Ghost bike, and other things that have been hidden since the foundation of the world

When we cleared every last molecule out of Ottilia Hall a couple of years ago to prepare it for renovation we thought we had completed the Move of all Moves. The building had been continuously occupied for over a hundred years so there was over a hundred years of accumulated hopes and conversations and prayers and plans and - well, more to the point - stuff. Lots of stuff. And we cleared out every single thing. We had one mega yard sale, then an auction, then another mega yard sale, and then give-aways and throw-aways and hide-aways and tuck-aways and, well, eventually the place got emptied.

But the emptying of Ottilia seems like a piece of cake compared to what we are doing now – emptying the basement that lies underneath our old kitchen and dining room. Everything in Joseph Hall’s ancient understory is also getting the heave ho, along with some other areas soon to be demolished.

In comparison to Ottilia, where the things that we saved or sold had actually been used in the light of day, some of the stuff we are now encountering seems to have been hidden since the foundation of the world...furniture so large that the building must have been built around it because there is no possible way to get it out, cabinets that surely must have been custom built for some specific purpose - because who would have ever thought of this?

There is nothing subtle or delicate or refined down here. It is all work-horse practicality and rough-hewn sturdiness. There are ancient rock walls and prehistoric pipes and bricked-in basement windows and all manner of oddities. A pantry cupboard was recently pulled away from the wall and behind it was a long-forgotten door. There are places in which the wall radiators are, for some perplexing reason, attached to the ceiling. There is a hospital stretcher that is used as a work table in the shop. A set of scaffolding serves as Kitty B’s dining table and cat food cupboard. Oh, and the bikes draped in old bed sheets. It may all sound very odd, but these are spaces that we who live here know so well that we can mostly walk through them with our eyes closed.

There is a strange beauty in the mis-matched tiles and dangling bulbs, in the thin-veined conduits that run like mazes around the walls and ceilings, and in the hulking cast iron pipes that grow like tree-trunks from the rough cellar floor. These are the hidden things that have powered our life above, a kind of architectural parable, a story in stone that reveals something of our search for God through a hundred years of daily life in monastic community. It is also a kind of metaphor for the inner mysteries that lie hidden within us, powering our choices and actions, our thoughts and conversations, our dreams, our prayers.

When we think of prayer, we perhaps imagine ascending to an upper room, or rising like incense into the ethereal heights of a soaring a cathedral, or floating our petitions and praise upward – cloudlike – toward heaven.

Yet perhaps the best prayer, the most honest prayer, happens in the work-horse spaces of our hearts when we ask God to walk silently with us into the hidden recesses and darkened crevices and ghost-like memories and mis-matched oddities of our souls, uncovering both sheltered beauty and hidden pain and, yes, mercy that courses unceasingly and unceasingly through maze-like interior byways that know no end because there is no end to God's mercy.

Prayer can be hard work…the work-horse faithfulness of simply showing up day after day to dwell in God‘s presence, and returning again and again to His Word.

Eventually it takes root so deeply that it’s as if our lives are built around it, like an entire building constructed around a single essential furnishing.

Eventually our eyes are so open to the mysteries of God - hidden since the foundation of the world - that we can walk in faith even in darkness.

Eventually the wisdom of God courses through the cave of our hearts, powering our choices and actions, our thoughts and conversations, our dreams, our prayers.

Eventaully our life becomes a parable, a story that reveals the mysteries of God's love.

“I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world.” Mt. 13: 35

Postscript: Our hard work will find it's culmination in our next (and last!) mega yard sale to be held November 23. Here's the basic info, and here are some of the items that have been long hidden, and many not so hidden.

Somehow

“A monastery is never without guests.”

These words of St. Benedict have certainly been true this weekend!

First, there was the small battalion that arrived Friday night for a weekend of retreat.

Then there was the throng that arrived on Saturday morning to attend a day-long meeting.

Then there were the mission Sisters – not actually guests of course! – who arrived later Saturday morning and had trouble finding a place to park because we had so many visitors.

Then there was the thundering herd that arrived on the front lawn Saturday afternoon to take photographs, clogging the entrance drive with their knot of vehicles.

Then there was the cloud of witnesses that slowly formed – beginning with the first arrivals on Thursday afternoon and continuing through Saturday – to help the community celebrate Sr. Michelle’s First Monastic Profession during Vespers on Saturday evening.

And then there was the flock that gathered in our monastic Chapel for Mass this morning – Sisters, retreatants, some of our out-of-town guests, folks from here in Cullman Town...

Before Mass I stood in the back of the Chapel “counting heads,” adding bread to the paten as guests continued to arrive, and continued to arrive, and continued to arrive.

But now the parking lot is nearly vacant. The Chapel is empty. The Retreat Center is quiet with only a couple of private retreatants still present. I am breathing deeply of the quiet and relishing the silence and pondering the mystery that somehow our dear Lord’s arms are wide enough to encompass all of us. Somehow His shoulders are broad enough to bear all of our burdens. Somehow there is bread enough for us all.

Somehow.

Thanks be to God.

A sparkle in my eye

Today I had a few hours away from the Retreat Center office and Sr. Lynn Marie had an unexpected day off from her ministry and so we took an impromptu trip to a lovely park one county over from ours. We packed a picnic lunch of peanut butter sandwiches, apple slices, and leftover cupcakes that had been decorated with pink icing and pastel sprinkles.

In any ordinary light in any ordinary room the baking sprinkles would have just looked like baking sprinkles - festive and cute, but that’s about it. But in the noonday sun the translucent shapes gleamed, glittered, sparkled, shined - as if a constellation of gemstones had just fallen onto my cupcake out of the clear blue sky. But they were not gemstones. They were just ordinary sprinkles from an ordinary grocery shelf scattered across an ordinary cupcake.

My delight in seeing these ordinary sprinkles suddenly shine like pastel stars was a reminder of the importance of slowing down, of drawing silent, of pausing to let light see the light of day, letting it play and splay across the ordinary stuff of the ordinary days of my ordinary life, refracting into the most obscure of corners to reveal the constellation and distillation of light within. It was a reminder to look at the world with a sparkle in my eye, because even on those days when life does not feel like much of a cakewalk, somehow there is still light distilled in the darkness.


Postscript: There are times and seasons when we have to dig deep and go beyond our usual daily strive. The ability to slow down and draw silent and rest in God's presence can help us find the pearl within an ocean tide of striving and strife, and perhaps help us realize that sometimes the surging ocean is itself the pearl.

Stargazing

I imagine that the stars in the starry sky must have shared a smile when they first caught sight of the tomato vine that has sprouted through the construction gravel and broken cement between our old and new monastery kitchens.

I can imagine them watching together as the vine first emerged - arising like a hero from the concrete netherworld, or like a memory from the earth. And I'm pretty sure they would have smiled.

Perhaps the vine is a distant memory of our earliest Sisters who once collected kitchen scraps near that spot, saving the leftovers – surely some tomatoes among them – to feed to the hogs down at the old pig barn.

Or perhaps it is a near memory of the tomatoes Sr. Bernadette is growing this very year just a stones' throw away on the other side of the back drive.

Or perhaps it is a memory of what is yet to be, the fertile promise and abundant hope that lie gestating beneath the rocks that will be plied away later this year when the old kitchen is demolished and the good ground, and all that lies within it, is restored to the nightshade gaze of the starry sky.

Or perhaps the flourishing vine is simply a reminder to keep watch with the stars, and to smile at the grace that is always ready to burst forth even from the rockiest earth.

Here in the monastery we keep watch with each other day in and day out for a lifetime. We can grow so accustomed the sights and sounds and routines around us that even our Sisters can sometimes begin to seem to us like rocky ground. We forget to be surprised, astonished, amazed at the beauty that is also there, the vine that is always ready to burst forth and flourish amidst the routines of daily life.

Our newly-sprouting tomato vine, emerging like a hero from the earth, invites us to keep watch, to be astonished, to smile, and to remember – to remember both that which has been, that which is, and that which still lies gestating beneath the nightshade gaze of the starry, starry sky.

Postscript: Pope Francis spoke beautiful and knowing words about community life when he spoke last week to a community of Poor Clare nuns on the Feast of St. Francis. As quoted in the Vatican Information Service e-news the Pope said: "The second thing I wanted to say to you, briefly, relates to community life. Forgive and support each other, because community life is not easy. Make sure that the monastery is not a purgatory, but rather a family. Look for solutions with love; do not harm anyone among you to solve a problem. Cherish community life, because when the community is like a family, the Holy Spirit is among the community. I beg for you the joy that is born of true contemplation and of a beautiful community life."

Whether we dwell in a monastery or within a family home or in a small apartment by ourselves - or even in a stable in Bethlehem - may our gaze be one of true contemplation. And may joy be born.

Papa Francesco and the homely hum

Our Retreat Center housekeeping routines got a little off track this week. Consequently I spent part of last evening cleaning guest rooms. I dusted with the thoroughness of a Benedictine – up and down, back and forth, with the grain, over and under, not missing an inch of exposed surface on desk after desk and dresser after dresser and chair after chair...oh, and the lamps and mirrors and picture frames and so forth as I tried to make things just right for our next set of guests.

As a Benedictine, I was content. Monastics value manual labor. St. Benedict says, “when they live by the labor of their hands…then they are really monks.” It was satisfying work.

This morning I was back at it, moving room to room accompanied by the homely hum of the vacuum cleaner. As I worked, I started thinking about Papa Francesco. Much ink has been spilt on Pope Francis and many pixels have been pixed and parsed. But for me, it was the homely, humble hum of the vacuum that brought to mind our new Pope.

I think that Papa Francesco would also find satisfaction in setting things right for the next pilgrim who comes to our door. Although a Jesuit, and though bearing the name of Francis, I think he would like the words of Benedict:

All guests are to be received as Christ.

And then this:

Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received. (RB 53)

So it seems that it’s not really about manual labor after all, as satisfying and contemplative as that may be. It’s about setting things right in the household of God, preparing a place of solace and rest for all who come. And so desk by desk, dresser by dresser, room by room, I do my small part to help prepare a place of mercy.

The Sister(s) at the end of the tunnel

Last Thursday, four of us flew up north to attend a conference at Sacred Heart Monastery in Yankton, SD. Our three-legged flight itinerary from Huntsville to Sioux Falls required that we depart for the airport at 4:15 in the morning. We were set to arrive in Yankton via Sioux Falls by mid-afternoon. Other than the early departure, it all sounded good on paper.

But “sounds good on paper” is not exactly what happened. We encountered (in no particular order because I can't even remember the order) one plane sent back to the hanger for maintenance, two delayed departures, one missed connection, one broken pair of prescription eyeglasses, three failed eyeglass repair attempts, one missing flight crew, three missing seat assignments, one closed stretch of Interstate, one hold-your-breath search for an alternate route, one 28-gate sprint after a last-minute unannounced gate change, one 30-minute wait on the tarmac for some late-arriving passengers, one unscheduled eight-hour layover, eight concourses memorized like the back of our hands during one unscheduled eight-hour layover, one hunt for three suitcases missing from the luggage carousel, one missing cell phone left on the other side of security, one dash to find it, one repeat trip through security, one emergency intervention for someone we found in urgent need, and umpteen phone calls to Cullman and Yankton keeping them informed of our (lack of) progress.

We finally arrived in Sioux Falls at 11 something at night and eventually arrived in Yankton shortly after 1:00 in the morning, 21 hours after departing Cullman and about 22 hours after we had originally awakened from sleep.

At the Sioux Falls airport, as I floated down the escalator from the concourse to baggage claim, I recognized the Sister who was there to greet us by the Benedictine symbol that she wore. At that moment of immense fatigue, I could not imagine a more welcome sight. It was truly like seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Although I had never met her before, I made a bee-line and instinctively hugged her. She ushered her exhausted passengers through the airport, located our luggage, and drove us safely through the Dakotan midnight.

The Sister from Yankton was not the only light at the end of the tunnel on what felt like an epic day of unceasing mishaps and delays. The four of us travelers were lights for each other…keeping each other’s spirits up; finding humor in the midst of frustrating circumstances and flagging energy; expressing gratitude for the fact that we were safe, nourished, and cared for by those on either end of our journey; and seeking to care for one another in our various moments of need...

Although the circumstances were unique, we were really just doing for one another what we seek to do every day here at the monastery – seeking to let the Christ Light shine through us as a beacon to others.

Each morning at Lauds we sing the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zechariah from Luke 1. The canticle speaks of Christ as the “dawn from on high” who shines “on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.”

Even when our darkness is merely one of fatigue and inconvenience, it is still a blessing to find the Light of Christ shining through others. May we each be for one another a light at the end of the tunnel.

A recipe for glory

Yesterday two recipes arrived in my email inbox. They had been sent to me by one of our Sisters who is not one of our usual "Sister chefs." I was so startled to receive the recipes from her that I wrote back humorously questioning what had happened. Knowing she had been on the road for part of the day, I asked “Did you crash into a cookbook?” Of course, part of my surprise was that I am not a good cook so I was startled to be on the receiving end of recipes – as if I would know what to do with them! She wrote back something along the lines of “One never knows...”

And it’s true, we never know. No matter how well we may know someone and know their usual habits of thought or patterns of behavior, we all have the capacity to surprise each other as we grow and change and develop new interests and skills and even new aspects of our personhood over the course of a lifetime.

Encountering unexpected aspects of others or watching them grow in new ways can serve to remind us that the other is a mystery that we cannot grasp. We cannot hold onto the ‘being-ness’ of someone else as if they are something static, forever confined to our image of who we think them to be, no matter how well we may know them.

We can also become confined to our own image of ourselves and refuse to grow beyond who we think ourselves to be. Yet each of us is a living, growing being who, in the words of St. Paul, is called to “grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ.” (Eph. 4:15)

Here in monastic community, even though we lead a common life, God still guides each one of us along our own unique path as we daily give ourselves to our monastic practices and to the common monastic endeavor. An “un-grasping” attitude – toward both ourselves and others – is vital in order to give God’s transforming grace full freedom to flower and flourish within the life of each Sister as she experiences conversion of heart, the fruit of a well-lived monastic commitment.

Experiencing the gradual transformation of my own heart and witnessing the work of God in others is one of the graces of monastic life. Even such a simple event as a recipe in my inbox can shine with the glory of God when I un-graspingly see in it the gracious gifts of those who are traveling with me on the road to eternal life. When I witness in the lives of my Sisters the mystery and reflected glory of the Lord, then I can exclaim with the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration – “It is good that we are here.”


From the Gospel reading for the Feast of the Transfiguration: "Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up the mountain to pray. As he prayed, the aspect of his face was changed and his clothing became brilliant as lightning." Luke 9:28-29