Posts filed under 'Benedictine'
May 1st, 2008
May dawns gray. My screen dawns a dull white. I yearn for the sun and long for words transcendent. Words that commune as much as communicate.
I have most of the tools of communication at my disposal but what I need most is communion. I’m not alone.
We are blessed with a broad spectrum of mediums. But we’re neophytes when it comes to recognizing and understanding this blessing. It almost seems that there is an inverse relationship between the number of methods of communication and true communion. We live in this place, over-turned, unaware, missing the forest for the trees, where communication either obscures or masquerades as communion.
Yesterday, a friend pointed out the difference between communion and communication, and how we often confuse the two. As a father, he had believed that when in conversation with his children he needed an outcome, and that without one there was a failure of communication, an opportunity was missed, a point of intimacy lost. He desired and aimed for communion, but got stuck at communication. A deep desire for communion’s intimacy was lost in a kind of forced communication. When we shine a light on the two, the difference between communication and communion becomes obvious enough. But in practice, we muddy them up. We fall prey to the illusion of utility. That is, we trust communication technique over the art of communion.
Perhaps it’s our culture, perhaps it’s our insecurities, our fear, our impatience. Perhaps we are bewitched by management and order. Communication is hailed as generative of outcomes and so we construct and manipulate and are left without that special kind of energy that enables us to release and wait–waiting being a particular kind of trust.
But the good news is that our adolescent infatuation with technique–the same technique that we also use to shield us from communion–can be transformed. We can grow up. We can awaken to the truth that all streams of media are handmaidens of communion. Beguiled no longer we can take back the end from the means. We can call…just to talk. We can try silence in the presence of friends. We can play, walk, breath, break bread, commune.
If we enter the art, we find that life has its own order. Ours is to trust life to lead us into communion. Ours is to listen to life, as St. Benedict exhorts, “with the ear of the heart.” And it’s here we find communion within time and play. Just so–in the middle of a spontaneous egg fight in the backyard with his son, my friend found communion.
December 9th, 2007
In a discussion about truth on a Benedictine forum I’m on, it occurred to me that I can become quite dogmatic in my belief that access to ultimate truth is impossible; as dogmatic as some who hold to the accessibility of ultimate truth. The irony was not lost on me. In any case, in trying to explain my position just a bit more, I think I may be dismissed by both fundamentalists and liberal-liberals. As follows:
What I’ve needed to do is distance myself from the category “Ultimate Truth,” because when I lifted the cover I found that it was an “ideal,” an apotheosis, a non-such, and so in the end it didn’t touch me. In other words, I believe “Ultimate Truth” is disembodied truth. And the claimed possession of this category of truth is what lies inside every form of fundamentalism.
I held to this in a kind of half-conscious way through much of my early life until it got to me in a truly existential way–over several classes and coffees with a recalcitrant philosophy professor–that as a contingent being I could have no direct contact with the ultimate ground of Being, or rather, the transcendent ideal of all Perfection.
Subsequently, my heart’s attraction to St. Benedict was his earthy, fleshy, communal, faith. This, and his sign-off humility that if I find a better way, a practice that corresponds to reality more fully, and therefore holds more fruit, well, then, I should seek it out.
(Intermission: Upon exiting the show pavilion in the Muttart last weekend we were informed that all the multi-coloured poinsettia’s, with of course the exception of the red and white ones, were painted. So some silliness here. Is the statement: ”This is a blue poinsettia,” true or false? )
To my mind it’s better to drop the adjective and simply talk about truth. Jesus never said, he was the “ultimate” truth, as if ultimate was somehow more “truthy” than regular truth.
When Jesus says he is the truth, he is making truth accessible. He is saying that truth is found, discovered, learned, in relationship, and specifically in a relationship with him, and therefore profoundly and mysteriously, in relationships with our neighbours.
He is saying–by virtue of relational not relative truth–that truth has a shape, has contours, and so may look different from different angles but that this doesn’t make it false. What’s more, he is saying that we will continually be lead into truth if we keep our ears open to the Spirit he sent. But that this truth is still always mediated truth. And, in this he is disassociating himself from the “Greek” or “Platonic” notion of truth–from where the idea of “Ultimate Truth” sprang.
“Ultimate Truth” is, again, not accessible because its claim is that it is beyond the personal. Which, unless one has received some kind of unmediated emanation, would make it the most untrustworthy sort of “truth.” (If “Ultimate Truth” was accessible, other people would not be required.)
Some years ago and someplace in here I had to hold up a mirror and see that my marching banner of “Ultimate Truth” was not only a phantom, it was also effacing and condescending and that it effectively relativized other truths and ways of understanding and so broke off any dialogue before it began. I had to recognize my own part in creating, if not hostility, a profound indifference to the Church and the Christian faith.
November 4th, 2007
Yesterday:
We’re in Montana’s, with its open beams and front end of a truck through the roof and all-you-can-eat ribs on Wednesday. Waitresses, some perky, some lazy, move through the general clamour with over-sized menus and over-sized plates of food. One cheerful server makes her way to our shellacked pine-plank table with its brown paper cover that is already being coloured on and asks about drink selections.
In this moment I watch my son with his daughter and her two year old brother and I think that he has decided somewhere and early on that he wanted to be a better father than the one he had. I’m pained and overjoyed at the thought. His ease with the kids and sense of play-fun and his never using the word careful is a delight to behold. And it uncovers in me an empty spot.
I’ve been absent for much of his growing-up years–his elementary and adolescent and teen years. Geography played a role. But also, my own sense of helplessness and fear and avoidance of memory and pain–much of it guilt induced–played equal parts.
I’ve not been a model father. Yes, I know, there are few model fathers. But learning fatherhood from my son, who has not had an easy first couple of decades and who has been in forms of trouble culminating at one point in his being the object of an “intervention,” was not, I suppose, what I’d expected. But there it is…and here in Montana’s I see it. I’ve seen something of life’s quotidian layers with its striations of strange moments and this comes as one more confusing and liberating moment.
Today:
As I browse the small book store in St. Peter’s Abbey, with it’s honour system purchasing policy, I consider writing my own Benedictine book; “Confessions of an Unfaithful Oblate.”
I’m afraid, even here at the Abbey, I pray and meditate best while walking behind the monastery along the easy maze of paths in the scrub poplar and hazelnut and dogwood, smoking a cigar. Today I notice life and death played out in all this under-and-overgrowth. I see what I take for a barb of sadness in a solitary Blue jay. And I see a bring-on-the-cold vigor in the Black-capped chickadees; all winter they will call out sweety-peety–a name I gave my daughter when she was old enough to walk in the woods with me. A name she still smiles at.
In this moment I realize I’ve come to the monastery to be confronted with my bits of infidelity. That is, my suspect self-discipline and shoddy time habits; ostensibly, my infidelity to live out a promise. Not a new thing for me. I need the paths and the walls of this place to square my life again. More, I need the fully-present presence of my mentor-monk to reassure me that I’m always salvageable and that my own odd reflecting presence adds something good back in.
Tomorrow:
Who knows what fugitive moments may be captured and held.
June 30th, 2007
My hour with the Spiritual Formation class–a diverse group, ages, backgrounds, professions–was actually a delightful experience. And I know Deb’s presentation of the Enneagram was great…many comments.
I talked about Benedictine spirituality and mindfulness, and on spiritual disciplines. I was encouraged by the reception and the questions.
One question–a hard one–was whether I thought my spiritual formation, my Benedictine path, was making me a better person.
How do I measure that? I did find something like an answer. In 1984, when I began volunteering in Edmonton’s inner city, I was out to save people…but I didn’t really see people. Today, that agenda is gone. I can no longer fathom seeing people as ministry opportunities. I see them, like I see myself, simply and profoundly human, trying to make sense of this world and our place in it.
To a certain sectarian view of Christianity I have lost my way. I think I’m finding it.
Thank you Briercrest Seminary and everyone in the Formation class. (For anyone interested in references or whatever, I’ve posted my presentation in the Benedictine Journey page.)
Technorati Tags: Briercrest, Missionary or Mission Field, Benedictine Path, Christianity, Spiritual Formation
March 26th, 2007
For reasons that are often beyond me I feel a kind of beneficent breeze every time I go out to St.Peter’s Abbey, in Saskatchewan.
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But there is nothing romantic about this monastery. Most of the twenty five or so monks who remain are old, many are tired, and a couple are infirm. Young monks enter, but it’s unlikely their numbers will overcome the attrition rate.
Brother Pius
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Sometimes it feels to me that perennial winter has set in on the Abbey. And yet they remain, living together, wearing their black habits, working at their given tasks. And then at the sound of the bell, five times each day, from Lauds to Vigils, they drop what they are doing and walk to the chapel for another half hour of chanting and praying the Psalms. And it is prayer they hope to be shaped by.
Brother Francis, afflicted with Alzheimer’s towards the end of his long life, was, until his death, always wheeled to the chapel by the brothers for prayer. He would often startle visitors by suddenly shouting out bits of the Psalms. The Psalms remained when everything else was gone.
It’s this counter attitude that attracts me and keeps bringing me back to the monastery. I am more than curious by their belief that being cloistered within a monastery, while sharing everything and owning nothing, is a freer way of life, and that before anything else it is a good way of living the gospel.
I too long to be schooled in love and service, as St. Benedict rejoins in his Rule. I too long for emancipation from the unspoken dictates of culture and its slavery to fashion and "correct thought". But I’m not that stable, open to conversion, or obedient (the three vows). Just thankful for the guys in black scapular’s who are.
The monasteries black-capped (of course) chickadees love peanut crumbs
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With Father James in his hermitage
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My mentor, Father James OSB
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Technorati Tags: St. Peter’s Abbey, Benedictine, Christianity, Peace, Religion, Spirituality
March 24th, 2007
To navigate is to know. There is no knowing beyond the bounds of what has been navigated. But there are shadings, outlines, possibilities.
I’ve been navigating the monastery for six years–four years as an Oblate. And this weekend I’m here at St. Peter’s Abbey for another "Oblate day."
Summer at St Peter’s Abbey
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Here’s my overly romantic notion of the monastery:
For me St. Peter’s Abbey is a little ship. It slips in and out of ports, staying clear of the clutches of commodification. It usually only docks at night. And so its silent inconspicuous presence is only noticed by lovers that might be strolling the harbour or the moonlit shores.
Lovers are there because as lovers they have taken time to slow down their souls and seed their passion. They see the ship…still and berthed.
The little ship leaves just before dawn, long before the malls open. It is missed by most. There’s no memory of its stay on the surface of the salt water. It only lingers in the minds of the lovers who later that night will tell their friends in the café.
Technorati Tags: St. Peter’s Abbey, Oblates, Benedictine, Christianity, Spirituality
February 11th, 2007
Yesterday at the Muttart conservatory
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…so that I may walk before God in the light of life. (Psalm 56)
I began wearing a crucifix over seven years ago. I was going to a Christian Missionary Alliance church at the time and was in fact an elder of the church. Of course I wore the crucifix under my shirt, next to my skin, where I could feel it, and no one else was the wiser.
It was a mild–and except for a few close friends and my wife–a discreet form of protest against the convictions that my church held. Convictions that for whatever reason, felt increasingly alien to me.
That a crucifix might be seen as a protest will seem odd to most people beyond the borders of Church things. But within the Evangelical house, in this case, the Alliance house built by A. B. Simpson, I knew it was a wedge in the door.
My "protest" was something that I didn’t plan. I had no map, no manifesto; there was no dress-code.
Stepping closer to the crack in the door, I saw a different landscape. A landscape of ragged convictions and a kaleidoscope of uncertainty. "Out there," because of the climate, or perhaps just because, people dressed differently.
Light through leaf
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The dislodged door, with the strange light flowing in, proved impossible to ignore. And so, still within the "safety" of my Christian and Missionary closet I began trying on different clothes. I started slow, an item at a time, looking in the mirror, wondering where these new clothes would take me. And in moments of secret panic, I wondered if I could really leave house and home. But after squeezing through the door and walking around outside for stretches, I knew that there was no turning back. I knew that for me, if I stayed, the bunching and chaffing of my old wardrobe would finally leave me gangrenous.
There was no one thing, no item that I could point to and tell myself if I replaced this, then I could still put my heart into this particular cast of Christianity–or more specifically, and for lack of a better term–the Evangelical-church-enterprise. Half-consciously I had been trying this for years, with declining satisfaction. It became increasingly obvious that my wardrobe of convictions needed changing, needed something like a new base-colour. Under the strange light, it was like I had been "draped" and now everything I wore looked off, or looked dull.
Or, I suppose, it was like losing everything in a fire. While shopping for new clothes I gape at the dizzying possibilities of what I could end up hanging in my bedroom, and I wonder how it was, that I used to habitually bring home grey sweats.
I can’t say exactly when all this started but I think my wearing a crucifix both symbolized and energized the inevitability of journeying beyond the creedal door of certainty. This is not to say that I’m unaware of my indebtedness to the tradition I’m leaving behind. In more ways than I know, it has made me the better part of who I am. What’s more, it gave me some of the resources with which to make my exit. But the exit was unavoidable and necessary.
And now, there’s no end in sight. I know this because a year after I bought my first crucifix, because of my interest in St. Benedict and monastic spirituality, a close friend gave me a Benedictine crucifix. A couple years later the miniature Jesus fell off. I had a strong impulse to glue him back on immediately. But I waited. Some of this was no doubt procrastination, but more of my waiting was to see just how it felt without him.
There’s no way that slight, silvery, two-inch Jesus should have made a difference, but it felt noticeably lighter.
Well, now, he’s disappeared all together. And I wouldn’t know where to look to find him. Thing is, now "he’s" showing up all over the place, and more often. Who knows where it will end.
Orchid Cross
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Technorati Tags: Crucifix, Evangelical Church, Christian Missionary Alliance, Benedictine, Christianity, Religion, Spirituality
December 29th, 2006
An old prayer for a new year:
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Zeckariah)
There are saints that live out and enjoy bone deep peace. They live around us undetected, and on some level hold our world together.
They love peace. They have loved peace so much as to be guided into peace’s domain.
Ice climber in Malign canyon (January 2003)
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I love peace too, but I fear I mostly love it on my own terms…when my little world is right…which of course isn’t true peace. So perhaps I don’t really love it. I mean really love it.
Because sweet peace, deep peace, is something that lives beyond acquisition, competition, reputation and the fear of death in all its subtle forms.
Well, here’s lifting a glass to at least taking another step in the "way of peace."
Technorati Tags: Peace
December 28th, 2006
In this week’s Vue:
Here’s some advice that is so sound and sweet and sensible that it deserves all kinds of dissemination. Thanks Connie Howard! Spread the love and the caviar.
Happy New Year!
December 27th, 2006
Sometimes we say things without thinking–perhaps even in jest–that turn out to be truer than anything we could have consciously come up with.
Some time ago Judy followed the slight tug of a half-formed impulse, stoped her car in front of the house of a casual friend of hers, walked to the stoop and rang the doorbell. Her friend had been ill and upset and was feeling desperate for some encouragement. Things with her family weren’t well. After she poured out her story, she asked plaintively, "Where is God in all this?" Before catching herself, Judy said, "Here I am!"
An untitled sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins ends with these lines:
Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
How mysterious, how wonderful that Christ plays in ten thousand places, that Christ plays in us.
Benedictine spirituality also teaches us to contemplate Christ’s presence in all of us, and especially the hungry, the lonely, the imprisoned.
Perhaps more difficult, is to contemplate the presence of Christ in your relatives, co-workers, neighbours. Or maybe most difficult, in you.
The reality, wether sensed or not, is that even now, in some place, in a thousand places, God is present, happening, entering a conversation, joining an event, moved by a touch, delighted by a greeting, at play in people eating and drinking together.
As some poets say, In God we live, and move, and have our being.
Technorati Tags: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Beauty, Benedictine, Christianity, Peace
Previous Posts
We are blessed with a broad spectrum of mediums. But we’re neophytes when it comes to recognizing and understanding this blessing. It almost seems that there is an inverse relationship between the number of methods of communication and true communion. We live in this place, over-turned, unaware, missing the forest for the trees, where communication either obscures or masquerades as communion.
The Veranda collapsed under the weight of a winter snow, so I built a Front Porch.
