From Blessing to Blessing

Fr. Michael Peterson of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, is directing the 2021 annual retreat at the Mount. The topic of the retreat is Benedictine resilience, which helps us keep our vow of conversatio morum — continual openness to transformation. At the end of each conference, Fr. Michael plays a song on a Native American flute, which inspired this poem.

Conversatio Morum

 

Today, YouTube has brought me a monk

from the prairies of Minnesota

who is wholly absorbed

in playing a Native American flute

 

With the first note he pushes

off from the shore of thought

and settles into the current of breath,

centered in a song that flows  

 

Like a life well lived, by turns

lilting, steadfast, and mournful

but always fluid, never lingering

on one note, no matter how compelling

 

The song summons cumulus clouds

that stream past my window,

indeterminate shapeshifting masses

and wisps shepherded by a south wind

 

Thus the breath of the universe proclaims

that a continual openness to transformation —

the monastic vow of conversatio morum —

is to move from blessing to blessing

 

Freeing us from our desire to make time

stand still, for the holy awaits wherever

our surrender to the impetus

of life carries us