onehouse

Benedict and Scholastica

I took this book out of the library the other day. A short little read, children's book style, with lovely illustrations by Tomie de Paola.

This is the kind of thing you could read out loud showing the pages a group just for a dash of fun. A bit of history grade school style.

Gild your soul

I have returned to reading Benedict's Rule with commentary by Joan Chittister. This, from Chapter 4 and September 21, fit perfectly:

Listen readily to holy reading, and devote yourself often to prayer. Every day with tears and sighs confess your past sins to God in prayer and change from these evil ways in the future.
 
A willingness to be formed is the basis of formation. Anything else is fraud. People can not be beaten into sanctity. They can only be beaten into submission. No, Benedict says, you can't get the spiritual life by waiting for it. You have to reach for it. Read things that gild your soul. Turn your mind to prayer, to a conscious response to the God present here and now. Remember who you are.
 
The ancients considered the gift of tears a sign of God's great favor. If we could be always sorry for what we have done to distort life in the past then perhaps we could be safeguarded against distorting it in the future. Regret is a gift long gone in contemporary culture but critically needed perhaps. In this society, guilt has disappeared and sorrow is labeled unhealthy. As a people, then, we separate one action from another in such a way that patterns escape us and pitfalls elude us. We simply stumble on, from one event to the next, unaware of the dangers in it for us, uncaring of our past behaviors, unfeeling of the callouses on our hearts.
 
Life, Benedict implies, is a tapestry woven daily from yesterday's threads. The colors don't change, only the shapes we give them. Without the past to guide us, the future itself may succumb to it.

Book 35 of 52: The View from the Monastery

I just realized I have a bunch of book write ups sitting in my draft folder for my 52 books from last year. I'll post them on the date I wrote them and then update it here if anyone wants to go into the time machine to have a look.

The View from a Monastery
Brother Benet Tvedten

The View from a Monastery is a lighthearted and honest take on life in Blue Cloud Abbey, "one of the monasteries where Kathleen Norris discovered the compelling world of the Benedictines" (back cover).  Brother Benet Tvedten, who entered the community in 1958, underlines the very human side of life in a spiritual community. He writes, "There are many false notions about monasticism. Pious people think we are holy. People who don't know much about religion think we are peculiar. The truth of the matter is that we are neither."

This one quote in particular has been rolling around in my tiny brain over the last few weeks. I have been wondering when it is wise to shout "Bullshit!" There is a time and a place for it but only the most foolish go around yelling it as if their nose is more attuned than the rest of the human race. But it does seem that we hold back from saying at the very least that certain things are silly and should be avoided by those seeking the kingdom. So I liked this. And you can substitute a lot of adjectives for the word "medieval".

Father Bernardine was my novitiate classmate. One day the novice master gave us copies of the Tyrocinium, a manual of piety used by novices in American Benedictine monasteries in the years before Vatican II. When Father Bernardine came to the section on sensuality and its prohibition of a monk's smelling flowers and petting dogs, he declared, "This is a lot of medieval bullshit." We were all grateful to him. The novice master collected the books and we never had to use them.

The Saint John's Bible

A friend of mine sent this link to me:

 

"At the onset of a new millennium, Saint John’s University and the monks of Saint John’s Abbey are igniting the spiritual imagination of people throughout the world by commissioning a work of art that illuminates the world today. This is the first time in 500 years that a Benedictine Monastery has commissioned a handwritten, illuminated Bible. Its construction parallels that of its medieval predecessors, written on vellum, using quills, natural handmade inks, hand-ground pigments and gold leaf while incorporating modern themes, images and technology of the 21st century."

Trappist Caskets

One of the only news shows I watch is CBC News: Sunday  with Carol MacNeil and Evan Solomon - a man I have a small crush on because I remember him from Hot Type, a show on print culture that is now exclusively on CBC's cable channel. No cable. No Hot Type which is probably one of the few things I'd watch on cable.

But I digress. CBC News: Sunday covers a lot of news in a couple of hours. And they manage to treat matters of faith and spirituality as part of that news.They also have longer pieces and sometimes host short documentaries so you actually feel like you are inhabiting a small piece of a story rather than just having the headlines spit at you by a talking head.

This week they had a lovely piece on Trappist Caskets, the "labore" of the monks of New Melleray Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa. The monks were able to explain the rule, their calling, and why their work is an important part of that calling. Their business manager also explained the unique challenges of working with people who do good work but are not driven by the usual competitive motives.  I'm not planning to be buried but if I was, I'd pick one of their simple rectangle boxes made by people who truly keep death before them daily.

Now if only CBC would put more clips of Carol and Evan online.

A crater in your heart.

I found an article, Come Follow Us,  by Cynthia Bourgeault on Belief.net. It is, unfortunately, intercut with that site's incredibly annoying advertising that acts like a frying pan to the head in the middle of a nice quiet moment. The article is an introduction to contemplative practices in the Benedictine tradition. Bourgeault says that "The monastic way of living slowly carves out a crater in your heart." and certainly that has been my experience. The words "slow" and "carving" are especially apt. (Apt, I tell you! Apt!) Over time, these faltering steps bring about a place that can receive strength and quiet grace.

She talks of the perceived trendiness of contemplative practice but defends seekers by writing:

People may say that this Benedictine mini-revival is just nostalgia or monk wannabees. I don't think so. Judging from the caliber of people drawn to this path and the depth of their yearning, I see something else. I see a hunger for a way into the heart and soul of the Christian mystical life. In a religious landscape still dominated by theological gamesmanship and moral clichés, people are hungering for a genuine, integrated practice of Christian life that transforms things from (and to) the core. For better or worse, the Benedictine tradition, 1,500 years old, is still the direct heir and repository (particularly in Western Christendom) of the Christian inner tradition: the praxis, or path, implicit in Christ's challenge, "If you would be perfect ... come, follow me."

How does one become perfect (which in the language of Christ's time meant whole, truly and fully alive)? Not by theologies or theories, but by an actual spiritual practice that teaches you "how to get from here to there." This is the missing link people are really hungering for, and it's the wisdom the Benedictine tradition still has to offer. Embedded in the time-honored Benedictine motto of Ora et Labora--"prayer and work"--is a balanced path to conscious selfhood; a template that, once learned, can be applied to the conditions of daily life to transform any life situation--single or married, fast track or slow lane--into "a school for the Lord's service" (in St. Benedict's words).

The Benedictine life is indeed a rare old wine waiting to be poured into the empty wineskins of our stressed-out, over-committed culture in the hopes of restoring sanity, balance, and a more human way of being alive. And yes, to carve a crater at the center of one's heart into which the mystical life of Christ may flow.

The article leads to another series of columns on learning to sing the Psalms, which is helpful to those of us far from a traditional monastic community. 

Saint Benedict

My favorite icon of St. Benedict written by Sr. Mary Charles McGough is explained here.

Today we remember his death in 543.

A nice writeup at Narrow at the Outset. The beginning of Spring is a good day to think on the call to listen.

 

Leaving people alone.

The readings in Benedict's Rule (Chapters 23-30) and Insights for the Ages have been on excommunication this week. These are difficult chapters with the potential for the kind of harsh treatment and judgmental behavior that many of us associate with organized religion. Perhaps it is because I have been thinking on the themes of silence, wilderness and desert as Lent has begun. Certainly Chittister's commentary helps soothe some of the language of sixth century practice. But I have noticed as I age that sometimes it is just best to let God be God and leave people alone. My constant chatter, analysis and tip lists - as sincere and helpful as I want them to be - end up providing either confusion or an excuse to avoid the problem at hand. And certainly it takes the wisdom of more than me, a community, to recognize when someone needs to stop being soothed and may need some time alone.

Or as Chittister writes, "It is not supportive to deny people the right and the environment to think a situation through, to recommit themselves, to gain perspective, to work things out without dividing the community over them. Sometimes pain itself cures."

- more on these chapters here.

Potato/Pot-ah-to

Have you ever been mid-conversation when you realize that you've read a whole bunch of books about things but you've never really talked to someone about those things and so you are pronouncing everything wrong? It's like learning a new language which sounds romantic but actually means "embarrassing myself in public".

It's like the time a friend of mine and I were explaining the English phrase "bats in the belfry" to a friend while I was living in France. Not knowing the word for bats, we franglicized the word "mammal" and said "mammals that fly". Our friend said that was a VERY strange phrase. Of course, later we realized "mammal" with a french accent actually means "breast". Somewhere in France, there may be a person who still  believes that when English speakers think someone is crazy, they say they have flying breasts in their bell towers.

Oh, I have many more examples displaying my own ignorance especially when it comes to names of authors and places. So I asked Thoughts on the Way the Abbey  for permission to publish some pronunciations from the names for the hours that he shared on the Onehouse online forum.

I am here to help you my friends (blind leading less blind or batty leading less batty...) and to keep you from having strange objects fly in your bell towers as we learn new things together. Favorite bat quote: "You wouldn't hurt a bat with glasses on would you?" (A prize to the first person who emails and identifies the source of that quote.)

Lauds is "lawds"

Terce is "terse"

None rhymes with bone

Compline is ComplINN

You forgot "Vigils"  :) But I'm sure the pronunciation of that one is no problem.

Also, perhaps you knew this already, but I didn't know it until I started hanging with them regularly, the Benedictines don't call themselves BenedictEENS as I have often heard them called, but BenedictINNS.

Ok, other funky (Benedictine) words.The 4 stages of lectio divina:

Lectio.  I thought it was like "lektio".  Every Benedictine I've ever heard say it says it like "lexio".

And meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio they pronounce with the SEE-OH in them too, like meditatSEE-OH, oratSEE-OH, and contemplatSEE-OH.

Humility revisited.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I usually give a heads up when Insights for the Ages, Chittister's online commentary on Benedict's Rule, comes to the section on humility. I summarized the findings here for those whose plates are too full for yet another piece of reading. But it is worth reading through. This part of the rule is delicious like chocolate even though it is good for me like broccoli. Mmmmm. Choco-li.