Planting Trees as an Exercise in Humility

On Memorial Day, I went to Mount Calvary Cemetery in Leavenworth, Kansas, to visit family graves with an aunt and a couple of cousins. It’s a good way to follow St. Benedict’s advise to “keep death daily before you,” as every year we come across new grave stones and freshly dug graves. Memorial Day is second only to New Year’s day and perhaps one’s birthday in leading us to consider what type of person we want to be in the time we have remaining on earth.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that since my last visit, a maple tree had been planted not far from my parents’ grave. In years to come, it will add beauty to their resting place and provide shade for visitors. I don’t know who planted the tree—probably the family of the man recently buried two plots over—but they certainly understood, as Nelson Henderson said, “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

Humble people recognize the limitation of their life spans and undertake tasks that will be of no benefit to them but will serve future generations. What type of person do I want to be in the time I have remaining on earth? I want to be the type of person who plants trees.

Creation's Slow and Powerful Rhythms

I recently came across this observation by Michael Crichton: “To the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try.”

A similar sentiment was expressed by Thornton Wilder said in his play Our Town: “Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you.” The same could be said of God. In our short human time span, how can we begin to imagine the slow and powerful rhythms of God and of earth?

Humility, echoing scripture, says that we shouldn’t even attempt to understand the majesty of God and God’s creation, because in trying to understand them, we are trying to control them. We are much more likely to enter into relationship with God and earth when we surrender to mystery—to not knowing—and  open ourselves to sacred surprises.

Today I took a walk and saw cottonwood leaves shimmering in the breeze, sunlight dancing on water, and grass growing in sidewalk cracks. One of earth’s vast and powerful rhythms is optimism that comes from participation in the paschal cycle of death and life. We can despair at the degradation of earth and the suffering of its inhabitants, or we can do the best we can from where we are with what we’ve got, and put the rest in God’s hands. Though we may never attain understanding, we can count on experiencing the joy of transformation.

When the Chips Are Down

One of sessions at the Novice and Director Institute explored different ways of engaging in lectio divina outside of the traditional method of using scripture. For example, we were invited to spend some time outside to let nature lead us into meditation.

I came upon a pile of 14 bags of premium red cedar wood chips and stopped for a bit of conversation. “After being a majestic tree that stretched up into the sky, it must be tough to be chopped up for mulch,” I said. Surprisingly, what I heard back was, “Yeah, being a tree was great, but this is good too. I’m kind of looking forward to being closer to the earth and protecting other plants so they can grow.”

I didn’t expect to learn a lesson in humility from some bags of wood chips. However, we all face times when we are called to let go of who we were and accept new limitations. If we don’t cling to who we used to be, we can find blessing both for ourselves and others in our new situation. So says my friend, the red cedar mulch. I’m grateful I took the time to listen to one of the many insights that nature, in all its forms, has to offer.

Our Spiritual Thermometer

In his homily at mass yesterday, the priest mentioned that when he was formation director at his community, a novice came to him and asked, “How do I know when I have become holy?” The priest replied, “I don’t have a spiritual thermometer you can stick in our ear or under your tongue! However, you can ask yourself: Have I changed since I became a novice? Have I grown closer to God? Have I allowed God to grow closer to me?”

The last question particularly caught my attention. Benedictines focus on seeking God, but sometimes I wonder if we unconsciously keep God at arms length. We might do this because we feel unworthy of God’s attention, or because we fear losing who we are if we become intimate with God, or because we are afraid of what God might ask of us if we let God get too close.

Allowing God to grow closer to us is a lifelong process of keeping the channels of communication open through daily prayer/lectio divina. As we grow in trust, love will cast out our fear, and our spiritual thermometer will glow with joy and zeal, true indications of holiness.

Kindergarten Wisdom

The theme of this year’s Novice and Director Institute is “The School of the Lord’s Learning,” with inspiration from Robert Fulghum’s book Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. This theme made me think of the refrain from a John McCutcheon song, “Kindergarten Wall,” about a poster in his son’s kindergarten classroom:

Of all you learn here, remember this the best

Don't hurt each other and clean up your mess.

Take a nap every day, wash before you eat

Hold hands, stick together,

Look before you cross the street.

Remember the seed in the little paper cup,

First the root goes down and then the plant grows up!

This song includes a lot of Benedictine wisdom, as shown in the following table:

Kindergarten	Rule of St. Benedict
• Of all you learn here, remember this the best	• Listen carefully to the master’s instruc- tions and attend to them with the ear of your heart
• Don’t hurt each other	• Keep your tongue free from vicious talk
• Clean up your mess	• Whoever fails to keep the things belonging to the monastery clean or treats them carelessly should be reproved
• Take a nap every day	• After Sext and their meal, they may rest on their beds in complete silence
• Wash before you eat	• On Saturday…the brother is to wash to towels which the brothers use to wipe their hands and feet
• Hold hands	• Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love
• Stick together	• If you have a dispute with someone, make peace with him before the sun goes down
• Look before you cross the street	• We must be vigilant
• Remember the seed in the little paper cup	• When they live by the labor of their hands…then they are really monks
• First the root goes down	• Observe stability
• And then the plant grows up	• Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God

It appears that the wisdom of St. Benedict has been engrained in us from an early age. Instead of making the way of God complicated, perhaps all we need to do is remember what we learned in kindergarten, and then live by it!

                                                           

             

Packing for the Journey

I always tend to pack too much when I go on a trip. Now that I am preparing to go to Yankton, South Dakota, for the Novice and Director Institute (NADI), my typical thought patterns are surfacing: “I’d better bring clothes for both warm and cool weather. What if it rains? I guess I should throw a jacket in the car. Will they have tissues in my bedroom? I wonder if I’ll have time to work on my Rule class assignment—I’ll go ahead and bring that along. How many books will I have time to read in 10 days?”

Packing for a trip can be thought of as a metaphor for life: If I’m anxious that my needs won’t be provided for, I’ll carry a lot of baggage with me. If I go with a trusting heart and the desire to walk lightly on the earth, I will encounter what I need along the way.

Simplifying is a process. I recently made the transition from wearing contact lenses to glasses, which means less eye care paraphernalia to pack, so that’s a move in the right direction. If I can stash one less sweater and book in my suitcase for this trip, that will be progress. Perhaps by the time I go to the Benedictine Spirituality Workshop and Retreat when I am a scholastic, I’ll get my packing down to the bare necessities (plus only one backpack!).

Cultivating Sensitivity to Grace

When I walked from Marywood to the monastery for morning prayer today, I was startled by a tremendous flash of lightening. An average bolt of lightning, striking from cloud to ground, contains more than one billion joules of energy—enough to power a 60-watt light bulb for six months. It was a dramatic example of God’s power at work in the universe.

Typically, God is a much more subtle presence in our lives. Furthermore, God’s constant provision for our needs often leads to complacency, which, as Augustine Roberts notes in his book Centered on Christ, can lead to “a certain insensitivity to grace.”

A consistent attitude of gratitude can help us remain sensitive to the grace that surrounds us. Giving thanks before meals helps remind us of the complex labors of the earth and humans that led to the blessing of the food sitting before us. Offering a prayer before we begin work can attune us to the miracle of the way our minds and bodies function. Counting our blessings before going to sleep reminds us that all life is a gift from God who loves us. When we incorporate gratitude into our daily lives, we won’t have to rely on occasional lightning strikes to remind us that God is here now, surrounding us with grace.

The Monastic Village

My friend Martha recently made her first overnight visit at Mount St. Scholastica, and she was amazed at how everyone’s skills and talents are put to good use—for example, in tending to our myriad of plants, maintaining bee hives, being companions to Dooley Center sisters, making handcrafted items for the gift shop, and keeping the cupboard stocked with cough drops. “It’s like a village,” she said.

I discovered the truth of that statement when I misplaced my May issue of Give Us This Day and my book Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim, which Martha and I used one morning during her visit. I attempted to retrace our steps, checking everywhere from the gift shop to the game room to numerous bathrooms to my compartment in the hallway to Martha’s guest room to my desk to my prayer space. Several sisters reminded me to pray to St. Anthony, and Sr. Rita Claire told me to pray to Sr. Mary Cosmos, now deceased, who used to pray to her own mother when she misplaced items. That seemed like a good idea, because at this point, it seemed like the books could be anywhere in the cosmos.

Ultimately, I posted a “Lost” notice on the community bulletin board, and sure enough, Sr. Rosann remembered seeing the books at the entrance to St. Cecilia’s—a spot on Martha’s tour that I had overlooked. It does indeed take a village to find a lost item in the monastery.

Although losing the books was a frustrating experience, it gave me some valuable insights about community life: it’s okay to ask for help, we have a web of people we can pray to for assistance, and having lots of sets of eyes can be very useful at times. It also made me realize how much I have come to rely on Give Us This Day, a sign that I have finally been able to integrate lectio divina practice into my daily prayer.

What had been lost has been found, with a few new insights to boot. May the village rejoice with me!

Where God Can Be Found

Jesus taught us that God is found in relationship. Indeed, Jesus’ deepest desire was that we all enter into the relationship that he enjoyed with the Father. As he said before he died, “I pray not only for them [his disciples] but also for those who believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us….” (Jn 17:21).

One man who understood this teaching was the musician Pete Seeger. As another musician, Ani DiFranco, said of him, “Each time I saw him was a lesson in how to be a better person. An interviewer listed Pete’s many awards and honors and then asked what was his greatest accomplishment. Pete said it was marrying the best woman he’d ever met, staying married for seventy years, and having three kids and six grandchildren. In other words, he said a successful human being is someone who’s created a happy family and supportive relationships.”

If we believe, as Jesus said, that God is found in relationship, and if we want our own lives to be a lesson in how to be a better person, it appears that we should focus on nurturing our relationships with God and others. Then the God we seek will indeed live among us and be one with us, and when our body dies and we encounter God in a new way, we will recognize the Holy One and realize that God was in our midst all along.

Blessed Are the Flexible

Lately I have been aware of and grateful for the people who go with life’s flow instead of creating blockages by resisting change. Within the past year a number of sisters have gracefully transitioned from full-time to part-time work, retired altogether, moved from missions to the monastery, and moved from the monastery to Dooley Center. As Karen Casey and Martha Vanceburg say in their book The Promise of a New Day, “When we try to hang on to … any part of life, we impede the natural flow. To be in harmony, we must let go. It’s human to want to hold on to what’s precious. But life’s real treasure is found in achieving the rhythm of ebb and flow.”

As I’ve been studying the monastic vows, it is clear that “conversatio morum”—fidelity to the monastic way of life and continually being open to conversion—will be a lifelong challenge. However, it’s also clear that accepting change gracefully is one of the life-giving fruits of that fidelity, contributing to peace and harmony not just for ourselves but for others.

As a friend from Shantivanam, Fr. Tom O’Brien, used to say, “Blessed are the flexible, for they won’t be bent out of shape!”

Becoming Open to the Spirit's Power

Jesus’ original disciples were not notable for their achievements when they were first called to follow him. However, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, they preached, healed, traveled great distances, and endured persecution as they spread the good news and shepherded a rapidly growing church. How were these men and women able to accomplish such feats?

We all know that the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. However, this Spirit is available to everyone; why, then, isn’t everyone open to it? Michael Casey identifies how the disciples came to this openness in his article The Benedictine Promises: “It is not by achievement but by endurance for the love of Christ that we become open to the Spirit’s power.”

It was easy for the first disciples to love Christ, because they interacted with him in the person of Jesus. We don’t have that blessing. Thus we have the challenge of seeing Christ in different guises—in those who make up the body of Christ—and loving them, which then opens us to the Spirit’s power.

It is in our grasp to live in joy and peace and invite others to share in God’s kingdom. By supporting each other, we can endure the difficulties of life for the love of Christ, who knows the suffering of humanity yet remains with us to be a conduit to God the Father. That willingness to be the conduit is reason enough for all of us to love Christ, centuries after Jesus walked the earth.