of this sun-lit day: I will walk before God in the light of the living. Indeed.

Not a quarter, not a crescent

Tonight the moon is so luminously elegant that my impoverished words stop short in approach. Even the stars keep a deferential distance, and the humble sky offers a muted canvas of colorless black.

This moon...under which Abraham tented, the Psalmist sat in awe, the Holy Family slept, St. Paul traveled, holy ones kept vigil, and untold millions - arrayed like stars through the centuries - have lived, slept, suffered, rejoiced... this same moon graces the night sky above us as one by one the windows of Sacred Heart grow dark and we slide into the peacefulness of night.

This moon...so luminous...can only be described by that which it is not... not a quarter, not a crescent, neither waxing nor waning, but a silent, self-effacing canvas reflecting the radiance of the handiwork of God, and proclaiming the glory of the Lord.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork...Ps 19:1

O Lord, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!  You have set your majesty above the heavens... When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you set in place - what are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them?   From Ps 8

Lost and found

A little over a week ago I lost my monastery keys. For days I have searched high and low, traced and retraced my steps, checked pockets, rummaged through drawers, befriended St. Anthony, looked in unlikely spots, and repeatedly asked other Sisters “have you seen my keys?”  I have grown weary of asking, and I’m sure they’ve grown weary of being asked.  I've grown weary of saying "It has three keys and a Benedictine medal."  I've grown weary of borrowing keys for my evening walk.  But I have not grown weary of searching.  The hunt has gone on with sustained attention and undaunted zeal.   

With lost keys on my mind, I had to smile when I read the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday. Luke 15: 1-32 tells the story of lost sheep, lost coins, and a lost son. It tells of the undaunted search and the joy of the find.  As I have spent time in lectio divina (sacred reading) with this passage all I’ve been able to think about are my lost keys. I have imagined my joy at finding them, and have imagined the exponentially greater joy of a Father at the return of a child, of God at the return of a lost soul.

This afternoon – at last – I found my keys in a spot that was both highly improbable yet somehow utterly logical. My heart leapt when I saw them, and I immediately imagined the infinitely greater joy of our Shepherd when the stray sheep is found and the flock is again united and whole.

The effort and attention I devoted to searching for lost keys this week was like a deep well of reflection, especially in light of the reading from Luke… Am I searching for the things of God with the same zeal as I have searched for my keys? Am I embodying St. Benedict's "good zeal" in service to my Sisters and others?  In what ways might I have wondered afar and am lost? Is my attention 'missing in action' during prayer?  And over what does my heart rejoice?  A good examination of conscience on so many fronts...all from a set of lost keys and the ever alive and enlivening Word of God.

Postscript: So what does a Sister keep on her key ring? It depends on the Sister and her particular needs. I have a key to the monastery and two Retreat Center keys. Why no car key? I don’t own a car. Through my monastic vows I am committed to common ownership, and when I need to use a car I sign one out and pick up keys from a central location. A Sister whose ministry requires routine use of a car has a car assigned to her, but she does not own it. Perhaps someday I’ll blog about monastery cars, or about St. Benedict’s chapter on Monks and Private Ownership… But for now I am going to take a walk, and let myself back in the door with these newly found keys!

Beyond recycling

Since entering our community five years ago I have learned that we are geniuses at recycling. Sure, we do the ordinary kind where you put cans into a bin and someone carts the bin away. But that’s too ordinary for us. Our preference is to reuse things right here at home – and believe me, we can find some kind of reuse for almost anything.

We water flowers and fill the goldfish pond with condensation from air conditioner units. Discarded letters and forms are cut up into stacks of note paper. The remains of candles are melted and molded to form new ones. We know how to get multiple turns out of a single greeting card. When an old shed was taken down, the concrete pad was transformed into a shady patio. Sister Mary Adrian even has an “infirmary shelf” for pottery that breaks during firing, keeping it close at hand until another use presents itself. I’m constantly amazed at the ingenuity with which we reuse and transform.

But what distinguishes this from mere frugality or environmental care? I think it has to do with a basic Christian orientation of grateful stewardship of the many gifts God has given us. St. Benedict further nuances this when he instructs monks to care for “all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar.” (RB 31:10) Simply put, we take care of what we have, and use it to its fullest potential. It also means that when we need something new – be it a car, a chalice, or a jar of jam – we seek quality workmanship, and then give it quality care.

Close readers will have noted the word “transformed” in the second paragraph. This, too, is rooted in our monastic orientation. Our monastic vow of conversion keeps us ever attuned to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform us more and more into the likeness of Christ. This is fundamentally an attitude of hope, of seeing the potential of ourselves and others to grow and change. For a monastic, transformation of concrete slabs and broken pottery flows not from frugality, or even creativity, but from a hope that permeates our lives so deeply that that it is expressed even in the material world around us. If reusing is rooted in stewardship, transformation is rooted in hope and in the promise of redemption.

The cross depicted above was formed out the jumbled remains of some old concrete posts along one of our wooded pathways. This is not mere recycling. This is an expression of a spiritual reality fundamental to monastic, and indeed Christian, life. In brokenness and in hope, we offer ourselves to transformation in Christ through the monastic way of life. So it’s not genius after all. It’s hope.


From Romans 8 -
For in hope we were saved.   Now hope that sees for itself is not hope.  For who hopes for what one sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance...  For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God...