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

I write today from the Abbey of Our Lady of Guadalupe in New Mexico, secluded beneath lush green mountains alongside the Pecos River. For the past few days, I’ve enjoyed the privilege of leading a retreat for the monastery’s lay associates. Surrounded by the Pecos Mountains and rolling prairie of the high desert, filled with pinon, cherry, and apricot trees, it is easy to feel yourself an infinitesimal part of a far greater narrative. Yesterday at morning prayer, the words of Psalm 8 seemed particularly appropriate:
When I see the heavens, the work of your fingers
The moon and the stars which you arranged
What are we humans that you should keep us in mind
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic your name through all the earth …

Here at Our Lady of Guadalupe, the main sounds at night are those made by the crickets, a few hooting owls, or the lone wail of a coyote in the distance. People come from all over the country to this lovely adobe monastery seeking a respite from the chaos of everyday life. As a recovering workaholic myself, I understand why so many of us find it hard to go somewhere to simply rest and recharge, and engage in what my Italian ancestors called la dolce fa niente, the sweet do-nothing.

Thomas Merton once described the contemplative life as being “fully active, fully aware, and fully alive.” As Americans, we get the fully active part. We’re not so adept at being fully aware or fully alive. The Europeans have us beat on that. Most Europeans will be returning home from taking their four-week annual vacation during August. By contrast, only about 19 percent of Americans take their full measure of vacation time – usually just a week or two for most workers. On average, Americans work about 1,835 each year, more hours than in 1977 when there was far less automation. Workaholism is a particularly American disease.

In his Rule for monastics, St. Benedict set down a schedule that divided the day equally between prayer, work, study and rest. He understood that leisure is essential. I would go so far as to say leisure is holy.

Even though my time at Our Lady of Guadalupe was a kind of “working respite,” I will return home today refreshed and relaxed, with a greater appreciation for the things that most sustain me: prayer and quiet reflection, and time with the people I love. Is there a place like the abbey where you, too, can come away for a while and rest? If you haven’t already taken your full vacation, is it something you can begin planning today?

Sometimes it’s important to take the wise counsel of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: Don’t just do something, stand there.

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?

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?

My mind continues to swirl with insights from “Disappear from View: Thomas Merton Fifty Years Later and Beyond,” the superb conference on the legacy of the great Trappist monk and writer, which was held last weekend at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union.

One of the best parts was hearing again so many passages from Merton’s voluminous writings. Merton wrote on a range of subjects from contemplative prayer and the role of poets to eradicating racism and the roots of war and fear. Another of Merton’s major preoccupations – and one that spoke to me most powerfully this past week – was his emphasis on seeking the “true self.”

For Merton, the true self connects to that spark of the divine that dwells in each of us. It was something he referred to as “the pure point of being.” For me, this search recalls a passage I love in the Book of Revelation 2:17: “To the one that overcomes I will … give a white stone, and on that stone a new name written, which no one knows save the one who receives it.”

It is intriguing to think we possess an identity known only to God, and that it is our truest identity. The mission of our lifetime is to uncover that identity.
Merton perceived the masks that so many of us wear in our largely conformist, success-and-outcomes-oriented culture. We wear the mask of the person we think we should be. We wear the mask of the person others say we are. I have been thinking about the many masks I continue to don. Something that drove it home for me was looking at the biographical notes in the conference program submitted by the various presenters – myself included.

The bios included long lists of professional achievements, and all the other markers by which we measure our personal worth. The shortest, most succinct bio of all belonged to Brother Paul Quenon of Merton’s abbey. Merton had been Brother Paul’s novice master and spiritual director. Brother Quenon is the kind of person who may not exist in the future. He has spent 60-plus years as a Trappist, waking every morning at 2:30 to begin praying for our world. In that time, he has written seven collections of poetry and been a mentor to countless spiritual seekers inspired by Merton’s writings, who show up daily at his abbey’s door. He is someone who has spent a lifetime seeking his true name.

I once stupidly asked Brother Paul what he thinks is the purpose of the Trappist life in the modern world. His answer: “The purpose of the Trappist life in the modern world is to show you don’t have to have a purpose. The purpose of life,” he said, “is life.”
Brother Paul sounds a lot like Merton, who said a person knows “he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.” Not surprisingly, Brother Paul titled the memoir of his six decades in the monastery, In Praise of the Useless Life.

As a new year nears – perhaps like you -- I have decisions to make on both a personal and professional level. Exciting new projects beckon. The question I most need to ask is, who am I really? What is my true name? What kind of work nourishes my soul? Which pursuits help lead me to the true self?
No one could have imagined that on Dec. 10, 1968, Merton would die so suddenly and in such a bizarre way. He was electrocuted accidentally when he touched a fan coming out of a shower in Bangkok, while on a tour of Asia. His death short-circuited for us whatever further insights he might have held within him. His passing, however, didn’t silence his voice.

I was particularly struck by a passage from Merton’s No Man Is An Island, that my colleague on the International Thomas Merton Society board, David Golemboski, read during a discussion of “Merton: Prophet of Hope for a Time of Fear.”
Merton wisely perceived that the root of all conflict is fear. The antidote to fear, he said, is hope. Hope is not optimism, which depends on wagering a positive outcome. Hope is a state of being. Hope is a gift we give ourselves. Merton wrote, “For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.”

May we all move into the new year walking on air.

I recently attended a retreat where my fellow presenters included astronauts who have flown on the Space Shuttle and spent time on the International Space Station. If you ever need reinforcement for belief in a higher power, just listen to the observations of those who have voyaged in outer space. They describe a universe that is far vaster and more intricate than we can imagine. As one astronaut put it, our generation knows more about the inner workings of the cosmos than any previous one, yet we still understand only a thimbleful of its complexity.

This is not to say all who venture to these far reaches become instant evangelists. They do, however, share a common awe for the beauty and intricacy of the universe. Scott Kelly, one of the astronauts I met, has spent more time on the International Space Station than any other human. Kelly was raised Catholic, but jettisoned formal religion as a teenager in favor of an open-minded agnosticism. He writes in his memoir Endurance: A Year In Space, A Lifetime of Discovery:
"I am a scientific minded person, curious to understand everything I can about the universe. We know there are trillions of stars, more than the grains of sand on planet Earth. Those stars make up less than 5 percent of the matter in the universe. The rest is dark matter and dark energy. The universe is so complex. Is it all an accident? I don’t know."
Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Many scientists seem more comfortable with the existence of mystery than so many of us who call ourselves people of faith. We crave certainty. We seek doctrine and rules. We want a God who conforms to our andromorphic needs. Of course Jesus was a light-skinned male (though he probably looked more like a present-day Syrian refugee). Of course, Mary had blonde hair and blue eyes. And God is a senior citizen with a snow-colored beard.

Could we not think of God as pure mystery, as absolute love, as inviolate light, as the deepest, truest point of being within our own soul and still follow the teachings of Jesus?

Listening to these astronauts forced me to reexamine the current political discourse about “protecting” the U.S. border. When astronauts gaze upon Earth from deep space, they see one mass. A single planet. A fragile bead suspended in infinite blackness.

Borders are artificial human constructs. What we now consider our inviolate U.S. borders once belonged to other people: to Mexicans, to the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, and yes, our Native Americans. About this history we seem to have collective amnesia.

Thomas Merton so accurately noted that the root of war is always fear. Today’s debate over building a concrete border wall or steel barrier – take your pick -- is drenched in fear. There is fear of strangers, fear that what is ours will be taken. Exaggerations, stigmas and outright falsehoods supply oxygen to these fears.

In the gospels, Jesus’ followers ask him what they must to do “bear good fruit,” to enter the Kingdom of God, and attain eternal life. Each time his answer is remarkably similar. “Go and sell your house and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven,” he tells one rather disappointed follower in Matthew’s gospel. To a lawyer in Luke, he says imitate the Samaritan who stopped to help wounded foreigner whom others passed by.

He puts it perhaps most succinctly in Matthew’s gospel: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in… I was sick and you looked after me.”

It seems to me that people of faith are called to tear down walls, not build more of them.

Just ask astronauts how many walls they see in space.

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).