Easter arrival

Sometimes, a guest is received on the front doorstep with great fanfare and elaborate celebration. But sometimes, a familiar friend slips through the back door – no big to-do, no fanfare – just a reach for the hidden key, a turn of the knob and an unhurried step into an open heart.

For me, Easter arrived like the second guest. Sure, I did my part to welcome our Risen Lord at the front door – the great Vigil of Easter, with its darkness and light, silence and song, organ and flute, cantors, musicians, water, incense, Easter fire, Easter candle, all uniting in a great conflagration of Easter joy. I was on the front walk along with my Sisters, our guests, our priest celebrant – all of us gathered at the front door of Easter. But for all the fanfare and jubilation of the Vigil, it was this morning, when I opened the chapel door on my way to Lauds, that Easter slipped quietly through the back door of my heart and pulled up a chair as if to visit for a while.

It was with the bells that Easter slipped in, the bells that call us to Lauds, bells not heard for three long days, silenced by the somber liturgies of the Sacred Triduum. They started ringing just as I opened the chapel door, and their familiar sound moved unhurriedly through the quiet morning as through an open door. No big to-do. No fanfare. Simply a familiar resonance, like an accustomed voice too long unheard, and suddenly my heart was filled with arrival, with presence, with familiarity, with Easter.

Perhaps among the many fruits of our formal liturgy - the ‘front door,’ if you will - is an intimacy with the Lord Jesus such that not only do we receive Him on the front steps with grand and solemn gestures, but we know Him when He slips oh-so-gently into our hearts, an unhurried friend who lets himself in with the key he knows we keep tucked above the lintel. As we continue the liturgies, the 'front door' celebrations, of this joyful Eastertide, may they deepen our intimacy with the One who slips quietly into our hearts with unhurried step, a familiar friend who fills us with arrival, with presence, with the profound blessings of Easter.


Postscript: Great fanfare has definitely characterized our Easter celebration here at the monastery. The solemn gravity of the Triduum liturgies gave way to a beautiful Easter vigil last night, beginning with the blessing of the New Fire on the front chapel steps beside spreading magnolia branches, and concluding with Sister Magdalena’s thunderously jubilant organ music after the final hymn. The liturgies today have been equally beautiful. But our celebration hasn't been confined to the chapel. This morning we gathered for our traditional Easter breakfast of ham, Sister Kathleen’s home-baked Easter bread, and hard-cooked eggs that were hand-dyed and decorated by Sister Eileen and her crew of retreatants and oblates. Meanwhile, Sister Priscilla and a crew of Sisters prepared a beautiful dining room for a festive Easter dinner. At times and seasons such as this, it is ‘all hands on deck’ here at the monastery! Everyone pitches in to create a celebration befitting our Risen Lord.

Becoming prayer

This is my favorite day of the year. You might think it would be Easter, or Christmas, or my birthday, or any day that the sun, rising over the pasture, just happens to catch my spirit ablaze. But no, today, Holy Thursday, is my favorite day, because this is the day when, every year, I feel as if I become liturgy.

I serve the community as sacristan, and these days of the Sacred Triduum mean long hours, attention to many details, and tending to little else except prayer, meals and liturgy. My office agenda has been cleared. This blog will be silent. My room is clean. I am ready to focus on nothing but moving with the motion of these days, helping carry the liturgy along, and in turn, being carried by the liturgy.

But it is not just the details and focus that carry me along. During the Triduum, the very doing of the work, the engagement with the hours and the details of these sacred liturgies, is like entering a cave, a castle, a crucible, another land. It is as if I cross a moat into the very heart of the Church's prayer and pull up the drawbridge behind me, not to emerge until Easter Sunday. These sacred days are like the cleft in the wall into which I place my entire being in prayer, and hopefully become the prayer that I pray.

I think (hope) most of us engage in our work as a form of prayer, as an offering to God. But as sacristan, these few days call me to focus particular attention on my work. There is an ancient liturgical maxim, Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, or “the law of prayer is the law of belief.” In other words, what we pray is what we believe. We do not just shape the liturgy, the liturgy shapes us as we enter into the fullness of liturgical prayer, expressing and living our belief.

I happen to have the blessing of engaging with the practicalities of liturgy. This interpenetration of both being and doing, each drawing me deeper into the other, leads me, after a while, to feel as if my life becomes liturgy, and the myriad tasks, a litany. Prayer becomes belief, which becomes gesture and act, which in turn, becomes prayer.

And today, on Holy Thursday, my favorite day of the year, I stand at the cleft in the wall and place within it the thousand gestures that will fill the coming days, each gesture a prayer, each task a bead on the rosary, a litany of love, hopefully becoming the prayer that I pray.


Postscript: Sister Emilie and Sister Sara Aiden work with me in the sacristy, and together we polish, iron, clean, organize, prepare… Last year’s oils have been buried. The holy water fonts are empty and clean. A fresh corporal has been ironed for the tabernacle. The humeral veil is draped and ready. The wooden clapper, kept in our archives, is poised and prepared to replace the bells which will not ring during the Triduum. And so much more… The three of us work shoulder to shoulder to help carry our community through these sacred days.

Plaiting palm

The reed folded sweetly around my fingers, as sweetly as the voice of Sister Mary Jude as she said “That’s right, Sister. That’s the way. You’ve got it.”

She was teaching me how to plait palm, a traditional skill to be handed on to me, and to others. I was startled at the suppleness of the palm once the hard edge had been peeled and discarded and the slender reed broken nearly in half. Now it was to be threaded and woven into something entirely new. In my uncertain hands, its disposition was relaxed, its mood pliable. I folded, tucked, and wrapped, folded, tucked and wrapped, my fingers slowly acclimating themselves to the palm, even as the palm adjusted itself to my fingers.

“You have to keep it moist and fresh,” she said. “If you let it dry out, it will break.”

We were plaiting palm for tomorrow’s Passion Sunday procession – decorative palm for the cross, the celebrant, and our prioress. We’ve been making other preparations, too. Sister Mary Adrian and Sister Kathleen arranged fans of palm for the altar. Sister Therese tied ribbons. Sister Kathleen Christa prepared for Vigil. The incense is ready. The wood of the processional cross has been freshly oiled. Musicians and cantors have rehearsed. Sacristans are prepared. And meanwhile, I keep thinking about the pliant yielding of the palm.

I keep thinking, too, about those who, over 2000 years ago, made preparations for Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Those who untied the donkey, spread their cloaks, cut down branches, cried “Hosanna…” And I think about our Lord Jesus as he entered the city.

“Pull it tightly. And you’ve got to hold it firmly. Hold it tight and don’t let go.”

I folded, tucked, and wrapped, folded, tucked, and wrapped, holding tightly and not letting go, committed to doing my bit of preparation to commemorate Jesus' journey. It was heart preparation, too, praying that my heart could be as supple as fresh palm, hard edges peeled and discarded, pliant in the hands of God, yet as firm as Jesus as he entered Jerusalem, holding tightly to his destiny, eyes set firmly on the cross - both pliantly yielding, and not letting go.

Symphony

Last night, I did something I rarely take the time to do. I sat in my room upstairs in Joseph Hall and listened to a CD in its entirety. The CD I chose, somewhat at random, was Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

I started out half listening and half reading an article. The article, though, was soon abandoned, and I leaned back in my rocker and simply listened as movement followed movement and tempos shifted and keys changed and fanfares were sounded and answered and themes emerged and were repeated in variation after variation, all leading at last to that glorious fourth movement that we know as the Ode to Joy.

Listening to the entire work was not only thoroughly pleasurable and deeply moving, it was an instructive reminder about attending to the whole, about remembering that what might be present for a moment – a dissonant chord, a contrapuntal rhythm, a musical phrase without a response – is not all that there is. The opus keeps moving, the dissonance resolves, the cello is answered by the violin, a motif is developed and repeated in deepening variations.

If we listen to only a single movement of a symphony, it’s easy to forget that it is part of a larger work. Likewise, a single period or event in our lives, when seen in isolation, can cause us to lose perspective on the whole. A dissonant chord, a single unharmonious note, a sudden change in tempo…any or all of these can cause us to inwardly grimace at the discordant sound, not understanding, appreciating, or properly contextualizing the dissonant note or unexpected chord.

Enduring such a time requires trust, perspective, patience, and hope: trust in the composer to lead us beyond the dissonance, perspective that is able to envision the whole beyond the part, and patience to wait in hope. For me, last night, resting from the work of the day, patience involved simply taking the time to listen to an entire symphonic work. In life, though, we are sometimes called to sustained periods of dissonance. Significant trust and perspective are required to persevere in patient hope.

The word ‘symphony’ means ‘concordance of sound.’ From the listener's perspective, and speaking spiritually, we could also think of this as ‘concordance of attention.' We are called to listen and attend to the various movements, motifs, and rhythms of our lives with trust, perspective, and patience rooted in hope, knowing that movement will follow movement, the tempo will shift, the key will change, the cello's call will be answered, and themes will develop and deepen, always leading us ultimately toward God, the source of all joy.


Postscript: Music in the monastery – There is plenty in our liturgy of course, but many of us keep CD players in our rooms. However we do keep the volume low in consideration of others and to maintain a good, quiet environment in the monastic living areas. I must admit that it was hard to refrain from cranking up the volume last night, especially during that 4th movement!

For more on music in the monastery, see the October 6, 2010 entry, Sister Anastasia's Orchestra, in the archives at left.

A color only God could create

The color that spread itself across the earth this afternoon was a color only God could create. It was a green charged with red, softened with yellow, laced with white, and warmed with the laziest afternoon breeze you could possibly imagine. Computer hues stand anemic and the printers ink merely pallid compared to the splendor and sublimity of these springtime shades, colors that only God could create.

This Sabbath afternoon has been suitably still, full of color, full of light, full of rest. The activities of the election of Prioress are behind us. The monastery is quiet. Community cars sit immobile in their assigned slots. It seems that no one at all is out and about. Around mid-afternoon, I wandered outside and sat for a while, watching the shades of springtime mix and match, drift and dance. Then I took a walk through the green, green pasture, through a color only God could create, resting in a peace only God can give.

Before this day is done – whether today, tomorrow, or whenever you read this – I hope that you, too, have a chance to pause, to let your eyes linger on this many-hued earth, resting in the peace that only God can give.


Postscript: Our Community completed our election of Prioress yesterday. Details can be found on our Community News page.

Making a mountain

Recently, I was asked to make a mountain. It was to be part of Sr. Marie's meeting room environment for her retreat entitled On the Holy Mountain. I’ve been asked to do some unusual things before, but never make a mountain. Where to begin?

First, there was a storage-room search for some mountain-colored fabrics, then a trip to the kitchen pantry with a cart. In the pantry I went shelf to shelf collecting tin cans of every size, empty jars, plastic containers, some variously-shaped food packages, and a bit of stainless steel. By stacking, leaning, propping, spreading, and draping this improbable collection of materials, I managed to create a credible mountain. Sr. Mary Adrian came along with some ideas about greenery and some extra fabric from her studio and turned the mountain into something even better than credible. A trip out back for a few rocks provided the final accent.

Looking at the fabric-draped mountain, you’d never know that the cloth hid a jumble of precariously stacked foodstuffs – everything from barbeque sauce to marmalade to chicken broth to a box of tea bags, all crowned with an upside down ice cream scoop holder. It was like a kitchen in camouflage, yet it gave shape to the fabric, changing a random assortment of mountain-colored cloths into a majestic, and defining, mantle.

For each of us, the vocation to which we are called is a kind of mantle, a figurative cloak draped across our lives, defining who we are. Yet no matter our vocation, it is the stuff of daily life – the “everything and the kitchen sink,” if you will – that both gives shape to our vocation, and forms the terrain upon which our vocation takes shape.

Whether vowed religious, spouse, or parent, our vocations are expressed within and amidst ordinary life. We make our lives from, and in turn are made by, the ‘stuff’ of life. Buying groceries, studying for school, mowing the lawn, growing vegetables, taking out the trash, comforting a child, bringing food to the sick, helping a neighbor, offering our gifts, laboring diligently at the work we have been given… This jumbled assortment of ordinary experiences propped against one another – sometimes precariously, sometimes improbably – forms the terrain we traverse as we climb the holy mountain in search of God.

We drape ourselves daily in the mantle of our calling, our vocation giving definition to our work, and our work, in turn, giving shape to our vocation. In faithfully living our call within the ordinary circumstances of our lives, we can help make far more than a credible mountain. Our lives can become bread for the world, a kitchen in camouflage, the terrain that helps others traverse the pilgrim path to God.


Postscript: This weekend, our monastic community will gather for election of Prioress. One Sister from among us will be called forth to assume the mantle of leadership. This call, too, bids one to be steeped in the ordinary events of life – care for the sick, attention to goods of the monastery, diligent labor – as she helps the community traverse the path to God. The call to leadership will shape her, even as she gives shape to the call. Our Community News web page contains information about the election process for those who are interested.

Good reason to pause

It’s not often that I linger in the stairwell, but the sights of springtime through today's open window gave me good reason to pause. I stood for a while, oblivious to anyone who might have wondered why I came to a standstill only halfway to my destination.

This is the time of year when the earth seems to cry out to be admired, to be gazed upon, to be sought after, to sing its own praises, to say “look at me,” even though the buds and blooms and bursting colors point not to themselves, but to the One who created their beauty.

Tonight’s reading from Sirach 24 during Vespers echoed the same idea…Wisdom singing her own praises.

"Wisdom sings her own praises...Like a cedar of Lebanon I am raised aloft…like a palm tree…like a rose bush…like a fair olive tree in the field…I bud forth delights like the vine, my blossoms become fruit fair and rich. Come to me, all you that yearn for me, and be filled with my fruits."

May the buds, blooms, and bursting colors of springtime turn our thoughts to the Creator of all beauty. And may we yearn for Wisdom, and linger at her feet, with the same delight with which we linger before the beauty of springtime. The Wisdom of God, "like cinnamon, fragrant balm, or precious myrrh," gives us good reason to pause.