Sister Gee, Sister Haw, and the cultivation of a monastic heart

Here in the southland (and maybe other places, too) we have an expression for folks who don’t exactly see eye to eye.

“They just don’t geehaw," we say.

Or perhaps they do see eye to eye, but they still somehow manage to work at cross purposes despite their best intentions.

The phrase comes, of course, from the days of mules and plows and the farmers who steered them to the right and to the left with a “gee” and a “haw.”  When two folk "just don’t geehaw” it simply means that one of them heads one way while the other heads another and nothing much gets done except for the intentions that get tangled and the footfalls that get scrambled and the stubborn necks that get sore from pulling too insistently and hard.

Monastic formation – both the initial kind and the kind that goes on until the day the Prioress calls the funeral home for you – can be seen as a kind of parable in which Sister Gee and Sister Haw get teamed up to cultivate a pasture but wind up getting cultivated themselves. It’s kind of like Haw trying to get Gee to become more Haw-like, and Gee trying to get Haw to become more Gee-like, but each becoming transformed into something entirely different in the process. Somehow amongst all the miscues and crossed purposes and tangled footfalls, absolutely nothing gets planted in the field but something manages to get planted in each of them. And it grows. And bears fruit. And they are transformed.

Each of us enters the monastery with our own particular experiences and outlooks and all manner of certainty that our way is the best way. It’s natural. And it’s very human. But the monastic call requires of us a pliability of spirit in order to be formed more and more closely into the likeness of Christ. In the monastery we often refer to this as a docile heart.

This docility doesn’t come overnight. While some may have more natural docility than others, for each of us it takes some time to stop pulling Gee when we’re asked to Haw, or to stop Hawing (or howling!) when we’re asked to Gee.

None of this is merely about compliance. While to a certain extent monastic obedience is oriented toward an orderly community life that allows contemplation to flourish, a far deeper principle is at work. A docile heart is directed as if to Christ and is ordered entirely to learning to hear and respond to His voice.

This deeper orientation is part of what makes the monastic endeavor so completely different from other forms of the common life. And it is what makes our relationships with Sisters with whom we don’t naturally “geehaw” so vital and ultimately life giving. For each of us, the true pull isn’t against the other, or toward the center, and not even toward compromise. The pull, the voice, the draw, is toward God, and that gives the tangled footprints and miscues a sacramental character.

The Rule of Benedict is full of practical guidance on how to seek God together in mutual love and service. Benedict recognized full well our human weakness, and I would guess that he perhaps did his own share of geeing and hawing in his time. He tells us to not be presumptuous, to be the first to show respect for the other, to let mercy triumph over judgment, to show unhesitating obedience… And he reminds us that it is love that impels us.

In Benedict’s day, an era in which Barbarian tribes were overrunning a falling and failing Roman Empire, he sought to integrate these rougher individuals into the life of a monastic community. Today, we generally think of ourselves as civilized and cultured.  Yet we still, interiorly, have hearts that are, to one degree or another, stubborn and uncultivated. We resist the yoke of the Lord.

The ‘yoke’ of monastic community life doesn’t always feel easy, because even with those we know and care for best, we may still feel at times as if we are Sister Gee to their Sister Haw. At those times, it’s good to remember that we are plowing together in the fields of the Lord, and it is our own hearts that are undergoing cultivation in a living parable of trust and love.           

Winter lullaby

When the earth trembles, is there someone to hold her hand? When she shivers with cold, does the firmament drape a warm wind across her shaking shoulders? When her hidden springs well up into a torrent of tears, do the heavenly hosts comfort her with a lullaby?

On these cold, cold days, when the earth seems to need a blanket as much as we do, I pray for those who tremble in the cold – whether from the icy blast of an arctic storm or the icy isolation of loneliness or fear, because we don’t need just physical warmth. We need the love of others.

Life in the monastery is filled not just with sisterly camaraderie but with mutual love. St. Benedict and the Gospel call us to no less.

The “monos” of “monastery” means “single” or “one.” It means not that we live alone, but that we seek God with a single-hearted devotion, and that our entire life is oriented toward God alone. For those who are called to monastic life, this takes place within the community in which we make our monastic commitment. Here in this community we experience our own times of trembling and times of tears, and we learn to walk with others through their own times of suffering.

So as the earth shivers along with us, I think not just about the physical cold, but about the loneliness and fear that are part of every human life, and I pray for all who tremble in the cold, no matter its nature. I pray, too, that I can learn to sing with the comforting warmth of a winter lullaby.

For weeks now, even since the early days of Advent, my thoughts have been filled with the anticipation of Epiphany. My thoughts were partly sad, because I felt that all I could bring to the Infant Jesus were empty pockets and counterfeit coins. But there was also joy, because the Feast of the Epiphany is a kind of icon of all my hope and all that I yearn for and journey toward.

Yesterday, on the eve of Epiphany, I took a journey of a different sort, returning to the monastery after several days of visiting with family in South Carolina. As always, I was driving a community car.

We don’t have GPS in most of our cars, and I am glad for the ambiguities and uncertainties of GPS-less travel. Instead, I usually drive with a map spread out on the seat beside me and an eye open for a new back road or an unexpected turn that suddenly looks compelling. It keeps my quizzical brow from softening into certainty and keeps me alert to ways in which the Lord bursts into this incarnate world like a star tumbling from the heavens.

Yesterday I took an unplanned right hand turn in Blackville, SC. A few piney woods later I stumbled across the loveliest country store you can imagine with a welcoming wooden sign that promised sandwiches and sweet tea.

The store was run by members of the local Mennonite community. It was a simple place without all the commercial accoutrements of most convenience stores. There were women in bonnets and men in beards and loaves of just-baked bread and a few locals and a few passersby and more than a few kind and cheerful words.

The store anchored the turn to a place called Healing Springs. But I was so ‘healed’ by the store that I didn’t even bother to look for the springs. I had already found a kind of icon of what I yearn for and journey toward.

In these days of GPS travel and authoritative electronic voices, the story of the magi reminds us that the journey toward our true destination is marked with uncertainty and ambiguity. Yet it is also marked by the certain hope that that the Lord ever bursts into this incarnate world, the joy of our beholding.

I journey to Him with counterfeit coins bleeding from empty pockets as I forget things and drop things and take endless wrong turns and let the glory of God slip through my fingers and fall to the side of the road as I stand by helplessly wondering what happened.

But I travel in hope and I travel in joy, knowing that even my sorrows can be transformed into a gift fit for a King.

Lo(w), how a rose...

Last night, Sr. Lynn Marie and I drove up to Huntsville to attend a performance of the Brass Band of Huntsville. In the midst of a variety of Christmas tunes and hymns arranged for brass, I was surprised to hear the inclusion of the hymn Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming. The tenderness of this hymn just didn’t seem suited to a brass band. And yet they played it with the gentleness of a lullaby.

About midway through, the tubas took over the melody. Who would have thought that four tubas could play as if they were cradling a cloud of fragrance and light? But their care of the melody was so tender, so sweet, so, well, angelic.

In this season of wintry darkness, with the night half spent and cold, may we remain watchful and wakeful for the Rose that ever blooms, even in such unexpected ways as the lowest of notes rising with the delicacy of a rose. And may we remember that even in our own low moments and dark nights, and no matter whether our particular notes are low or high or fast or slow, we, too, are called to tenderly cradle the blossom that springs forth like a cloud of fragrance and light.

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.

Gaudete, evermore and evermore

The past couple of weeks I’ve been reading a library book* about the Great Flood of 1927, when the Mississippi River inundated vast expanses of farmland and towns with up to 30 feet of water, flooding the homes of over a million people in 10 states in the greatest river flood in US history. It is a disastrous tale in which the forces of Mother Nature and the forces of human hubris collided and together created a catastrophe.

The portion of the book that I’ve been reading over this past week has focused on those stranded on the thin knife edge of the top of the Mississippi levee – the highest land in sight – with the churning river on one side and an ocean of flooded flatland on the other, the alluvial fields awash in water that covered rooftops and swept away barns, livelihoods, and lives.

The story of what happened to those who fled to the high ground of the levee – mostly black, mostly poor, mostly powerless – is tragic. As I read this tale of woe this week I was looking forward to the rejoicing and hope of Gaudete Sunday. I wondered what hope would have looked like and felt like for those stranded for days and weeks in such suffering, waiting for food, waiting for shelter, waiting for rescue, waiting for salvation to roll down as mightily as the mighty Mississippi.

I'm guessing that most reading this blog cannot really imagine what those on the levee endured and suffered. I'm guessing most of us live in a warm, safe structure with plenty to eat, surrounded by people who care.

And yet we, too, in our own individual ways, stand on the knife edge of a levee with frightening waters that swirl around us. Perhaps it’s physical illness, perhaps it is an inner anguish, perhaps it is on-going concern for the welfare of loved ones, perhaps it is a deep empathetic sadness with those who suffer elsewhere. So we, too, stand amidst swirling waters of one sort of another and we, too, need rescue. We, too, need hope. And we, too, need to be hope for others.

In some ways, Gaudete Sunday can seem an abstraction. It’s the third Sunday in Advent. It’s time to rejoice. But how do we rejoice on the knife edge of a levee? How do we rejoice in the face of suffering – our own or others? How do we sing a song of springtime in deep midwinter? How do we sing a song of the Lord in a strange land?

Liturgical time offers us a way to sing. In liturgical time, hope rolls down for us, mighty as the Mississippi, even as we stand stranded atop a levee surrounded a flood of concerns and fears. Liturgical time teaches us that even here, even now, even evermore and evermore, the Lord has, and does, and will prevail. The Lord will come. The desert will bloom. The parched land will blossom. The flood waters will abate. Salvation will roll down, mighty as the Mississippi.

Liturgical time offers us the gift of uttering and embodying a reality that is deeper than the reality that we can see. In the bleakness of midwinter, we don a color of spring. At the peak of waiting, we rejoice for that which is not yet. In the foreign land of our suffering, we sing the songs of Zion.

Liturgical time also offers us hope. Just as Mother Nature and human hubris collided and created a calamity, in liturgical time, divine promise and human longing fuse to enkindle hope.

Hope’s natural home is in the gap between suffering and rescue, between midwinter and spring, between desire and promise. It is hope that allows us to stand on the levee and sing, even when fears and concerns and pain surround us like a flood. It is hope that allows us to sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. Liturgical time always returns us to the Gospel, to the message of blooming deserts and abating floods. It is a message of hope that is mightier than the mighty Mississippi. It is a message to be shared with others who wait on the levee, who wait for rescue, who wait for salvation.

Those of us who have heard the message are to be, like John the Baptist, bearers of the message. We are to sing the song. We are to prepare the way. We are to carry the joyful message of hope, especially to those unable to sing in a strange land, whose human longing has not yet heard the divine promise. We are to carry the message that will ignite hope within their hearts.

The liturgical color for today is not pink, but rose. Rose is subtler, more nuanced, more complex than pink. It’s like a wiser shade of pink, or like pink in a minor key. It’s a shade that knows the complexities of life – both the thorny circumstances of chronos time and the infinitely tender unfolding petals of kairos. It’s a hue that knows how to stand amidst swirling water and sing a song of the Lord.

And so, on this Gaudete Sunday, in the bleakness of a grey and cold midwinter day, we rejoice and sing a song of the Lord. We sing for ourselves, we sing for one another, and we sing for all who stand amidst swirling waters, awaiting a message of salvation, a message of hope that is mightier than the mighty Mississippi.

* The book is Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America by John M. Barry

From a sycamore tree, beholding

There are times when my faith comes up short, and like Zacchaeus I am unable to see Jesus through the crowds of my concerns and through the shortcomings of my own nature. In times such as these I rely on my Sisters to help bear me up, to be trees of faith in whose branches I can find support and perspective in my search for God. Likewise, my Sisters sometimes need me to be the one to uphold them in time of need.

This picture was taken last week by one of our employees on the day that Gusmus was being taken down (see previous post). It depicts Sr. Therese on the right and me on the left watching the demolition. There is a pile of rubble before us, the new Retreat Center structures going up beyond that, and the monastic cemetery beyond that (just beyond the trees). It is, to me, a scene that speaks to the nature of monastic life – walking side by side through seasons of death and seasons of life, bearing witness to it all, and supporting one another along the way.

It goes beyond just monastic life, though. We are all called to grow strong and tall in our faith, to let our branches splay wide and free, to be like a sycamore tree in which others can find solace and support in their search to see the Lord Jesus. And when our faith is in short supply, let us not be so proud that we can't stoop to climb on the shoulders of another, finding among their branches the perspective we need. Because after all we are not merely bearing witness to seasons of death and seasons of life, we are beholding the Lord.

With loving eyes the Lord looks to us in mutual beholding, seeking a home in us even as we find our home in Him.


When he reached that place, Jesus looked up and said, "Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house."
Luke 19

All Saints, All Souls, All In

There was a hard poignancy in watching Gusmus, our little frame house out back, being taken down yesterday. It was especially poignant to watch it happen on All Saints Day.

This picture kind of says it all – the brilliant and beautiful leaves of autumn seemingly forming an odd counterpoint to the fractured timbers of Gusmus, yet somehow being all of one piece. Each represents a life fully lived, fully given to the cycle of death and life and the turning over of new leaves. Each represents a life given “all in.”

Our dear little house, which gradually acquired the appellation “Gusmus” after our long-time handyman who built it back in the 40’s, has given fully of itself in countless ways. In the years since serving as a home for Mr. Gusmus, this simple frame house has served as a guest house for Sisters' families, has housed Hurricane Katrina refugees, has served as home for a few of us during the renovation of Ottilia, has welcomed “Sister guests” from other monastic communities, has offered a retreat space for our own community members who needed a brief time away, and filled in admirably for innumerable other community needs. Now it is giving way to our need for new Retreat Center facilities.

If a house could be a saint, this house would be a good contender for canonization. It has lived its life “all in,” giving itself fully to whatever it was called to do, and now yielding like an autumn leaf to the paschal cycle of death to new life. Its namesake also lived his life “all in,” faithfully serving the monastic community for decades. I never knew him, but the stories that are told are recounted with a reverential, saint-like tone.

Today, on All Souls Day, we will process to the cemetery where we will recite the names of our deceased Sisters. I’ll also remember in my heart the name of Mr. Gusmus, giving thanks for a good soul, a giving soul, and a soul given “all in” in service to the monastic community and to the Lord.

Postscript: This morning at breakfast we were reminiscing about Gusmus, with Sr. Benita recalling her years as primary caretaker of the house, Sr. Bertha recalling the "quiet time" she spent there, me recalling a sweet note Sr. Benita had left for me when I stayed there as a vocation inquirer, and so on. With the loss of this dear, sweet house, I think our hearts are as crushed as the rubble, and it is particularly hard to look at the crushed timbers on a day like All Souls. Yet like the autumn leaves, we also look with hope to what is to come.

"The bones that were crushed shall leap for joy before the Lord."
Antiphon from the Office for the Dead.