A recent selfie!
The day I write this, I
realized during my morning prayers that they are my entrance to “my”
monastic community. I put “my” in quotes because the community in which I’ve
been blessed to participate has never been mine alone, but that of generations
of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Native peoples, Celtic
peoples, and more—past, present, and future, from every people and culture.
And,
in my heart, I join you who read this or who have read anything I’ve written,
because you are a part of me as I am a part of you. And you too enjoy the same
contemplative community whenever possible.
I
guess this all began yesterday afternoon as I went through “Mom’s box” of my
life’s souvenirs. Mom saved things that I had forgotten I had written and
published, as well as articles about my work and announcements about
presentations I had forgotten. And she included a file of my stuff labelled
“Chris” in Dad’s handwriting, indicating he had done likewise.
Reading
and writing words has been my way into a spiritual community vaster than I ever
imagined when I was a child. And it has been my way into discovering a God
grander than could ever be “captured” by mere words, even those of the Bible.
As
happened this morning, my morning prayers are often a means of continuing
conversion and more comprehensive understanding, providing continuity to my
(and our) disparate experiences. I continue reflection begun several weeks ago
on Benedictine John Main’s Letters from the Heart. He writes of the monastic
experience:
More and more it will fulfill its prophetic role
by living in the cities where the experience of community and of spirit are all
but lost. There, in these modern deserts, it will bloom by the proof of the
power of faith and absolute generosity to achieve the impossible in liberty of
spirit. “Let the wilderness and thirsty land be glad; Let the desert rejoice
and burst into flower” (Isaiah 35:1). [ p 75]
I
thought of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the early Christian monastics who
went off into the wilderness to pray. Now we, in our own “deserts,” may hear
the call to take what I call in my retreats “monastic moments,” opportunities
to look inward, to listen to our own hearts, undistracted.
Of
visitors to his monastery, Main writes,
They think they will find God in the terms they
have imagined until then. But instead they first find themselves—recognized,
known, and inexplicably loved. And because of that experience their
expectations begin to change. They no longer seek a God of their own imagining.
Instead, they begin to expand in the presence of the God they know to be beyond
thought or image. [p 72]
And,
he adds, “They now realize that God is seeking them. They must simply be
still and allow themselves to be found.” [p 72-73]
We
are called, Main says, to shape a community where others may also find their
way, at the same time recognizing it is not “ours” but God’s. He correctly
cites Bonhoeffer’s warning that an idealistic view of community leads only to
disappointment, either in God, in others, or in oneself. The Rule of Saint
Benedict describes the essence of Christian community as loving people as they
are.
I will again be co-leading
a 5-day contemplative retreat April 27-May 1, 2020 in Cullman, Alabama, through
the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Theological Seminary. It is open to
the public.
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Copyright © 2019 by Chris
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