Anam Cara…

Anam cara, soul friends – they aren’t so easy to come by. There’s a lot more to “making friends” than being overtly bold and chummy on first acquaintance. Something happens beneath the surface of encounters with soul friends. Something that feels drawn, woven, connected, oddly inexplicable.

On Wednesday, after Vespers, I am graced with just such an encounter. Two of them, actually. Sitting in the lobby, waiting on the dinner bell, I find myself in conversation with Jan – a Methodist minister from Kansas who is on sabbatical. She’s vibrant, full of life, easy to talk to. Not long after MaryAnn joins in the soft chatter, in walks Micha – a stay-at-home mom and writer who is exploring Benedictine spirituality. My attention is drawn to Jan and Micha. They are on my end of the age demographic I have seen, in my limited monastic experience, represented at the monastery. We exchange introductory information, enough to set off fireworks in my gut, this strange feeling that I already know them somehow and that I’d like to know them better.

The dinner bell rings and as we head up the stairs, I invite Jan and Micha to join MaryAnn and I on a walk to the lake after we eat.

I’m waiting in the lobby after dinner to meet up with the ladies and head out, and Brother Shawn happens through the room. He stops to chat, and I tell him we’re planning to walk to the lake. He asks if we’d mind him coming along.

Well…
Being as we are all at a Benedictine monastery, intrigued by the lives of these faithful men and women who have chosen to give themselves so fully in their expression of devotion – of course we won’t mind the Brother’s company on our walk.

We’re all gathered now, plus another walking companion – Randy has decided to come along – and we set out. Quietly we make our way down the hallway, past the chapel and the guestmaster’s office. I’m reminded of our silent meals as together we partake in the silence of the hallways while listening to the symphony, not of clinking silverware and creaking floors but of clothes swishing and feet padding over the carpeted floor.

We file through the door just past the guestmaster’s office and stand in view of the chapel windows, on the hill overlooking the meadow. I pause to acknowledge the sacred beauty of the scene. It is a cessation of movement – the motion in my body comes to a gentle standstill and my thoughts follow suit, suspended in utter stillness. I know I’m probably not alone in this, as more than one pair of eyes is drawn magnetically to the lush green “sea, vast and wide.”

We hesitate to speak, to upset the center of balance in the silence of the meadow that perches with nearly visible grace in the air around us. But once we’ve made our way down the hill, onto the wide path that fringes the meadow, a certain delight swells up and the presence of soul friends proves too much even for that blessed silence to bear. Conversation begins, softly at first and then, without our noticing, more comfortably audacious.

(Monastery Summer 2010, post 12)

Pulling weeds…

As breakfast comes to a close on Wednesday morning, I hear MaryAnn whispering to Sister Helen (breakfast in silence, remember?) about their morning plans for weed-pulling. Not eager to spend the entire day with Baldy, I wonder if it would be weird to invite myself along. Probably. I decide against it.

With plate, fork, napkin, and coffee cup put in their proper after-meal places, I turn to head downstairs. I walk past Mary Ann, who is just taking the last bites of her french toast. Quite to my own surprise, I lean over and ask in a whisper if they might want some help pulling weeds. She says they be more than happy to have another pair of hands, that I can meet them in about thirty minutes.

Out of the dining room, down the stairs, I pass through the silent hallways, push through a door and stand on the hillside behind the guestrooms. Looking at the meadow. It feels almost naughty to have nothing “better” to do than stand and gawk at a field for a full half hour. But there’s life. Gratitude once again rises in my chest and I could almost, almost run over the hillside like Julie Andrews, break out in my own loud and probably off-tune “THE HILLS ARE ALIVE…”

I refrain from doing so. Call it pride, but MaryAnn and Sister Helen have already started their work and I’m eager to join them. Sister Helen provides gloves and a hat, neither of which I think will be needed – but I am quickly proven wrong.

The weeds are tangled and some of their stubborn roots take my full weight to even break off at the top! Even though it’s early in the day, the sun is already quite warm and I’m thankful for the wide brim of the hat, flopping onto my shoulders. Sweat gathers on my forehead and reaches down to cool my burning face. I can feel the back of my neck slowly baking, and I don’t really care.

Sister Helen leaves to take care of other chores and MaryAnn asks about me, my schooling, my church, how I found this monastery, and more. I ask about her desire to be in community here, her decision to leave, what she does now, and more. We are perfect strangers and yet…we are not. There’s a warmth and openness that unfolds between us and I’m kind of sad when it’s time to leave. But I’ve got a time set up with Todd to see more of the monastery grounds and…oops! I’m almost late…

(Monastery Summer 2010, post 11)

Ok…NOW we can go on with that busy Wednesday. Couldn’t leave out the weed-pulling!

Monastery recap

Alright. Wading back into my monastery reflections, I’m trying to remember specifically what’s already been posted…

First, I was on the road, headed north to Pecos. Arrival at the door of Pecos Benedictine Monastery, there was the transition from one world to another. I introduced you to one of the monks, Brother Shawn, and wrote about the meals in silence. There was a reflection on how the monastery seems to diminish a chronic sense of self importance, makes me wonder if I’m really the one making the world go ’round. After that, I let you in on that creepy character known as Baldy…not once but twice. After I shared some Longfellow to help describe the meadow, I wrote some about my busy Wednesday.

Ok. Reoriented to what’s been posted…I see a glaring gap in the story. So before I go into the second half of the week, I’ll take a brief detour in my next post to catch that gap and then move on…

Lordy. Would’ve been easier to write this if I’d done it with the experience fresh in mind. So be it. I could use some monastic reflection in the middle of my crazy schedule! Maybe it’ll be something of a retreat space for you, too…

Busy Wednesday

My past visits to the monastery, all I’d seen was my room, the dining room, the meadow, the library, and the bookstore. On this visit, there’s a stronger sense of friendliness with the people I bump into, which is opening doors for me to see more of this place and offering a greater sense of belonging. For instance, Yolanda, the woman in charge of housekeeping, stops me in the hallway one morning. After some pleasant chit-chat, she asks if I’ve been to the lake.

“Um, well, I’ve seen the pond…”

“No, no…there’s a lake!” Before we part ways, she gives me directions, which involve taking a small foot path past a very visible sign: “NO ENTRY. AUTHORITY: STATE GAME COMMISSION.”

On the “ten-cent tour” of the monastery, as Todd called it, I learn that the monastery has some 1,000 acres of land. We head out on a path going beyond the building that houses the library, beyond the limits of my previous ventures (imagine Samwise Gamgee tromping through a field at the beginning of the journey, “If I take one more step, it’ll be the furthest from home I’ve ever been.”) Entering what Todd calls the “monks’ playground.” I had no idea any of this was back here! The first building we pass has a number of rooms – one with a kiln, another with spinning and weaving equipment, a third set up for candle making. Oh, and they keep bees! I don’t know why, but this is just…way cool. There’s a mechanic’s garage, a woodworks, warehouse-type storage, and at least two rooms for Dove Publications. Brother Jim, I think, runs the operations here for Dove. He’s there as we walk through and we stop to chat a bit. He’s planning an outing with another retreatant to the Pecos Ruins later on and invites me to join them. The day is filling up!

As we walk through a couple of conference style rooms, Todd tells me that there have been a couple of movie crews out here. Anybody seen Crazy Heart? I haven’t (yet), but apparently there’s a scene in the movie where they’re out on a lake – that’s the monastery lake. And…the upcoming whoa-dang from the Coen Brothers? True Grit? I guess they filmed part of that here as well. Pretty freakin sweet.

The tour winds down, I sit outside for a while before Midday Prayer, then it’s up for lunch and out to the ruins. MaryAnn and I climb into the van, and Brother Jim drives us a few miles down the road to the National Monument. Cameras in hand, we venture into the heat, soak in the rich history of the valley.

By the time we’re back at the monastery, I’m worn out. Thankfully, it’s an hour or so before Vespers, so I can take a nap…

For being originally intended as a silent retreat, this day – my Busy Wednesday – has been full of activity and conversation. And it’s not over yet!

(Monastery Summer 2010, post 10)

The meadow…

Even before I made solid plans toward Pecos, I knew I’d take my journal and my camera into the struggle of finding some way to capture the essence of the monastery.

After supper on Thursday, I happen into conversation with Randy – a musician, in the most artistic sense of the word, who has experience as a photographer, God knows what else, and is an all-around seeker who’s birthday gift to himself is a retreat at a monastery in northern New Mexico. We talk about the rhythm and silence of the monastery – of course, right? Seems like this is the same reality that strikes with enormous grace every person who visits here – like a beautifully harrowing punch in the face. Randy says something that makes complete sense and that somehow I just…missed. He suggests that I sit with it – just sit and ponder, look around and see what it is about the place that most grabs my attention.
We part ways and I go outside to sit on a bench and just…look. I think about the past few days and all the places I have walked and sat, taken pictures, read, slept, and journaled. It’s no easy task to narrow things down to the places that “most” embody the essence of the place. Eventually, two things surface: the hallways, which I mentioned earlier; and the meadow.

So before I go on any further about hikes with newfound anam cara, adventures in the bookstore, or my “busy” Wednesday, you need (yes, neeeeeeed!) to get some feel for what I’m talking about when I mention “the meadow.” I wish there were a better single-word description of what (I’m almost tempted to say “who”) this is!

I sit on the bench, waiting for the bell to ring for Compline, and since the camera simply hasn’t served to fully capture the meadow, I pick up my journal and begin to write.

It’s like a giant bomb of silence went off and THIS is the lush and living crater it left behind. It’s anything but silent, really, but silence is embedded in its roots, its very DNA – in every beam of sunlight glowing through each individual leaf.

The deepest center, what draws the rest in with a stronger, more subliminal pull that gravity, is the willowy marsh. Teeming with life, it’s a literal sea of patchwork in a million seamless shades of green and red and brown. It pulses with life and moves like the sea as the wind sweeps overhead.

The silence in this center emanates outward…to the cattails…the pond…the lawn, toward the left. And to the right, a field that grows toward darker greens, then lighter browns and meets the cemetery, then the path that fringes the meadow.

I could sit and gaze on this scene literally for hours on end. I love it!

On Saturday morning, at Vigils, a Psalm is read that stops my voice mid-breath and makes me smile. Somehow, it touches the same essence I had struggled to articulate:

There is the sea, vast and wide,
With its moving swarms past counting,
Living things great and small.
The ships are moving there
and the monsters you made to play with.

Somewhere in all this looking and pondering and writing, the bottomless truth and mystery of Longfellow’s words finds a home deep in my heart.

(Monastery Summer 2010, post 9)

With Longfellow in the meadow…

On one of my many walks around the meadow (an image of the path is currently the image at the top of this page…), I brought Longfellow with me. I cracked the book open, gently turned the yellowed pages to a title that caught my eye. Flowers.

I hope you’ll have some time to read and savor it (the bits in bold were what really grabbed me…and what I’ll refer to in my next post, I think).

Flowers

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth’s firmament do shine.

Stars they are, wherein we read our history,
As astrologers and seers of eld;
Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery,
Like the burning stars, which they beheld.

Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous,
God hath written in those stars above;
But not less in the bright flowerets under us
Stands the revelation of his love.

Bright and glorious is that revelation,
Written all over this great world of ours;
Making evident our own creation,
In these stars of earth, these golden flowers.

And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing,
Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part
Of the self-same, universal being,
Which is throbbing in his brain and heart.

Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,
Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay;

Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues,
Flaunting gayly in the golden light;
Large desires, with most uncertain issues,
Tender wishes, blossoming at night!

These in flowers and men are more than seeming;
Workings are they of the self-same powers,
Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming,
Seeth in himself and in the flowers.

Everywhere about us are they glowing,
Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born;
Others, their blue eyes with tears o’er-flowing,
Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn;

Not alone in Spring’s armorial bearing,
And in Summer’s green-emblazoned field,
But in arms of brave old Autumn’s wearing,
In the centre of his brazen shield;

Not alone in meadows and green alleys,
On the mountain-top, and by the brink
Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys,
Where the slaves of nature stoop to drink;

Not alone in her vast dome of glory,
Not on graves of bird and beast alone,
But in old cathedrals, high and hoary,
On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone;

In the cottage of the rudest peasant,
In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers,
Speaking of the Past unto the Present,
Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers;

In all places, then, and in all seasons,
Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,
Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,
How akin they are to human things.

And with childlike, credulous affection
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.

(Monastery Summer 2010, post 8)

Baldy…part two.

Time for Vespers. I rise at the final toll of the bell, walk slowly to the chapel, take my seat, and allow myself to be submerged in the flow of Psalms. Sitting in the lobby afterwards, waiting for the dinner bell to ring, MaryAnn asks me how my day has been. She spent part of hers pulling weeds with Sister Helen and is planing to go back in the morning.

MaryAnn used to live in community here and is back for a visit. I’m curious as to what had made her consider religious vocation (becoming a nun) and what made her change her mind. But time is measured by the sound of the bell and it’s time for supper. Up the stairs and through the symphony of another silent meal, I walk back to my room. Now, on my own until Compline, Baldy decides not only to poke up his head, but to jump clean out into the open and land like dead weight on my chest.

When you’re an introvert who has past experience with panic attacks and you’re visiting a monastery by yourself – maintaining sanity is a good thing! I’m afraid to let myself look to closely at the feelings, to go too far inside of myself, without a friend to pull me back out again if I start to drown. And the idea of making new friends is scary, partly because I am so doggone timid and partly in duty toward the intended silent retreat.

But as the feelings rising in my chest begin to churn in my stomach and send my head spinning, I instinctively reach for my cell phone. Mom’s on speed-dial. She lets me talk it out and then suggests I do something quiet but outside myself. iPhoto. I’ve taken lots of pictures already, so I might as well start playing with them. I settle into the common room with my laptop. I’m alone, but feel far less isolated than in my room. There is silence, my thoughts are free to enter into where I am, and a sense of Presence returns. I begin working with some photos. It’s a meditative process, my fingers move over the touchpad, my eyes attentive to the details in each image, my breathing slows. Todd happens through and asks, “Barbara, has anyone given you a full tour of the place?” No. He offers to show me around sometime tomorrow. That would be great.

I guess Baldy’s tired of trying, at least for now, because he’s disappeared.

And so pieces of my Wednesday begin to fall in place. It will be a very non-silent, get-Barbara-out-of-herself sort of day, but oh the grace of it all.
(Monastery Summer 2010, post 7)

Meet Baldy

A confession: This was supposed to be a silent retreat. Or at least that was the original intent. Let me explain.

I said before that this retreat was a requirement for my graduate program – I’m supposed to take one short retreat each semester and a longer retreat during each of the two summers, one three-day and one five-day. When I took a four-day retreat last summer, at Renovare’s International Conference, I didn’t know that one of my two summer retreats had to be taken in silence. This left me with a five-day silent retreat to be taken in the summer of 2010. So I made a reservation with the monastery and planned on lots of silence. I figured I wouldn’t really know anyone and so conversation wouldn’t really be a ‘problem’. I also figured I could be in touch with my Spiritual Director throughout the week, for some intentional conversation to help bring clarity and direction to the retreat.

See, I’ve got a bit of history with panic attacks, which always seem to strike when I am alone and when my thoughts are somewhat interior – I go inside myself and just start to…drown, with no outside and loving voice to pull me back up again. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but the tendency is still to avoid long periods of intense silence and interiority.

So…a five-day silent retreat?

Hmm.

I left it open. Didn’t reserve a ‘hermitage’ for a more private retreat time. Didn’t leave my cell phone at home. Packed a few good ole distractions…just in case. A copy of Eat Pray Love (not great literature, but light reading to rest the mind), my laptop (iPhoto, I love you), and a weathered 1932 edition of Longfellow’s poems.

After a pretty quiet twenty-four hours following my arrival on Monday afternoon, minus a few in-passing conversations that help warm me to my new environs, I start in on Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, the book that I’ve decided will be the ‘theme’ of this retreat. Journal in hand, I settle myself on a bench and begin reading. Later in the day, after lunch, with the high-perched sun burning hot on my head, I mosey down to the big willow tree. Todd, the guestmaster and soon-to-be Brother, said there’s a chair down here in the shade. This proves to be the perfect reading spot. I quickly lose track of time as I read and journal and enjoy the reflections on the pond, the company of the birds (they are blackest black with blood red markings on their wings), the voice of the bullfrog, even the wingless bugs that fall out of nowhere onto my arms and the pages of my book. I brush them away as gently as possible – though I’m afraid the spiders get more abrupt treatment – and continue reading.

Altogether a truly lovely day. My thoughts have been carried to places within myself where I, on my own, wouldn’t have known to go. Some authors have a way of doing that – sitting with you and journeying with you as a friend into unknown landscapes of your soul. I find Parker Palmer is certainly one of these.

About an hour before Vespers, I feel it. The cold ache in my stomach rears his bald and warty head.

I push him down, away, anywhere outside my line of vision. I go back to my room, grab Longfellow and my camera. I take some pictures out front of the monastery, then sit on a bench near the entrance to read a poem out of that worn old book. Songs of the Night? Something like that.

Baldy pokes his head up again.
I look the other direction, pretend he’s not there.

(Monastery Summer 2010, post 6)

Making the world go ’round?

This post might be more suited for a “final” post about the monastery, and I don’t think that’s what this will be…but it’s where my mind’s at this morning.

Last night I was praying Vespers from Benedictine Daily Prayer, slowly and softly whispering through the Psalms, I bumped into something. Words I had chanted with the community exactly one week ago, that had kind of toyed with my attention at the time…that I had put down in my little Moleskine. I’ve thought of these words several times during this first week of diving into (or have I been drowning?) everyday life, life three and a half hours south of the monastery. I’ve remembered the words, but haven’t taken the time to stop and really look at them. So maybe it’s about time.

Lord, what are we that you care for us,

mere mortals, that you keep us in mind;

creatures, who are merely a breath

whose life fades like a shadow?

When I heard these words last week, I was well beyond the point of no-return in my love for the monastery – the place and its people. When these words came out of my mouth, I was sitting in the chapel, savoring the rhythm of the liturgy. My attention was on the words being spoken, but there was a shadow of thought sort of resting behind them. As I savored the sound of our voices coming together in the words of the Psalms, I was trying not to think about the fact that it was my last night there. My goal for the evening was to let my soul soak up every last bit of the spirit of that place that it could possibly hold – to be thankful for the precious gift of time I’d been given to be there, rather than wallowing in self-pity and dread that I’d be returning home the next day. Then these words were spoken, went off in my mind like lightning, brought a sudden break in the shadow.

Lord, what are we that you care for us,
mere mortals, that you keep us in mind…?

In that moment, they were far more than pious cliche thoughtlessly spouted off in a posture of pseudo humility. I heard them, spoke them with a strong sense of the question mark at the end.

I mean, really, what are we that God would care for us, know us, involve himself in the (often petty) drama of our lives?

Somehow, after those days of rest, silence, nature, good conversation – being, on the scales of my achievement oriented and upwardly mobile world, utterly useless – these words came in and hit my heart full force. Yet in the dailiness of my life back home, the power of that question mostly bounces off my thick skull in its entanglement in the “muchness and manyness” (in the words of Richard Foster) that so easily convinces me that God darn well better pay attention to me! It’s this attitude of entitlement that saps me of gratitude and induces those occasional meltdowns – when the weight of it all is crushing down on my shoulders, when I have no idea how I can go on and I turn to God with anger in my eyes and politely ask through gritted teeth, “Can I get a little help here?”

Thank God for the monastery, right? And for Sabbath. And for daily moments set aside for quiet and rest and “utter uselessness.” In those times, I find I can stop striving and, lo and behold, the earth does not fly off its axis. God’s got it all in hand.

Lord, what are we that you care for us,
mere mortals, that you keep us in mind…?

(Monastery Summer 2010, post 5)

Meals in silence…

On weekdays at the monastery, breakfast and supper are taken in silence. In the past, as with the liturgy in prayer and free-flowing silence, it has taken a few days to settle into this. After dinner on the first night and breakfast the next morning, I realize these hushed meals are yet another thing I love about the monastery.

Back home, when I eat alone, it’s usually in front of the laptop, checking Facebook or reading a blog or catching up on old episodes of LOST and MI-5. When I’m at work, it’s in bites taken between tasks and customers. In company, there is always conversation. I snarf my food, barely realizing what I’m eating or if I’ve even actually chewed it properly! My mind is otherwise engaged, zoned in on whatever happens to be glowing off the computer screen or or what needs to be done next at work or what my contribution should be to the table conversation.

A meal taken “in silence” is actually far from pure silence. What I am beginning to realize, as I ponder what is it that makes me so look forward to breakfast and supper, is that I’m hearing sounds that are typically muffled by activity. I come to the top of the stairs and quietly enter the dining room. Once everyone has gathered, we bow our heads, the food is blessed as are those who have prepared it and those who will eat it, and the floorboards creak as we move to line up at the buffet. Then begins the symphony. Squirt, swish, swish, clank, jingle, creak – a squirt of hand sanitizer, rub it in, pick up a plate, select necessary silverware, move down the line. Moving as quietly as possible, I fill my plate – more modestly it seems at first than after I eat it, especially when my senses are swept away in the deluge of fresh homemade bread. I take a seat, fill my glass with water from the metal pitcher sitting fat and cool near the center of the table, and begin to eat. The symphony continues as forks make contact with the porcelain plates, each clink marking a small progression in the meal, just as the bell signals movements through the day. Rather than being left to wonder what direction my tablemate’s thoughts have gone or where to rest my eyes, my attention is drawn to the sounds of communal feasting and to the actual food in front of me. I begin to hear whispers of gratitude – not of my dining companions, but of my own heart. The blessing of delicious food to eat and beautiful souls to share it with grows in my awareness. I notice that point where my hunger is satisfied and sit reflectively as I finish the water in my glass. If Brother Shawn or some other attentive diner doesn’t get to me first, I rise from the table and pick up my mess, make my way creakily to the bussing station where I push any scraps of food into a bowl, throw my napkin in the trash and sort my plate, glass, and silverware into their designated stacks. Doing this reminds me of the hands that will push the cart into the kitchen to have it’s load wash, dried, and made ready for the next meal. A quiet sigh of gratitude and contentment escapes my throat as I descend the stairs and amble to my room or a bench or around the meadow to the lake.

Allowing quiet in one area or dimension of our lives frees our attention to receive with open gratitude in another. But this will probably entail some sacrifice or risk on our part, a venturing beyond the known and familiar. Even in small ways – like taking a meal in silence.