Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Toolkit #4 Benedictine Spirituality




OK, the truth is I am an extraverted contemplative. I am not even sure those two words can officially be used together. And the older I become, I find I am becoming “more so”. The thought of living at a monastery or retreat center is very appealing. Not wearing wool habits or copiously copying manuscripts or being totally alone. But I desire space, and long spells of quiet. In fact, I work at a place on 100 acres with a lake, and houses, a picturesque 100 year old chapel, and ancient trees that can almost tell stories. I have a wonderful Healing HeArts Studio to lose myself in. But I also work with lots of other folks who work – with their doors shut! I am forever peeking out in the hall for someone to talk to. There you have it – an extraverted contemplative.

What I have determined is that though I once desired the lifestyle of a monk, I really don’t want to escape my life. I want, to live my wild and precious life as Mary Oliver expresses in her poem The Summer’s Day.

I don’t want to endure my life. I don’t want put off my life. I want to embrace my life as a great mystery that is being unfolded. I work at it, really I do. I spend time in prayer. I work with a most wonderful spiritual director who excels at stretching me. But there are other things I want to do: I want to put a warp on the loom and create cloth. I want to spend time with my grandgirls and see the world and therefore God in and through their eyes. I want to make collages. I want to spend much time alone and in prayer in my womb of a study. I want… But my world is fast, full of lots of details that consume me. So often when I finally get into bed, I wonder where my day has gone. When did I let go of the ribbon of hope that the day promised?

Joan Chittister is contemporary Benedictine and perhaps the leading authority on Benedictine spirituality. This is what she says about prayer:

“Prayer is a long slow process….little by little, one gospel, one word, one moment of silence at a time, we come to know ourselves and the barriers we put between ourselves and the God who is trying to consume us.
The contemplative does not pray in order to coax satisfaction our of the universe. God is life, not a vending machine full of trifles to fit the whims of the human race. God is the end of life, the fulfillment of life, the essence of life, the coming of life. The contemplative prays in order to be open to what is, rather than to reshape the world to their own lesser designs.
…The contemplative prays in order, eventually to fall into the presence of God, to learn to live in the presence of God, to absorb the presence of God within…the contemplative is the seeker who can go down into the self, down the tunnel of emptiness, and finding nothing but God in the center of life, call that Everything. Most of all, the contemplative is the one who, looking at the world, sees nothing but the presence and activity of God everywhere, in everyone.”


Today, practice Benedictine Spirituality by being still, in the presence of God so that you might absorb the presence of God within.


Resources:
Chittister, Joan; Illuminated Life, Monastic Wisdom for Seekers of Light, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 2000.



The Summer Day
-Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
The one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
Into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
How to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
Which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

1 comment:

  1. I am enjoying my daily time with you and God and all the other friends on this journey. Today made me laugh. connie C is deathly afraid of grasshoppers. Imagine ger reaction when she was greeted by a close up the grasshopper on today's post. Hahaha!! She e-mailed me immediately. It was a very funny insertion into a pretty tense day. I left at 6:30 this morning and got home at 7:00. Whew! I'm glad tomorrow is Friday! Love to you....C

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