January 16: power

After not speaking to anyone for four days straight, I’ve realized that it is hard to have social power in a place where one cannot speak. A monastery is a place for silent contemplation, for prayer, for work, for respect. Frivolity has no place in a monastery. It was for me a strange mixture of familiar and unfamiliar—for I am not a monk. I not Catholic, but Protestant. I am not even a man (which tends to be a requirement for being a monk).

And so I felt out of place and unsure of myself, conspicuous to any watching eyes as I wandered somewhat self-consciously. The notes and even the words for the Psalms sung at prayer were strange to me, and I was thankful for the liturgy; yet there were many parts which were not included (due to the variation of the services throughout the year). At times the silence was almost oppressive—meals were eaten without speaking, making it somewhat awkward to meet the eyes of any of the other people. It was almost as if we were each shadows haunting the place, each alone, not wishing to acknowledge the presence of the others. But the avoidance and the silence were freeing in a way as well. I was allowed to be unsure of myself the first few times I attended prayer. No one took notice of the things I unwittingly did wrong or omitted; and no one took notice of the things I did right, either. No one really has power in a monastery (at least not how we think of power). All are humble before God.

Noise and speech are how we assert our presence in the world. Without them, we feel as though we are less real, less substantial, as though we are treading through a dream world—or as though we ourselves are the dream. (And whose dream is it, I wonder?)

January 15: lost

As the saying goes, not all who wander are lost, and this is true—but not all who wander are not lost, either. If one has a specific goal in mind, one will get there and back without too much difficulty; but once one begins to wander, it is not until one turns back after taking one fork and then another that one realizes that one cannot remember the way.

I had this experience as I was attempting to explore the vast land that belongs to the Abbey of Gethsemani. I have an extremely weak sense of direction and have trouble reading maps, and so the map I had of the nearby grounds was not very helpful. I set out trying to get to a lookout point, and I eventually arrived at what I thought was the lookout point, but I couldn’t be sure, as the trails were lacking in much signage. Eventually, I gave up trying to get anywhere in particular and decided to see where the different trails led. Unfortunately, I took for granted the fact that the Abbey owns many, many acres of land—which meant that when I eventually decided to head back to my room, I soon realized just how far I had wandered (and, more importantly, that I had no idea how to get back). 

In theory, I probably could have gotten back simply by retracing my steps, but that would have been incredibly inefficient. Instead, I wanted to keep heading in the direction of the monastery from where I already was. Two hours later, I had made it back, but I realized (much to my chagrin), that had I simply retraced my steps—wandering though they had been—I would have been more timely and sure about my path.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

The problem is that turning back is hard (because we are proud, proud people). It seems so counterintuitive that turning back should be more progressive than going forward. Yet if we continue to go on the path our feet have found, we run the risk of becoming taken farther in the wrong direction. Turning back—though it might not potentially be the most direct route—is the best option, because it requires conscientiously traveling over familiar territory in search of the goal.

January 13: seeking God’s face

As soon as you are really alone you are with God.

 

Do not flee to solitude from the community. Find God first in the community; then he will lead you to solitude.

 

Those who live with God also live for him, but they do not live in what they do for him; they live in what they are before him. Their life is to reflect him by their own simplicity and by the perfection of his being reflected in their poverty.

 

We find God in our own being which is the mirror of God.

But how do we find our being?

Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act we have no way of knowing what we are… Hence we cannot find the depths of our being by renouncing all activity… Hence to find our spiritual being we must travel down the path made by our spiritual activity.

– Thomas Merton

January 14: open

Solitude is something that seems so straightforward and simple when I am sitting by myself in my dorm common room, listening to music and writing blog posts or reading, but when I first come to a situation where solitude is my only option, I am out of my depth. 

The monastery was a place where I was unfamiliar with everything around me. There were rules and a schedule, but nothing was specifically required of me. There were no expectations; and coming from a world where expectations and obligations are what drive us to do, do, do all the time, it was unsettling to be allowed to do what I wished. It felt wrong. For all anyone cared, I could have sat in my room for four days and done nothing. I had the option to go on hikes or go to prayer, but I didn’t have to. I didn’t even have to go to meals. 

When I arrived at the monastery, I was afraid of wasting the time given to me. I wanted to rethink my life and evaluate my relationships and experience spiritual growth. I wanted to discover a new sense of calm and feel refreshed an inspired. I wanted to relearn how to listen and pray.

But these things cannot be forced. In one sense, I did waste most of my time at the monastery because I was afraid of failing—of not having an epiphany where all the stress in my life made sense and went away. I wanted to be open, but the experience was so unlike anything I had ever done before—there weren’t even any hoops to jump through—that I was at a loss for how to gague my “success.” 

It wasn’t as if the experience held no merit for me—far from it (hopefully I will find time post in the future about these things). However, it was not what I was expecting. And I needed to realize that that’s okay—it’s okay to be at a loss and not feel fully prepared. It’s okay to explore and wander and try different things. It’s okay to not find fulfillment in an activity—because the experience of trying shows that there are some things that won’t work for certain people.

Learning to embrace uncertainty and contentment in the midst of uncertainty is incredibly valuable in a time where the push toward being competent and prepared in all circumstances cultivates a debilitating fear of the vengeful god Failure.

January 11: hands and feet

Hands & Feet

January 10: learning to lose

Humility is the most fundamental but most difficult of all the virtues. Without humility, there can be no community; yet discovering how to be humble is not self-evident. As it relates to community, however, it is not too difficult to know what is desirable behavior. The difficult part is acting out what it right.

As humans, we strive for affirmation. We desire to be recognized as intelligent, beautiful, witty, virtuous. And when we interact with others, we have a tendency to try to display those things in order to gain affirmation for them. Yet this sense of self-centered entitlement can turn a characteristic statement or action into a contest to prove who is the best—the most intelligent, the most beautiful, the most witty, the most virtuous.

And it is these types of contests, even between good friends in a tight community—especiallybetween good friends in a tight community—that keep us from living and loving as we should. Contests put members of a community on the defensive and prevent vulnerability and understanding between its members. 

When I go to class or hang out with my friends or spend time with my family, my goals are to have fun and to learn more about the world I live in and people I share it with. If I get wrapped up in thinking that I have somthing to prove, I will not accomplish any of these things. If I sit in class and become frustrated with my professor or my classmates or the content to the point where I write off the class and in retaliation keep a list of all the things that are wrong with the whole experience, I have failed my better nature by refusing to learn. If I constantly correct my friends’ grammar and word choice for accuracy and clarity (even in a sarcastic, humorous way), I run the risk of alienating the people I love dearly to the point where our time together has been soured. My need to feel superior forces those I spend time with to assert their own talents in defense, and instead of becoming closer, we become wary of one another and unwilling to be open and vulnerable for fear of being hurt. And if I talk back to my family members (even if I think that I am only explaining myself), what began as a annoyed remark or a thoughtless comment suddenly becomes a serious quarrel.

If there is anything good within me, it is what my Creator has placed there. Therefore, what have I to prove to anyone? And the people with whom I share love and space and reality, they are just like me in this respect. What have I to fear from any of them?

Without fellowship where Christ’s presence is evident, I will be shut off from true community. And without that community, I become unable to hear God’s speaking in my solitude. 

But when we act according to grace, our actions are not ours alone; they belong to God. If we follow them to their source, we will become at least potentially capable of an experience of God. For his actions reveal his being in us.

It is difficult, but necessary, to put on the role of the smaller man. 

January 9: poverty

One of the questions that was asked of us this week as we discussed Benedictine practices was “If you could be guaranteed that your needs for the rest of your life would be taken care of, would you be willing to take a vow of poverty?”

My initial response was that I would be completely willing to give up worldly cares in order to be freed from things such as grades and a career and the fear of failure and instead devote my life to poverty and prayer. But then, what about my books? If I had to renounce all my possessions and live as the monks do, would I really be able to do it? Would I be able to give up my laptop, where I keep my half-finished novels and my access to the Internet?

The problem with these sorts of choices, is that they look so good in theory, when we are able to think about the benefits and ignore the limitations. Yet this way of thinking is mere selfishness. The point of choosing poverty is not that it is what will benefit me, but that it is what will allow me to serve God and others more faithfully. Therefore, any limitations should be seen as blessings, as they will encourage me to cling to God as I should. 

It is easy for us to let go of the things that we hold loosely or that we see other people holding tightly. There is little merit in saying that I am willing to give up having lots of money or clothes or a phone because these are things I am not attached to. But it is extremely difficult for me to let go of the things that I have bound to myself and have incorporated as parts of my identity. 

True poverty is a state of mind. It is easy to let go of physical objects; it is difficult to let go of ideals or beliefs. 

Poverty is not merely a matter of not having “things.” It is an attitude which leads us to renounce some of the advantages which come from the use of things… Poverty can bear on things like our opinion, our “style,” anything that tends to affirm us as distinct from others, as superior to others in such a way that we take satisfaction in these peculiarities and treat them as “possessions.”

To be poor in spirit is to hold all things loosely, to view nothing as exclusively “mine”—no personality trait, no worldview, no physical possession. There is no sense of entitlement; the person who is poor in spirit knows exactly what he is, knows that there is no hope or gain to be found in what he is, and therefore rejoices because all things to be hoped for are outside of himself and only to be found in the Father through Christ. 

January 8: thoughts without solitude

This interim, I came back from a time where I was free to do what I chose, and so I rested and read and went for walks and spoke to my parents. Now that I am back, however, I have been attempting to cram in as much time with others as I can in order to get through all the activities offered before second semester begins. And as a result of my two weeks of relative solitude, I feel extremely restless because I am taking in so much from readings and lectures and don’t have time to think and process.

And not being able to stop and think frustrates me, to the point where I can be sitting in my Monasticism class and have no idea what my professor is saying, because something he said sparked off a thought trail of something else that I want to reflect on, and I am not able to do that in peace.

Of course, this lack and subsequent desire for solitude is something I have brought upon myself, but it forced me to realize that this is going to happen next semester, and that I will therefore have to prioritize and focus on the things that will help me grow.

Bonhoeffer talks about the balance of solitude and community in Life Together. He writes: “let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.” He goes on to explain that for fellowship in community to be fruitful, there needs to be time for the individuals who make up the community to be alone.

The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.

The remedy for being more prone towards exclusive solitude is not simply to always seek out community. And the converse is also true: people who feel drawn to be around others should not try to be alone for long periods of time. In either case, the person will not be able to appreciate the new state because the other is necessary to prevent burnout.

Extremes are easy, but they can also be dangerous. Instead, learning moderation and balance is what will be most widely beneficial—especially for those of us who are learning the habits which we will practice when we are living on our own and have more freedom.

January 7: the need for control

It has only been three days of class so far, and already I’m having problems. When I realized that I was experiencing frustration, I decided to step back and think about the class itself in the context of the readings I have been doing—and I came back with some interesting observations.

My first observation was that I had a lot of positive expectations for this class, based on what other people had told me as well as what I envisioned the class to be like. The problem with expectations is that when I cling to my vision of what reality is supposed to look like, I shut out any other possibilities. And if those other possibilities are my reality, I become angry—and therefore lose the potential for a different but potentially equally good experience. 

I have very high expectations for those who are in authority—and especially for my teachers, as they are the ones who are supposed to be filling my brain with information. Teachers always have my initial respect, because being a teacher is a daunting and blessed task. Yet I will not blindly follow someone who seems to not know what he or she is doing. Therefore, I have even higher expectations for the teachers of subjects that are more important to my growth as a Christian—because what they teach me will weigh heavily on how my walk with Christ plays out. And this is such a class.

I keep finding myself disappointed and frustrated with the class and my professor. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I was wrong to choose something I have spent time thinking and reading about a few months ago instead of something that has been on my heart in this point in my life. Perhaps I have moved past this and there is nothing left for me to learn. But another part of me scoffed at that, because I am too intelligent to think that I have nothing left to learn about being a disciple. But I might not be too far off.

I went into this coming from a very good Christian educational background, which means that (in theory, anyway), I have a lot of knowledge. I also come from an experience in Ray VanderLaan’s Discipleship class and years living in community at Turning Pointe in the Ensemble. Yet because I thought that I was beyond the things we went through in class, that did not mean that there was nothing I could take away from it. 

I began to realize then that I was doing exactly what Bonhoeffer was telling me not to do. I was projecting my own experiences and expectations onto the class instead of allowing the community to be itself. And in that way, I was limiting the flourishing of the classroom community because I was trying to force it to conform to some notion I had. But I am no more knowledgeable or wise than anyone else in that classroom; who am I to be in charge?

Community is about more than everyone being similar. Community is more than a contract or a mission statement. A community is made up of dynamic, fallen people—and as such, it needs to be allowed space to grow and reform in different ways. Therefore, its members need to be able to open themselves to the possibility of what could be, and let go our claims to control. Ultimately, the community is not about me. It is not even about the other people. Community should be about Christ—otherwise it will fail.

Author’s Note: New Monasticism

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? What with classes and Christmas Break. Hopefully I will be more faithful at least through this interim—especially through this interim. The class I am taking is called “The New Monasticism,” and in it, the students are reading a handful of books which talk about the monastic life and how it can be lived in the 21st century. As part of the class, we will be traveling to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky to spend a week living with the monks and seeing monasticism lived out in the traditional sense. 

In many ways, this class feeds directly out of my experiences taking RVL’s Discipleship class and traveling to Israel—and one of the books I am reading (Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer) directly talks about community, which is a subject that has been weighing on my mind as I learn to live in a dorm and consider becoming an RA next year. Therefore, my reflections on this class will be those of a Christian learning to live in Christ-centered community in a way that encourages whole-hearted discipleship.