God's Forgetfulness

On this day when we celebrate Halloween, I’m grateful to my cousin Gwyndolyn for reminding me of a bit of wisdom from my favorite TV witch, Aunt Clara from Bewitched: “I know I’m a little vague at times, but on the other hand, when I forget something, I’m definite.”

Actually, these words could just as easily have been spoken by God. We’ve all experienced frustration with God’s vagueness when our path is not clear and we don’t feel like we’re receiving any divine guidance. However, as Sr. Mary Irene Nowell reminds us in her book on the psalms, Pleading, Cursing, Praying, when it comes to forgetting, God is quite definite: “What God remembers, exists; what God forgets, ceases to be.” No wonder the psalmist prays these words in Psalm 25:6-7:

Remember your compassion, O Lord, and your faithful love, for they endure forever. Do not remember the sins and rebellions of my youth. Please remember me according to the measure of your faithful love and your goodness, O Lord.

A good rule of thumb is to not forget that which God remembers and stop remembering what God has forgotten. As Aunt Clara knew, forgetting can sometimes be a definite virtue! 

Blessed Are They Who See Beautiful Things

This morning at dawn, as I was heading to mass, I heard my name called by Sr. Helen Mueting, who wanted to show me a spectacular view of a tree, crescent moon, and star that was visible through an upper window in the dining room hallway. I hadn’t noticed it myself and was grateful to Sr. Helen for pointing out such a beautiful scene. It was a wonderful way to start the day.

This experience reminded me of a quote from the book The Color Purple by Alice Walker: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.” I don’t know if it makes God angry, but God is likely disappointed and sad for us, I imagine, when we don’t see and enjoy the beauty of creation in which we are immersed.

One of the great benefits of living in community is that others often draw my attention to beauty that I am too preoccupied to see. This call to be mindful of beauty helps me practice gratefulness and provides me with opportunities to pause and experience awe. I am grateful to those who are attuned to beauty, and echo the words of Camille Pissarro: "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing."

The Slow Work of God

Before I moved to the Mount, a friend gave me an artistic rendering of the following quote by Teilhard de Chardin:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

We are quite naturally impatient in everything

     to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something

     unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress

     that it is made by passing through

     some stages of instability—

     and that it may take a very long time.

Only God could say what this new spirit

     gradually forming within you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing

     that his hand is leading you,

     and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

     in suspense and incomplete.

I was able to ponder this quote again at a retreat with The Divine Milieu, one of Chardin’s books, that was offered recently by Sr. Susan Barber at Sophia Center. Upon examining the 13.8 billion–year history of the universe as we know it—from the Big Bang to the creation of elements to the initial formation of galaxies and stars and planets to the appearance of water and microbes and plants on earth to the development of invertebrates and vertebrates to the evolution of humans to the birth of Jesus to the thousands of years after his resurrection—it is clear that God works very slowly indeed, at least in our human reckoning.

Our impatience with this slow pace of change reminds me of a quote by the writer Elizabeth Bibesco: “He is invariably in a hurry — being in a hurry is one of the tributes he pays to life.” We who love life and its possibilities want to cram in as much as we can during out short life span and are impatient with delays, especially delays in overcoming humanity’s limited understanding, intolerant attitudes, and unjust practices. It is frustrating and uncomfortable to have to pass through the long stages of instability that are inherent to “the law of all progress.” However, as I get older, I take comfort in Chardin’s reminder that we and the universe itself aren’t designed to speed through life’s changes—somehow,  slowness is an integral part of God’s process in gradually forming a new spirit within us. As a postulant, I am at a place where I am especially called to trust that God’s hand is leading me and accept the anxiety of feeling myself in suspense and incomplete—but in reality, we are all called to that trust and acceptance until our last breath on earth, so I rejoice that I am in good company!

Words to the Wise

In my Psalms class, in preparation for our study of Psalm 130, Sr. Irene Nowell asked us to find repeated words and phrases in verses 5 to 8. Repeated words indicate what is important to the psalmist. A “word cloud” (that is, a graphical image of the most frequently used words) of these verses might look something like this:

We all have our own personal “word cloud” hovering over us every day. Since I became a postulant at Mount St. Scholastica, my word cloud might look something like this:

St. Benedict says, “The 11th degree of humility is that when a monk speaks he do so gently and without laughter, humbly and seriously, in few and sensible words, and that he be not noisy in his speech,” which gives us a clue about what a Benedictine word cloud would look like. May our words reflect the life we are striving to live!

God in a Nutshell

The other day when I was in the community living room reading the paper, some Sisters were listening to the weather report on TV, and I overheard the meteorologist say that an unfamiliar object fell through the sunroof of a friend’s car. I glanced up to see them cut to a picture of a mottled green and black walnut, which we’ve been picking up by the truckload here at the monastery…150 buckets and counting! After filling 20 or so buckets myself, it’s fair to say that I no longer find black walnuts quite as extraordinary as they appear in the eyes of our local weatherman.

The current abundance of walnuts calls to mind something James K. A. Smith wrote in is book You Are What You Love: “Too often we look for the Spirit in the extraordinary when God has promised to be present in the ordinary.” How is God present to us through the very ordinary black walnut? Well, black walnuts remind us that God loves diversity, for people either love or strongly dislike their intense flavor. They remind us that God can be found beneath the surface of things, for the nut resides in an unattractive green hull that turns black and mushy as it decays. They remind us that God provides for our needs in sometimes unusual ways, for when walnut hulls are ground, they can be used for blasting, tumbling, cleaning, polishing, and filtration; they are also used widely in the construction, furniture, adhesives, paint, plywood, resin, rubber, paint, and cosmetic industries.

I myself am grateful for black walnut trees because they provide a connection to my father: when he was a young man, he planted some of the trees on the family farm, and after these trees were cut down a couple of years ago, my younger brother gave me the gift of a pen that was created from a piece of the wood. Thus, in a way, God’s spirit that was present in my dad continues to find expression through the words I write with that pen. Upon deeper reflection, God’s presence in the ordinary can turn out to be extraordinary after all!

The Beginning of Wisdom

I recently read an interview with the poet Dana Gioia, who was asked how he found time to write poetry while working a full-time job. He replied, “Even in business when I worked ten hours a day, I always found an hour or two each night to write. This schedule didn’t leave time for much else, but I was very happy. It’s good to give up things that don’t matter.”

The last line caught my eye: “It’s good to give up things that don’t matter.” How do we develop the wisdom to discern what does and does not matter?

Last week, Sr. Mary Irene Nowell offered the Mount community an overview of Old Testament wisdom literature, in which we learned that the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord, meaning awe about who God is and what God does. Therefore, it appears that one way to discern whether something matters is to determine whether it increases our sense of awe of God and how God is at work in our lives.

I must say that watching TV 12+ hours a week before I joined the monastery didn’t do much to increase my sense of awe. On the other hand, the classes I’m taking, my time in communal prayer, and my observations of God at work in the lives of the Sisters at the Mount truly have been “awe inspiring.” People often ask how things are going for me at the Mount, and now I know how to respond: Awe-full!

Connecting with the God of Surprises

One day last week, one of the Sisters I live with, Sr. Alberta Hermann, said, “I believe in a God of surprises.” That got me thinking about how everything is a surprise to young children, because they are seeing aspects of the world for the first time … and so, when it feels like life is rushing past us, we would do well to remember to look at the world with the eyes of a child, which will help us slow down and reconnect with the God of mystery and surprise. The following poem is a meditation on that desire.  

Time Travel

If you want to stop time from hurtling through your already short life span,

you need to apprentice yourself to a four-year-old child,

who will teach you how to become absorbed

in the tiny insect

 c   r   a   w   l   i   n   g

across your dining room table,

in the patterns of s u n l i g h t dancing on the carpet,

and in the smooshy sensation of mashed potatoes in your mouth.

Put your faith in the God of surprises, who transforms your world

from a dreary and familiar place to one in which lilacs

bloom in September, the grocery store offers

free samples of honey lavendar ice cream,

and your being resonates to the beat

of a West African djembe drum.

Make the book of your life a

mystery, not a travelogue,

and don’t forget

to add a twist

at the end. 

Monastic Greenery

One of the cheerful aspects of life at Mount St. Scholastica is the fresh flowers that grace our dining room table, chapels, and various nooks. Sr. Philomene Glotzbach is especially skilled at highlighting the beauty not just of the blooms but of the supporting greenery in a flower arrangement. The brightness of the flowers and the steadfastness of the stems and leaves complement each other in a delightful harmony.

Just as in a flower arrangement, we often tend to overlook the persons who provide the “greenery” in the monastery—the faithful ones who place new worship aid sheets in each choir stall at the beginning of the week, put away the peanut butter and crackers after 10 o’clock “lunch” in the break room, and fill a big tin with popcorn so it’s ready for movie night. Community life flows gracefully when every person performs her tasks faithfully.

This past week I attended a 5th-grade vocation day in Topeka with Sr. Barbara Smith. In describing community life to 10- and 11-year-old girls, Sr. Barbara said that it was like being on a field hockey team; she used to play the right wing position, and she and the players in the left inner and right halfback positions worked together to advance down the field and make a goal. Similarly, every person’s contributions to life in community are important and necessary, and everyone must work together “that in all things God may be glorified.”

As Ram Dass noted, “We are all just walking each other home” to our goal of fullness of life with God … and the journey is a lot more pleasant when a companion keeps the path mowed and bakes bread or cookies to share along the way!

Zombies and The Welcoming Prayer

I’ve often wondered what’s behind the appeal of the zombie craze, which has shown no sign of abating for the past several years. Even cooking shows on television are having chefs make zombie-themed cakes…the more oozing brains and spurting blood, the better. Finally, I came across a theory that makes a lot of sense. In The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo suggests that we are so scared of our inner life that we are afraid to look beneath the surface, but because our need to look within won’t be denied, it manifests in a fascination with images of people being cut open in slasher movies and ripped apart by zombies. What is inside will surface one way or another. Thus, if we want to reduce the amount of violence in our society, we need safe ways to examine what we keep inside.

At the Oblate Renewal Day at the Mount on October 1, Dr. Dennie Oades provided us with such a tool—the Welcoming Prayer. Dr. Oades explained that when we are children, it is rare for all our needs for security, affection, and control to be met in healthy ways, so we develop “emotional programs for happiness” based on those needs—for example, we might unconsciously expect to be affirmed for what we do for others or need to be in control to feel safe. When those needs are blocked somehow, we feel frustrated, which is when we can use the Welcoming Prayer. This type of prayer invites us to pause and acknowledge that God is present in the midst of our physical and emotional reactions to events and situations in daily life. This recognition of God’s presence within us gives us the courage to welcome what we are experiencing, for it has surfaced to teach us something. Then we can release our frustration by praying, “I let go of my desire for security, affection, and control and embrace this moment as it is.” Thus we respond to our feelings instead of react to them, which is much healthier for us and for our relationships with others.

As Dr. Oades noted, God is at work through all things for our healing, even our turbulent emotions and physical aches and pains. You can find more information about the Welcoming Prayer at the Contemplative Outreach Web site (http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/). It’s a wonderful way to inoculate yourself against potential zombie attacks!

Enjoying Our Friendships

In one of the closing prayers at the funeral for Sr. Benedicta Boland, we read, “We take comfort in the hope that one day we shall see Sr. Benedicta again and enjoy her friendship.” It occurred to me that what we miss most about people after they die is the opportunity to enjoy their friendship on a day to day basis … they are no longer present to share a cup of coffee, play a round of cards, discuss the day’s headlines, or be a sounding board for life’s mysteries.

Thus one of death’s many lessons is not to take our friendships for granted. Sr. Benedicta had many visitors during her last two months of life, because it was clear her health was failing. Her family and friends were blessed to be able to visit with her one last time. We can’t always count on that blessing, however. Therefore, we need to cultivate a steady sense of gratitude for our friendships and consciously enjoy being with our friends while we are still on the same side of the doorway of death.  

On July 27, 2011, the 65th Session of the United Nations General Assembly declared July 30 as “International Day of Friendship,” and in many countries, “Friendship Day” is celebrated on the first Sunday in August. Death, our mentor and master teacher, reminds us not to wait for a particular day on the calendar to acknowledge and celebrate our friendships, which are one of life’s greatest blessings.