Amazed...

I am writing this post from Saint John’s University in Minnesota where I am taking a class on the Gospel of Mark. My course began last Monday, it is now Wednesday, and I’ve spent the last couple of days immersed in the world of Mark. It’s as if the entire set of Gospel readings from Year B of the lectionary has been distilled into a single, intense infusion of good news.

If you’ve never read Mark in a single sitting (I first did this a few years ago), you might be amazed at the rapid-fire pace of the narrative – that is, up until Jesus and his disciples arrive in Jerusalem and the narrative suddenly brakes to something akin to a frame-by-frame sequencing of Jesus’ final days and hours.

You might also be amazed at the gospel writer's frequent use of the word ‘amazed’ to describe the reaction of the people to the mighty works wrought by our Lord. The people are amazed. Astounded beyond measure. Filled with awe. Over and over again.

Their amazement caused me to realize, when I stop to think about it, how amazed I am to be here in Minnesota. How astonished I am at the works of God that brought me to Sacred Heart Monastery, to my various roles within the Community, to my current, though temporary, role as a student here at Saint John’s…

Whether we move through our lives at a rapid-fire pace or methodically take things in frame by frame, I think we can grow so accustomed to the people and places that surround us that we forget the wondrous works of God that led us to that place, to these people, to this work. We sometimes forget to notice that all around us, in many different ways, blind eyes continue to be opened and the lame continue to get up and walk. Often, the blind eyes are our own, closed to the awesome glory of God that fills the whole earth. Often, we are the mute, our mouths withholding the proclamation of the good news. Often, we are the lame, not willing to get up and “go into all the world.” We ourselves need the good news of Jesus to heal us, that we can go forth to heal in his name.

Whether through the slow, daily infusion of the lectionary cycle, or a single, intense immersion in the entire gospel, may our eyes and hearts be opened to the mighty works of God and the good news of Jesus. May they fill us with astonishment, amazement, and awe.


Postscript: I am here in Collegeville, MN, taking summer school graduate courses at Saint John's School of Theology. I will be here for a total of five weeks. More to come...

Springs of water

The most cleansing water on earth is that of baptism, but there are other waters that have their own cleansing effect, even if they make a mess in the process.

After Vespers this evening, a Sister came to tell me about a leak in the ceiling of the sacristy. A quick peek revealed two bulging ceiling tiles and a slow drip that I knew was a harbinger of a potential gush. It’s the season of condensation on A/C conduits housed in the ceiling, and with no recent rain, I knew that’s what the problem had to be.

I went on to supper – in silence since we are on retreat this week – and contemplated my next move, which I knew would have to include a Sister more mechanically adept than I. While I silently ate my dinner and contemplated saturated ceiling tiles, another Sister came to whisper to me about a broken A/C unit in a building for which I am responsible. I kept eating, now contemplating two sets of moves, because when it comes to mechanical things, I am better at contemplating moves than actually making them.

What to do? I wasn’t sure. So I kept eating. And contemplating. Meanwhile, a Sister more mechanically adept than I, seeing my contemplative stance in the face of necessary action, took a stroll over to the building with the broken unit and made a quick fix of a simple problem, one that perhaps even I could have repaired had I contemplated the possibility of something so simple.

Then, with dinner over, we verified the repair together and then headed toward the sacristy with trash bags, plastic garbage cans, good intentions, and high aspirations. But as we carefully removed ceiling tiles, our best attempts to control the inevitable rush failed. Water sprayed everywhere and wet tiles fell messily into our arms.

All of this happened between the conclusion of dinner and the beginning of our Reconciliation Service, held as part of our retreat. I was responsible for greeting arriving priests so did not have time to change clothes. Yet there is perhaps no better way to go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation than with evidence of failure clearly visible – in my case, a swath of fiberboard residue smeared across my shirt.

In monastic community, we come to know each other well. We know each other’s weaknesses and strengths. My Sisters know that I am not particularly adept with anything mechanical. They know that what might appear to be contemplation might just be utter perplexity about what to do, and so they pick up the pieces and save the day. But in turn, I know that utter perplexity is no cause for inaction. My job is to get up and try, even if it involves failure, or perhaps a big mess.

In our retreat conferences, we have been hearing about giving our all to our monastic commitment, about not holding back, about engaging fully in the ‘meat and potatoes’ of everyday life in monastic community. The routine events of life - the 'daily,' as we call it - are vitally important to a monastic because it is through them that we come to holiness. We get up and try. Perhaps we fail. We pick each other up. We begin again.

During our Reconciliation service, I made my confession, my shirt smeared with failure. The priest's words of absolution washed over me, their musical cadence like a flowing rush of living water, like a benediction, like a blessing. Returning to my seat at the rear of the chapel, I saw my Sisters arrayed before me in the pews. We daily see each other’s failure. We daily see each other’s beauty. Part of this beauty is the compassion with which we greet one another's normal human failings, helping each other in our perplexity, weakness and pain, as together we journey to God, as daily we begin again. The compassion falls like a gentle spring rain. Musically. Beautifully. Like a benediction. Like a blessing.




Postscript: Each year, our community pauses our usual ministries to take time out for a week-long retreat. Our meals are in silence. Our pace is quiet. Our steps are unhurried. It is a week of spiritual rest, refreshment, and more sustained time for prayer. This year, Sister Karen Joseph, of Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand, IN, is leading our retreat conferences. She is offering to us some wonderful food for reflection based upon the Rule of St. Benedict and the wisdom she has gleaned from her many years of living this life. Her wisdom has been a blessing!

Car #5

I returned today from South Carolina following a week of visiting family. I drove car #5, one of our monastery cars. It is a gray sedan that drives well and is perfectly functional, safe, and well-maintained, but is not quite the car I would buy were I buying a car for myself. But then, as a monastic, I wouldn’t be buying a car for myself.

In a monastic community, we don’t have personal possessions per se. A hallmark of monastic life is that the “goods of the monastery,” as St. Benedict calls them, are held in common. This common ownership is perhaps the principal way in which monastics express poverty, along with holding our needs in balance with those of our Sisters. We defer to and rely upon resources which are held in common.

Our practices are not about efficiency or economy of scale or any such practical considerations. Rather, they are about relating rightly to one another and to created things. Dependence upon the common resources of the community rather than the strivings of our personal will and effort is an act of humility in our independent, self-sufficient culture. It expresses in a very tangible way the spiritual reality that everything we have is gift.

When I get into car #5, adjust the seat and rear view mirror from the settings of the previous Sister, and take off down the road carrying gas cards that are not my own, any prideful illusion of self-sufficiency falls away. Even in the days before I entered the monastery and I owned my own “stuff,” I was not truly independent. I was part of a web of family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, storekeepers, bankers, bakers, and so on. This interdependence gets masked, though, with an illusory veneer of self-reliant autonomy. In the monastery, however, the reality of our interdependence is both clearly articulated in the Rule and readily experienced in daily life.

This interdependence is not a passive stance of dependent helplessness. It is a powerful spiritual stance of tangibly and humbly expressing our basic human situation of being in need – of God, of one another, of our daily bread. It also powerfully provides for the mutual expression of love, of caring, of meeting one another’s needs in the name of Christ, of taking responsibility and doing our part to provide for the needs of the community.

The manner in which we handle the goods of the monastery also expresses a spiritual stance of reverence for one another and for the gifts we have been given. We all work hard to make sure that car #5, and all the goods of the monastery, are in good shape and ready for the next Sister. St. Benedict exhorts us to keep the goods of the monastery “clean” and to not treat them “carelessly.” Indeed, he tells us to “regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar, aware that nothing is to be neglected.” (see Rule of St. Benedict chapters 31-34).

You could say that car #5 got me to Carolina and back, but that is a narrow way of looking at it. It was really the entire community that got me to Carolina and back. Even as I drove down roads far from Cullman, it was the community that had cared for car #5 and prepared it for my use, and it was for the community that I cared for it well while it was in my charge.

Within an hour of pulling into the monastery parking lot late this afternoon I was already participating in the life of the community. I greeted a familiar guest, assisted an unexpected guest, lent a brief hand with a need in the infirmary, admired the newly-blossomed day lilies, and answered a sacristy question. In other words, I was back. But then, I had never really left. Car #5 – and the community behind it – was with me all the way.


Postscript: The sharing of our common resources helps us learn to distinguish our wants from our needs. For instance, if I need to run an errand, but another Sister needs the car for a medical appointment, I defer to her greater need. We also learn to moderate our personal preferences, etc. for the good of all, and to recognize the wisdom that comes from others. Perhaps if I were living by myself, I might have purchased a different car based upon my own preferences, but our administrators choose cars based upon what is best for the Community as a whole. I am grateful to drive one that is comfortable not only for myself, but for many.

Three weeks

What a difference three weeks makes. Three Saturdays ago I spent the day in hiking books and wide-brimmed hat picking up tornado debris from the monastery grounds. Helicopter blades spun repeatedly through the sky. Floating fragments of wood bobbed aimlessly along the shoreline of our small pond. Flashlights and candles were our sole evening light source.

Today I donned Sunday attire, charged up the camera batteries without a second thought about the power source, and strode out onto a pristine front lawn. This was our day to celebrate the blessing of our renovation project, and the only thing that shone more brilliantly than the morning sunlight was the joy in our hearts.

I think the only way our hearts can move so seamlessly from the incredibly hard work of the past three weeks to the buoyant joy of this celebratory day is the Psalter from which we daily chant. The Psalms express the breadth and depth of human emotion before God – from buoyant joy to deepest lament, from glad thanksgiving to poignant plea. Singing the Psalms in a four week cycle – day after day, week after week, year after year – implants and imprints the words of the Psalmist deep in our hearts. When we experience sorrow, the Psalmist’s lament comes readily to mind. When we experience joy, the Psalter gives us words with which to let our praise and thanksgiving resound.

The Psalms also form within us the deep realization that our human joys and sorrows are not only transient, but they are rooted in something that transcends the immediate situation. The Psalms help us learn to take all of our experiences and ground them in God, in something deeper than passing events and situations no matter how intense they may be. They also help us learn how to hold in our hearts simultaneous joy and sorrow – a combination that was certainly present today as tornado victims were repeatedly referenced in our ceremony of blessing.

The Psalms form us, teach us, and help us to see all of our human experience – from tornado aftermath to festive blessing – in light of the unsearchable riches of the wisdom and goodness of God.

Back to normal (sort of)

In most ways, things are back to normal at the monastery following the April 27th tornado. The electricity works. The phones ring. The internet connects. We’ve had retreat groups and school tours. We’ve hosted family and friends. The morning sun casts its usual gilded edge on the chapel roof. Afternoon sunlight still pours through western windows. Our monastic rhythm, never interrupted, has a more “typical” feel to it with organ accompaniment for liturgies, lights, our usual meal times, etc.

Other ordinary activities have resumed, too. Sister Lynn Marie and Sister Therese took part in the spring concert of Cantanti Della Donna, a local women’s chorus in which they both sing. The Liturgy Committee began its series of presentations to orient the Sisters to the new Missal translation. The Scholastics (myself and Sister Sara Aiden) had our scheduled Scholastic Day last Saturday. The entire Community has been in full swing preparation mode for tomorrow’s blessing of our renovation project. Routines have been resumed. Other typical activities have been engaged. Everything is back to normal.

Well, make that “sort of normal.” It is hard to feel normal when things look so different. There is sky where trees used to be. The ground is slashed from heavy tree-removal equipment. Stray shingles and boards still litter a few spots on the outskirts of our grounds. The final piles of debris are awaiting pick-up along the front curb.

But it is the trips into town that make one realize things are simply not normal even though the phones ring, the electricity works, and the internet connects. FEMA signs, piles of rubble, heavy equipment, shattered tree lines, a streetscape that looks like someone rubbed a giant eraser through the city… It is all a continual reminder that many are still coping with devastating loss.

Even as we have mostly recovered here at the monastery and are able to forge ahead with our usual business, it is not business as usual. We remain deeply connected to the suffering of our neighbors and the jarring impact of the tornado upon our dear city.


Postscript: Despite all the recent disruptions from the tornado, we are very excited about the upcoming blessing of our renovation project. If you’ve been to the monastery within the past year, you may have seen the project renderings we have had available for viewing. We now have them posted, along with a lot more information about the project, in the Capital Campaign section of our website.

Final report / First chapter

The headline in our local paper read, “Final report: 910 homes, 98 businesses damaged in city.” It may be the final report, but it’s just the beginning of the story.

I had occasion to speak by phone recently with two local business people, both of whom had businesses damaged and one of whom is currently displaced as a result of the April 27th tornado. They were routine business calls, but these days routine conversations invariably turn more personal. Both told me, one with still-shaking voice, the stories of how they and their employees reacted and survived the storm. One told me which door to use now that their main entrance is unusable. The other told me where she’s temporarily located while her business is rebuilt.

Nine hundred ten homes plus ninety eight businesses. It adds up to over a thousand narratives of fear, of survival, of taking stock, of rebuilding. The official tally may be important, but it’s the stories that tell the actual tale, the still-shaking voice that bears the real report of the storm. And the stories are just beginning.

Tonight at Vespers we recited Psalm 78, a Psalm so long that it is the only one recite instead of chant. It summarizes the story of the people of Israel up until the time of David. As we recited, I thought of the many stories that are being told, and will continue to be told, here in Cullman – stories of fear, survival, taking stock, rebuilding. I thought of the thousand stories, and so many others beyond our small city, for which the "final report" is just the first chapter in what may be a long and arduous narrative.

May we keep in prayer those who are now writing chapter one of a story of indeterminate length, a narrative they did not set out to write. May it be a be a narrative of hope and healing. And as stories helped the ancient Israelites pass their heritage from generation to the next, may the stories we tell help bind us together.


I will open my mouth in story,
drawing lessons from of old.
We have heard them, we know them;
our ancestors have recited them to us.
We do not keep them from our children;
we recite them to the next generation,
The praiseworthy and mighty deeds of the Lord,
the wonders that he performed.
From Psalm 78



At top is a book the tornado blew into our woods. Below are a few scenes from our fair city:

Beyond categories

Wood, metal, and shingles. Those are the three main categories of debris that we have gathered from our post-tornado monastery grounds. Then there are the subcategories. Painted and unpainted wood. Exterior and interior metal. Shingles in more speckled varieties than I thought possible.

Then there are smaller categories. Plastic. Glass. Sheetrock. And their subcategories of indoor and outdoor plastics. Clear and colored glass. Wallpapered and painted sheetrock.

And then there are the singular items that defy categorization. A child’s bicycle helmet. A junior high school yearbook. A spatula. A string of Christmas lights. A sofa pillow. Kitchen curtains strung in a tree. A decorative eagle, torn in half. A light switch cover. An insurance statement. A roll of red ribbon. A street sign from clear across town. A strand of beads. A picture frame. A torn novel, The Green Grass of Wyoming, lying in the green woods of Alabama. And so much more.

Our monastery structures were spared major tornado damage. But the tornado left on our lawns and in our woods the remains of structures that were not spared. Gathering the fragments of homes, garages, and businesses that landed on our lawn and sorting it loosely by type is like some kind of horrible exercise in Aristotelian categorization, the genus and species of tragedy. Yet picking up these pieces has been a deeply moving and humbling experience. Not only does one see at close range evidence of the force and strength of nature – splintered wood, bent nails, twisted metal, shredded shingles, all carried for who knows how far by fierce and mighty winds – but one is handling the treasured remains not just of houses and businesses, but of homes and livelihoods.

It has felt like a sacred duty, this task of collecting wood, metal, and shingles, the dispersed fragments of something that was once a singular whole – perhaps a home, a shop, a restaurant, a church, a dental office… I have gathered them not as shattered debris, but as fragments of homes and livelihoods. I have gathered them with reverence because I know that each fragment points to a person, a family, a narrative – a family without a home, a restaurateur without a stove, a dentist without tools, a lawyer without records, a grandmother without her favorite chair, a child without her bike helmet, a church family without their building, a locksmith whose locks have been blown away...

I have gathered the pieces with prayer for all whose homes and livelihoods were blown onto our grounds, praying that that which has been dispersed will be gathered, that which has been broken will be restored, and that fragmented and fractured lives will again be made whole, the pieces woven into a narrative of survival, of healing, of a wholeness that transcends categorization.


The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem,
gathers the dispersed of Israel,
Heals the broken hearted,
binds up their wounds,
Numbers all the stars,
calls them each by name.
Great is our Lord, vast in power,
with wisdom beyond measure.
(from Psalm 147)




Postscript: Our grounds are now fairly well cleared, with only the outskirts left to tidy up, thanks to the hard and heartfelt work of Sisters, staff, and volunteers.