Land of Next / Land of Now

Perhaps, if you are anything like me, you have some moments in which you are absent from the present because you are present to what is absent, already handling the next thing on your agenda instead of dwelling in the one precious amazing moment that is here right now before you. You have stepped out of the Land of Now and straight on into the Land of Next even as the present moment is tugging at your sleeve for some attention.

It happened to me again (for at least the gagillionth time) during Lauds this morning. I happened to be the one whose turn it was to lead our closing prayers. But as I got to the oh-so-familiar, no-notes-needed closing lines, I could not find the words because my mind had already moved on. I had left the Land of Now. I was in the Land of Next. A prompt from a Sister was required to bring me back to the present moment and the present words.

Today, the Feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, is a good time to remember to be present to the precious and amazing moment that is the present moment. Somewhere, somehow, God is in this moment, a visitation from on High over which we can leap with joy, or which we can leap straight over with distraction, or ambition, or frustration, or anticipation, or whatever beckons us away from the place and time and person and task or no-task which is before us.

Whatever comes next will come soon enough. But for now, I pray I can be present to the Dawn from on High that shines upon me in this very moment.

The Visitation

This morning’s Benedictus antiphon: This is the day the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it!

The Lord gives us this day, and we rejoice. But isn’t there also a sense in which God gives us to this day? Does the day rejoice in our presence in it? Does the day say something like, “This is the person the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in this one created by the Lord!”?

The Lord made this day. The Lord made each of us. May our words and deeds, our silence and prayer, give the day cause to rejoice, just as the gift of the day leads us to rejoice. May we be a blessing to the day as the day is a blessing to us. May it be like a Visitation, like an embrace, two of God’s creations – this day and us – rejoicing in each other, and together giving glory to our Creator.

This is us

Tonight I stepped outside for the simplest of errands - to take a bit of cardboard to our recycle bin.

Along the way I found a prayer book left in a windowsill by a Sister who I knew would soon miss it. I stepped into the kitchen and called her floor. “Oh, my,” she said. I got the book back to her.

I then stepped into a guest area to turn off some lights after the last-departing guest. I picked up the key left behind along with the note of gratitude left on the desk.

With the guest area empty, I experimented a bit with nightlights. Which type shines best in a darkened night-time hall?

I then stepped around to the back of Ottilia Hall – our home – and saw across the building a bank of lights like a sky of stars…a building awake and asleep with the inhalation and exhalation of a life lived at work and at rest, at prayer and at play.

I know who lives in every room. One of the rooms is mine. The lights are darkened there now, but will soon be on, wakeful, and then at rest.

This is us. Awake, asleep. At work, at rest. Fully and joyfully alive with the inhalation and exhalation of a life lived to give glory to God through the simplest of gestures and the grandest of efforts and the most earnest fidelity in a most serious and sacred of intention.

This is us. A community brought together through the call of God, each sister a light plucked from the night sky and placed here to be a light in the darkness, to shine like a guide in a darkened night-time hall.

I finally made it to the recycle bin with my bit of cardboard, but not before having wandered through a hallway where I found a book, the kitchen where I made a call, a guest area where I picked up a key and adjusted some lights, and then the backyard, where my heart filled with gratitude for the community that we are, in our simplicity and our complexity, our inhalation and exhalation of effort and rest, the rhythms of prayer and work, of solitude and community...

This is us, living this monastic life. With fidelity. With joy.

Balm of Gilead

There is a thorny scrub tree that grows in the Middle East called the Commiphora. When a Commiphora tree is pierced with a gash that reaches all the way through the bark, the tree bleeds. It bleeds an aromatic resin that we call myrrh.

Frankincense is obtained in much the same way. A Boswellia tree is wounded, and it bleeds a fragrant resin that is referred to as ‘frankincense tears.’

Gold is brought forth from the broken earth, and with backbreaking labor. And thus the three gifts presented to the newborn babe in Bethlehem each came from a wound to a tree, or a gash in the earth. They came from a tear (to rhyme with bear). They came with tears (to rhyme with beers).

In bringing these particular gifts to the Christ Child – God incarnate – it is as if the wise ones were not merely offering a gift. They were also telling a story. They were saying, “This is what it is like to be human.” Being human glitters and glistens. And being human is painful. It is glorious. And there are tears and tears.

As with gold, frankincense, and myrrh – glimmering, aromatic, precious offerings – gifts can come forth from our wounds. A sweet aroma wafts in through the broken window. Shattered shards form a beautiful mosaic. Golden nuggets glisten within the underground seams of daily toil.

The shattered pieces of our lives can gleam because the transfiguring work of Christ lends beauty to even our failures and frailties. On the Feast of Epiphany, as I bring to Jesus my finest gifts, I want to also gather the shattered fragments of my life, because these, too, are gifts to bring. Like the gifts of old, the finest gifts are often born from tears and tears. Because that is what it is like to be human. And that is what it is like to have our brokenness transfigured in Christ, like a small, thorny tree, wounded, that bleeds a Balm of Gilead.

And so like the wise ones of old, I open my treasures and offer to the newborn babe my gifts of gold, of frankincense, of myrrh. And I offer the gift of myself, my humanity – with its shimmering glory, its tears and tears – offering it to the transfiguring work of Christ. I offer myself in the hope that in the thorny tree and rocky soil there will be a glimmer of gold, a fragrant aroma, the possibility of transfiguration because I see, like an epiphany, the presence of God in our midst, who sanctifies what it means to be human, who transfigures my tears and my tears.

In offering ourselves – fragments and all – our transfigured selves can become a continual offering, a pleasing fragrance, a Balm of Gilead in a thorny, broken world.

Images of the Blessed Mother in which she is depicted holding a rosary have always seemed to me somewhat anachronistic in that the rosary came centuries after, certainly not during, her lifetime.  So why is Mary sometimes depicted with rosary beads draped through her praying hands, I wondered?

But tonight, on the eve of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, I was contemplating just such an image when I realized that it is not anachronistic at all.  During Mary’s lifetime, the mysteries of the rosary were unfolding around her, within her, held in her hands, touched with her fingers, grasped and ungrasped ungraspingly as the life of her dear Son unfolded like light, like joy, like sorrow, like glory, bead after luminous sorrowful bead, her tears transformed into gems, the petals of her opening heart unfolding like a prayer, the words of the angel echoing within: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

The mysteries of the rosary were witnessed, pondered, prayed by Mary...and then left for us like a cairn, like a touchstone, like a prayer, to lead us to her dear Son.

A leitmotif of home

We still have one area of the monastery that is heated by furnace and it has finally gotten cold enough to turn it on. Tonight I heard it crank up for the first time this season.

When it kicks on, which it does for a brief while twice a day, it sounds like a choir of anvils, iron striking iron, a jarring, discordant un-cadence of noise, as if it were a giant cast iron metronome that has lost all metrical memory and is staggering around under the weight of a Wagnerian opera. I mean, it is loud.

Even so, I smiled out loud when I heard it. The sound made me happy. It is getting cold. It is our familiar furnace. It is crazy loud. But it is a sound of home, a leitmotif that speaks of warmth, of cozy-ness, of familiarity, of family, of my sisters. Of home.

The sounds of the monastery are, like angels, myriad upon myriad. From the gentle rhythm of our monastic chant, to the blazing organ on big feast days, to the footfalls of sisters that you know by heart, to the crackle of ice when the breakfast table-waiter fills the metal milk bin, to the click of the chapel door that tells you you either did or didn’t close it all the way, to the countless thumps and bumps associated with every corner of the monastery… All are leitmotifs of home – sounds of comfort, of familiarity, of the love of sisters, of being at home in the world in this place called Sacred Heart Monastery.

When the crazy loud furnace kicks on, the choir of anvils doesn’t suddenly sound like a choir of angels. But the jarring, discordant sounds do somehow take on a kind of melodic quality. A weightlessness like that of joy. A rhythm like that of peace. A leitmotif that says "home."

Postscript: A familiar old sound has recently come back home. Our old pendulum clock that has been on the 1st floor of Ottilia Hall since around 1940 was removed before the renovation. It had not been working properly for a while, and so it was sent away to be repaired and renewed. It was put back in place last week. We are grateful for the return of this familiar old clock.

Blind Bartimaeus and the philosopher’s cloak, or when our answers go begging

I think each of us has ideas about how the world works, at least for our little corner of the world. We cloak ourselves in the security of what we know (or think we know) – our own personal cosmology for our own personal corner of the cosmos. But today’s Gospel reading from Mark 10 invites us to throw off the cloak of our own ideas and perceptions and seek the sight that comes from Jesus.

In the passage, blind Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, sits at the roadside begging. Perhaps in a sense he is not just the son of Timaeus, but a descendant of Timaeus, Plato’s work in which the central dialogue partner, so named Timaeus, sorts out the nature of the cosmos. He concludes that sight is the sense that is of greatest benefit to humans because through it we can observe the workings of the universe and from that derive the wisdom of philosophy.

But the Gospel writer tells us of a greater vision, a greater wisdom, than that of mere philosophers. And so in true wisdom this “son of Timaeus” recognizes his blindness, throws off his philosopher’s cloak, and calls out to the Son of David saying, “I want to see.”

I know that I have my own ideas about how things ought to be and my own personal answers to every conceivable situation – my own miniature version of the Timaeus filled with my own conceptions of the universe. But I hope that like blind Bartimaeus I can recognize my ultimate sightlessness and let my answers sit begging on the side of the road, seeking the sight that only Jesus can give. I hope that I can toss away my philosopher’s cloak, and anything else that keeps me from springing up to follow the Son of David.



Postscript: Even within the physical world of the monastery – our tiny little microcosm of the cosmos – we can have our own ideas about how the world works. Rooms and chairs and any number physical constellations of the goods of the monastery can get anchored in our mind as to “this is how it is.” One of the wonderful (and sometimes challenging!) aspects of hospitality is experiencing the space through the eyes of guests who sometime utilize Retreat Center rooms, furnishings, lawns, etc. in a far different way than I could ever imagine. Sometimes I’m delighted by the novelty. But sometimes I am challenged to throw off my cloak of habit and see the space with fresh eyes. My assumptions have to go begging.

St. Benedict tells us to receive the guest as Christ. This, too, takes a particular type of vision, recognizing the Lord in the stranger at the door, and in turn, helping them to receive the sight that Jesus can give.