Godly Vision

Matthew reports that “Jesus began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented” (Mt 11:20). No doubt in later years, the people of those towns told stories of the itinerant preacher who passed through and healed their sick, but when Jesus was with them, they did not seem to appreciate his words and his marvelous deeds. His gifts of compassion and wisdom did not change their lives.

It is human nature to have keener hindsight than sight in the present moment. As Jacob said, “The Lord was here and I did not know it!” (Genesis 28:16). Truly, we can echo his cry every day as we look back at the kindnesses that have been visited upon us. The scriptures tell us that “God is lasting love” (Psalm 136) and “God’s mercy endures forever” (Jeremiah 33:11), so we should expect to see God acting in our lives. We need to train ourselves to be aware of that love and mercy in the moment so it can infuse our lives with gratitude and help us to live in right relationship with others and the earth.

Let’s learn from our ancestor Jacob’s experience so we instead can say, “The Lord is here, and my heart is filled with awe and joy in the presence of God, my savior!”

Sacred Stories

I am currently attending a 3-week Benedictine Spirituality Workshop and Retreat at Saint Benedict’s Monastery in Bristow, Va., with seven other female scholastics from across the country. Affectionately known as “vow camp,” the purpose of the retreat is to discern and pray about taking the next step in Benedictine formation, which is to make final profession of vows.

Yesterday each participant described how her call to Benedictine life unfolded. The variety in our paths was remarkable: one started discerning in college, whereas others didn’t feel called to explore Benedictine life until they were in their fifties. Several had entered another religious order and left because it wasn’t a good fit. Some were cradle Catholics, and others were converts to the Catholic faith. Some were influenced by their families or teachers; for others, it was their ministry or prayer that led them to the monastery. Despite our diversity, we all ended up as Benedictines. God indeed works in mysterious ways!

After each person relayed her story, we sang the following refrain:

We come to share our story
We come to break the bread
We come to know our rising 

          from the dead

I happened to be sitting across from a painting of saints Benedict and Scholastica, and it occurred to me that the song reflected what happened in their last meeting. They shared what was happening in their monasteries and in their hearts, they broke bread together, and they reassured each other about the new life that was to come, which was confirmed when Benedict saw Scholastica’s soul rising to heaven in the form of a dove several days later.

All meetings with others are holy, because God is always present with us. Breaking open our lives together by sharing stories and food helps us trust in the new life to come, in whatever form it takes. Thus I’m grateful for this gathering of Benedictine women and know that God will guide us on our monastic path in the years to come.

God's First Language

The poet Czeslaw Milosz was born in Lithuania, raised in Russia, settled with his family in Poland, defected to France because of the Polish communist practice of taking political prisoners, and finally emigrated to the United States. Throughout his moves he kept writing poetry in Polish, even though his books had been banned in Poland and his poems weren’t translated into English until 1973. In 1980, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Milosz said, “Language is the only homeland.”

It follows that those who find their home in God need to learn God’s language. According to Thomas Keating, OCSO, “Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.”

Learning a new language entails focused listening, repetition, and practice. Thus, to learn God’s language, we need to sit and listen to God speak through silence again and again and again. This is how Jesus learned God’s language, by repeatedly slipping away from his disciples at night or in the early morning to sit in silence. Clearly he learned to speak God’s language eloquently, as demonstrated by his silence at his trial and crucifixion.

An important attribute of silence is that it allows our actions to speak—thus, you could say that silence allows God to speak through acts of kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and presence. As students of the language of God, we too need to let our actions speak and reflect the goodness of our Creator and Teacher, in whom we find our eternal home. 

Absurd Choices

The Polish writer Wisława Szymborska said, “I prefer the absurdity of writing poems / to the absurdity of not writing poems.” Many people consider writing poems to be a frivolous activity, given that few people are likely to read them and much more important work is always at hand. Poets, on the other hand, find it absurd not to write poems, which help us be attentive to the marvels of the world, grateful for our unfolding lives, and empathetic to the struggles of others.

Similarly, following the way of Jesus is considered to be an absurd choice by many people. Love your enemy? Seek to be last rather than first? Sell what you have and give it to the poor? Yet to persons who see all things as inter-related through Christ, it is absurd to view others as strangers to be feared, ignored, or exploited. Instead, they are to be welcomed and cared for as if they are an extension of oneself—as if they are kin (akin) to me.

Neither writing poetry nor following Christ is easy. As G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” However, an easy life is not necessarily a satisfying life. Seeking what is true, beautiful, and good leads us to fulfillment, and as Plato remarked, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” And Christ brings us closer still to vital truth, if we dare to embrace the absurdity of loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

A Prudent Approach to Peace

This morning at 3:45 I was shaken from sleep by an emergency warning about flash flooding that blared from my cell phone. How can this device be called a “smart phone” when it warns a person who lives on the fourth floor of a monastery about flooding? Clearly I have to outsmart my phone by adjusting the notification settings.

This event reminded me of Jesus’ advice to “Take heed, keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time will come” (Mark 13:33). On the other hand, Psalm 62 says, “God alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed.” How do we maintain a balance between keeping alert and being at peace because of our trust in God?

If we hear on the evening news that a storm is approaching, it is prudent to pull our flashlights out of the closet and make sure they work. Similarly, in the parable that Jesus told about wise and foolish virgins, the prudence of being well supplied with oil for a vigil was rewarded. Prudence is a form of being alert, of anticipating what might occur; it is a characteristic of the wise. However, wise people also know that they can’t rely wholly on themselves. Ultimately, our lives are in the hands of God who is always with us, whatever storms or challenges come our way.

We can both be prudent and be at peace by placing our trust in God. Clearly this is a much wiser course than placing our trust in our cell phones!

Lessons in Moderation and Sufficiency

I have a tendency to be obsessive-compulsive, which is a great characteristic for an editor and a gardener. However, it also has its drawbacks, as I find it difficult to pull myself away from certain activities, such as assembling a jigsaw puzzle, weeding, or reading a book. Integrating moderation into my life is sometimes a challenge.

The Rule of St. Benedict is a helpful tool for people like me because it provides a balanced schedule of prayer, work, meals, reading, and sleep. Perhaps most importantly, “On hearing the signal for an hour of the divine office, the monk will immediately set aside what he has in hand and go with utmost speed…. Indeed, nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God [i.e., prayer]” (RB 43:1, 3). The expectation that we will immediately set aside what we are doing so as to get to the chapel on time for prayer and mass is good training for curbing my own desires and compulsions and placing a priority on spending time with God.

Nature also has ways of thwarting obsessive-compulsive behavior. Today I was picking the last of the cherries, and no matter how I positioned my ladder, pulled branches toward me, and stretched, I couldn’t reach the enticing fruit at the very top of the tree. God provides food for birds and worms as well as for humans, and nature also has ways of teaching us when it’s time to stop. As Wendell Berry says, “We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?”

We have a freezer full of cherries that will provide pie, cobbler, and jam for the community and our guests. Enough is enough!

Sharpening Our Vision of God

One big impediment to our desire to deepen our relationship with God is that we can’t encounter God face to face. When God’s intimate friend, Moses, begged God, “Do let me see your glory!”, God replied, “I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name … but my face you cannot see, for no human sees me and still lives” (Ex 33: 18-20).

Although our senses and our consciousness have not sufficiently evolved to view God directly, God still wants to be known by us. God gets around this dilemma by appearing to us in human form in the person of Jesus, by imbuing the world with the spirit of Christ, and by “making all my beauty pass before you” in the things of the world that we can grasp with our senses.

Unfortunately, we often place our own impediment in the way of knowing God: judgment. The chief priests and elders of Jesus’ day judged him to be an arrogant reprobate. We judge others almost constantly and often fail to see the beauty in many aspects of God’s creation. As a consequence, as Verónica Rayas notes in Give Us This Day, “When we judge others falsely, we blur our vision of God.”

We all know how blurry our vision gets when we get a particle of dirt in our eye. How much more difficult is it to see when our vision is obstructed by a large wooden splinter, which Jesus equated with our judgment of others?

If we really want to live out the prayer that St. Richard of Chichester addressed to Christ, that we may “see you more clearly, love you more dearly, and follow you more nearly,” we must stop blurring our vision of God through judgment. How? It is by cultivating humility that we are able to avoid judgment and enlarge our hearts to encounter Christ in others and in the gift of creation. If we truly wish to see God’s face, the surest way to sharpen our vision is by practicing humility and gratitude.