Dot Magis: Sacred cacophony

St. Benedict Fra Angelico via Wikimedia Commons

“From holy Easter until Pentecost without interruption let ‘Alleluia’ be said both in the Psalms and in the responsories.” —from The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 15.

"...my breath caught in my mouth. Alleluia? I had barely thought the word in weeks, and now we were singing it in four parts, in Lent. St. Benedict’s Rule flashed through my mind. Wait, I wanted to say, until 'holy Easter'! 

Holy Easter duly arrived, and with it, a delightful explosion of Alleluias. But I still wondered at my discomfort with those out-of-season Alleluias. I was reminded of St. Ignatius’s caution to retreatants in the Spiritual Exercises (#127) to 'not read any mystery that is not to be used on that day or at that hour, lest the consideration of one mystery interfere with the contemplation of the other.' It can be hard to hear God’s voice in a cacophony, even a cacophony of sacred mysteries." — read the rest at DotMagis

I have a short piece up at DotMagis reflecting on how the out-of-season singing of alleluia made me more aware of the need to be present to each of the tasks and people that appear in my inbox and at my door even in this particularly chaotic time of year.  Just as with the sacred mysteries of the Exercises, I mused, take things one a a time.  What I hadn't quite realized when I wrote it is that these swirling demands are not like sacred mysteries, they are sacred mysteries.  Enveloped as they may be in difficult personalities, or troubles that I can't unravel in a few lines, even popping into my inbox, these are collisions with the sacred.  And surely a mystery.

Phaith: Ora et labora

More on kitchen painting from my latest column in Phaith:

"But as one playlist ran down, inconveniently catching me up the ladder removing old wallpaper, soapy water running down my arms, a momentary silence descended. The quiet seemed to be doing as much to dissolve my tension as the hot water was doing for the remnants of the wallpaper paste. I left the music off.

I began to listen to the sounds of the task at hand, not obliterate them in a barrage of noise. The swish of the rag in the water, the scritch of the sandpaper on the spackle, the bass thunk as I tapped the lid of the paint can back into place at the end of the day. It reminded me to listen for the sound of God’s Hands at work in creation, in my life. To be attentive to the ways in which God would like to remake me."

Read the rest here....

Column: Unhurried hospitality

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 23 June 2011.

For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome. — Mt. 25:35a

It had been raining for the last 24 hours, and would rain for the next 48. It’s what you get when a typhoon arrives as the monsoon season begins. Soaked does not begin to describe the state of my shoes. We had been walking the paths that wind between the temples of Mount Kōya since early in the morning, and so the pilgrims’ shelter just outside the precincts of Okuno-in was a welcome site.

The young Buddhist priest who had been guiding us all afternoon took a tray from the shelf. He lifted the wooden lid off a large pot kept warm over a banked fire and ladled tea into four delicate cups. We found a table and let our bilingual conversation about the concept of self-abandonment in Buddhist and Catholic thought swirl around us like the steam from our drying shoes.

Everywhere we went in Japan — from the hut of a hermit living high on a mountainside to the elegant temple where the emperor visits on occasion — we were welcomed with tea, perhaps a small sweet, and unhurried conversation. Far from home, it was a ritual I appreciated deeply.

“A wise old monk should guard the gates of the monastery,” recommends St. Benedict in his Rule. Like our Japanese hosts, Benedict felt that guests should be welcomed graciously. Guests bless the house, and to care for them, is to care for Christ.

No wise old monk guards the doors to my office, but I suspect that Benedict would not thereby absolve me from the requirement to welcome guests — or students or colleagues — graciously. It’s not the tea or sweets I think he would fault me for failing to provide, but the unhurried conversation.

I can’t tell you how often a student knocks on my door with, “I know you’re really busy…” True. Infinity is a concept I grasp in part because it’s a good description of the length of my to-do list. Still, helping my students grapple with the intricacies of calculating pH is one thing on that list, and an important one at that.

Information moves fast these days, a message dispatched from Japan arrives in my Bryn Mawr inbox in a breath. Is this what drives the sense that I must respond quickly and efficiently to each task that presents itself, to always be in a hurry to get to the next thing? I long for the advice of one of St. Benedict’s wise Brother Porters to teach me “how to receive and answer a question.” The Rule notes that humility and charity are essential. Speed and efficiency, while commendable, take a back seat.

As one school year ends, and I begin to plan for the next, I’m meditating on unhurried conversations and the Benedictine tradition of hospitality. How can I make a gate in the wall that my to-do list seems to have erected around my office? Can I truly respond as St. Benedict advises, Deo gratias — thanks be to God — to the next knock on my door?

The fire that kept the tea warm for pilgrims at Okonu-in has been kept burning for a thousand years; communities that keep St. Benedict’s Rule have been beacons for travelers half again as long. No fire burns in my office, no wise old monk ushers you through the door, but I pray my students will know that they are welcome nonetheless.

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Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
— T.S. Eliot, from The Rock

Column: Elected Stability

Can you tell I'm ready to be home?

The photo is from a relief hanging in the western cloister at Wernersville.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 17 November 2010.

One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek: To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. — Ps. 27:4a

“There are four kinds of monks,” begins the Rule of St. Benedict: those that stay put and have a rule of life, those who go unbound by a common obedience and those who have neither rule nor stable community — the wanderers, the gyrovagues.

Benedict, not surprisingly, looked most favorably on those monks who lived in community, under a rule and an abbot, and even musters a word or two of praise for hermits and anchorites. But the gyratory monks who “all their lives wander in different countries staying in various monasteries for three or four days at a time,” St. Benedict can find nothing to praise in their “wretched life style.”

I need no encouragement from the good saint. After six weeks of wandering in different countries, spending three or four or 10 days sleeping in various hostels and the occasional airplane seat, I’m more than ready to give up my gyratory ways.

Though grateful for the technology that lets me see their faces as well as hear their voices wherever I go, I miss my family deeply when I travel. Drinking my morning cup of tea at a desk, while they eat their dessert half a day and half a world away, is not the same as sharing the same meal at the same table. Clearly I have, as 11th century Benedictine monk St. Anselm advised, “set down roots of love” in the community in which I have professed my vows. My family.

What surprised me, though, was how much I missed the community I pray with. The first morning back at Lauds, as the other side took up its strophe of the psalm, I felt suddenly relieved of a burden I did not know I was carrying. I was not making this time of prayer alone, but was gathered into the rhythm of the community’s voice, as we handed the work of God carefully back and forth over the altar.

St. Benedict called the community a workshop for stability, a spot to learn the virtue of being present to God in the place where you are. Here and now. In the place we have set down our roots of love. For Benedict’s monks, that place was built of real stones and mortar. Most of us must instead seek an interior stability, rooted less in an enclosed place and more in an encompassing love.

The community I celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours with been a good workshop to help me build an interior stability, a monastery of the heart. The work demands presence. It teaches me to keep my mind here and now, and simultaneously to be ready to grasp what is being handed to me.

In his Genesse Diary, Father Henri Nouwen, exhausted by his own travels, reflected on this inner stability, that whether he was “at home or … in a train, plane or airport, I would not feel irritated ... and desirous of being somewhere else ... I would know that here and now is what counts … because it is God Himself who wants me at this time in this place.”

To elect St. Benedict’s virtue of stability, is to move beyond being resigned to where I am, beyond patiently enduring the vicissitudes of travel — or of life at home — but to desire with all my heart to see what God wants me to see. Here and now. In this place and at this time.

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God our Father, great builder of the heavenly Jerusalem, You know the number of the stars and call each of them by name. Heal hearts that are broken, gather together those who have been scattered, and enrich us all from the plentitude of Your eternal wisdom. Amen. — Psalm prayer from Morning Prayer, Thursday, Week IV

The Big Silence

Read about the BBC's "The Big Silence" - which followed five people to a Benedictine monastery and on an 8-day Ignatian retreat. The site, Growing Into Silence, is a project of the British province of the Jesuits.

I'd love to see the show...

Column: Counting Stitches

When I realized how many stitches I'd put in, and how many there were to go, I very nearly did despair. The yarn softens my hands as well -- the lanolin in the raw wool rubs off! I love finding the bits of the monastery right there in my yarn -- dried bits of grass still caught in the spun fibers.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 22 October 2009.

Teach us to count our days rightly, that we may obtain a wise heart. — Ps. 90:12

I was flipping through one of the dozen catalogs that arrived this week when I saw it — a gorgeous grey wool sweater with an intricately patterned yoke. It would only take a few clicks on the Internet, a credit card and it could be on my front step by week’s end. I have to admit it was tempting.

Actually, I’m already waiting on a sweater — but I don’t have a tracking number because I’m knitting it by hand. The rough spun wool came from a Benedictine monastery in New York, ordered not with a quick click or two, but by scheduling a phone call with Brother Bruno. I worked in earnest on the sweater last January amidst the silence of the Spiritual Exercises. Ten months and 22,000 carefully counted stitches later, I’m only half done.

“Teach us to count our days rightly, that we may obtain a wise heart.” I’m counting the days as well as the stitches until I can wear my sweater, but I wonder if I am any wiser for spending my time in this way. What lesson in wisdom are the psalmist and I seeking here?

The sweater’s slow progress certainly fosters patience and as St. Augustine counseled: “Patience is the companion of wisdom.” Even more, it is an invitation to delayed gratification. The waiting is a discipline, one that has much the same flavor for me as fasting. There is a certain freedom that grows from knowing that I can wait, even for what I need, not just merely want. Fasting teaches me to know the difference, so does knitting.

I am learning more than patience. Each stitch in the sweater grows from the previous one; the strength of the whole depends on the integrity of these individual twists of yarn. Perhaps when I learn to see my days from this same perspective, recognizing the spots where the strands I am weaving are weak and in need of repair, and how the ultimate worth of my life depends on the shape of each day, I will have a wiser heart.

Most of all, the sweater fosters persistence. There is nothing to distinguish one row from the next, but despite the lack of signposts, I need to keep working. It can be hard to persist when you see no progress toward an end, particularly when the landscape is dull and clear road signs are lacking. It’s hard to count the days when they are like this. Still, I watch a friend who lost her son a year ago persist in prayer, though she sees no sign that God is near, and the landscape is unbearably barren. Endless rounds of knitting or prayer may not be wise in the eyes of the world, but I suspect she and I both hope a time will come when we can see the shape of what has been wrought by our hearts and hands.

St. John Cassian, whose writings inspired St. Benedict to write his rule for monastic life, points out that we have many tools at our disposal as we grow in our spiritual lives — fasting, vigils, deprivation. No matter what we choose, their purpose is not to merely possess the tools, but “to produce the crafted objective for which these are the efficient means.” The more progress I make on this sweater, the more I realize it’s not about efficiently making a sweater, but about how the sweater efficiently re-makes me.

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God of eternal wisdom, you alone impart the gift of right judgment. Grant us an understanding heart, that we may value wisely the treasure of your kingdom and gladly forgo all lesser gifts to possess that kingdom’s incomparable joy. We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.— Opening Prayer for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Column: Prayer and Patience

I learned about writing reminders on the mirror from Crash - who started writing his list there when he started high school. On the long retreat, I wrote my schedule on the mirror in my room - principally the graces sought in the exercises of the day.

This column appeared in the Catholic Standard and Times on 17 September 2009.

Pray without ceasing. — 1 Th. 5:17


The reminder taped to the kitchen door read “cake.” My lunch? Hung on the doorknob. The phone rings. Can Victor bring Chris his trombone at the bus stop? He forgot. Mike plops onto a chair in my study, “Did you remember to put money in my lunch account?”

With four of us starting back to classes at three different schools, lists and notes are tacked everywhere from the back door to the bathroom mirror. Until it all becomes routine, I need the prompts. Case in point, the bright yellow sticky note on my binder notwithstanding, I arrived at my class today to find I left the problem set for my class behind in my office.

Maybe the unfamiliarity with the routine life of a Christian community is what impelled Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to end their letter to the newly formed Church at Thessalonica with their version of a to-do list for the community: Be at peace. Care for the weak. Be patient with everyone. Pray constantly.

Maybe I should tape this list to the door? Paul’s rapid-fire words of advice — a style scripture scholar Calvin Roetzel colorfully dubbed “shotgun parenesis” — seem to fit my life these days. Short and to the point, I don’t need the details right now, just the reminder. For all things give thanks to God. Hold onto what is good.

As the pace of life picks up, I need to cultivate patience, peace and unceasing prayer more than ever. But what will it take for me to remember to pray, not off and on throughout my day but as Paul advises, incessantly? Somehow I think sticky notes will not do the trick.

Maybe it would just take a small reminder? Benedictine monk Bede Thomas Mudge says of his experience of wearing his prayer beads, “The feeling of having the beads on my wrist is an almost constant reminder to prayer.” Brother Bede also writes about what happens when he forgets to put his beads on one day, realizing that their absence prodded him to pray just as effectively.

Or maybe what I need is the absence of a reminder in a life overflowing with them? Perhaps when I feel most frazzled, when I long the most for patience and peace, conceivably that longing itself, like Brother Bede’s absentee beads, is my prompt for prayer.

The anonymous 14th century English author of a classic guide to the mystical life, “The Cloud of Unknowing,” had this advice about prayer: “Let your longing relentlessly beat upon the cloud of unknowing that lies between you and your God.” So it could be that my relentless longing for peace is an incessant prayer to God. But to be sure, I scribbled a note on my mirror. Prayer, patience, peace.

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Blessed be your name, O Lord, you are the fount and source of every blessing, and you look with delight upon the devout practices of the faithful. Draw near, we pray, to these your servants and, as they use this symbol of their faith and devotion, grant that they may also strive to be transformed into the likeness of Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you for ever and ever. Amen. — Prayer of Blessing of religious articles

Obedience's Gifts

After I wrote this I realized that in Latin Benedict means "good word" or "blessed," and Benedictus ("blessing") is the first word uttered by Zechariah after he insisted his son be named John. I wonder if that unconciously drove this piece down the road it went? Patient Spiritual Director's help with my Greek last spring played a role, too...

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 6 November 2008.]

Zechariah said to the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is getting on in years.”

“I am Gabriel and I have been sent to you and bring you this good news. Listen! Since you have not believed my words, which will come true at their appointed time, you will be silenced and have no power of speech until this has happened.” Lk. 1:18-20

“Mom, Mom…Mommmmm! Tell him to leave me alone!” came the increasingly strident demands from the back room. I was moving as fast as I could, but without a voice, the squabbling siblings had to wait for me to arrive on scene to call a halt to the proceedings. Alas, all that came out was a squeak, unlikely to elicit silence when pitted against the booming voices of my teen-aged sons.

I resorted to sign language, learned when the boys were toddlers. Stop squabbling, my hands read, leave your brother alone! The two combatants had no eyes for my hands; the verbal battle raged on over my head, while I was relegated to the sidelines.

Oh, for the return of my voice! Zechariah endured nine months without his voice, forced to rely on his hands, and the patience of those around him to be understood. I imagine it tried his patience, too. As much as I regularly choose to spend time in silence, I find this imposed silence to be vexing. Both Zechariah and I have something to learn. To hear, to listen, to obey.

Luke’s Gospel uses the Greek word “siope” to describe Zechariah’s silence. The Greek translation carries the connotation of an imposed, involuntary silence, of a silence that goes beyond mere voicelessness, to the stilling of one’s will. Without a voice, it’s certainly hard to impose my will (particularly on noisy teen-aged boys).

My inability to express myself strikes more deeply than the temporary suspension of my role as peacemaker. Suddenly I’m put in a position where I have to listen, where I have to accept without argument the choices, pleasing and displeasing, that others make for me — to obey.

A listening ear is the key to obedience. Literally. Obedience derives from the Latin “obaudire” which means to listen deeply. St. Benedict’s rule for monastics begins with his call to monks to live in obedience and humility. The very first word of the rule? Listen.

St. Benedict calls obedience a gift, owed not just to the superiors of the community, but to each other. In order to obey, one first must listen. Not so much to the squabbling children or the demanding student, but to the voice of Christ, hidden in the voices of others. It requires listening not superficially, but deeply. It is a discipline that both requires and produces obedience. It is a listening that should not fail to respond to God’s call.

My voice has yet to completely return (though the kids have ceased squabbling for the moment), but I am balking a bit less at this “stilling of my will.” I’m learning to enjoy being surprised at the choices others make for me along this road, to delight in these gifts of obedience. And I’m practicing listening for Christ in the voices of those around me, even amidst the squabbles, the demands and the banal.

I hope in the end to be able to do as St. Benedict advises, “Listen carefully, my child, to your master’s precepts, and incline the ear of your heart.”

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Lord Jesus Christ, You were made obedient unto death, and Your name was exalted about all others. Teach us always to do the Father’s will, so that, made holy by obedience which unites us to the sacrifice of Your body, we can expect Your great love in times of sorrow and sing a new song to our God. Amen. From Daytime Prayer, Monday, Week II.

Exacerbation

I am covered in hives - and I'm grateful. Why? Because it didn't start until after the Good Friday service tonight. Meanwhile, Crash and the Boy, having used up all their control at church (Crash was an acolyte, so was seriously on best behavior) are now engaged in escalating sibling warfare. I point out this is not a good time to be baiting your brother. (This begs the question, is there a good time? Answer, I think, is when I'm out of earshot.) Math Man has been up since 3:30 am working on a grant, I've been juggling parental, teaching, departmental and liturgical responsibilities all week AND am clearly having an allergic reaction to something.

As I desperately beg for peace yet again, Crash turns to the Boy and remarks, "I think this is making Mom exacerbated." It's definitely not helping...

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Why the St. Benedict tag? Patron saint of hives.

Friday Five: Books!

Revhrod at RevGalBlogPals wonders what the really good books in our lives are. And having taken BesoMami's reading challenge on, I'm thinking about writing about reading...


What book have you read in the last six months that has really stayed with you? Why?
Mary Oliver's Thirst. Two poems in particular from that collection have stuck with me. The first lines of Six Recongnitions of Our Lord:

I know a lot of fancy words.
I tear them from my heart and my tongue.
Then I pray.

and of Heavy:

The time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.

What is one of your favorite childhood books?
I may regret admitting this in public, but The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I first read it in a frigid Illinois winter, where I was walking to school thinking of the little girl walking in the snow with no shoes. And the marvelous comeuppance that comes the way of Miss Minchkin.

Do you have a favorite book of the Bible? Do tell!
The psalms are in my very bones.

What is one book you could read again and again?
The Psalms. :-) My comfort reading actually moves around, right now when I need something predictably soothing and humorous, I tend to pick up something in Lois Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series (A Civil Campaign is on my bedside table at the moment). They make me laugh and remind me of my brothers (and their well meaning, but somewhat quirky senses of humor).


Is there a book you would suggest for Lenten reading? What is it and why?
The Psalms. :-) Sorry, I couldn't resist. St. Benedict's Toolbox: The Nuts And Bolts Of Everyday Benedictine Living by Jane Tomaine, an Episcopal priest. The book grew out of her work in her parish and her doctoral dissertation, so it's grounded well in pastoral practice, tradition and prayer. Looking for a Lenten discipline? The focus is on how we can answer the calls to obedience, hospitality, stability and conversion of life outside the monastic enclosure. I gave it to my brother a couple of years ago when he was in the last stages of joining the Episcopal Church and asked me for something that would offer practical advice on living out God's call to us in our everyday lives. He chose to say the short version of Morning Prayer that is included - still does as far as I know. I won't reveal precisely where he says it, but it's one of the few places that a parent of young boys can find privacy in the morning!

The Sheep Genome: Transcription Complete

My sheep is finished, alas, Barnacle Boy (the intended recipient) finds it "too fuzzy", so I'm off to find a wool that he likes. The wool was lovely to knit with indeed, so I will follow up with a sweater of the same stuff (for me, not the boy!)

Transcribing the Sheep Genome

I'm knitting a sheep from sheep's wool. Benedictine sheep wool to be precise. The pattern is both simple and complex. Simple in that it uses only one stitch - the knit, and few variations on it at that (a mid-row turn and an increase). Complex in that nearly every row is unique. Follow the pattern slavishly and you end up with what appears to be a sheep skin growing off your needles. It never fails to amaze me, or those watching me. I realized it is like DNA, you read off a linear code to produce a 3-D object. Even though I understand the principles behind both processes, the mystery of creation remains.

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Information about the real sheep genome is here. My sheep code can be obtained here.