Being Benedictine in the 21st Century

This weekend I will participate in a Zoom conference called “Being Benedictine in the 21st Century,” which will explore how to live the Benedictine charism in our changing world. Participants have been invited to consider what it means to be monastic and how Benedictine values can be lived out both within and outside of monasteries. Interestingly, this conference is taking place as I prepare to ask the Mount community to support my request to make final vows.

For years I searched for the way that is most conducive to living with God as the center of my life. After spending time in communities that centered around school or ministry, in a parish community, and at Shantivanam House of Prayer in Easton, Kansas, I have discerned that living in a monastic community according to the Rule of St. Benedict offers me the best avenue to follow Christ wholeheartedly. The Rule provides a structured balance of prayer, communal life, and work achieved with the tools of humility, hospitality, a listening heart, stability, simple living, and a solid leadership model.

Living in a monastery isn’t the only way to follow the Rule of St. Benedict, of course; it just happens to be the best way for me to live out my vocation. Other people are finding ways to integrate Benedictine principles into their lives as oblates, hermits, scholars, and members of alternate communities. In a way, the people who are being Benedictine according to various models are like an ecosystem—different life forms that feed each other and energize each other with the common goal of sharing life with God. It’s an appealing vision of how we can live and thrive in the diverse and inclusive kingdom of God.

The Life That Is Waiting For Us

Around 8:15 am, I went outside to take a picture of some flowers and noticed that the area around the statue of Our Lady of Fatima needed to be hoed. I thought I’d better tackle that job while it was still cool, and then I noticed that weeds were growing up around Sr. Dolores’ gooseberry bushes and that bunches of dried leaves had collected around a rose bush. Two hours later I came inside, got cleaned up, and found a new e-mail message that required some research before I could respond. This is not at all what I had planned for my morning!

It is easy to become overwhelmed by all the tasks calling for our attention. Some people respond by making a “To Do” list and methodically working through it so they can accomplish as much as they can as efficiently as possible. This approach is effective, but it can prevent us from responding to needs and opportunities when they arise. As Joseph Campbell said, “We must be willing to give up the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Perhaps the life waiting for us is to listen to a friend who is distressed or to take a walk on the first sunny day in two weeks.

The good news is that, as St. Benedict said, “The Divine presence is everywhere.” Thus, no matter what we attend to throughout the day, we can be assured that we will be walking humbly with our God. Why, then, should we worry about how our day unfolds? Regardless of what we do, God is present, and it can’t get any better than that.

A Pentecost Call to Pay Attention

Blooming garlic scapes

Did you notice the movement of the Spirit on the Feast of Pentecost? Perhaps not, if you were looking for a rushing wind and tongues of fire. We have become conditioned to expecting a grand, dramatic entrance by the Spirit. The experience of the prophet Elijah teaches us otherwise, as described in 1 Kings 19:11-13:

“The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.”

It requires much more effort to be aware of God’s presence in a gentle whisper than in storms, earthquakes, and fires. You would think this would require that we follow Paul’s advice In 1 Thessalonians 5: 17 to “Pray without ceasing.” That certainly doesn’t seem feasible, but consider this statement by Mary Oliver in her poem The Summer Day: “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention….”

The way to pray always, to constantly be open to experiencing the presence of God, is to pay attention, for as St. Benedict says in his Rule, “We believe that the Divine presence is everywhere.” We just need to train ourselves to look and listen, especially in unexpected places.

Yesterday I noticed the movement of the Spirit in the flick of our cat Joey’s tail, in garlic scapes that are blooming in our herb garden, and in the conviviality of sharing homemade pecan pie at dinner. How about you? Where did you experience the presence of the Spirit on her Feast Day?

Tag—You're It

The first letter of John says something curious: “If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us” (1 Jn 4: 12).

Wait a minute! That seems to imply that God’s love isn’t perfect unless we love one another! How can that be?

Apparently, love isn’t brought to perfection until it expands in ever broader circles. Love has always been shared within the Trinity—Creator, Son, and Spirit—but such love could not be contained, so an ever-expanding universe was created. God loves us into being and then says, “Tag—you’re it!” In other words, as John says, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another” (1 Jn 4: 11).

The Holy Spirit is our guide in this quest to be a link in God’s desire to bring love to perfection. The fervor and joy of the disciples who first received the Spirit could not be contained, and the good news of Jesus the Christ spread rapidly throughout the world. Now it is our turn to be messengers of God’s love. We don’t need to travel to distant countries to do so; not only do we have the power of the World Wide Web at our disposal, but the people we encounter every day also need reminders of God’s everlasting love. If we find it difficult to reach out to them, we can pray to the Spirit to help us.

God, who has done so much for us, doesn’t need anything from us—but we can choose to offer this gift of helping to bring God’s love to perfection. It’s an honor to be part of this eternal chain of love.

Helping Better Things Fall Together

Norma Jeane Baker is known primarily for her persona as the sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, but she had more than a pretty head on her shoulders—she was actually an intelligent and thoughtful woman. For example, she said, “People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right … and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

I believe that Jesus’ original disciples would have agreed with this statement. After Jesus died and was resurrected as the Christ, they had to let go of the person he had been. Christ himself said to Mary Magdalene, “Don’t cling to me.” The good life they had with Jesus certainly fell apart when he was arrested, tried, and crucified. However, better things fell together after he ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit to open their minds and hearts to the love they were called to share. Why was this better than being with Jesus? Because it extended Christ’s love and kindness beyond a small region in the Middle East to the entire world.

Norma Jeane Baker knew something about kindness and inclusiveness, too. As reported by Sara Kettler on the Biography website, when she learned that her friend, the Black jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, was unable to get hired at the Mocambo, a famous L.A. nightclub, she devised a plan. The club's owner believed that Fitzgerald lacked the glamour to draw crowds, so in her persona as Marilyn Monroe, Baker approached him with a proposition — if he booked Fitzgerald, she promised to sit at the front of the house every night and bring along other celebrities. The club owner agreed to hire Fitzgerald for a couple of weeks, and during Fitzgerald's run, Monroe kept her word. Fitzgerald's shows sold out, and the successful engagement changed Fitzgerald's career trajectory. She later told Ms. magazine, "After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again."

In her own way, Norma Jeane Baker did just what Christ asked—to love her neighbor and expand the Body of Christ by modeling kindness and inclusivity. As we celebrate Pentecost on Sunday, may we be inspired to do the same.

Practicing Peace Through Presence

I am grateful that a long-time friend from St. Louis, Sharon, was able to visit me this past weekend. Because she is a talented artist, I asked her to help me decorate some sugar cookies for an open house for my new office. As with any artistic endeavor, it was an exercise in being present and breathing in the spirit (the inspiration) of the moment.

As with Buddhist mandalas that are painstakingly crafted from colored sand and then dumped into the ocean or a river upon completion, my cookies will not be long for this world. After completing their purpose for being—that is, offering Sharon and me the opportunity to practice presence together and helping me offer hospitality to my guests—they will be consumed and will be no more. Yet this loss need not be a cause of sorrow, because the next moment of life will offer its own opportunity to practice presence and hospitality. If I cling to one moment, the gifts of the next moment will be lost.

This morning the community sang a song with the refrain, “Make me an instrument of your peace.” It occurs to me that when we practice presence by living in the moment and then letting it go, we are an instrument of peace. In this way, we are modeling trust that God will be present in all the moments to come, so we don’t have to cling to what has been or what we are experiencing now.

Rabindranath Tagore said, “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” When we live in each moment, the Holy Spirit moment, we too have time enough to experience the wonder of life with God and to be an instrument of God’s peace. 

Our Call to Fulfill Jesus' Dream

When Jesus was preparing to leave his disciples and return to his Father, he gave them a lot of last-minute instructions, as a mother might leave a list of do’s and don’ts for her children when she’s going to be away on a trip. However, even though Jesus “was lifted up into the clouds,” as it says in the Acts of the Apostles, he was no helicopter parent! Jesus knew that as long as he was in the world, his disciples would stay dependent on him instead of venturing out to follow their own calling—and besides, his work on earth was done, so it was time to leave them to journey on to his Father. 

Although Jesus was leaving the earth, he said to his disciples, “Remain in me,” which sounds contradictory. How can you remain in someone who isn’t physically present? Those of us who remain close in spirit to loved ones who have died understand very well that their departure doesn’t separate us from them. As Victoria Weinstein observes 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 desires and their issues and integrate them into our own…. We continue the work of their hands.”

The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is a good time to recommit ourselves to fulfilling Jesus’ dream of bringing the kingdom of God to earth through love and service—to continuing the work of his hands. When we do that, we remain in Christ and share Christ’s joy in his relationship with the Father and the Spirit—no divine helicopter parenting required!

Rooted in the God of Movement

I will soon be moving to a new office in the monastery, so my spring cleaning this year will involve some heavy lifting (mostly by Sr. Elaine and Bill and Nathaniel from her maintenance crew!). Even with help, this move is a chore that involves finding and packing boxes, sorting through catch-all drawers, examining the contents of files I inherited from previous editors and oblate directors, and making decisions about what to keep or pass on to someone else.

I’ve had plenty of practice in moving over the years, having lived in three different dorms at Benedictine College in Atchison and then bouncing from Kansas City, Mo., to Columbia, Md., to Newport News, Va., to St. Louis, Mo., to Easton, Ks., back to St. Louis, and then on to Lawrence, Ks., to Leavenworth, Ks., and back to Atchison. It’s no wonder I’m ready to take a permanent vow of stability!

St. Benedict has a lot to say about the value of stability. Still, there is something about physical movement that is holy too. As Neale Donald Walsch observes, “Movement is one of the most ignored or unused Instruments of the Holy Experience. Many people don’t see it as a pathway to God. Yet Movement is God…and God is Movement.” A God who is continually making all things new must be a God of movement.

Perhaps the way to resolve the tension between stability and movement is to find our stability not necessarily in a geographical place but in God. When we are grounded in God, we are rooted in the fertile soil of the Spirit wherever our path may lead. Then, as Teresa of Avila said, we can trust God that we are exactly where we are meant to be.

A Call to Radical Amazement

Have you been gobsmacked today?

“Gobsmacked” is a British word that means to clap a hand to one’s mouth in astonishment. We should seek to be gobsmacked at least once a day, for as Abraham Joshua Heschel says, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

Living in wonder is an important spiritual tool because astonishment leads us to God. When we marvel that God filled the earth with such beauty and ingenuity—what John O’Donohue referred to “life’s passionate sacramentality”—our wonder leads us to praise, thanksgiving, and the desire to know God more intimately.

Seeking to be gobsmacked at least once a day isn’t at all difficult. The key is to look at and listen to things closely—the kaleidoscopic symmetry at the center of flowers, the radiant depth of an infant’s eye, the exuberant brushstrokes of Van Gogh’s paintings, the symphony of bird song.

Being in a hurry is the enemy of wonder, because then we don’t have time to observe the beautiful world in which we are immersed. As W.H. Davies said, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.” What a waste of our life if we brush past life’s passionate sacramentality in our efforts to be productive, efficient, or accomplished.

We aren’t called to be successful, we are called to be faithful…and to be gobsmacked.

Attending to the Voice of the Earth

In her recent online presentation on “Benedictine Spirituality and Care of the Earth” for the Center for Religion and Environment, Sr. Elizabeth Carillo suggested that we should consider the earth to be a non-human part of our Benedictine community. What are the implications of being in community with the earth?

Building relationships with others requires spending time with them. St. Benedict already has that covered when it comes to the earth, because in his Rule he provided time in the daily schedule for outdoor manual labor—growing herbs and vegetables, planting and harvesting crops, maintaining an orchard, tending a vineyard.

When we spend time with others, we naturally listen to them. What, then, is the voice of the earth saying to us? For one thing, it tells us to be aware of the wonder of God’s creation. As Wendell Berry says in his book The Art of the Commonplace, “Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence.” How would our lives change if we were truly aware of how the miraculous infuses our lives and the universe?

Earth also speaks to us of surrender to the natural cycle of the seasons, accepting the new life that sprouts in spring, the growth and productivity of summer, the harvest of autumn, and the death/fallowness of winter. In this way, earth teaches us balance, which St. Benedict also advocated in his Rule.

St. Benedict is careful to provide for the needs of everyone in the community, so if the earth is part of our family, we also must care for her. What she needs now is space for a balance of forests, grassland, and desert and healing from the poisons we are dumping on the land, in the water, and in the air. The earth has been amazingly generous to us for eons but is reaching a dangerous point of depletion, and as St. Benedict instructs, the needs of the ill and the elderly are primary.

We refer to “mother Earth” for a reason; as with so many human mothers, the earth makes a lot of sacrifices to nurture and provide for us. With Mother’s Day approaching, let’s remember and honor our relationship with the earth by making an effort to take care of her, not just for one day but throughout the year.

Branching Out to the Whole World

Image from David Attenborough
Fans blog.

Saint Francis reminded us of our connection to all of  creation in his prayer “Canticle of the Sun,” where he referred to “brother sun, sister moon, brothers wind and air, sister water, brother fire, and mother earth.” Our current x-ray and CT/MRI technology shows that physically, we are indeed akin to the rest of creation; for example, our lungs looks exactly like a tree branch and our veins mirror the veins of leaves and networks of rivers. The roundness of our eyes reflects the shape of the sun, and at the base of our fingernail, many of us have a half moon, called a “lunula” (“little moon”).

It appears that God the Creator left an imprint of expansive branching and circular wholeness on everything in the universe. Jesus himself used these images when he referred to himself as the vine and we as the branches and implied a circular relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit. He instructed us to go (branch out) to the whole (circular) world to spread the word of God’s inclusive love and mercy.

When we feel lonely, it can be a consolation to know that we are connected with all of life through the branches and circles found in our own bodies. We don’t know what God looks like, but if we are indeed made in the image and likeness of God, then we can assume that God too is one who branches (infiltrates everything to bring it new life) and makes whole (includes all in an expanding circle of love). Jesus’ words and our very bodies show that we are called to do the same.