The Art of Loving

We tend to think of love as an emotion over which we have no control. However, in his book The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm identifies love as an art and says,

“…if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering… aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving.”

For Christians, Jesus is the master teacher of the art of loving. Through his teaching and his very life he demonstrated that love requires service, sacrifice, and whole-hearted dedication. He asks us to set aside our desires for success, prestige, money, and power, which ultimately do not satisfy, to become practitioners of love, which leads to everlasting life. This is why he has had such a tremendous impact on the people of the world—he showed us the power and possibility of love.

If we decide to learn, practice, and dedicate ourselves to the art of loving, we will also help others discover God’s love and understand that we are one in the body of Christ. What other pursuit could be more worthy of our attention and devotion?

The Glory of Humility

The third chapter of Sirach includes a curious line: “For great is the power of God; by the humble he is glorified.” Of all the magnificent things God has created—galaxies, stars, seas, forests, mountains, music—it is the humble who make God glorious? How can this be?

Perhaps we can think of it this way: How many truly humble people do you know? A handful, maybe? The earth is full of people who glory in performing great athletic feats, creating amazing works of art, making lots of money, and achieving positions of power, but as it turns out, humility is much more difficult to achieve.

Humility requires acknowledging that everything we achieve comes about as a result of the gifts God instilled in us—even the gifts of discipline and motivation—along with the assistance of our teachers. The world tells us that our self-worth comes from what achieve, seemingly on our own. The humble are the few who have learned that our self-worth comes from being loved into being by God and by participating in God’s life as it unfolds through us and around us. Thus the humble truly do glorify God. May we be among their number!

Atomic Wisdom

All matter, including the human body, is made up of atoms. One of the implications of being made up of atoms is that, as physicist Alan Lightman notes, “…99.9999999999999 percent of the volume of an atom is empty space, except for the haze of nearly weightless electrons. Since we and everything else are made of atoms, we are mostly empty space.” The atom—that which makes us up—is, as Maria Popova observes, “not a unit of stuff, but a tiny center of matter swarmed by nearly weightless electrons orbiting at a great distance and a great speed. We are mostly restlessness and empty space.”

We can think of the tiny center of matter that exists in each of our atoms as God who dwells in us, because “It is in God that we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Although St. Augustine knew nothing about atoms and electrons, he intuited our restlessness and emptiness and the core of God that makes up our very being when he said, “…our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

With so much empty space available inside the atoms that make us up, why does God choose to dwell in such a small part of those atoms? Perhaps we would be overwhelmed by God’s glory if God were more than an infinitesimal part of us. Perhaps God knows that humans need a quest for that which is hidden to focus our attention. Perhaps Jesus’ observation that the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed is truer than we realized. We may not understand why, but God is clearly an advocate of smallness, of humility: “Take the lower place.” “Let the little children come to me.” “Those who are last shall be first.” “You must serve one another.” This approach is modeled in Jesus and in the very way God exists within us. It is when we embrace being small, being humble, that we will find God within the restlessness and empty space within us.

Seasonal Perspectives

During the summers when I was a child, I looked forward to autumn because it meant returning to school, which I loved. New crayons! New shoes! A new teacher! As I got older, I was surprised to discover that some people dislike autumn because it feels like it is ushering in winter, the season of death.

It is true that, as Fr. Ed Hays says so evocatively, “The whisper of winter and of death is upon the autumn wind.” However, one of the gifts of aging is that we are better equipped to take the long view. Autumn actually is a season of new beginnings, because it is the time when the plants and creatures of earth drift into death and dwell in darkness, both of which are necessary for rebirth. Year after year we see that the new beginning triggered by autumn unfolds after six months or so, when seeds burst into life and trees sprout new leaves. From this perspective, spring—when new life appears everywhere—actually could be considered a season of endings, for as soon as birth occurs, the aging and dying process gets triggered!

No matter our attitude toward autumn, it will inevitably arrive. Not clinging to the things that need to die will help us accept the season for what it is—a natural part of life with gifts of its own, if we are willing to put aside our own desires and accept them.

Breathing Into New Life

Sr. Melissa Letts, who died on September 14, spent eight years at Mount St. Scholastica (after transferring her vows from Red Plains, Oklahoma) quietly attending to her work and her art and not so quietly rooting for Oklahoma football and basketball teams. Because of her unassuming, no-fuss demeanor, her store of inner wisdom often went unnoticed. However, this changed for me when my formation director, Sr. Marcia Ziska, asked several professed sisters to share some advice with me as I entered my canonical novitiate year. This is what Sr. Melissa wrote:

Realize this is a process.

Relax and breathe.

Enjoy the moment.

Now that I have finished my novitiate, I can see that these simple words contain profound wisdom. Furthermore, her words apply not just to the novitiate but to life itself. Life is a process of learning how to love God, others, and ourselves. We are more likely to learn how to do this when we relax and breathe, inviting God’s Spirit to be with us, instead of trying to impose our own will as we make our way through life. Each moment is a gift to be enjoyed, not improved.

As we shared stories of Sr. Melissa at her vigil service, Prioress Esther Fangman told us that when Sr. Melissa received the news that she would be dying soon, after the initial shock, she said, “I know God loves me, I know the community loves me, and I love myself. I’m ready to go.” She lived out her inner wisdom and gracefully surrendered to the new life to which God was calling her. I’m grateful to have her wisdom and example to guide me as I continue on the monastic journey to the everlasting life we will share.

The Road from Loss to Wisdom

When a tragedy occurs, we instinctively turn to people who have experienced the same difficulty we are now facing, to draw on their wisdom, their empathy, and their living witness that this grief can be survived. When it is the death of a loved one we are facing, Catholics have a particularly loving consoler in Mary, who endured the piercing pain of watching her son, Jesus, be tortured and die on the cross. She is a woman who knows the depths of grief; thus we can cling to her and ask her to strengthen us and console us until the brunt of our own sorrow has passed.

To be human is to know loss; to be a follower of Christ means to shoulder our losses until they are transformed into wisdom that allows us to be a comfort and support to others. We don’t need to be concerned about finding the right words to speak—after all, no words of Mary are recorded after the death of Jesus. It is our lived experience that speaks: we have felt pain and faced struggle, we have endured, we are present to others who are now suffering. In this way, Christ will bring us all together to eternal life.

Solace

Given that each moment of our life is different from the one before, you’d think that we would become accustomed to the constant rhythm of letting go of what is and welcoming what is to come that makes up human existence. Yet the death of one of our companions always seems to be so shocking and unexpected, especially when it happens with little or no warning. At such times, when we experience the loss and suffering that touches every life, we seek solace.

In his book Consolations, David Whyte says,

Solace is found in allowing the body’s innate wisdom to come to the fore, the part of us that already knows it is mortal and must take its leave like everything else, and leading us, when the mind cannot bear what it is seeing or hearing, to the birdsong in the tree above our heads, even as we are being told of a death, each note an essence of morning and of mourning; of the current of a life moving on, but somehow, also, and most beautifully, carrying, bearing, and even celebrating the life we have just lost.”

One way to carry, bear, celebrate, and honor the life of a person we have just lost is to live fiercely while we ourselves still have breath—to cherish our precious, limited time and live as much as possible in a state of gratitude. As Whyte notes, “Solace is a direct seeing and participation; a celebration of the beautiful coming and going, appearance and disappearance of which we have always been a part.” Followers of Jesus know that when we seemingly disappear at death, life does not end but continues in a new form beyond our imagining. Thus in the midst of our grief, we also celebrate the new life that we cannot see but trust awaits us because of the one who said, “I am going to prepare a place for you…so that where I am you also may be.”

God is Simple

The other day I came across the following quote by the early Christian theologian Origen: “God is absolutely one; God is simple.” Of all the words I might choose to describe God, “simple” is not one that would come to mind. However, that thought comes from my human perspective, and we humans tend to make everything complicated. Our go-to position is to see difference and complexity instead of oneness and simplicity.

One attribute of God we can agree on is wisdom, and the mark of wisdom is simplicity. Consider Einstein’s equation E = mc²; you won’t find a scientific equation much simpler than that, but what it reveals—that energy and matter are interchangeable, because they are different forms of the same thing—helps us understand how the energy of God’s love, creativity, and compassion can come to dwell in human flesh.

God loves. We are one with God. Therefore we are called to love. It appears Origen had it right; God is simple. It is we who need to stop trying to make God complicated.

The Sacrament of Community

At my ritual of triennial (three-year) profession of vows on Saturday, prioress Esther Fangman compared living in community to a sacrament. Linking the two had never occurred to me, but if we understand sacrament to be a means of divine grace and a symbol of a spiritual reality that is ordained by Jesus, then community life is indeed a sacrament.

Jesus chose to live in community with his disciples, and at his last supper he instructed us to serve one another, which requires living with each other. As St. Basil said, “If you always live alone, whose feet will you wash?” One could add, “And who will wash your feet?” The give and take of living in community is a means of divine grace because it allows us to participate in the spiritual reality of the life of the Trinity—“infinite outpouring and infinite receiving,” as described by Fr. Richard Rohr. Living with others is the key to knowing God by participating in the life of God—learning by doing. It is learning how to humbly and joyfully give what you have and who you are, while humbly and joyfully listening to everyone and receiving guidance and assistance from those who have the skills and wisdom that you lack.

St. Benedict concludes Chapter 72 of his Rule with the words, “…may he [Christ] bring us all together to everlasting life.” The sacrament of community is the tool Christ uses to bring us all to everlasting life, which is the only way the body of Christ can get there—together.

Life at the Threshold

Today is my last full day as a novice before I make my first profession as a Benedictine sister. It is a threshold time. What should I do?

Go to morning prayer and mass…. Eat breakfast…. Go for a walk…. Do a load of laundry…. Finish some editing work….

God is found in the ordinary even at times of transition, although our awareness of God’s presence is often heightened at such times. The other day when I was picking tomatoes, a honey bee buzzed around me repeatedly and landed on my forearm several times. Ted Andrews notes in his book Animal Speak, “The bee is the reminder to extract the honey of life…and that no matter how great the dream there is the promise of fulfillment if we pursue it.” St. Benedict would translate that as “What can be sweeter to us than the voice of the Lord inviting us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life.”

I also was aware of God’s presence yesterday in the form of a hawk that landed on a tree not far from where I was walking. Hawks are usually permanent residents in an area, reflecting the vow of stability I will be making. They have keen vision, which I will need to see God in my life and in the community and world. In their flight, hawks teach us balance, which is also a lesson of the vow of fidelity to the monastic way of life.  

The day is yet young; perhaps before I go to bed tonight I will also be given a sign of my call to obedience, the third vow I will take tomorrow. If that happens, I’m sure it will occur in an extraordinarily ordinary way!

Pilgrimage into the Vowed Life

Before I entered Mount St. Scholastica as a postulant, I went on a pilgrimage to Wales. As I stand on the threshold of making my first profession, I am preparing to make another pilgrimage of sorts—a pilgrimage into the vowed Benedictine life.

In the book Living Between Worlds: Place and Journey in Celtic Spirituality, Philip Sheldrake notes, “The true object of pilgrimage had always been a loving attention to God; there was a deep suspicion of pilgrims who did not already carry with them the God whom they sought.” My primary object in making vows as a Benedictine is to grow in awareness and love of the God who has always been with me. I’m grateful to have the support of the community in this, our common quest.

The vows are tools derived from the wisdom of St. Benedict, and I will gladly make use of them. However, whether we make formal vows or not, everyone who rises to a new day is invited to enter into the mystery of loving Christ, who often becomes present to us in surprising ways. Along with St. Brendan, we can pray:

Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways

and break fresh ground with you.

Christ of the mysteries, I trust you

to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know

that my times, even now, are in your hand.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for you.