A Holy Woman

In the fourth chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict, it is written, “Keep death daily before your eyes.” One tool for practicing this dictum in the monastery is the necrology board that is located on the wall outside the choir chapel. This board lists the names of all the members of Mount St. Scholastica who have died since the community was founded in 1863, and alongside each name is a number. In front of the necrology board is a box of numbered tiles, and each day, we are invited to draw a number and pray for the deceased community member whose name corresponds to that number. In this way we stay connected to community members who are now part of the communion of saints and remind ourselves that our names, too, will one day be listed on the board.

The newest name that will be added to the board is that of Sr. Benedicta Boland, who died on Thursday evening, September 29. Sr. Benedicta had been in poor health since I joined the community, so I didn’t have much contact with her; however, we were connected through prayer, because she was the designated “pray-er” for the Marywood living group. My final encounter with her was on the Monday before she died, when she saw me in the hall and beckoned me into her room. Some of her friends from Oklahoma had attended the autumn prayer service that I planned, and she wanted to thank me. As she took my hand firmly and smiled beatifically, I felt enveloped by holiness. I’m not alone in that feeling, because in every reminiscence of her, I hear the phrase, “She was a holy woman.”

At morning prayer the day after Sr. Benedicta died, our very first chant was the following invitatory by Bernadette Farrell: “Your words are spirit and life, O Lord; richer than gold, stronger than death. Your words are spirit and life, O Lord; life everlasting.” Truly, the Word that lived in Sr. Benedicta is stronger than death, and through that Word, she has found life everlasting. Later at mass, we sang My Soul is Thirsting by Bob Hurd, which includes the lines, “Your love is better than life itself; you are the God who upholds me. You are the God whom I seek. In your presence I will feast and be filled; in the shadow of your wings I rejoice.” Sr. Benedicta’s spirit was singing with us, and although we will greatly miss her physical presence among us, we rejoice that she has taken her place at the table with God, for whom she was thirsting.

The Chemistry of Gratitude

In her retreat The Art of Pausing at Sophia Center, Judy Valente mentioned the phrase “the chemistry of gratitude.” This phrase is intriguing and led me to wonder, “What are the elements of the chemistry of gratitude?”

A large part of the equation must be awareness. If we aren’t aware of our blessings, we cannot be grateful for them. I remember reading once, “When you woke up this morning, did the lights come on when you flipped the switch? Did water flow when you turned on the faucet? Then you have something to be grateful for today.”

Ironically, an abundance of blessings often blunts our sense of gratitude. One way to keep gratitude ever fresh is to recite miniature blessing prayers throughout the day, as suggested by Fr. Edward Hays in his book Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim. For example, upon taking a shower, Fr. Ed proposes that we pray, “I lift up my heart to you in gratitude, O God, for this gift of a hot shower that refreshes me.” After doing some reading, we can pray, “I lift up my heart to you in gratitude for the ability to read and for the wonder of words that speak to my heart.” When we fill our day with such thank-you notes, we can’t help but conjure the first element of the chemistry of gratitude: awareness.

Another element of the chemistry of gratitude is taking time to express our thanks. As William Arthur Ward said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” The expression of gratitude is a wonderful lubricant in the life of any community, for if we occupy ourselves with offering thanks to others, we have less time to fixate on the ways they annoy us!

Yet another element of the chemistry of gratitude is graciously accepting thanks when it is offered to us, instead of deflecting praise or discounting what we did, which diminishes our God-given gifts and the pleasure of the person who is offering the thanks. Our response to gratitude doesn’t have to be complicated; a smile and a simple “Thank you very much! That’s kind of you to say” will suffice.

When it comes to gratitude, the world is one great big chemistry lab. Mix and match awareness of your blessings, expression of your gratitude, and acceptance of thanks from others, and gratitude will become an elemental part of your life.   

And by the way…thank you for reading The Monastic Call!

Practicing the Art of Pausing

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of comments along the lines of “I can’t believe it’s Friday already!” and “Where did the week go?” To keep the months from flying by, we need to learn “the art of pausing,” which was the topic of a retreat offered by Judy Valente at Sophia Center this past weekend.

One method of pausing that Judy recommended was to take time daily to write a haiku or any type of three-line poem to get a better sense of how we’ve lived our day. This practice requires slowing down and reflecting, so that in our busyness we don’t miss what is most important to us.

I remember reading that the reason childhood seems so timeless is that everything is new to a child, whereas to adults, it seems like we’ve seen it all before. Judy mentioned that she once heard that writing haiku or other types of poetry allows us to flip the sense of “déjà vu” to “vujà de”: seeing something new in what we have seen many times.

I plan to use haiku in my practice of lectio divina to see if it helps me perceive Scripture with new eyes. I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with three haiku poems I wrote on the retreat on Saturday:

Amidst rusty leaves

bean blossoms nod serenely.

Fall is not spent yet. 

∞     

Clouds cannot hide light

spilling out from the edges

of God’s universe 

∞

Dessicated stalks

hold the surprise of popcorn

that will cheer our nights

Finding My Tribe

Recently, I came across the following quote in The New Yorker:

“Why do people want to adopt another culture?” Alice Kaplan, the French scholar, writes. “Because there’s something in their own they don’t like, that doesn’t name them.”

I have certainly adopted another culture by joining the Mount St. Scholastica community, with the attendant culture shock (“I can’t wear blue jeans in chapel? We’re having a house meeting at the same time as my favorite TV show? We pray how many times a day??) It’s worth the effort to become acculturated, however, because something in my previous life as a single American woman didn’t name me. My culture didn’t encourage me to live simply, be aware of the needs of others, or set aside regular times for prayer. The limited extent to which I was able to do those things as a single person required great effort. It is different for the Sisters of the Mount, because the Rule of St. Benedict provides a mechanism for community life and enables them to support each other as they seek to live out their values.

It still feels weird to eat with a different group of people at every meal, and wait to do laundry because someone else’s clothes are in the washer, and speak up during conversations because the Sisters who wear hearing aids can’t  hear me when I mumble. On the other hand, when I proposed having an autumn equinox prayer service, my living group offered to help, and more than 50 people attended; when I pick beans, at least half a dozen Sisters pitch in to help clean them; and when I bake brownies, there’s no danger I’ll end up eating the entire pan myself. It appears I have found my tribe.

Celebrating the Success of the Harvest

The harvest season is a time of celebration, and for good reason—harvesting is hard work!

Recently, Sr. Marcia Ziska invited Sr. Rita Claire Judge and me to help her pick grapes at a local vineyard; she was hoping we could each harvest two 5-gallon buckets, and I thought to myself, “That shouldn’t take too long.” How-ever, these grapes were small-er than the table grapes I had in mind; in addition, they were often out of reach and had twisty stems, making them difficult to separate from the vine. Two and a half sweaty hours later, we reached our goal, and I will never again take grape jelly for granted.

Although we need to remember that the gifts of the harvest come from God’s hands, that does not mean we should discount our own work in bringing the fruit to the table. As William Barry, SJ, says in his book Praying the Truth, “There is no reason to hold back on telling God about our joys, our excitement, our successes in life…by telling Jesus about their joy [after coming back from mission], the disciples gave Jesus a chance to rejoice with them and to teach them something about his relationship with his Father….”

September 22, is the first day of autumn. Here at the Mount we will welcome the season with an evening prayer service to reflect on the summer now past, give thanks for gifts of our gardens and fields, acknowledge our need for light in days of increasing darkness, and contemplate the seeds we need to plant now for a fruitful spring. Even if the work you do has a long harvest season, such as parenting or teaching, I hope you will take time to acknowledge the value of your labor and enjoy the blessings of the autumn season that—ready or not—is now upon us.

An Eye for Simplicity and Mystery

Yesterday, the Atchison Serra Club invited all local sisters, priests, brothers, and persons in formation to a picnic at Jackson Park. The picnic tables were literally groaning with mounds of sweet corn, ribs, brisket, pulled pork, potato dishes, various rice, bean, cabbage, lettuce, and jello salads, grilled tomatoes with mozzarella, chips, watermelon, cantaloupe, brownies, cakes, and cookies. I heaped my plate full, but as I ate, I found to my surprise that the food I enjoyed the most was a single perfect blackberry that was part of a mixed green salad. Sometimes, even in the midst of bounty, simplicity is what speaks to our heart, if we can train our eyes (and our stomach) to see it.

The other image I carry with me from the picnic is that of a lilac bush with some spotty purple blooms. I didn't realize it was a lilac bush until Sr. Martha Schweiger pointed it out to me, because I'm used to seeing lilacs bloom in the spring, not in mid September. I snapped off a small sprig, and the deep, earthy, complex aroma provided deep satisfaction as I relaxed into the twilight. Thus I received another lesson in the value of living in community: Even when our eyes don’t see mystery at work in the world, others notice it and draw it to our attention.

I ended the day grateful for the gift of blackberries, lilac, and the chance to enjoy life in community, thanks to the generosity of the Serra Club.

Listening to Stories with the Ear of the Heart

Since my arrival at the Mount, a number of Sisters have started conversations with me by saying, “Stop me if I’ve told you this story before….” I think they are worried they will bore me, without recognizing that our most-repeated stories are the ones that are the most sacred!

In The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo comments, “Often we repeat stories, not because we are forgetful or indulgent, but because there is too much meaning to digest in one expression. So we keep sharing the story that presses on our heart until we understand it all.”

In class this week, Sr. Mary Irene Nowell asked if we had a favorite Psalm, and once again I found myself telling a tale from my pilgrimage to Wales this past spring, before I joined the Mount as a postulant. I was absorbing the stunning beauty of the sea and cliffs at Aberdaron and thought to myself, “I should take my inheritance from my parents and buy a little cottage here—or at least go visit all the beautiful places in the world. And what am I doing instead? Moving to dusty little old Atchison!” Soon thereafter I went to morning prayer, and Sr. Therese Elias directed us to turn to Psalm 16, where I read, “God, you measure out my portion, the shape of my future; you mark off the best place for me to enjoy my inheritance.”

That story presses on my heart for a number of reasons. First, never before have I had such a clear, direct, speedy, and humorous response from God; second, it gave me a sense of peace about my decision to join the Mount community; and third, it provided the insight that being a Benedictine at Atchison is my inheritance. No wonder I need to keep repeating the story.

Part of the call of community is to keep telling our stories and to listen to the stories of others “with the ear of the heart.” You want me to stop you if I’ve heard your story before? That would be very un-Benedictine of me, wouldn’t it?

Harvesting God's Word

In Sr. Elizabeth Carillo’s recent retreat “Nature: The Living Icon of God,” she noted that each created thing is God’s word to us. To ponder what God is saying to us in everything we encounter would be overwhelming, but St. Benedict solved that dilemma by stressing the importance of doing manual labor, such as growing and preparing food—thus providing time for God’s message to sink in (and, incidentally, ensuring an ample supply of bread, wine, and veggies for the supper table!).

One word of God I have had ample time to ponder lately is that in the loooooong row of green beans in the monastery garden. It takes about two hours for me to work my way down one side of the row and up the other—plenty of time to learn lessons about the monastic values of patience and gentleness.

For example, I have learned that picking green beans and praying the Psalms, the basis of Benedictine prayer, both require patient attention. Just as beans often hide under leaves or disguise themselves as stems, the Psalms contain hidden insights that require time (perhaps a lifetime) to uncover. Another aspect of patience that is necessary in both picking beans and praying the Psalms is stamina; I find just as many beans at the beginning of the row, when my legs are fresh and I am full of enthusiasm, as at the end of the row, when my back is aching and I am longing to be done. Likewise, although the short, sprightly Psalms provide easy pickings, the lengthy, tedious Psalms also provide a great yield if I stick with them.

As for gentleness, unless beans are picked with care, it is all too easy to accidentally snap off an entire branch, dislodge delicate blossoms, or step on part of the plant, thus destroying future growth. Similarly, in community life, great gentleness is required in our dealings with each other. As J. Masai noted, “Feelings are everywhere—be gentle.”

I’m sure the beans will continue to transmit God’s word to me in various ways through the end of the season—especially the word “gratitude” as I eat them!

Connected Through God's Word

One of the blessings of joining the Mount community is that occasionally I am able to participate in programs at Sophia Center, a ministry of the Sisters where retreats, spiritual direction, and educational programs are offered. On Saturday, September 10, I attended a one-day retreat offered by Sr. Elizabeth Carillo entitled “Nature: The Living Icon of God.” This day also happened to be the tenth anniversary of my mother’s death.

Sr. Elizabeth noted that for ages, nature has been seen as a way that God communicates with us. I have found that to be true, and in addition, it is the way that my mother continues to be present to me after her death.

My mom and I didn’t have a great deal in common—for example, she never expressed much interest in poetry, whereas I have devoted many hours to writing it. However, we both had an appreciation of flowers and bird watching, and I used to fill her hummingbird feeder with nectar to draw the tiny birds to her kitchen window.

Every day I receive a poem by e-mail from The Writer’s Almanac, and the day after my mom died, the poem I received was Little Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond by Mary Oliver, which concludes,

As for death,

I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,

Can you?

Since then, I have felt my mom’s presence in hummingbirds, which particularly seem to show up at times of transition. For example, when I moved from St. Louis to Lawrence, Kansas, there was a picture of a hummingbird on the side of the U-Haul truck I rented. Since I have moved to the Mount, scads of hummingbirds have been feeding in the inner courtyard. One day, one of the birds uncharacteristically sat for a very long time at the feeder—no doubt guarding it, but also passing on the message, “You are here now—it’s okay to stop and rest a while.” 

At the retreat, Sr. Elizabeth noted that “Icons do away with the distinction between this world and the next.” My mom and I are still participating in the flow of God’s life, just from different places, and we are still connected by God’s word to us, the tiny but tenacious hummingbird.

Resting in God

As part of my formation program, Sr. Marcia Ziska and I are reading and discussing the book Praying the Truth by William Barry, SJ. Barry invites readers to ask God, “What do you want for our friendship?”

Before I could take that step, I had to ponder the concept of having a friendship with God. Scripture doesn’t exactly abound in models of friendship with God…Abraham, Moses, and David, perhaps, but they were extraordinary personages. To me, God the Creator has always seemed too awesome—and too busy—for the intimacy and time required of a friendship. Christ seems more approachable, having once been human in the person of Jesus, but still feels more like a teacher than a friend, and the awe factor is an impediment there, too. In addition, because of my upbringing, I tend to think of God the Creator and God the Redeemer as masculine, whereas I associate friendship with more feminine qualities, likely because most of my closest friends are women (with a few happy exceptions). I’ve come to associate the Holy Spirit with the feminine qualities of nurturing, presence, and gift giving…could I imagine a friendship with the mysterious third person of the Trinity?

When I asked God the Spirit “What do you want for our friendship?” the response I got was “I want you to relax into me.” I wasn’t expecting that reply, though in retrospect, it’s not surprising. The months preceding my entry into the Mount were very active and demanding as I traveled, dismantled my house, and moved, and my first five weeks in the community have been a blur of meeting new people, learning new routines, and participating in community activities. As with anyone joining a new group, I’ve also found myself working hard to make a good impression (“Look at how many beans I picked!”). The Spirit’s invitation of friendship does not entail adding to my list of things to do and learn, but rather relaxing and experiencing what it means to rest in God. Letting go of the satisfaction and sense of control that comes with doing will be a challenge, but if God the Spirit wants to be my hammock for a while, how can I refuse that invitation?

Sorrow and Joy

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. —Kahlil Gibran 

Last Saturday I took my two cats, Ellie and Gracie, to their new home, and I wept, because for the past four years they have been my delight. It is difficult to separate ourselves from that which we love, especially when the separation is a consequence of our own decisions. If someone from the Mount had asked me Saturday night if giving up the cats was worth gaining all that community life has to offer, I likely would have said “No,” and meant it. Fortunately, I encoun-tered Sr. Loretta in the hall, who gave me a hug and led me to a box of tissues instead.

Sunday’s gospel from Luke offered a hard truth that spoke to my situation: we need to hate (i.e., detach ourselves) from our family and even our own life to be a disciple of Jesus. Although people who are not animal lovers may not believe that giving up one’s pets falls into that category, anyone who has loved and been loved by a dog or cat understands that giving them up is a bitter sacrifice.

I have caught myself thinking that with so much human suffering in the world, I shouldn’t grieve the loss of my pets, especially because they will be comfortable and well taken care of in their new home. However, as I learned when I studied counseling, grief of any kind is not subject to judgment; it must be acknowledged and honored for healing to occur.

As when I relinquished my house and other possessions, what has been some consolation is that Ellie and Gracie will now be a blessing to someone else who needs them, and that a channel has been carved in me as a conduit to other blessings. In his book The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran noted, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” We have to trust that, as we request in Psalm 85, God will “nourish our joy.” Gibran goes on to reflect,

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. 

Although, to my great regret, joy is no longer taking the form of a cat asleep upon my bed, I will be ready when it appears in another guise.

Ora et Labora et Ludere

On the day I entered Mount St. Scholastica, I was presented to the community and was asked, “What is it that you seek?” I responded, “I seek to know and serve God through prayer, work, and play in companionship with the community of Mount St. Scholastica.” I chose to include the word “play” in my response because although ora et labora—prayer and work—are familiar values that have been passed down through my family for generations, ludere—play—isn’t really part of the family lexicon. However, I believe play is an important aspect of knowing and serving God.

Recently, when I was visiting my Uncle Bob, he happened to mention, “Dad [my grandfather] was always busy doing something. If he didn’t have anything else to do, he’d go out and dig cockleburrs out of the corn field with his hunting knife.” My dad was the same way. Even his leisure activities, such as tinkering with cars, growing a vegetable garden, and going fishing, although meditative, were also productive. I have followed in the footsteps of my family in that my level of satisfaction at the end of the day is generally tied to how much I have accomplished.

Play helps circumvent that mindset by acknowledg-

ing that we do not have to do anything to be loved by God. God wants to be in communion with us, and a sure way to do that is to enjoy and be grateful for the playground of creation that God has provided for us … to feel the joy of simply being, and of being with others, that is at the heart of play.

Although the Mount is a very active and productive community, I’ve been glad to learn that you can often find a spirited game of Yahtzee or Uno underway in the community living room, and that the Sisters enjoy movie nights, outings to Royals games, and opportunities to rejuvenate at a nearby lake. May God be glorified in all things…even in a rousing game of Scrabble!

Continuing the Work of our Parents' Hands

During his childhood and young adulthood, my father attended St. Benedict’s Church in Bendena, Kansas, which was staffed by priests from St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison. Now that I am at the Mount, I realize how thoroughly my dad had absorbed and integrated into his life the Benedictine values of ora et labora (pray and work), humility, and service to others.

Today, September 1, would have been my dad’s 92nd birthday. As I remember him, I find myself meditating on the following quote by Victoria Weinstein in the book Beyond Absence:

There is no need to end our relationship with the dead, for they are still ours. Still ours to struggle with, to learn from, and to love. There is no timeline for grieving them and there is no finitude to loving them. Through time—as long a time as it takes—we take their dream and their issues and integrate them into our own. We make use of whatever hard-won wisdom they were lucky enough to gain while they lived. We continue to forgive them, if forgiveness is called for. We continue the work of their hands.

I cannot continue the watchmaking work of my dad’s hands, but I did write this poem about him, which I offer in his memory.

Movements

My father knew the mysteries of time.

There, at his watchmaker’s bench,

he sat with hairspring balance

and adapting rings,

His days of relying on suspension

extensions and escape pinions

long behind him,

As brass click wheels ticked

and chime rods struck

the half hour.

Serpentine hands circled

on tension springs

and roller staff pins

As he gently nudged

the urgos center wheel

with rosary pliers;

And with his Gruen staff

and crutch plate, he monitored

his grandfather movements.

Now that his time tide

clock is complete, he has

mastered space as well,

Resting lightly

on the balance jewel

of my memories.