Late-Winter Wisdom

The worship aid for Sr. Lou Whipple’s funeral included the following quote by Thomas Merton: “All of creation teaches us some way of prayer.” What is creation teaching us about prayer when we have two weeks of 60- and 70-degree weather in late February, followed by a return of frigid temperatures and snowflakes in early March?

• Perhaps creation is teaching us the prayer of acceptance of whatever each day brings us, whether or not it is to our liking. Do we truly believe that God is to be found in blustery winds and snow, as well as in warm breezes and gentle rains?

• Perhaps creation is teaching us the prayer of patience by showing us that we can’t rush the growth of creation or of ourselves, and that a certain amount of time must be spent in winter cold and darkness to prepare for new growth.

• Perhaps creation is teaching us the prayer of gratitude for a late-winter break from cold temperatures and for our warm coats, scarves, and mittens when wintry weather returns.

The wisdom of creation is vast that and is imparted to us on a moment-by-moment basis, so perhaps the most important prayer we can learn is to live in the present so we can be awake to what creation wishes to teach us.

Attaining Wisdom Through Silence

I suspect that Jesus was a man who was comfortable with and even craved silence. As Sr. Genevieve Glen has noted, “The evangelists … show him over and over again to be a person who paid intense attention to the world around him.” Such intense attention is facilitated by silence.

We at the Mount maintained silence during our recent week-long retreat, except during our communal prayer times and mass. The silence cleared away the clutter of conversation and made us more attentive to the words we did hear from our retreat director and in our songs, psalms, and Scripture readings. Although I was somewhat concerned that our silence would seem inhospitable to our guests and employees, I believe they sense that we practice this discipline not to shut them out but to enable us, and them, to be more open and attentive to the world.

In today’s Gospel reading, we heard “Give, and gifts will be given to you” (Lk 6: 38). What we seek is facilitated by its opposite. To obtain fullness, we practice emptiness. To obtain life, we practice dying to self. To obtain wisdom, we practice intense attention and silence—out of which comes the Word to guide us, sustain us, and help us recognize and respond to God’s presence in the Body of Christ.

How to Achieve a Happy Death

Sr. Lou Whipple, who died this week at the age of 50 years, taught us a great deal about how to approach death. Although she greatly loved her family, her monastic sisters, and her life in the monastery, upon learning that her cancer was terminal, she did not cling to life. Instead, she attended to what each day brought with what energy she had—going to daily prayer and meals, working a few hours in the business office, and spending time with loved ones. When diminished breath confined her to bed, she continued to pray and visit in that space, and when her body ceased to function, her soul slipped away peacefully.

Recently I read that of the three elements that make us who we are—body, mind, and soul—there is no doubt that it is the soul that is in charge at the time of our death. Nonetheless, our mind (that is, our ego, or who we think we are) and body often resist death, because they believe it means the end of them. The poet Louise Glück said, “The great thing / is not having / a mind.” I’m not sure that is possible, but somehow Sr. Lou’s trust in her soul, the agent of God, allowed her to come to an acceptance of her impending death and override the objections of her mind and body. Thus, she had what we would call a “happy death,” and gave us a model for how to achieve that ourselves. It was her last gift to us.

Flight of the Spirit

I have a confession to make: I’ve never really cared for the stained glass windows in St. Lucy’s Chapel here at the Mount. To me the design is jagged and disharmonious, a harlequin-like mishmash of colors that don’t really go together: pink, orange, purple, yellow, red, and blue. And yet, the other day, in a pane of clear glass at the top of the chapel, the reflection of the stained glass formed the image of the wing of a monarch butterfly, and suddenly it became quite beautiful.

Just so, to many of us, the recent death of our treasured sister, Lou Whipple, felt harsh, disharmonious, a clash between the desire to continue life in its present form and the need to die to let new life unfold. And yet, to Sr. Lou, death became the unfolding of a butterfly wing, or the wing of one of her beloved bees.

Death can be like a storm we must weather before we can take wing. After I heard that Sr. Lou died (despite the prohibition against use of the word “Alleluia” during Lent),  I thought of the following refrain from a song by Bob Franke, which is often sung by John McCutcheon:

Alleluia, the great storm is over,

lift up your wings and fly!

Alleluia, the great storm is over,

lift up your wings and fly!

Lift up your wings and fly, Lou—to that home on God’s celestial shore, where glad and happy we will meet on the day we too fly away.*

*See the lyrics to I’ll Fly Away by Alfred E. Brumley.

How to Eat a Banana in the Monastery

In his book Monastic Practices, Charles Cummings, OCSO, notes, “There is a monastic way of doing things, a monastic way of living, that may seem strange at first because the reasons underlying it are not immediately evident.”

Such as the way that Benedictine sisters eat bananas in the monastery.

After I was at Mount St. Scholastica a few weeks, I noticed that many of my new dining companions have a curious method for eating a banana; they place it lengthwise on a plate, pull back one strip of the peel, cut the fruit into bite-sized sections, and proceed to eat each bite with a fork. I asked why they eat bananas this way and was informed that they were taught the practice when they were in formation, because to eat a banana in the manner of a monkey was considered uncouth.

Notwithstanding appearances, eating a banana monastically offers the benefits of slowing down and being mindful about this food before us, thus encouraging us to savor it. And so, although the reasons for eating a banana in the monastic manner are not immediately evident, it turns out there’s nothing strange about them at all.

Mindful Eating

On Ash Wednesday, we ate our meal(s) in silence at the monastery. As a result, I was much more attentive to the taste, texture, and amount of the food I ate than usual. As the poet Jane Hirshfield says, “Attention alters what it touches.” The food itself wasn’t altered, but my appreciation for it was.

Several years ago I attended a course on mindful eating. I remember an exercise in which we spent about two minutes eating a single potato chip. Eating the chip that slowly and attentively made me realize how greasy and unappetizing it was…and yet, how many times have I mindlessly devoured half a bag of such chips in a single sitting?

I also recall a story of an immigrant who had come to the United States from a country where she and her family experienced great deprivation. The first time she was taken to a grocery store, she burst into tears because of the bounty spread out before her. I can’t remember the last time I marveled at all the fresh produce and well-stocked shelves at my local grocery store.

Eating is such an integral, repetitive part of life that it’s difficult to do it mindfully. However, eating slowly and in silence, and fasting from certain foods now and then, are tools that can awaken our senses…including our sense of gratitude.

Fasting From Worry

I wonder if perhaps we are called to fast from worry this Lent.

Yes, many of the policies currently being implemented by persons with political power are contrary to our Gospel values and are certainly a cause for worry. However, to worry implies that we, rather than God, are at the helm of our life and the world. As Alan Jones notes, “even our despair is to be given up and seen as the ego-grasping device that it really is.” Worry, anxiety, and despair ultimately are reflections of our desire to be in control. Freeing ourselves from this desire enables us to respond to our individual call to serve the body of Christ. Then the kingdom of God—where all persons know they are loved, have what they need, and are free from fear—is closer to fulfillment.

I suggest the following Lenten practice: Place a bowl and some small stones in your prayer space. Every day, choose a stone and voice a worry about your own life, the lives of your loved ones, or the world. Then place the stone and your worry in your offering bowl and lift the bowl to God as you pray, “You, O God, are my rock of safety and my source of peace. Into your hands I place my worries. Guide me in your way.”