Sarah Noceda, 2011 Volunteer in Community Participant - A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

I saw a pear tree today

And it made me cry. I suppose that’s not the usual response to viewing fruit trees. But I had never seen one in person before and it was so beautiful and it looked so graceful spreading its dusky green branches out, its small, hard fruit bending its weight this way and that with the wind…  I nearly stepped back out of some strange sense of respect. I knew pears grew on trees, of course. I had eaten pears in the past. But to see it there…

Today is my first day at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison, WI. I have come from Chicago to an in-residence program of sorts. They call it VIC-Volunteers in Community.
. . .
Yep. That’s right. I came from Chicago to live with some nuns. On purpose.
. . .
I will stay for a month. I will work. I will study. I will pray. I will meditate. And I will search for the Essential Good at the Heart of the Universe. Otherwise known as God, Allah, YHWH, Great Spirit, Brahman, Imana, and The Turning of the Shade. I will search for a knowledge of that Force, for a “knowing” that I may carry home with me.
. . .

For more reflections go to the complete set of excerpts at: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery.

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In the Garden of Eating

I eat food. I eat at least three meals a day, sometimes I snack. And I enjoy food. Well, more accurately, I enjoy restaurants and cooking. I love to read about food, the traditions, the history, how to cook it. I know things about food. Like, that it comes out of the ground. Sometimes from trees and animals. Sometimes it’s expensive, sometimes not. And I know there are a lot of people who don’t have it. I have always had food. Good food, a lot of times great food. . . .  So, I was surprised at my reaction to my first glimpse of the monastery garden. It went something like this,

“THAT PLANT IS MAKING FOOD!!!!”

I was speaking of a green bean plant. The green bean plant probably didn’t think it was doing anything particularly remarkable by producing its crop of green beans. But I had never seen a green bean growing on a bush before. I was thrilled. I felt like a little kid surveying the shelves of an old-fashioned candy counter as I looked up and down the rows of the garden. There were carrots just like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, their frothy green tops rising out of the black earth. There were white flowered pea vines with ACTUAL PEAS GROWING ON THEM. Just hanging there. I took one out of its shell and popped it in my mouth. The taste was pea-ey and wonderful.

. . .

I had never really worked in a garden before or even wanted to, really. All that dirt, the bugs, being out in the wet or the hot sun, sweating…ugh. Plus, I had a “brown thumb”.  . . . I just patronized farmer’s markets and felt like I was doing my part by not eating tomatoes in the winter. So, I guess what I’m saying is that aside from a herb garden on my porch, maintaining an actual garden, like one in my yard that grew actual vegetables…that was never on my to-do list. Now, my sense of wonder made me want to know more.

Sister Lynne had us weeding and picking beans and peas. She told us all about her work with them that year and spoke about their differences and their needs with a maternal tenderness. She showed us how to hold the plant as we picked off the product so as to not damage the larger plant. We didn’t pick the small beans so as to “give them a chance to grow.” She told us to weed around the squash and lettuce to give them “more space and room to breathe”.  So, even though I had to ask  her every 3 minutes if something was or wasn’t a weed, I still felt as if the lettuces were thanking me with a huge sigh of emphysemic relief as I finished up.  . . .  As we worked we spoke of Michael Pollan and the slow food movement, of the hectic modern life we lived in the city as opposed to our lives here. We talked about how we felt rushed, so rushed every minute of every day.  . . .

As we finished up I felt grateful. I was hot, burned, dirty, sweaty, and had dirt in my shoes and two mosquito bites on my arm. But I felt happy. And I felt useful. Like I had done something, really DONE something. Something essential and important and GOOD. Something that somehow connected me to something greater than myself, to the land, to other people, to time and space and the infinite. I was helping to make food. Food that people would eat. That I would eat. And it would taste good. The work of planting, of weeding, of watching, and caring seemed worth it to me now in a way I had never imagined it could be. After all, what was all my work next to the magic of the plant that made my food?

For more reflections go to the complete set of excerpts at: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery.

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Bluebirds are not blue all over

I learned that today. About bluebirds. They have reddish orange  throats and brownish bodies. But their wings are blue and they are gorgeous when they fly. Like little pieces of sky. Getting up at 6:30 am is getting easier as the days progress. The monastery bells start at 7am and ring every half hour. I appreciate their timekeeping. They are not only a call to prayer for me-I count the ”dings” and then judge from that where I have to be - but also the only timepiece I have since I wear no watch and I have left my phone charger in Chicago. I am usually eating my breakfast when they start their first peal of the new day. Bells, to me, mean happiness. I have always had apartments that were in the vicinity of churches, elementary schools, or trains. . . .  They are the sounds I want to hear when my window is open and I fall asleep at night or wake up in the morning. They are happy sounds to me and comfort me. I hear the bells and I know it is time to start the day. I put on my flipflops, sling my daypack over my shoulder and go out through the back door, walk 100 feet between two large pine trees and begin my way to the monastery by way of the prairie path.

It is glorious to watch the new sun over the morning prairie. The air is cool and the dew wets my feet as I walk quickly down the path on my way to morning prayers. There is a small glacial lake – “Lost Lake”- on my way and the other day I saw a host of swallows flying in formation over it, dipping into the sun and looking so happy to be alive.  . . . Crickets jump out of my way and the occasional rustling in the vegetation that surrounds me reminds me that I am never alone on these mornings. Tiny black and tan toads hop across the path under my sandals and I always hope I do not crush any of them in my haste to get to the calm of the morning centering prayer.

. . .

The Benedictine way of life is characterized by value-laden practices that respect the whole person – body, mind and spirit. Simplicity manifests a basic honesty and sincerity where the spirit within is shared outwardly with others.  What you see is what you get.  In chapter 4 of the Rule on the Instruments of Good Works, Benedict says, “speak the truth both in your heart and in your mouth” and “do not wish to be called holy before you really are.” To seek God alone is to place God first in one’s heart within relationships.  We find God in the events and people of ordinary life as we nurture an awareness of God’s presence in all things. The Liturgy of the Hours, centering prayer, the Eucharist and individual prayer all call us to our intention to seek God throughout the day.  “Listen” is the first word of the Rule.  It means listening attentively to hear what the situation demands of me and then respond to it.  Benedictine life may be summarized in a single rule: to listen carefully and to respond heartily. That is what obedience is: listening with the ear of one’s heart.  When we say that we take people and things to heart, we are straining to hear the meaning of their words and respond freely from the heart. Hospitality is a special form of obedience (like listening to one another): answering another’s call.  Benedict says, “Let all guests be received as Christ, for Christ will say ‘I came as a guest, and you received me’.” Benedict extends that same reception of guests of the monastery to all creation, even to the tools of the monastery which he says are to be treated as sacred vessels of the altar.  Everyone and everything, all creation is to be treated with reverence.

So…a little different than you’d expect. A little the same… . . . They are loving and peaceful women. They are all welcoming and motherly to us in a way that touches my heart. After all, they just met me! I look forward to another month of getting to know them and their journeys. Maybe they can help me with mine. I hope they can.

For more reflections go to the complete set of excerpts at: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery.

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That is one Green building!

The monastery grounds are beautiful and spare and austere and lush all at the same time. Everything about the buildings is light and airy yet solid and secure. Kind of like the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. The outside is sandy brick studded with solar panels and surrounded with prairie, gardens, fruit trees, and grass as soft as your grandma’s  Berber carpet. There are flowers all around-riots of  yellow coneflowers, purple prairie clover, and white milkweed, all nodding in the heat of the brilliant July noon. And everywhere there is tall and verdant Prairie grass. I imagine this must be what it looked like to Laura Ingalls Wilder, to the Native Americans, and to my own Wisconsin ancestors, when they first saw it after a two month combined boat and train trip from Europe in the 1860′s. Of course this is mostly Restoration work. The Sisters and their volunteers have worked tirelessly to restore the prairie land surrounding the monastery as part of their vow to be “good stewards of the land”. The sisters take ecology VERY seriously.

The inside is made of mostly blond wood and bamboo with locally sourced granite and environmentally sound paint and light fixtures. The kitchens use all Energysaver appliances and the building itself is “right-sized” so as to leave the littlest carbon footprint possible. When it was constructed the Sisters were even mindful to make the building stand on an open patch of land between the trees rather than have to cut down any to make space.  . . . The sisters also believe that part of their role is to make the monastery a quiet and reflective space. There is little artwork on the walls to detract from “visual clutter”. There is also no music in the building other than that provided by the sister’s voices during the Liturgy of the Hours.  To cut down on “sound clutter”.

And let me tell you, this is one reflective building. In both senses of the word. There are windows…EVERYWHERE! The light just streams into the monastery . . .  The building feels Good. With a capital “G”. And that could be because it IS Good. And Green. Environmentally speaking, that is.  . . . The ones who say an environmentally-conscious building can’t be made at a reasonable cost? I’ve got some nuns you should talk to…

For more reflections go to the complete set of excerpts at: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery.

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This praying thing

Our day at the monastery starts with Centering Prayer. We meet in the Oratory-a kind of small chapel- with an organ, a cross, a small lectern and a large candle at one end. There are four rows of chairs facing one another across a center aisle. One one wall there is an icon of Jesus looking all business-like and yet nice and patient.  . . . The Oratory is silent, the large candle is lit and we file in for what begins our new day. Taking our seats we get comfortable and wait. When she is sure all are in, one of the Sisters closes the Oratory doors and we begin. Sister reads a short prayer and then rings a Tibetan bowl once. We start 20 minutes of concentrated meditation.

What you choose to “center on” is up to you. The Rule of Benedict-as do many methods-recommends one clears one minds of all thoughts and focuses on a word or phrase either from the prayer just read or to just pick a word of phrase on your own. It is understood that this will be hard and almost impossible to do at the outset. It takes practice, lots of practice. I have chosen to take a phrase from the Bible, the Book of Isaiah; “God is the Strength of my Heart”. I like the way it sounds, that end part, “The Strength of my Heart”. So I do what I learned in yoga class and focus on the bridge of my nose while I repeat the phrase endlessly in my head. It’s hard. I have been doing this for years in yoga and in other situations. And it’s never NOT hard. Sister has told us to acknowledge any intruding thoughts but not to dwell on them, just push them softly away like with a feather duster. I keep dusting and I keep trying to focus on my nose. At one point my eyes cross with the strain of it. . . . I keep my hands “open to the universe” on my knees and sit up straight to encourage the flow of breath in and out. I have been doing this for days now and I don’t think I am improving. I have to remind myself of Sister Lynne’s admonishment when I apologized the other day for not getting my row hoed faster, when she said gently, ”It’s not a race.”

. . .

After Centering Prayer comes the Intoning of Praise for the Word given to us by the Anonymous Author of the Psalms, to God, and to Jesus. . . . We then pray the Psalms in a back and forth in a ping-pong action from one side to the other. I found the tradition bizarre the first few days, now I find it hypnotic. The songs [Psalms] are sung in unison with whichever side you happen to sit on that day and the Leader (Sister Lynne today) interjects with a solo here and there.  The voices and rhythm of the call and response and repetition are sung in a high octave with peaks and valleys of notal expression. I am surprised by how my heart feels a physical pulse with the notes as they seem to crystallize and hang in the air between the two sections.

. . .

For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Praise/Prays

. . . This is fascinating, this whole process-the chanting, the back and forth singing. The reactions it’s producing are almost physical in sensation. I feel rested after Centering Prayer, as if I’d just napped. The Singing of the Psalms and the Chanting (we alternate sitting and standing) puts me into a half-awake state and when I leave at the end I feel energetic and just…Good.

After the chanting, there is a secular reading-this week the focus has been Hope. What is Hope? Can Hope be bad? How does one maintain Hope in a Cynical world? Is Hope foolish in the face of certain things? Do we draw from God for our Hope externally or is it internal? . . . Between the chanting and the singing and the readings there are minutes of silence where we are encouraged to meditate on what we have just experienced. Sometimes, depending on the time of day there is a Gospel reading or a reading from the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) or one of the Letters.

. . .

For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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The Singing Nuns (and non-nuns)

Then there is more singing. Up and down the notes go whizzing between Soprano, Second Soprano, Contralto. It is too high for my range and I find it hard to get enough breath in my lungs between lines. I keep trying. One of the volunteers has a gorgeous soprano and I think she must be careful to keep within the rhythm of the group so as not to break the unity of expression, which in some ways, is the goal.

Then there is the Litany of Prayers, which I think is my favorite part. One of the Sisters calls for God to hear the prayers for the world we have to offer. Anyone may chime in and does.  Prayers are offered by Sisters, by Oblates, by retreatants, by lay employees of the monastery who come to pray with them. In my week here I have heard every prayer imaginable. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all delivered with loving kindness:

“May there be peace in the Middle East and may our Muslim brothers and sisters be able to worship in their faith without fear of danger.”

“We offer prayers for our Congress people that they may make decisions for the good of the people and not for political gain.”

“God, please watch over those who suffer from disease, especially those suffering from the ravages of cancer and AIDS. May they find comfort and peace on their journey.”

“Lord, for the Jewish people. That we may always have a true and lasting respect and understanding for each other.”

“For all those who are unemployed or underemployed, especially those in danger of losing their homes, we ask you God, to provide them with meaningful work and a means to sustain themselves in these difficult times.”

“We ask for prayers for all the children of the world who suffer from cold, from hunger, from abuse and neglect. That they may find loving adult caregivers and the resources to sustain their growing bodies.”

The there are the personal prayers delivered in a murmur from the mouths of all those in the room. I close my eyes and hear the names of all the people being prayed for wash over me. Barely audible, they are whispered and mumbled throughout the room…Thomas, David, Jim, Catherine, Julia, Greg…the names keep coming for a good few minutes. I add my own in my head, still too unsure to say any names out loud.  . . .

And I wonder if these people know they are being prayed for? Because even if there is no God…which there very well might not be a God…these people are loved. That much is true. They are being watched over and someone is hoping for them. For something good to happen to them, for them to enjoy life, find peace, find love, find happiness, for them to get well, to find a partner, to not die, to find a job, to find themselves. In Jesus name we pray. Even if you don’t believe in Jesus, it is still beautiful. This coming together to hope for each other, for the ones we know, the ones we don’t. The ones we can help, the ones we wish we could help.

. . .

The Prayer of Jesus is said at the end of the Litany. Basically it’s the “Our Father” without the “Father” part.  And they add a little tweaking to make it more accessible and inclusive:

The Prayer of Jesus

Holy One, our only Home, blessed be your name, may your day dawn, your will be done, here, as in heaven. Feed us today and forgive us, as we forgive each other. Do not forsake as us at the test, but deliver us from evil. For the glory, the power, and the mercy are yours, now and forever. Amen.

We exchange the Sign of Peace. Some people hug, others shake hands, some give half-hugs, some nod. Whatev. The Sisters are fine with you expressing Peace whichever way you’re most comfy. And then it’s over. That’s the Liturgy of the Hours. It’s pretty painless, just under an hour time-wise. And its free. And I feel amazing when its over. Like I’ve just had 12 hours of sleep and could climb a mountain. I’d have to pay 15 bucks for that feeling at my yoga studio.

. . .

For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Place matters

Getting to know a new place is a lot like getting to know a new person. You can start out hesitant and shy. You can do a lot of observing and surreptitiously figuring of how that person thinks or what their sense of humor is like before you approach them. Or maybe, like a kid on the first day of school, you just jump right in. “Hi, my name is Sarah, Wanna be friends?” I have jumped right into Holy Wisdom monastery the way I jump into most of my relationships, with both feet. I want to live the fullness of this experience, to take in everything I can, I want to fully and completely open myself up to it, so that it can hopefully, transform me. It has been two weeks I have been here now and some things about the monastery I have managed to get “chummy” with right away while others have slowly shown me their good qualities as the days have passed and I have become more a part of the rhythm of life here.
. . .
There is apparently, a wolf who lives somewhere around the monastery and a few coyotes. I always make sure to be down the prairie path and safe at home before night falls here at the monastery. I have been assured that should we meet, they would be more afraid of me than I would be of them but images from childhood storybooks make me walk home all the faster when the sun starts to go down behind Lost Lake. There are caterpillars that smoke large pipes from atop Indian grass, and cup plants filled with water that offer grasshoppers and crickets a place to refresh themselves. Bluebirds, goldfinches, and dickcissels fly from one burr oak tree to the next, stopping to rest sometimes on Queen Anne’s lace. The lightening bugs dutifully come out at night to light my path home on both sides as the sun sinks in a showing of red and orange brilliance in the West.

Lavender bergamot (or bee-balm) and mountain mint offer themselves to the sun while wild lilies and jack-in-the-pulpit hides itself away from the fat bumblebees who go about their work with great concentration. The cardinals like to sit in the pine trees and preen themselves in full view of us as we work as if to say, “I am the most gorgeous of birds, don’t you agree?” There are Eastern cottontail rabbits, ground hogs, and meadow voles right under your nose as you go about your chores. The red-tailed hawks cry plaintively as they circle the land looking for food. I hear there are sandhill cranes, eagles, and white-tailed deer here but I have yet to be graced by their presence. There are weeping willows near Lost Lake and their wise arboreal air is soothing to me. I have always loved the graceful way their branches hang and sway in hot summer wind. A weeping willow never fails to remind me of “The Lady of Shalott” and I find myself mouthing lines by Tennyson as I walk to morning prayers.

The area around the monastery is filled with delightful surprises. The other day I looked up to see two wild turkeys walking together not a hundred feet from where I stood. They looked like two elderly friends having a stroll, deep in conversation. The pear and apple trees have become fast friends, their fruits slightly bigger after taking the time to convert all this blessed sunshine into food for me to eat. Stumps were cleared and processed for mulch the other day and for one afternoon the air smelled of chardonnay-oakey and slightly tannic. I woke up to a storm last week and the prairie was silent while each bird and beast and insect bedded down for the long rain and the earth had a cozy feeling all round as I huddled under my quilt.

Ladybugs stick to my shirt as I clear the area around the tomato plants and I speak with them sotto voce, curious as to what they see in their comings and goings in the garden. Do they see the raccoons? How do they feel about these Japanese beetles? So far, the ladybugs have not commented on either. They seem to be content, like the bumblebees, to go about their business in joyful silence. There are also more than enough spiders, earwigs, millipedes, centipedes mosquitoes, flies, and ticks. It is hard to be sympathetic but I remind myself that they have their jobs, too.

Today, we weeded a beet row and gave both the fledgling beets and the Savoy cabbages room to breathe and I felt protective of vegetables for the first time in my life. The banana peppers and zucchini are coming along nicely and it is like Christmas when we come to the garden in the morning and see food just lying there waiting for us to carry it into the kitchen. The other day we dug out a host of “invasive plants” to give the native species a chance to flourish. I felt useful and happy to be a live and yes, amazingly joyful, yet again.

The Prairie is an undeniably cheerful place in summer. It is alive, as a separate ecosystem, in a way I have never been privileged to see. There is an order here, a rhythm, and a life force that fills me with what the Psalms call “Holy Fear”. Fear is a dubious word. It can mean several things. Most often it means to be afraid of something. But it can also mean “to inspire reverence”. That is how I imagine it when I look out onto the prairie and see the flash of blue or yellow, a hint of red or orange, a rustle of brown or green. This place has a Spirit-with a capital “S”. It offers me unconditional welcome and I feel its openness embrace me as I spend more and more time here.

The prairie extends a hand and offers me the opportunity to celebrate the beauty and brilliance of Creation with all of the creatures it harbors in a true spirit of friendship and I feel, mutual understanding. The Prairie and the woods want to know us and we should want to know them. It seems right and good for us to try. We have so much to learn from each other it would be a shame to let that go to waste. Paul, the monastery groundskeeper for the past two decades, mused the other day while we pruned the apple trees that it is impossible for him to see the Prairie, the garden, the orchard, as anything but the expression of a Theology of Love. The birds may sing, the bees buzz, and the squirrels scold, but the white wild indigo, the wild lupines, and the silky asters murmur, the prairie dock and the red clover thrum with life, and the porcupine grass and prairie dropseed, the grama grass and the bluestem pulse with beauty.

. . .

For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Mindful work

. . . Here at Holy Wisdom, I’ve been offered a different perspective on “labor”, on work in general. A different view on what it is and where its value lies. In the past two weeks, I have cleaned Swiss chard and washed the dirt off it. I have separated the purpley-pink and white stems from the green leafy parts and parboiled them. I have plunged them into icy water to stop the cooking process and then frozen it for use in the colder months.

I have placed frozen roma tomatoes in hot water, slipped their skins from them and cooked them in huge pots on multiple burners. After they are mush I have run them through a sieve to strain the juice and pulp from the seeds before cooking them down further for sauce to freeze and store for winter.

I have bathed and spun lettuce, trimmed beets and kohlrabi, and gathered beans, peas, peppers, and zucchini for the evening’s meal. The work is done in community, all of us women chatting and giving directions, companionably straining, sieving, washing, peeling side by side. We have sat and stood by sinks, stoves, and prep tables, trading stories and laughing over shared experiences. . . .

Pruning apple trees is not easy. One must hold the ladder, one must handle the “lopper” or the clippers carefully and choose the branches to be trimmed wisely. The apple trees are pruned to give the tree more room to breathe, for air to circulate amidst its branches more freely, for sunshine to get at its fruits more readily, and for insects to be blown through the tree and not be so prone to settle in it.

The pear trees are pruned for lightness so that their branches don’t weigh it down so and for any diseased bits to be isolated before they get to the heart of the tree. . . . Sometimes Paul, the groundskeeper, climbs up into the tree itself to check the bug traps or to get at a particularly high branch. . . . This, this care we give the trees who will give us their fruit in return, is labor also. We accidentally drop small branches on each others’ heads, bump our heads against low-hanging trunks, and trade directions, “Come here, over here! The ladder! Move it this way! This branch! That one over there! Oops, wrong one!” as we laugh and tell our favorite memories of apples, pears, trees.

The sun infiltrates the green shaded curtains we have entered and we cannot see each others faces sometimes but we follow the sound of voices as we make sure to “cut the trees hair properly” before moving on to the next one. I stop to hold a pear. One of three, it hangs on a low-lying branch. I feel its warmth, the miracle of its smallness and its huge potential, and am happy.

It is time for prayers often before we are done with the job. It is alternately a challenge and a relief to stop mid-task but it is part of the learning here at the monastery. There is a time for work and a time to be thankful work is over. It would be easier to open a can of something, sure. It would be simpler to buy what is needed or wanted, in season or no. Or to get someone else to do these task for me. But there is camaraderie in the work we do here, a time of togetherness, a sense of purpose in the sharing of a task, a chore well done or well started at least.

The tasks are necessary, the reason clear, and the work is appreciated. This kind of labor is one I can do, one I can be fully present for. I am not sending paperwork to another office or filling out endless forms. I am not staring at a computer screen or devoting 12 hours a day as Lloyd Dobbler would say, to make a product I will not sell or selling something I have not processed, or producing something I will not process. There is love in this Labor. Is that what we are truly missing today?

* * *

For more reflections go to the complete set of excerpts at: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery.

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Sisters

When I told people I was coming to Benedictine Women of Madison the first question I got after “What’s that?” was, “Why would you want to go to a monastery?”  Why indeed? . . . Basically, I was searching for God…or more specifically, an understanding of what I believe is God. God and I had been fighting and I missed God. I wanted it to be like old times. So when the opportunity came for me to go live with some nuns I thought the monastery was as good a place as any to try and reestablish that connection. The first move, the first phone call to a long-lost friend.

At the end of two weeks time I can say I definitely have found something, although God it isn’t. Yet. I have found a bridge. Being here has served as a kind of mediator between me and the idea of God I am searching for. Being here with these women, nuns and non-nuns has opened me up to the possibility that the God I have been missing might be closer than I think. Slowly, very slowly, I am connecting the dots. Humor, flexibility, and patience I am realizing, in the way I perceive life is going a long ways to helping draw those lines. All these qualities are best exemplified in the sisters themselves as they go about their work here at Holy Wisdom.  All of our assumptions about nuns have been challenged, I think, since coming to the monastery.

The sisters themselves are very merry and seem to truly enjoy life and their vocation. . . . They are generally soft-spoken, thoughtful, witty, and a joy to be around. The sisters pray and chant with us, they attend classes and seminars, meetings and retreats, and also do outside work. I have seen Sister Mary David mow the lawn and Sister Joanne running errands, while Sister Lynne maintains much of the garden.

The sisters also practice the gracious art of Hospitality. A dying art in our times, Hospitality means truly opening one’s living space to another and giving to them the best of what you have. The sisters have hosted fellow nuns from all over the world to come and live and study with them. Kenya, South Korea, and China are some of the places they have received guests from. They have also hosted refugee families and opened the monastery to various people needing time to get back on their feet.

The peace of the prairie environment is only one of the many gifts the sisters and staff at Holy Wisdom offer whomever comes through their doors. Food, that most timeless and incredible symbols, is another one of their gifts. It is hard to devote yourself to work or prayer or meditation or even sleep when you are hungry, and the kitchen at Holy Wisdom consistently churns out amazing dishes, many made with the sisters own produce. . . .

The people at Holy Wisdom are truly compassionate and considerate. There is a schedule of a balance of work, prayer, meditation, and study but there is also time for fun and fellowship, for “down time” and just “rest time”. . . .

People’s biorhythms are taken into account and no one is asked to do more than they are able or inclined to do in good cheer. Responsibilities are evenly shared with no one shirking their part. When weather or illness prevents something from being done or someone to do it, another steps in to take the place or another task is done while we wait for the sun to come back. There is a commitment it seems, to “going with it”. I am learning to “go with it” too. Those who come to Holy Wisdom seem to be committed to living The Golden Rule in their everyday interactions. People do what they can when they can and seem to take joy in making each other’s burdens lighter, always asking if you need help or if there is something, anything they can do. I am in awe of how this place works like clockwork and there is an aura of harmony wherever you go, inside and out. . . .

I am encouraged to participate in the abundance of life here at Holy Wisdom –even when it seems as if what I am being asked to is a hardship it is for my happiness that it is meant.  It is to wake up early, which will permit me to see the sun and to enjoy the sweet singing of my fellow humans in the early hours. It is to only be provided with healthy food –not junk– to allow my mind and body to grow and to be able to fully embrace the work of the day. Maybe I am asked to work on some group project so I can appreciate the time and preparation that goes into maintaining both the building and the people of the community. Or to be asked to participate in community activities and events so I do not spend too much time alone to get wrapped up in my own neurosis. Perhaps it is to go to bed early so I can arise refreshed and not exhausted for the day ahead and be in a better mood for the others I will celebrate the day with.

In this understanding I do not feel deprived but almost gently nudged toward a better Way. The Way the sisters have taken is not the way for everyone and nor is it the path I choose for myself, but it is a good path. True, it is a path that has been made for me and not by me and one that I am meant to respect as long as I am here. And there is some need in our lives to explore and to blaze our own trails, but that way is not for everybody. This more contemplative life is beautiful for those who choose it and fits them to a tee. It is a path explored by generations and experimented with over centuries in order to find the method that works the best. The Benedictine way of life exists here to offer peace to those who seek it. It is not the peace we would make up but the timeless peace of ages and tradition. The security and protection of knowing that there are many ways of defining “freedom”.

I do not, nor does anyone here, feel forced to do anything here at Holy Wisdom. Personally, I find myself running toward this perfectly harmonious balance of the best of what makes me human. A Way not of mindless TV programs, endless cans of soda, the pursuit of the latest gadget, perpetual exhaustion, hamster-wheel antics, the obsessing over a job I might hate, and insomnia, but of Perfect Peace. A Way that is finely, beatifically in tune with my spirit and one in which what is best for me will not be something I will have to force upon myself but one I can grab with both hands and hug to myself knowing it will bring Balance and Harmony to everything I do, everyone I meet, and everything I am.

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Spiritual guidance

Claudia is my spiritual guide. … She looks more like an early 70′s guitar player than a gifted psychoanalyst, yoga practitioner, mother, and spiritual guide.  … Claudia specializes in eco-conscious Christianity and the role of the Feminist in Christianity. … Claudia and I have been working together these past three weeks in one-on-one sessions, 1 day a week, 1 hour at a time. In our sessions we discuss my relationship with God, my views on my experience here, and what the future holds for me in terms of my spirituality.  … I like Claudia. She is funny and fun, she is wise and patient, and insightful. And she has been flawless in executing that task of all those whose job it is to probe the human heart: she makes me ask myself the tough questions and she makes me look inside myself for the answers to those questions.

… Claudia and I comfortably settled into the time we had together with her asking me about my life up until this summer and why I had come to Holy Wisdom. The next session we dug in a little deeper, Claudia letting me lead the way with the shovel, and we ended up discussing my relationship with my parents and their view of faith and the role that religion played in their lives. And then in later sessions we would discuss my marriage and divorce and what that had done to impact my faith and whether or not it was still affecting it. We would also discuss where I would go from here in regards to my faith journey and how I would use the knowledge gleaned from our sessions to inform my life for better.

I am somewhat of a ruminator. I chew thoughts like a cow chews a particular piece of cud… I try not to think too hard about things I can’t change or “what if” type situations because it just makes me nuts. The point is, I am a contemplative person. For better or for worse, I think about things. A lot. Probably more than is good for me. I have often thought it would be good for me to take up some form of manual labor if only to be forced out of my head more often than I currently am with work, yoga, etc. So there’s a lot of thoughts flying around in there regarding religion and spirituality and the universe and all that. Enter Claudia.

She didn’t exactly take me out of my head but she didn’t exactly keep me in it either. She sort of …well, organized my brain. Like cleaning a closet, she had me take everything out regarding faith, religion, etc and she stood there with a label-maker while I decided what to keep, toss, or sell.   It was astounding how all these thoughts that I suppose had always been in the back of my brain came to the surface the longer we chatted.  It was pretty amazing what came out … discussing what was affecting my ability to find God. So we dug deeper.

Talking with Claudia, I discovered that the approach my grandmother took to Catholicism was very different than the approach my own mother took to the same religion.  … I have explained in previous posts how my grandmother’s expression of faith was one rooted in understanding and acceptance. Her vision of God was one of Supreme Love, a sunburst that took in every person around it and warmed them in its rays. … And you were good for goodness’s sake. …  And if you did do something bad, why, you would feel it in your heart and then you would try very hard to never do it again. Claudia and I discussed the idea that perhaps my grandmother’s view of her faith had undergone many revolutions over time, informed by her life’s events and the experiences she had with her church, other people, and her own bouts with self-exploration. The idea came to me that perhaps my grandmother had started out much like my own mother was I was a little girl, and that over time, her understanding of her faith grew into the Faith I had seen demonstrated over time. Time, in other words, had polished the small bit of coal -earthy and not very yielding- and through many revolutions of the heart had turned it into something of great value.

My mother’s view on the other hand seemed to be more Rule and Judgment based. …a God to be feared, a Jesus to look askance at with the question always, “Am I doing this right?” … The simple explanation of my mother’s rulebook of faith was, “Trust the Church and all her representatives, don’t ask questions or argue, and nothing bad will happen to you.” Needless to say, having internalized this at a very young age and having had it ingrained in her for all of her childhood, my mother did not view her faith as an ever-changing thing but as more of a monolith that would stand unchanging for all time. She did not brook questions very well and saw my early wonderings as a lack on her part in my upbringing. If she had done a better job of raising me in the faith, I think she may have wondered, I wouldn’t be so disobedient and willful, I wouldn’t have asked so many questions or been so unsatisfied with the answers.

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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For information about spiritual guidance available through Holy Wisdom Monastery click on this link.

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More guidance

…  Claudia asked me if my mother’s view towards the faith had changed any since I had hit my thirties and my mother had grown older. I thought about that for a moment. And it was so. … Having raised all her children to adulthood and finding herself more alone after they had all left home, Claudia posited that my mother had suddenly perhaps had time for the first time in many years to examine her faith on a different level. I supposed that could be true. Perhaps the softening I was witnessing was the beginning of her entering a different understanding of her faith and this new time in her life.

… Could it be that my mother was becoming akin to my grandmother in her view of her faith and what it meant in her life? That was worth a thought. We do the best we can with what we have, when we have it. Was my mother just doing the best she could with what she had? Did my grandmother do much the same? … This striving for goodness in their children, the only way they knew how, how could I fault them for that? Wouldn’t I do the same for my own child? Wouldn’t I try to imbue in them the same sense of family, tradition, morals, and values that had led me through my life and had given me a place to turn to in times of struggle? … I decided to, finally, cut my mother some slack. She had her journey to make and I had to let her make it. …

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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For information about spiritual guidance available through Holy Wisdom Monastery click on this link.

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And still more…

The next session with Claudia, centered on forgiveness. …

I wanted to be able to forgive my ex-husband … I wanted to see him as a hurting soul, as a person in need of something that I could never give. I wanted to be able to, as the Dalai Lama says, “Imagine him as a 5 year old child” in my attempt to see him as a person who was very wounded and who might never find peace, and to send him light and love and to only think good thoughts when I thought of him. I wanted to forgive him … But I just couldn’t, no matter how hard I wanted to … I felt … like there was something wrong with me, that unless I could work this out, I was doomed to be unbalanced in my quest for spiritual wholeness.

Claudia helped me explore the idea that maybe it was too soon for forgiveness, just yet. Maybe I needed more time to process all that rage and sadness before I could empty my heart and be open to filling it up with forgiveness. … She understood my need to be “right with the Universe” in the balance of things regarding my divorce. But she also knew that these things take time…and they take Universe time, not “me” time. Claudia helped me to understand that the Universe didn’t require me to forgive my ex husband now…maybe someday…but it was okay not to right now. No pressure. Baby steps. The Universe is infinitely patient. As long as you are willing to take the steps to forgive…The Universe will always be there at the forgiveness table waiting for you to sit down. No matter how long it takes.

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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For information about spiritual guidance available through Holy Wisdom Monastery click on this link.

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Books are my friends

I love books. They are my friends. So, it was lovely to see so many of my old crowd in the monastery library here at Holy Wisdom. “Oh hi, Dorothy Day! I didn’t know you’d be here?”, “Karen Armstrong! Its’ been too long.” and “Why Thomas Merton, you old dog…where have you been hiding yourself?” There they all are, hanging out on the shelves, identified by their catalog numbers, spines ramrod straight.  I walk through the aisles, brushing my right hand over their wonderful selves in a gesture of camaraderie, recalling all the good times we’ve shared together.

The library is cool and a little dark, but not too dark for reading. There are comfortable chairs set up so you felt free to “settle in” with a copy of the Madison newspaper or that periodical you’d been meaning to read about medieval monasticism, or the latest issue of National Geographic. There are wide windows that look out onto the prairie. There are laptop connections for those who require them. Everything is done in medium wood stain and I feel instantly at home in this library as I do in all other libraries. . . .

The first friends I spied were the Liberation Theologians. They were reclining with the Progressive Christian thinkers and I gathered Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg up with Oscar Romero and Peter Maurin. Next to receive an invitation to my chair were the monastics and the early thinkers. “Excuse me Julian of Norwich? St. John of the Cross? I was wondering if you’d mind if I took you out sometime? I’d like us to get to know each other better”.  And finally, I invited Thict nacht Nanh and the Dalai Lama to spend the night. They don’t judge me for my poly-amory. I can be fickle with my books, throwing one aside for another more exciting prospect. I often have attacks of conscience and will go back to the first book when I’ve finished the second.

Staying at the Monastery is a dicey prospect for someone with book-lust as I will not be able to read all the books I want to in the time I have here. Books will have to be wisely chosen. Already I am anxious wondering how many I will be able to read before I have to leave here. It’s probably a good thing Holy Wisdom did not tell me the extent of their collection or I might have begged to stay in the program longer just in order to make it through. The library here has an advantage for me though in that it is unfrequented by more than two people or so at any one time of day. So, in the time I have spent here so far, it is a semi-private affair. I can come and haunt it how I please and when, chatting with my old friends about this and that, picking them up off the shelf and rudely reading their back covers before placing them in their proper space.

Virginia Woolf pleaded for a “Room of One’s Own.” That may have been well and good for Ms. Woolf. But I want a Library.

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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For more information about the library at Holy Wisdom Monastery, click on this link.

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Missing my life

Our days at the Monastery lasted from 6:30 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening, Monday through Friday. Technically we had free time to do whatever and to come and go as we pleased from 6:30 onwards until bedtime. Frequently, after a day filled with meditation, praying, working, and studying there was little we felt inclined to do except recline. After the last dishes were put away from the dinner service, I would often retire to the computer room to write my blog while the other girls went walking on the trails or spent time in the library. The first weekend I had spent at Holy Wisdom by myself, writing, exploring, writing, reading. It felt good to have that time to just devote to some of the things I love the best. The second weekend, the boyfriend drove the 3 hours up from Chicago after work that Friday night to visit me.  . . .

The next week went by in a flurry of activity and every morning I felt happy and good about my time at Holy Wisdom. I was convinced it had been a much needed break for me and that I would return to Chicago well-rested and with a more peaceful outlook. That last weekend, I spent with the other girls in the program popping in and out of Madison enjoying concerts on the Capitol Square, swimming, the restaurant scene, and yet another visit to the amazing Mustard Museum. That Sunday we went to lunch at a celebrated Madison restaurant devoted to local Wisconsin fare and something startling happened to me as I settled into my chair. I became overwhelmed by the desire to be a part of city life again. I seemed to see everything and everyone around me in stark clarity at that moment. I missed it. I missed the noise and the people and the smells and…well, everything. I missed Chicago.  . . .

There is truth in saying we have a place in our own history, in our own story and the story of the people whose lives we touch. When you are young you hear of the way other people live their lives and if it’s more exciting than yours you think, “Oh, I wish I had their life.” I used to wish I had grown up on a ranch in Wyoming or on the beach in Hawaii like some of my friends. I would wish for the rhythm of their days as they learned to surf at 3 or ride a horse at 4. I would imagine how exciting it would have been to have grown up with a jet-setting father or a politician mother and wonder how I would have been different if I had. I suppose it’s natural for us all to wonder, “What might have been.”

After spending time at Holy Wisdom the past three weeks, I knew without a doubt that my story was not written in county life or in monastery life. At least not this part. I had enjoyed those three weeks immensely and learned so much that I would take with me and apply in my later life. I would also enjoy the last week, savoring the experience and treasuring the knowledge of prayer, meditation, community, farming and gardening that I had been privileged to be a part of. In allowing me a space in their VIC program the women of Holy Wisdom Monastery had allowed me to step outside myself for a time and to choose a life, even for a short while, that I was not born to.

For those that know me, the idea of me getting up at 630 am and spending a good part of the day weeding around squash plants or trimming apple trees seems ludicrous. And many times, it was evident that the rhythm of that life at Holy Wisdom was as foreign to me as an Arab prince’s. But I did it and I learned to enjoy it for what it is and what it will always be, a good and fitting place for those who are born to it or who choose to embrace it. I belonged to the life at Holy Wisdom for a time and I would take that time with me back to the life where I did belong and would for the foreseeable future, no matter how far away my life might take me. Holy Wisdom has been good for me.

But in that moment at the restaurant, homesickness had come upon me like a sudden fever and all I wanted was to go home to that wonderful city of rats as big as small kittens and line cooks that sing love songs to each other in Spanish, and where I can go see a jazz band play at 4 am. My favorite city in the world, built by three generations of my family, loved by them all, and the place where no matter how far I travel, I have been written into Chicago’s story for all my life.

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Being good

People think it’s easy to be a good person. They seem to think it’s the simplest thing in the world to live a good life and be nice to people. Well, it’s not. If it were that easy everyone would be able to do it all the time and we would achieve world peace, an end to hunger and violence, and most of the world’s problems would end. It’s pretty darn difficult, in fact. Even when you try and try, sometimes without meaning to, you can really screw things up. It’s hard to get a good grip on the world sometimes and even harder to get a grip on other people and the situations you find yourself in, in your life. The hardest of all is dealing with just yourself.

I find I can be my own worst enemy. There are days when I am a total crab and a trial for anyone to be around. There are days when I am needy and clingy and need constant reassurance. There are days when I have to bite my tongue almost in half so as not to tell someone what I really think of them in less-than-ladylike language. On really bad days I can’t even bite my tongue and I just say mean things and think even meaner things. Sarcastic things, cruel things, dismissive things, they just fly out of my mouth with no thought attached to them most of the time. I try so hard to respect and honor every person I meet and to try and treat them according to the Golden Rule. But it is overwhelming to me sometimes, when I am hungry or ill-humored or tired or this is a person who is seemingly going out of their way to annoy and upset me…

Being at the Monastery has shown me various parts of my personality, both good and bad. When you are in a controlled environment for an extended period of time I suppose it is inevitable that these two sides of every person should come to the surface. In our classes on the “Benedictine Rule” every morning, the Sisters have shown me that even if I don’t want to have a conversation with my faults all the time, I at least have to nod at them once in a while and maybe even take them out for coffee in order to get to know that part of myself in order to be able to better understand all of me. In doing so, I can help myself to a better understanding of all people and hopefully, by that, become a better person.

I know you won’t believe it….but…I have a lot of faults.”The big 3″ as I like to call them are the ones I spend the most time trying to overcome, or at least bully into shape. I have been trying to overcome them since childhood. So far the progress has been steady but minimal.

1. I am super-judgemental: I want everyone to be good and to live up to my standards of character and when they don’t, I get upset with them.

2. I am super-impatient: I want things done right away even to bending the laws of time and space and I often fail to give allowances for tasks done by others if I think I could have done them faster/better.

3. I am super-thoughtless: In the heat of the moment I often fail to see other’s perspectives. And those are just the biggest faults.

The Benedictine Rule focuses on self-improvement and living effectively in community. To be fair, Benedict lived in a monastery. But his ‘Rule” has been used in the formation of many different types of communities where Goodness and Respect are the qualities people want to work on developing. Benedict talks about all sorts of subjects that relate to sundry topics such as how people should speak to one another (with utmost respect) or how should one be expected to do less than savory chores (with humility). Benedict, in his writings, shares with us the normal struggles and objections we have both with our own spirits and the spirits of those who surround us.

In my time at Holy Wisdom, I have spent hours now, sitting in class with “The Rule” as we call it, on my lap, my pencil poised, articulating with the group as to what it really means to treat others with grace, humility, respect, kindness, and charity. We all agree it is important, exceedingly necessary, and just the right thing to do. But it is also a scary thing to do. To have to look into your heart every day of your life and probe all your thoughts and feeling in order to make sure there’s not something in there hiding from you which will jump out later to hurt the one you wish to treat with loving-kindness, whoever that person may be.

Benedict is big on boundaries, I have noticed. He is of the school of Frost-ian thought that believes that “good fences make good neighbors.” Fences are usually thought of as structures that keep things out but in ‘The Rule” Benedict enforces certain things in order to keep things in the community. Things like goodness, love, and acceptance. Imagine if we could all learn that. To exercise loving discipline in the formation of our own characters while yet allowing for understanding and grace in regards to our neighbors’ same struggle. I once told the Sisters, “I’d make a terrible nun. I would never be able to master my faults.” One of the Sisters started to laugh and putting a hand on my arm she said kindly, ” Oh…it’s been fifty years and I’m still trying.”

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Invasives

It’s odd how there are things you can go through your whole life not thinking about. Like “invasive plant species.” I can honestly say I do not recall there ever being a time in my life I have ever truly thought about that term. Here, at Holy Wisdom, it has become a regular part of my vocabulary. Sometimes we shorten it to just ”invasives.” An invasive plant is, to put it subjectively, “a plant growing where it doesn’t belong”. There are no “good plants” or “bad plants” here at Holy Wisdom. All plants are looked at as performing some sort of function. No judgments and no preferential value assigned. The humble dandelion and the sunflower are on equal ground here at the monastery. As long as they respect the plants they share the space with. We call the “plant removal” we do in the garden at Holy Wisdom “weeding” because it is a catch-all term. What we’re really doing is “strategic plant reduction, removal, and relocation with composting as a side benefit.”

Weeding and pruning are necessary things when one is trying to grow plants for food.  . . .  When invasive plants insinuate themselves in and around those plants you mean to raise for food, problems arise. Invasive plants tend to wrap themselves around the food plants, choking their root or preventing them from getting optimal sun and water. The invasive plants leach essential moisture and nutrients from the surrounding ground and deprive your food plant of getting what it needs.  . . .

Weeding, pruning, digging are time-consuming, never-ending activities and as I do them I find myself relating the activity to my everyday life and the challenges I face as a person, my faults and weaknesses, the qualities in myself I wish were more developed, the good stuff about myself I don’t acknowledge or downplay. Thoughts come to me in waves: Am I truly grateful for what I have? Do I really realize how blessed I really am? I suppose one could view the task of removing invasive species as an internal one as well.

I know I definitely have those “invasives” or “weeds” or “rot” that I wish, more often than not, I could rip out or cut out and compost or at least identify in enough time to do some damage-control. Qualities in ourselves that if we could, we would prefer not to entertain as a part of our person. Sometimes we don’t even know how they got to be a part of us or why we let them get as big as we do. We just know them as part of the landscape, as it were.

Unfortunately, if they are left too long then, like Queen Anne’s Lace, and wild grass, and the Japanese beetles, they will destroy the good things about ourselves little by little. You have to be willing to do the work, to grow and learn every day, to probe the parts of yourself that are unfamiliar to you in order to reap the benefit of the good stuff. You have to ask the hard questions and go in knowing there might be unpleasant things like squash bugs and hornets you’ll have to get through.  . . .

How can one learn quickly which qualities about oneself are good and worthy of development in time to help them flourish? How can I appreciate myself better and be grateful for what I have in my life and how it had come to me? Conversely how does one learn which qualities are damaging in time to stop them from taking over and ruining other relationships? Do I keep working at it, even when half of what I plant won’t turn out the way I expected? How do I prune in my own life? How do I judge when I have become too concerned about things that are fundamentally damaging to my spirit? How do I cut the branches that are obstructing my goals for my authentic self?”

So many questions. The answers, like the food from the garden, will hopefully, come in time.

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Resilience

“Resilience” is the topic of the class we take at Holy Wisdom 3 days a week. The class, with the participation of Sister Lynne, is led by a woman who has made a special study of this topic in her life. The class is held after we have spent a couple of hours usually doing outdoor work in the hot sun. It is a welcome respite, with its cool air conditioning and a pitcher of water in the center of table flanked by whatever baked good our teacher is proffering that class time.

Our teacher, Donna, is an excellent baker, a sailing enthusiast, and a poet. She is also a survivor of great personal tragedy and I can imagine no one better to lead our little group through our study than someone like her. The syllabus of this class is very different from our class on Benedictine spirituality. One is driven by our relationship to God, the Universe, and what it takes to live in community with others in peace and harmony. The other is about our relationship to God, the Universe, and what it takes to live in community with ourselves in peace and harmony. The same and yet different focuses, both important and both designed, the end product in mind, to help us to know ourselves better while also getting to know the “other” better.

So then, what exactly is “Resilience” and why is it so important?  Resilience is the ability to bounce back, the quality that makes us able to stand up to the challenges we face in life and keep standing, even after those challenges have rolled over us like a bulldozer operated by a pro wrestler. Like water, being resilient, helps us to go around and under and through. To find the little cracks, the niches, the opportunities, to keep going long after many others in similar circumstances have given up exhausted and tapped out or resigned themselves to Fate or Destiny. Resilience is the ability to summon that “other you,” that stronger you, to call forth that strong force within yourself and let it loose upon your world. Resilience is “Towanda: Queen of the Amazons”.

The funny thing about Resilience is that it is a relative term. Some people have a remarkable amount of resilience and nothing and no one seems to get them or keep them down.   . . .  Some people are resilient in the face of certain things but not others.  . . . Finally, there are some who are not resilient at all – for them, all that is needed to knock them down is just one big wave and its over for them, they never seem to be able to stand up again.  . . .

One of my favorite reads is “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. A psychoanalyst and Nazi death camp survivor, Dr. Frankl spent his life, post-Holocaust studying the “x-factor” and its absence or presence in people’s lives. In his books he cites instances where two people exposed to the same treatment in the camps, who are from the same relative backgrounds, could have such different responses to stressors. So much so that one person may refuse to eat or shower, will refuse to do what he must to keep himself free of disease, essentially abandoning himself to death, hopeless in the face of the situation while the other doggedly attempts to live his life in the camps with a sense of normalcy believing he will eventually be released or escape and if not, then he will at least die with his dignity. What is the great difference between these two people? What allows us to go on in the midst of great suffering? How is it that some people become overwhelmed by challenges other people are able to stand up against?

Community support, family and friends, education and resources…people that study this as a science say that all these factors must be present in order for a person to be truly Resilient. But then there is still that something called an “x” factor, an outlier, something that can’t be placed. People with the “x factor” tend to be highly resilient in spite of the lack of, or total absence of, many of these qualifiers. In other words, “if this” does not add up to “then this” for these certain people. They seem to be naturally Resilient. A conundrum indeed.

Here at Holy Wisdom, in this small room, flanked on each side by strong women eating linzertorte and listening to Donna’s soothing yet clipped tones describing the day’s topics, I wonder how and in what ways we have different levels of resilience.  . . .

All things being considered, appearances are deceiving and I have seen too much already in my life that leads me to not make the foolish error of assuming that a naturally shy or delicate person would be less resilient than someone more bombastic or formidable. We are all capable of great feats of strength in our life’s journeys.  . . . Do any of us know what our thresholds are? Can any of us ever truly know what we can take until it is asked of us? How strong a load can I carry, how great a burden would I be able to bear? How Resilient am I, really?

. . .  I wonder.

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For additional excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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Beekeeping and Blessings

There are things I will miss about Holy Wisdom when I leave here. I will miss the cardinals that sing the Liturgy of the Hours back and forth to each other in the pines as I rinse lettuce in the upper garden. I will miss pulling out the horsetails from the roof garden and hearing Paul talk about his love of the Prairie. I will miss the pioneer camaraderie that has developed among the women I stay with, the shared jokes and laughter. I will miss the order and the rhythm of my days here — the mystic feeling of the timeless tasks we have engaged in…gardening, tending an orchard, cooking, preparing food, protecting the land, singing and sharing with one another. I will miss the security of the sisters’ life experience to guide me, and the soothing presence of the monastery building itself. But it is time to go home.

This last week we have had the good fortune to encounter the monastery beekeeper, Jean. We watched from the safe distance of her truck as she “split a hive”.   . . .  The bees, she explained to us later, know instinctively when it is time to split — to go off and form a new hive with a new queen. She modeled the “starter hive” now encased in glass for us and pointed out the new queen developing, which bees were doing what and how they were going about cleaning their cells, feeding the new bees, and communicating furiously to other bees through terpsichorean rhythms.

Bees are curious in that for them, community is the only way they can live, there is no such thing as a single bee. A bee without community is a dead bee, it cannot live or survive for even a short time without a hive, a place to go back to where there is food and warmth and shelter and other bees. No bee is an island. In that way, they are as unlike a human being as anything ever can be. Bees don’t seem to have the luxury or the hubris to assume they can be alright without others of their kind. They know it just doesn’t work like that. Bees need each other.

I don’t think it — being apart from one another — works that way for us either, as much as we might try to trick ourselves into believing it can or does.   . . .  Why do we keep trying to convince ourselves we don’t need each other? Where is the virtue in eschewing a hive of our own? A place where we belong, where we fit in and where we are cared for? A place where we truly feel useful, comfortable, and happy doing what we know best? Rugged individualism may work for the odd few…but I’ll take hive-dwelling. And not the hive-dwelling of conformity or automaton-like behavior…not like that. But the hive-dwelling of community, a place for everything and everyone. A place where we really see each other, and we really interact with the benefit of all of us in mind.

The last day at the monastery we received a blessing from all the members of the community. Standing at the large, granite baptismal font, we were given a prayer and a wish for good things for our future, for love and wisdom to follow us in our life’s journey. It was a small thing, this blessing, taking all of 15 minutes. I felt slightly embarrassed and sheepish and awed all at once. But it was no small thing to have people who have only known you a month, who have spent their whole lives working for the good of all people, and searching for that same goodness in others . . . it is no small thing to be blessed by them.      . . .

Did I find God there, on the Prairie? Did I come away with “the Knowing” I was searching for? Did God and I make up? The answers are maybe, a little, and yes. For all three questions. I don’t know what God is but . . .  yes, God was on the Prairie.  . . .  And God is in me, even if I don’t recognize it. And the “Knowing”? I guess I may have to accept it as a lifelong quest.  . . .  God and I have made up, definitely. Although it’s still in the beginning stages, we have reformed our friendship. I look forward to getting to know God better and to opening myself up more to God. Fair is fair.  . . .

The image that came to my mind over and over again . . . was that of a God being a parent who has one child on their lap getting cuddles, with another child trying to push that child off so they can then sit on the same lap and get the cuddles for themselves.  . . .  I have no children but I do know from talking to parents…if you want to use that metaphor…there is always Love. And there is more than enough for everyone, and it will never run out, and it will never be conditional. That is what has always existed and will always exist, and maybe we will never know who or what or where it comes from.

Love is timeless and unending and constant and loyal. It exists for us to share with each other, where it comes from, we may never know.  . . .  Does it matter why we love? Or does it only matter that we do love? It is the greatest gift, this gift of loving another. Taking the love we are born to give and communicating it to another human being. It is what we are here for, what we search for all our lives, what we hold most dear.

That is what I have taken from my time here at Holy Wisdom Monastery. And I will take it with me wherever I go. That is God. And that is the Knowing.

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For the entire collection of excerpts from Sarah’s  on-going blog, click on this link: A Confirmed City Girl looks for God in a Monastery

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