As I begin to write these words it is just after 8.30 in the morning, as the office of Lauds is being said and sung a few miles away at Turvey Abbey Benedictine monastery.

Yesterday, I returned from Turvey after co-leading our first Enneagram weekend of the year, introducing a new group of people to this insightful system of personal and spiritual growth. And what a positive and thoughtful group they were.

At the same time, the six-week online course I’ve been part of, Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist, led by Christine at Abbey of the Arts has ended. I’m grateful to have been a part of this community of people, all of us ordinary yet extraordinary.

I am so full of hope and joy about the groundswell of desire for growth that I sense all around us, and not only because, in the Northern hemisphere at least, spring is beginning to break through the frozen ground. I’ve noticed that increasingly when I talk about what could be seen as a somewhat eccentric preoccupation with Benedictine life and with spiritual and creative growth, people I meet are interested and asking questions. There’s a different feeling around from the days a few years ago when colleagues would look at me as if I’d suddenly grown two heads. Or perhaps I’m simply less tentative in my self.

This morning I read a poem from the awakening hour section of Macrina Widerkehr‘s book seven sacred pauses. It reflects perfectly this sense of grace and renewal that I’m aware of:

What lifts the heron leaning on the air
I praise without a name. A crouch, a flare,
a long stroke through the cumulus of trees,
a shaped thought at the sky – then gone. O rare!
Saint Francis, being happiest on his knees,
would have cried Father! Cry anything you please.
But praise. By any name or none. But praise
the white original burst that lights
the heron on his two soft kissing kites.
When saints praise heaven lit by doves and rays,
I sit by pond scums till the air recites
Its heron back. And doubt all else. But praise.

John Ciardi

What grace and renewal can you see in the moments that make up your life?

Image by S Wolfe

Elsewhere:

And as we approach the sacred time of Lent, Claire Bangasser talks about Cultivating our Soul, and Jan Richardson meditates upon Ashes and Sojourner Truth.

This week’s enCouraging Bliss task is to make a list of bliss-full blessings we’ve experienced over the last week.

I’m going to concentrate on one day: the Enneagram workshop day I led yesterday at Turvey Abbey in Bedfordshire.

A group of around 20 of us who learned the Enneagram at the Turvey Benedictine monastic community gathered there to learn, to talk and laugh together, to connect deeply.

Seeing and being seen

In an email to me afterwards, a friend said it is only in experiences like this that she feels she can be herself, that she is truly seen for herself and can see others in the same way. I feel the same, so that is the first blessing.

Friendship

Our group was mixed in history together; some of us have met many times before, others never, but there was an immediate bond of friendship between us. The second blessing.

Prayer

Perhaps it’s unnecessary to pick out formal prayer in a day that seemed full of prayer, but to me, Mass seemed particularly moving yesterday, particularly intimate. The third blessing.

Vulnerability

Life is not perfect. Sometimes it is incredibly difficult, sometimes we are in terrible physical or emotional pain, and sometimes we think we are being tested more than we can stand. This was apparent in various ways yesterday. And yet we continue. The fourth blessing.

Food

While others go hungry, we sat eating lunch outside, warmed by the early summer sun and cooled by a slight breeze. The fifth blessing.

Memory

I sat alone for a while after lunch in a walled garden in the Abbey grounds. I sat on a wooden chair with words inscribed in memory of a good man who died a few years ago and used to sit in that garden. I remembered him and so many others who have made life better by living. The sixth blessing.

Beauty

As I sat in that walled garden, I closed my eyes. I could smell the rosemary bush and lilac blossoms to my right, I could hear birdsong and the droning of a bee. I opened my eyes to watch the bee right next to me dipping into the rosemary flowers. I don’t know if it’s the air of sanctity, but they have bumble-bees almost as big as humming birds at Turvey! As I left the garden, my eye was caught by a single tangerine-coloured poppy against a group of bluebells. The seventh blessing.

Laughter

You know, sometimes laughter can be used as an avoidance tactic. But we often need to laugh at ourselves and laugh with others. The test is whether compassion is also present – for ourselves as much as for others. If it is, then laughter can be the most healing of medicines, and we laughed warmly together yesterday. Appropriate on World Laughter Day that this is the eighth blessing.

Images: mine, taken at Turvey Abbey

Elsewhere:

Today is also a very special day – Towanda is being ordained. I’m so very happy for this great blessing. And Carl takes his first simple promises as a lay Cistercian. Wonderful news.

As we move through Holy Week, I’ve been remembering my early fascination with monastic communities.

I recall being aware as a child that all over the world there were quiet, mysterious, enclosed spaces where groups of women and of men lived silent lives.

(You have to realise I was named after Therese of Lisieux, and my romantic fantasies about her sickly decline and early death behind the grille of her Carmel were wholly positive. And I did not take into account that monasteries are full of ordinary people like you and me who have difficulties getting on with each other.)

Then my teenage years brought me a less romantic type of nun: the tough, slightly mad individuals from the teaching order at my Catholic grammar school. Suffice to say that cured me of any rosy fantasies about monastic living, and awareness of the existence of the contemplative orders swum to the back of my mind and stayed there for many years.

But now I’ve regained that awareness of those communities of people in quiet spaces of prayer around the world. Many of them live a life that hasn’t altered that much in centuries, at least in its intent, if not always in its practice.

One practice that’s very new is the concept of the monastic blog. Who’d have thought it! But these are such an interesting window into a world that most people will never experience and many think is a complete waste of time.

So today I wanted to share with you my five favourite monastic blogs:

1. Musings of a Discerning Woman by Sr Susan Rose Francois, CSJP, of Seattle. This was the first monastic blog I ever read, and I appreciate the social activism emphasis. And you gotta love someone who calls her sisters “groovy” and posts about Kurt Cobain.
2. A Nun’s Life by Sr Julie Vieira, IHM, in Michigan. What is says on the can: thoughtful and informative writing about the monastic life. Sr Julie is also responsible for the introduction of Nunday in which she posts photographic portraits of nuns from all over the world. It’s an attempt to point out that monastic vocations may be less common, but they still exist.
3. Colophon is a blog by Benedictine nuns in an Oxfordshire community. This is a relatively new monastery, and I’ve only recently discovered the blog. I like the self-deprecating tone, and the brief podcasts. If you’re unfamiliar with the traditions of Holy Week, you may be interested in the podcast attached to this post.
4. I love Nunsuch partly because its writer, Sandy Yost, CSJ, uses the strapline adventures of a techie nun. As well as being a nun, Sandy is Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy. If that doesn’t blow away your preconceptions about monastic living, I don’t know what will. Her blog is full and rich, as her life appears to be.
5. Finally, A vow of conversation, by Macrina Walker, OCSO, from the Cistercian community of Koningsoord Abbey in the Netherlands. This is probably the most overtly theological and “learned” of the five. Macrina uses the blog as a framework for her theological reading. It is not the sort of writing you can skim, but it really rewards some concentration. I was very moved by the quote from Adalbert de Vogue about Benedictine life with which she begins this post.

So those are my five favourite monastic blogs. I’d be very interested to hear of other recommendations readers might have.

Image by luchilo

A note of caution I’ve heard about President Obama and our leadership expectations of him is this: we must remember he is not the Messiah.

And indeed he’s not. But it made me think of Benedictine spirituality. Chapter Two of the Rule of St Benedict sets out What Kind of Person the Abbot/Abbess Should Be. Chapter Three is On Summoning the Brethren to Council. (You can read a full translation of these two chapters in this text.)

Re-reading these chapters, a couple of things occur to me:

1. The sophistication with which the Rule simultaneously encourages and restrains the Superior of the monastery
2. How well these two chapters fit with current business teaching on leadership

In the place of Christ

The Superior stands in the place of Christ in the monastery. He must “fulfil his actions in the name of one who is called greater”. She “…should not teach or ordain or command anything that lies outside the Lord’s commands, far from it; but her commands and her teaching should mingle like the leaven of divine justice…”.

This immediately gives grave responsibility tempered with great comfort: to act in the place of Christ for a community would seem an impossible burden were it not for the example of exquisite leadership his life gives us.

And remember that the Rule was written in a time when rulers were often absolute and feared. Joan Chittister has this to say:

The social revolution of the Rule starts in this paragraph on authority. This will be a different kind of life than the sixth-century Roman ever saw. The head of the monastery will not be a chief or a queen or a feudal lord. The superior of a monastery of Benedictines will be a Christ figure, simple, unassuming, immersed in God, loving of the marginal, doer of the Gospel, beacon to the strong.

Walking the talk

Chapter Two goes on to explain how the Superior “…must show forth all good and holy things by his words and even more by his deeds.”

And “…she should show herself equally loving to all, and maintain discipline impartially according to the merits of each.”

Well any of us with experience of being in authority, perhaps as a manager, a teacher or a parent, knows how challenging these sections of the Rule can be! And any of us on the receiving end of a manager, teacher or parent who does NOT act like this knows how frustrating it can be…

A very modern leader

Next, we hear that the Superior must use different techniques to lead different personalities:

…one, indeed, to be encouraged, another to be rebuked, another persuaded, each according to his nature and intelligence. Thus he must adapt and fit himself to all…

I just did an Amazon search for books on management and leadership. There were 204,211. I doubt many have under 200 pages. Chapter Two of the Rule covers four pages and seems to me to have everything a leader must know to deal with people fairly and effectively.

(The only thing that might not fit our modern sensibilities is a small section suggesting corporal punishment for “…the shameless, the thick-skinned, the proud or disobedient.” Tempting, but perhaps not…)

Collegiality

Chapter Three is no less revolutionary for its times. The superior is explicitly instructed to take counsel with the community when decisions must be made.

For “less important matters”, the Superior “…should take counsel only with the senior monks…”. But for the big, important decisions, the whole community must be assembled to consider the matter. Why? Because the youngest, most junior monk may have the grace and imagination to see the best solution.

Chittister again:

Benedict knows that there is a spark of the divine in all of us. The function of an abbot or prioress, of leaders and spouses everywhere, is not so much to know the Truth as to be able to espy it and to recognise it in the other when they hear it. Calling the community for counsel is Benedict’s contribution to the theology of the Holy Spirit.

And what a huge gift and relief for the Superior, who does not have to come up with all the ideas! The actual decision-making is his (“…the decision should, however, depend mainly on the Abbot’s judgement, and all should be joined in obedience to what he considers the soundest course.”) but the wisdom arises collectively from the community, like prayer, and the smoke of incense (psalm 141).

Communal responsibility

Responsibility is enjoined upon the whole community, not just the superior. The monks must behave like grown-ups:

…the brethren must give their counsel submissively and humbly and not presume stubbornly to defend their opinions.” “…no-one is to presume to argue rudely with the Abbot, or to argue at all outside the monastery.”

Perhaps this all comes back to the tension between the individual and the communal. A monastic community is there to support the individuals in it as they seek God. But the community will outlast the individuals in it, whether monk or superior.

(A sober note here: as the number of people in monastic life falls, some monasteries will close. But I believe there’s a sense in which generations of prayer and monastic life leave an indelible mark, quite separate from the buildings that housed them.)

I think these chapters echo the note struck so forcibly in Obama’s inaugural address: that of individual and collective responsibility.

And I realise I was wrong in describing them as modern. They are ageless.

image: hamed saber

Meanwhile, elsewhere in cyberspace:

I’m reading two stories of being called and of change, at Episcopal Cafe and at Football and Faith.

On Saturday I took my first official step along the Benedictine path for which I have long felt affinity: I made my petition to become a probationary Oblate of the monastic communities at Turvey Abbey. In a lovely symmetry, a friend made her full oblation at Mass the same day, in a very moving ceremony.

You can find out more about all this my post here. Briefly, a Benedictine oblate is someone who lives a normal life (whatever that is!) in the world whilst formally affiliated to a particular Benedictine monastery, and who follows the spirit of the 6th Century Rule of St Benedict of Nursia.

So I am now what I might refer to as an “L-plate oblate”, and if all goes well in around two years I make my full oblation.

I made my petition at Vespers (evening prayer) on Saturday during an oblate weekend attended by those from Turvey and other monasteries.

During Vespers, we sang Psalm 23, which contains the lines

O gates, lift high your heads;
grow higher, ancient doors.
Let him enter, the king of glory!

This verse (which is repeated twice) struck me forcibly. I was being asked to lift high my head, to expand my heart, for this new part of my journey.

When the time came, the two superiors, Sr Zoe and Br John, stood in front of the altar and I stepped forward to stand in front of them. I was shaking and my heart was pounding. Now, bear in mind that I had to say just one sentence and that I’m used to speaking in public. But this was different; this really meant something, and I was very nervous.

This is the wording and format:

Sr Zoe: What do you ask?

Tess: I ask to be admitted to fraternal union with the monasteries of Our Lady of Peace and of Christ our Saviour, to try your way of life as an extern oblate.

Sr Zoe: This will be granted to you if you are ready to listen to God’s Word as it is communicated to you through Holy Scripture, through the Rule, and through any guidance given to you here.

Br John: My brothers and sisters, let us pray to God the almighty Father for the church, for our monasteries and for this sister of ours who today asked to begin her probation, in order to serve Christ and his Church with greater commitment, according to the spirit of the Rule of our holy father Benedict.

Sr Zoe: O God, from whom every vocation comes, look kindly on your servant and grant that this sister who wants to share our life may know your will, and that we may all be strengthened in your service. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Then she kissed me, handed me a copy of the Rule, Br John shook my hand and I went back to my seat.

The strange thing is, I didn’t expect this step to make much difference. I’ve been associated with Turvey for years; I’m familiar with the Benedictine rule and I’m currently studying it more deeply. But it has made a fundamental difference to the way I feel. The best way to describe it is a sense of belonging that I simply have not known before. As Br John put in my card: “And about time too!”

So I’m very happy with how fitting this seems, and I’ll end by saying thank you to Sr Miriam and Sr Judith, who “run” the oblates. I appreciate your friendship more than I can easily say.

I am studying the monastic Rule of St Benedict. This piece is one of my reflections on the experience. To read the whole series click here.

Our second unit of study, during August/September, was the Prologue of the Rule.

It begins with the word ‘Listen…’. A word almost complete unto itself. Perhaps if the Rule started and ended with this one word it would be enough to guide us through our lives. If we truly listened, to ourselves, to others, to the divine, we wouldn’t need any other instruction, but we are all horribly fallible and so we do.

When I’ve read the Prologue before, I’ve been struck by its beauty and its warmth, and during my readings and reflections on it this time the same lovely, stirring phrases struck me:

…turn the ear of your heart to the advice of a loving father…

Now is the hour for us to rise from sleep. Let us, then open our eyes to the divine light, and hear with our ears the divine voice…

Run while you have the light of life…

Let us make for ourselves a girdle out of faith and good works…

…we must make ready our hearts and bodies to engage in the warfare of holy obedience…

But for the very first time, probably through concentrated repeated reading, the sheer masculinity of the writing also struck me: my son, he, him, his, father, brothers.

Now of course I realise that Benedict was a man, writing for men, referring to the teachings of Christ, and to God – who in Benedict’s language is masculine. (No modern gender-neutrality for Benedict!) But logic rather flew out of the window and this all began to make me feel excluded from my beloved St Benedict for the first time. It began to make me dwell again on the exclusion of women by the church through the ages, and by the Catholic church to this day.

So this study experience was not altogether comfortable or comforting. (Not necessarily a bad thing in itself of course.)

But now that a little time has passed, what I keep coming back to is one of the phrases I love the best and which for me encapsulates much of what the Rule is about:

…we must at all times use the good gifts God has placed in us…

If you take this together with the very first word of the Prologue, I think you have the kernel of guidance we all must follow, whatever our sacred practices: we must listen deeply to discern what our gifts truly are, and we must use them. Not to do so is to waste what we have been given.

Sometimes we’re not very good at acknowledging our gifts, because they seem natural to us, or because we see our faults too clearly. And sometimes we puff up what we think our gifts are at the expense of our genuine giftedness because we’re clever at something society says is valuable. So active discernment and quiet listening is very important.

All this puts me in mind of the words of Marianne Williamson used in Nelson Mandela’s famous speech, so I think I’ll leave you with them (emboldening my emphasis):

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Turvey monastery from the gardens

A while back, I wrote about a course of study in which I’m engaged as I move towards becoming a Benedictine oblate. I’ll share some more reflections on that with you later this week.

But meanwhile, what exactly IS an oblate?

From the Latin, oblation (offering), a Benedictine oblate is someone who associates themselves formally with a particular Benedictine monastic community and, while remaining in the outside world, lives in accordance with the spirit of the Rule of St Benedict. Oblates can be married or single, male or female.

The Benedictine monastic way of life is a balance between prayer, work and study. As an oblate I’ll seek to reflect that in my own life.

The vows a Benedictine monk or nun takes are threefold:

• stability
• obedience
• conversatio morum

Stability commits the monastic to their particular monastery *. Some orders, especially teaching and missionary orders, move from one ‘house’ to another. Benedictines stick with their monastery and the community of people in it.

Obedience means listening to the voice of God in whatever guise it may come, discerning and following the right path for us, in both large and small things. The very first word of the Rule of Benedict is “Listen…”

Conversatio morum (conversion of life) means a continuing, lifelong openness to transformation. A continual turning back to and responsiveness to God. It encompasses the other two vows.

As an oblate, I won’t actually take these vows, but they will form part of the fabric of my life. In relation to stability, an oblate’s commitment is to the monastery with which they have a relationship, in my case the community at Turvey Abbey. But of course I will not actually live there.

In practical terms, I will spend some weekends each year at Turvey Abbey, a community which emphasises interfaith work, liturgy and the arts. I will continue my practice of Lectio Divina. (A quick plug here for Christine’s forthcoming book on Lectio – I know it will be wonderful!) I will pray some of the monastic offices each day. I’ll continue the course of reflective study of the Rule that Turvey oblates are currently embarked on.

I feel the need for a disclaimer on the paragraph I’ve just written. It all sounds great, doesn’t it, but in fact I don’t always do these things as a regular practice. I very often stumble and skip.

It may seem a bit mad to base one’s life on a 5th century monastic rule. Perhaps it is. But my hope is that it will give my spiritual life more focus and structure.

I’ll let you know.

* The word monastery (from the Greek monos – alone) applies to both female and male communities. Historically, ‘convent’ also applied to both genders, but has come to mean solely female communities. Arguably, the word ‘monk’ could also apply to both genders as it comes from the same Greek root. I prefer to use ‘monastery’ and ‘monastic’. And let’s not get into the difference between nuns and sisters, nor a cenobite as opposed to a hermit and how a hermit may be different from an anchorite! Although it’s all quite interesting – there may be a whole sub-category of geekdom here.

If  you’d like to find out more about the Rule and history of St Benedict, you may like my article What is Benedictine spirituality?

Today is the feast day of St Clare of Assisi, founder of the monastic order now most commonly known as the Poor Clares.

It’s interesting to think of the level of power and influence this medieval woman has had in the church and in the popular imagination (through her relationship with St Francis, explored in films such as Brother Sun, Sister Moon).

Not wanting temporal power, determined to live a more austere life than those coddled Benedictines(!), with whom she lived for a while,  she lived Francis’s teachings of radical poverty and taught her followers to embrace his philosophy.

Unlike the Franciscan friars, her nuns lived in enclosure. It would have been unthinkable in 13th Italy for women to tramp the roads as beggars.

Yet for all her austerity and enclosure, Clare remains a powerful figure. She was the first woman to write a rule for female monastics, which is still in use today. There are Poor Clare enclosures all over the world.

I like this contrast between humility and influence, I think it’s interesting. And I suspect that Clare in person, like Francis, would have been a very strong character, nothing wishy-washy about her!

There is some correspondence between her and a princess in Bohemia in whose spiritual journey Clare had taken an interest. This is from Clare’s third letter:

That you, poor and humble,
follow in the footprints of Christ
poor and humble – Joy!
That you are delivered and safe
from evil and pride and vanity – Joy!

That you love to be poor,
and so have found in your heart
desire for God –
a treasure which ALL have hidden within – Joy!

Addendum: after publishing this, I saw that Jan Richardson has an excellent post up today about St Clare at The Painted Prayerbook. You can read it here.

I’ve just started a study course following the Rule of St Benedict, and I’ll share with you from time to time some things that strike me about it.

The first unit we’ve looked at was Chapter 72 (On the Good Zeal Monks Ought to Have). I’ve learned that this chapter is often considered the heart of the Rule of St Benedict, and it contains some of his finest writing. You can read a translation of it here.

Praying this chapter at lectio divina, the word zeal kept jumping out at me.

You just don’t hear zeal a lot these days, do you? It isn’t the kind of word you drop into everyday conversation! And look at the dictionary definition above, some really old-fashioned words there to roll around on your tongue: earnestness, fervour, hearty.

There’s something about those words that’s uncompromising. And of course St Benedict was right to add the word good in front. Good zeal.

But how do we know when it’s right to be a zealot and when it is a terrible blindness?

There have been so many examples in history of religious zeal and fervour leading to evil: the Crusades, whose actions in the name of Christ were often barbarous; the religious fundamentalism of all stripes that we see today, resulting in widespread bloodshed.

That kind of zeal is, I believe, rooted in fear.

Which is why the context of what Benedict writes is so important. His encouragement is to be zealous in love, in patience, in unselfishness.

This sort of zeal crowds out hatred and fear, and the chapter demonstrates so well Benedict’s spiritual relevance today.

Some people think that religion should be solely about spirituality. I don’t agree.

Richard Rohr says:

I believe that there are two necessary paths enabling us to move toward wisdom: a radical journey inward and a radical journey outward. For far too long we’ve confined people to a sort of security zone, a safe midpoint. We’ve called them neither to a radical path inward, in other words, to contemplation, nor to a radical journey outward, that is, to commitment on the social issues of our time.

This is why I was so pleased to read a news article about monastic activists. (Try saying that a few times if you’ve had a glass of wine or two!) The article begins:

Picture the scene: you are chairing your company’s annual shareholders’ meeting, there is somebody raising issues you really do not want to discuss and you are desperate for her to sit down and be quiet. Oh yes, and she’s a nun.

Apparently some monastic communities are targeting corporations they believe have questions to answer by deliberately buying a small number of shares in them. They then have the right to pitch up at shareholders’ meetings and ask those questions. And you’d have to be pretty ballsy to risk the PR backlash of shutting up a nun.

I guess this is a close cousin of using your feminine wiles to get ahead (which as a good  feminist I disapprove of), but I have to say I think this is a great idea. Go sisters!

You can read the full story here.

Photograph by foxypar4