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

I think I just discovered the most peaceful place in America. It is a monastery tucked within the rolling hills of northwest Missouri. Here, the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration make their home. The only sound in the open field where the monastery stands is the whir of wind through trees, and an occasional thrum of a cricket. Stepping inside the monastery offers a profound encounter with silence. The sign, in colored glass, that greets visitors says, “Peace.”

I stopped in Clyde, Missouri, en route to guiding a retreat at Conception Abbey, a men’s Benedictine monastery just down the road. The visit couldn’t have come at a better time. Throughout the six-hour drive from my home in Illinois to Missouri, I listened to NPR on the car radio, feeling increasing despair. A “mystery” neurological disease has been attacking children. It was revealed that Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fingers had been chopped off during the torture he endured before his death. How better to prevent a journalist from writing negative stories?

Then there was the caravan of families with children fleeing the violence in central America marching toward our southern border to seek asylum, along with the U.S. President’s threats amid cheering crowds to call out the Army to stop them.
(All of this talk about protecting the sovereignty of the U.S. is interesting since we snatched the state of Texas from Mexico and showed no respect for Indian tribal boundaries in our country’s early drive westward. But hey, that’s history, this is now).

I prayed at noon with the sisters in their magnificent chapel filled with ornate wooden prayer stalls, vibrant mosaics and life-size statues. (If this were Europe, busloads of tourists would be arriving daily to see the admire the beautiful architecture and art work in this chapel, as well as the Basilica at Conception Abbey down the road). The sisters support themselves by making communion hosts (including a gluten-free host they patented), as well as handmade soaps, balms and lotions, and a variety of artifacts. But make no mistake: prayer is their main work.

Sitting beside the sisters, listening to them sing the words of the Psalms at Mid-day Prayer, I recalled something the spiritual writer Thomas Merton wrote in his journal after his first visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani, “Now I know what has been holding the world together and keeping it from cracking into pieces. It is the prayers of this monastery and others.”

My friend Brother Paul Quenon of Gethsemani Abbey recently published a memoir of his 60-plus years in monastic life. Its subtitle is, “In Praise of the Useless Life.” It’s easy to dismiss monastic life as a hopeless throwback to the past. And yes, by the world’s standards dedicating one’s life to prayer can seem like a useless, even lazy endeavor compared to building bridges, developing a new treatment for cancer, educating the young, or piloting a rocket to the moon.

I applaud the sisters at Clyde and other monastics for their chosen work: sending prayer into the cosmos for our increasingly fragmented world. In previous times, the connotation of being a sister of “perpetual adoration” meant someone from the monastery was present at all hours of the day to pray before the Blessed Sacrament – the Eucharist -- which Catholics believe represents the presence of Christ. I was impressed by something Sister Dawn Annette Mills, the general prioress of the Clyde monastery, said about how the sisters now interpret “perpetual adoration.”

It is not just a 24-hour prayer program, she said, but a way of life. “Each sister is called to be a perpetual adorer … to recognize Christ present in every moment of every day, in each encounter and experience. In that awareness, every moment becomes an experience of adoring perpetually the Christ that is before us.”

I left the sisters in Clyde with renewed hope. Hope that good is at work even in these stressful times. Can each of us this week become “a perpetual adorer,” recognizing Christ in every moment, encounter and experience?

The U.S. government shutdown has ended ­— for the time being. It’s probably only a matter of time before the next political standoff. It might be hard-wired into our American psyche to want to prevail at any cost. But is there a better way? Monasteries might seem like an odd model for government, but the way monastic communities reach decisions offers important lessons. Monasteries still practice the disappearing art of consensus.

Monastic decision making is a slow, deliberate process of discernment. It rests on people operating from a set of agreed-upon facts (not exaggerations or outright falsehoods, as we have seen in current political debates). Everyone receives the same amount of information and data. The books are opened, so to speak.

Each member of the monastic community gets a chance to weigh in, regardless of age, seniority, or stature. St. Benedict insisted on this practice in his Rule for monastic life. In doing so, he upended the customs of the 6th century in which only men of certain means received a place at the table. Benedict believed fresh ideas often emanate from the young. “All should be called to counsel,” he wrote, because it is often the young who see more clearly “what is better.”
Rule of St. Benedict

We’re subjected regularly to people talking over one another, arguing, and insulting each other on cable news shows. Benedict wants none of that. “Community members, for their part, are to express their opinions with all humility, and not to presume to defend their own views obstinately,” he wrote.
Nor is it a case of majority rules. Community members have to pay attention to where the will of the majority is trending. But those in the majority, Benedict said, need to heed the concerns of the minority as well. They are to insure those concerns are addressed to the extent possible in any final decision.

And here is possibly the most important part: once a course of action is decided, the entire community agrees to pull in the same direction. Even those who initially opposed a course of action agree to try to make it work. No throwing stones from the outside in.

I often think of how much time and energy some in the U.S. Congress have expended over the past 10 years trying to repeal the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. What if that same amount of energy had gone into trying to improve it?

The time — and prayer — that goes into arriving at consensus in a monastic setting is likely far more than we can hope for in the business or public sector. But the transparency and mutual respect with which decisions are made — as well as the willingness to listen to all points of view — can serve as a model.

Consensus is a process. It reminds us that no one person possesses all of the truth all of the time. No one is right a hundred percent of the time. Each of us holds a piece of the wisdom we need to move forward. Often, the best path to progress is by the winding way of consensus.

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).

With all the chaos and confusion swirling around our country, I was fortunate enough this past week to have several experiences that have filled me with hope. My speaking engagements brought me to four places in two states where I encountered people who are helping to make America good.

My first stop was The Upper House on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Upper House is a private institute founded by UW alumni Stephen and Laurel Brown to inspire students, faculty, staff, clergy, community members, and local professionals to work for the common good. The motto of The Upper House is “Think, Be, Do,” a recognition that our actions emerge from our character — the being we become by cultivating an interior life.

It was heartening to visit a public campus where gospel values are discussed not in a didactic or doctrinal way, but as a way of recognizing that caring for one another is the one best hope for our world. The executive director of The Upper House is John Terrill, someone I’ve long admired for his work connecting faith-based ethics with the work world. The program curator is Melissa Haunty, an energetic young woman experienced in bridging the arts and faith.

Because of John and Melissa, I was able to speak in this public space about “Monastic Wisdom for the 21st Century.” My talk drew an audience of people from different religious backgrounds and stages of life. It was a testament, I believe, to how so many of us are looking at what is happening in our country and drawing closer to the timeless monastic values of community, consensus-building, hospitality, humility, simplicity, prayer and praise.

My next stop was Holy Wisdom Monastery just outside of Madison. Twenty-five years ago, some Benedictine sisters had the vision of creating an ecumenical monastic community where single Christian women – both Catholic and Protestant – live, pray, and work together, following the gospels and monastic Rule of St. Benedict.

The Holy Wisdom sisters have a special ministry of care of the land. They have restored 100 acres of prairie on the land the monastic community owns that also includes a glacial kettle lake, woods and wetlands. Their stone monastery is a wonder of eco-friendly technology. Holy Wisdom is an oasis of peace and natural sanctuary just outside the city. It is also an example of why Benedictine monastic life has lasted 1,600 years. It has endured by adapting unchanging to the changing needs of every age.

Later in the week, I arrived at Mother of God Monastery, which rises like a great white mirage on the South Dakota prairie. I was invited to give a series of conferences on some of the main themes of the Benedictine Rule, including “Waking Up,” “Seeking the True Self” and “Esteem for silences.

The sisters originally came to Watertown, South Dakota, to teach, but their main mission in recent years has been to return to St. Benedict’s original vision of monastic life as encompassing prayer, spiritual guidance, and work within the monastery. It is of great comfort to know these sisters stop in the middle of whatever they are doing three times a day to pray for our country and our world. They pray for our political leaders, for the people who feel alone, the people who are ill, who need work, who will die today.

Visiting a Trappist monastery for the first time, Thomas Merton once said, “Now I know what has been holding the world together and keeping it from cracking into pieces.” I felt that way hearing the beautiful sung prayer of these Benedictine sisters in South Dakota.

It is also difficult to put into words the warm hospitality you experience at Mother of God Monastery. On my first visit there, my husband and I drove up to the monastery at night. Out of the darkness emerged this tiny woman in a hooded coat accompanied by a Husky dog. It was Sister Emily Meisel. She approached us with her arms extended. It was the first time we were meeting, and I will always remember that gesture of welcome. Since then, I’ve modeled that gesture many times in welcoming people to my own home for the first time. Thank you Sister Emily.

A song the sisters sang at Mass this morning, “I Will Choose Christ,” says so much about them: “I will choose love, I choose to serve, I give my heart, I give my all to you.” If you have a chance to pass through Watertown, South Dakota, do stop in and say hello and express gratitude for all these sisters have contributed to the people of the Dakotas. Even better, attend one of the many spirituality programs Sister Emily offers at the monastery’s Harmony Hill Retreat Center.

My last stop today will be a meeting with students of Mount Marty College’s Watertown campus who have been studying The Rule of St. Benedict with the help of my book, How To Live: What The Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning and Community. The students will be presenting their creative projects that illuminate the Benedictine values of community, listening, awareness of God, hospitality, caring for creation, stability in a moving world, lifelong learning, and work. I’ll write more about that in a future column.

I’d like to leave you today with a comment from my dear friend Denise Morris of Fargo, North Dakota, who attended my conferences this weekend. Denise said she thought the 2016 election caused an eruption of the negative energy of envy, greed, anger, and racial and class divisions that had been roiling for many years under the surface.

Now that this energy is out in the open, perhaps we can decide what kind of nation we want to be. Denise asks: “Are we going to choose this negative energy, or work for good?” An important question to ponder this week and for long after.