Judith Valente's Blog: Mindfulness in the Age of Twitter - Posts Tagged "benedictine"

I find myself once again this weekend nestled within the verdant, peaceful surroundings of the Chiara Franciscan Spirituality Center in Springfield, IL. Normally I don’t watch cable news when I am on retreat, but this time I felt compelled to look at the images of last summer’s violent protests in Charlottesville, VA.

News footage of young men carrying torches, giving the Nazi salute, fist-fighting, throwing stones, and hurtling insults at their fellow citizens flashes across the TV screen in sharp contrast with the prayerful tranquility of my surroundings. Stations continuously replay the scene of a car driven by a white supremacist plowing into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring others. Commentator after commentator comes on to condemn one side, then the other. Meanwhile, in real time, another supremacist group prepares to rally in front of the White House.

On this first anniversary of the Charlottesville tragedy, I feel I have to confront the unfolding divisions tearing at the fabric of our nation. Is there any way to prevent the rage, the violence, the mutual suspicion from spreading its poison?

I find myself returning again to the timeless wisdom of the sixth century Rule of St. Benedict. Benedict, the founder of western monasticism, well understood that human beings can and will mess up. Even in a monastic community, there could be conflict, anger, and fear of change. Benedict established a protocol for dealing with these difficulties. First, he asked people to own up to their destructive behaviors. If someone was unwilling to do so, he recommended that a trusted person – someone with standing and gravitas in the community who has perhaps struggled with the same demons – confront the other person. Benedict wasn’t so much interested in condemning or punishing, as in changing behavior, and making amends.

The way that can happen is through dialogue. There can be no fruitful dialogue without careful, respectful listening --and the willingness to confront complex questions. What is really behind the fear that makes members of white supremacist groups feel so threatened? How can those of us who come from immigrant families, or who are members of minorities express to them that this fear is unfounded?

Progress just might come when people are willing to sit in a room and have a conversation. The word conversation, after all, means to ‘turn with,’ in other words,’ to change.’ With change, there can be healing. It will not be perfect healing, but what things in this life are perfect? We must start somewhere to bind the divisions that have erupted so forcefully and publicly.

The Franciscan retreat center where I am staying is steeped in the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi, who stressed simplicity, care for all of creation, and above all, peace. A brochure in my room bears a quote from Jesuit Father John Dear, a student of St. Francis and modern-day peace activist.

Father John Dear writes: “Francis of Assisi embodies the journey from violence to non-violence, wealth to poverty, power to powerlessness, selfishness to selfless service, pride to humility, indifference to love, cruelty to compassion, vengeance to forgiveness, revenge to reconciliation, war to peace, killing enemies to loving enemies.”

If we practiced those values, Father Dear says, “we would share the world’s resources with one another, having nothing to fear from others, and live in peace.”

Can we give ourselves the challenge of those words as move forward this week from the memory of Charlottesville?

Last week I had the privilege of guiding a retreat for the lay associates of Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey, an Olivetan Benedictine monastery sheltered beneath the Pecos Mountains in northern New Mexico. The monastery’s abbot is Father Aidan Gore, a soft-spoken Scotsman who exudes gentleness and humility, two of the most important of Benedictine values.

What impressed me most, though, was the number of times Abbot Aidan expressed gratitude. He never failed to thank the monastery’s lay associates – known as Oblates – every time they gathered for prayer with the monks. He thanked them when they attended Mass on Sunday. He also thanked the local residents from Pecos who came, and the lone musician who led the singing.

He singled out in a special way young couples there with small children, asking how they were doing, waving at the children during Mass, and enduring good-naturedly the crying babies and fidgeting toddlers. He noticed a group of young men who were apparently attending Mass at the monastery for the first time, gave them a special greeting, and oh yes, thanked them too for being there.

Abbot Aidan is a man who carries a heavy burden. As with many monasteries, the number of monks at Our Lady of Guadalupe has been shrinking for decades and is now down to just eight. Most of them are over the age of 65, and two are in their nineties. The abbot is responsible not only for the monks’ well-being, but the spiritual direction of the 273 lay Oblates affiliated with the monastery. He presides over a large facility with dozens of immaculately kept, comfortably appointed guest rooms open to the monastery’s visitors, as well as nearly a thousand acres of land. How he keeps it all going, only he and God knows.

Despite their age and in some cases obvious infirmities, the monks of Our Lady of Guadalupe are ever gracious. They spend time with the guests, and attended the wine and cheese social the abbot arranged on a Saturday night for the visiting Oblates, even though it began at 7:30 p.m., an hour when most of the monks usually retire for the day.

The monastery is situated alongside the Pecos River (one of the cleanest rivers I’ve ever seen), amid the lush greenery of the high desert mountains. The monks of Our Lady of Guadalupe seem determined to keep their home an oasis of quiet contemplation for a world desperately in need of serenity. I’m reminded of something my friend the Trappist monk Brother Paul Quenon once told me. “Contemplation is just a big fat word for gratitude.”

I left Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey grateful for the setting, for the prayer life of the monastery, and for the monks and lay associates who help keep it going. “Now I know what has been holding the world together and keeping it from cracking into pieces,” the famous spiritual writer Thomas Merton wrote on his first visit to a Trappist monastery. “It is this monastery and others like it.” I felt much the same way during my time in Pecos.

The next time you are in the southwest, please consider stopping by Our Lady of Guadalupe and extending to Abbot Aidan and his monastic family a hearty thanks. In the coming week, I will try to be like the abbot in openly and extravagantly expressing my gratitude for the people and many blessings in my life. What blessings are you grateful for?

Excitable, anxious, extreme, obstinate, jealous or overly-suspicious he or she must not be. Such a [leader] is never at rest.

That advice might sound as though it’s ripped from this week’s headlines. It actually come from an unlikely source: The Rule of St. Benedict, written 16 centuries ago for people living within monasteries. The enduring wisdom of these words resounded loudly for me this week as I watched with millions of Americans the wrenching spectacle of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination hearing.

Re-reading the chapters of The Rule that deal with qualities of a leader, I was struck again not only by the forward-thinking of Benedict of Nursia, but how critical his message is for our time. Benedict advocates a profile in courageous leadership that seems to all but have disappeared from the U.S. political landscape.

“Only in this are we distinguished,” he writes, “if we are found better than others in good works and humility.” Good works and humility. Hardly the measurements in vogue these days. Hardly the qualities on display this past week in our national leaders.

Howard Schultz, the entrepreneur largely responsible for Starbucks’ distinctive allure, often speaks of “leading from the heart.” Schultz vision is echoed in The Rule. Back in the sixth century, Benedict applied an alternative name to the person entrusted with a leadership role: that of servant.

In a Benedictine world view, true leaders don’t place their personal interests above all else. Winning isn’t everything. Working for the good of all is. The best leaders, Benedict says, are teachers, not dictators. To those of whom much is given, much is expected. Perhaps the most revolutionary of all Benedict’s ideas is the model he asks leaders to imitate: that of Christ.
Speaking of the monastic context, he says, “The prioress or abbot must always remember what she or he is . . . aware that more will be expected of one to whom more has been entrusted ... Anyone who receives the name of prioress or abbot is to lead...by living example.”

Benedict also reminds us that leaders mustn’t become so obsessed with results or coming out on top that they neglect the well-being of those around them. Whether one’s arena is politics, business, academia, the not-for-profit sector, or a monastery, a leader’s foremost concern is people. Or, as Benedict puts it so beautifully, the care of souls. “Above all, they must not show too great concern for the fleeting and temporal things of this world, neglecting or treating lightly the welfare of those entrusted to them,” he writes. “Rather they should keep in mind that they have undertaken the care of souls for whom they must give account.”

The best leaders I’ve worked with in my journalism career were those who cared as much about my personal development as my professional output. They were the editors and news directors who understood that people aren’t interchangeable parts. They gave me assignments that engaged the best of my talent.

Far ahead of his time, St. Benedict recognized that human beings are complex creatures who don’t all respond to the same prompts. Good leaders, he says, “will accommodate and adapt themselves to each one’s character and intelligence.”

The most effective ones “must know what a difficult and demanding burden they have undertaken: directing souls and serving a variety of temperaments, coaxing, reproving and encouraging them as appropriate." Above all, he emphasizes kindness, noting “A kind word is better than the best gift.”

Perhaps the Benedictine Rule should be required reading for every member of Congress, the judiciary and executive branch. Perhaps then kindness will replace anger in our public discourse. Consensus will overtake conflict. Service will outweigh self-aggrandizement. Dignity and decorum will define our democracy. Is that too much to ask?

The best sermons aren’t spoken ones, but those we witness through the example of a person’s life. I experienced one of those living homilies when I spent four days recently with the Benedictine sisters at St. Scholastica Monastery in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Whenever I’m tempted to walk away from the Catholic Church, frustrated with its hypocrisy and faults, I need to think of these monastic sisters and the others like them.

The history of the St. Scholastica sisters represents a continuous response to various calls of need. Their example reminds me of Aristotle’s famous prescription for living a fulfilled life: “Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.”

One of the things I admire most about this monastery is that it accepted women who had physical challenges at a time when many religious orders rejected candidates with medical difficulties. To this day, those sisters continue to offer significant contributions, some by serving in leadership roles.

The truly elderly sisters are a model for us all. Sister Marcella, the oldest member of the community, is 98 and still helps in the dining room. At age 96, Sister Pierre oversees the gardens and the grounds. Not a flower buds or a tree root spreads without Sister Pierre knowing about it.

Arkansas had been a state only 43 years when the Benedictines arrived in 1878. Their mission was to teach the children of mainly German and Irish immigrants who farmed the land and worked on the railroads along the Arkansas River. The oldest of the first four founding sisters was just 34. The other three were in their early twenties and hadn’t even made their final vows yet in religious life.

The sisters eventually established a boarding school for girls as well as an orphanage. One woman I met in Fort Smith, who volunteers at the monastery, told me her father had been raised in that orphanage. “My father used to say if it wasn’t for the sisters, he’d either be pumping gas or in prison,” she said. Instead, he raised a family and had a successful career. He never forgot his debt to the St. Scholastica sisters.

The sisters are a vivid example of why Benedictine spirituality has endured for more than 1,500 years– by adapting always to the necessities of the times. As needs changed and both the boarding school and orphanage closed, the sisters kept moving forward. They turned the school into a community center. When they no longer had enough sisters to staff the community center, they arranged for a local co-educational junior high school to use that space.
And still the sisters keep adapting. Last year, in one of the toughest decisions they’ve had to face, they moved out of the six-story gothic style monastery that had been their home for 94 or their 140-year history in Arkansas. They now reside in an attractive new single-story building across from the old monastery that is easier for the elderly sisters to navigate.

They keep on going. The sisters oversee a robust training program for spiritual directors and also offer spiritual direction and counseling on an individual basis. Their Hesychia House of Prayer in New Blaine, Arkansas, set in the shadow of the Ozark Mountains, allows those seeking an immersion experience of the contemplative life the chance to spend time in one of four hermitages the sisters own there.

Their ministry now extends beyond Arkansas. With other Catholic partners, the sisters sponsor a scholarship program for Colegio San Benito, which educates high school age girls in Guatemala. The ministry recently expanded to include scholarships for Colegio graduates who want to go on to university studies.

The Fort Smith community is also the home of one of my favorite spirituality writers, Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, whom I call a modern-day mystic. If you admire the writing of Thomas Merton, you will also love Sister Macrina’s books including: "Seven Sacred Pauses;" "Song of the Seed"; and "Abide." Her most recent book, "The Flowing Grace of Now", will be out later this year.Macrina Wiederkehr

The Arkansas sisters could use our help now to help pay down the debt on their new monastery. If we are looking for somewhere to place our Lenten alms, may I suggest helping these Benedictine women who have given so much. You can contribute via PayPal on the monastery’s website here: stscho.org

Thanks to Sister Hilary Decker, Oblate Director at Fort Smith, for inviting me to give two talks to the lay associates of the monastery based on my book "How To Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community," How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us about Happiness, Meaning, and Community and to Sister Madeline Bariola, my fellow Italian, with whom I laughed until I cried).