Our Second Monastic Day: in Sequence

Because it is handy to have our "first monastic day" sequenced, I've done this with the second one we used.   

We've gone through several such "days" in the past. So while anyone who cares to do so is browsing through the first two, I will continue working behind the scenes to put the others in sequential order as well.

To begin our "next" monastic day, click on the link just below.  At the end of that post, there will be another link.... and on and on as each post appears.

As before, we will look at how we can live as cloistered hearts in the midst of our everyday lives.

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Photo on this post by Connie Wells

Come, Author of Lectio

Between supper and night prayer in a monastery, usually there is recreation.  However, in this between-supper-and-night-prayer-post, we'll spend our time talking about "tomorrow."

As we know by now, our next monastic "day" (which may become two weeks long!) is one in which we will pray to be immersed in lectio.  With that in mind, I'd like to take a brief look, in advance, at what my personal hopes are for this. 

First:  what this is not: 

- This is not a book club, where a particular book is discussed.  Yes, I've recommended one, and I'll quote from it because I find it one of the more "reader friendly" titles I've personally discovered on the subject of lectio.  But having and reading this volume is not "necessary" for anyone else.

- This will not be a series of "teachings," although hopefully the quotes I'll use (from several sources) will help us learn more about lectio divina from those who have written about it.

Second:  what I hope this will become:

-  I would love to see us move from reading about lectio divina into practicing it, into becoming comfortable doing so, and even into hungering for it.  Hungering for "lectio" is, of course, hungering for Scripture, and for prayer.

Which is, of course, hungering for God.

- We talk here at The Cloistered Heart about "living through the grille," about developing a habit of seeing and responding to all persons and all circumstances through the grillwork of the will of God.  Our basic grillwork is Scripture.

So:  I see the practice of lectio divina as a builder of our grilles. 

-  The thought came to me to do this in the framework of another "day".. because my hope is that Scripture will became, for each of us, a "grille" which will go with us into every part of every day. 

"The presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church enables all who accept its guidance and live in its communion to read the inspired Scriptures by the light of the same Spirit by Whom they were written.. the written words of the New Testament are ... a place where Christ can still be encountered and where He has promised that His words will transform those who receive them."  (Daniel Rees, Consider Your Call, Cistercian Publications, 1980, p. 262).

We rely on God alone to lead us.  It is the Holy Spirit of God Who inspired the writers of Scripture.  It is the Holy Spirit of God Who speaks the words afresh into my own heart, into my own life, as I prayerfully read them.

This is the basis, the framework, the great bottom line, of Lectio Divina.

Lectio is to be an encounter with the Person of Christ. 

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.  Send forth Your Spirit and they shall be created.  And You shall renew the face of the earth.




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A Taste of Lectio

As supper begins on our second monastic day, I have an announcement.

It seems we are not finished with our "days."  We shall be having a third, and this one will be all about lectio.  That is:  we'll look at the monastic practice of lectio from as many "angles" as we can possibly manage.  We'll read about it, share the fruits of it in our lives, and most of all - we will hopefully be encouraged toward the practice of it. 

The hope - and certainly the prayer - is that, throughout the routines of our third "day," we will be drawn into an immersion in lectio.  After all, to be immersed in lectio is to be immersed in scripture.  And to be immersed in scripture is to be immersed in God. 

With this in mind, our supper refectory reading is again from Praying Scripture for a Change by Tim Gray.  As I am recommending this book, I hope the publishers would not mind my quoting from it here (perhaps they would consider this a "review").  The book is also available from Amazon.com.

"Some might say 'Lectio Divina was invented by and for monks.  Can it really be practiced by ordinary people living busy lives?'  The answer to such a question is given by Pope Benedict XVI. Since the start of his pontificate in April 2005, Pope Benedict has strongly championed the use of lectio divina for everybody.... Pope Benedict said:  'if lectio divina is effectively promoted, this practice will bring to the Church - I am convinced - a new spiritual springtime.'  In those words, the Holy Father is echoing Vatican II:  'The Church forcefully and specially exhorts all the Christian faithful... to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:8) by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures...  Let them remember, however, that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that a dialogue takes place between God and man.'..." (Tim Gray, 2009 Ascension Press, p. 37).

"In contrast to meditation techniques aimed at emptying the mind, Christian meditation makes full use of the intellect in an effort to understand God's Word and to hear God's voice (p.62)

''Lectio (Latin for 'a reading') divina ('divine') literally means 'divine reading,' and refers to the reading of Sacred Scripture in the context of personal prayer."  (p. 26)

"A Carthusian monk named Guigo... begins his book (Ladder of Monks): 'one day when I was busy working with my hands I began to think about our spiritual work, and all at once four stages in spiritual exercise came into my mind: reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation.  These make a ladder for monks by which they are lifted up from earth to heaven.  It has few rungs, yet its length is immense and wonderful, for its lower end rests upon the earth, but its top pierces the clouds and touches heavenly secrets.'" (quoted by Gray on p. 27)

"As you practice lectio divina and read and meditate on God's Word, your mind falls in love with the truth."  (p. 96)   

Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty.  Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

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My Vespers

While our Sisters and Brothers in monasteries are chanting Vespers (usually between 4:30 and 6:00 pm), we who live out "in the world" may well be in the busiest time of our day.  The world, at Vespers-time, is right in the middle of "rush hour."  It is when many are leaving work, pouring into roads and trains to make the journey home.  Some of us are preparing an evening meal, knowing that growling tummies will not be soothed if we hide away in prayer corners to sing and chant praise.

So we do what must be done.   Many times we're content to be exactly where we are.  Sometimes, however, the grass can look greener inside the monastic fence, and I will admit that "rush hour," for me, is a time when my own grass can seem seriously withered. This is due in large part (for me) to a kind of physical and mental lagginess that tends to hit in late afternoon, and has for as long as I can remember.  It's the time of day when I'm tired, draggy, and most likely to feel - well, grumbly.  Through the years, I've learned that I am not the only person to feel washed out at that time.  Yet this is when people have to get themselves home from work, food must be prepared (sometimes by the same individuals who have just plowed their way through traffic), and children may need a bit of extra referee-ing.

When the body is exhausted and the mind is reeling from a day's work, even the humdrum tasks of late afternoon can seem immense.  "I remember reading," said our friend Rose some time ago,"that obedience to one's superior is more meritorious than all the self-imposed mortifications, fastings and prayers.  Then I realized my superior is really my vocation as a wife and mother.  Therefore, my duties and responsibilities of motherhood must come first.  And, done with the right intentions (as St. Francis de Sales says, 'for the greater glory of God'), all my actions are lifted up in prayer."

Those in a cloister come to Vespers out of obedience.  They gather to pray when they feel like doing so, and when they do not.  

When my day starts to bend toward evening, it is time for a particular kind of "Vespers."  It's a time when I can offer my duties, my care for those around me, any rush-hour hassles I may face, and even my own dragginess, to God.  

By being made into an offering, these can become my evening prayer.

“When you use the analogy of the grille of God’s will and imagine yourself protected by it, you really do see things in a new light. I think a perfect example of this was when I placed myself there on my 40 minute drives back and forth to work, battling very unpleasant traffic. Suddenly it didn’t matter if everyone seemed to try to push me out of the way - I was alone with God and nothing else was of any concern.” (from our friend Jane) 

God “can say to someone driving that car bumper to bumper, ‘I will lead you into solitude and there I will speak to your heart. (Hosea 2:14).’” (Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia, Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame IN, 1975, p. 22)

"Some people might think it contradictory to speak of 'contemplative' in the same sentence as 'mother of a very large family.' But it is the contemplative spirit that has helped me survive the chaos that is natural when raising a number of children.... The cloister in my heart is a place of refuge.  It is a place where I can retreat from the world no matter where I am; in the middle of a crowded mall, or in a busy grocery store, or in my own kitchen." - Rose

© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org      


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Reconciliation

On a regular basis, those in a monastery have the Sacrament of Reconciliation made available to them.  We who live in the world, however, have to take an extra step toward receiving such a privilege.  As a general rule, we must go TO where this is being offered. 

Perhaps we can think of it as mortification in advance.  

Our Sisters in a monastery, meanwhile, have a scheduled time when a priest comes to them.  In our "monastic day," perhaps that time can be right now.

In thinking of this, I decided to re-post (with a bit of minor editing) something I wrote on this subject for the Breadbox Letters blog this past Lent...

“When you want to write on a blackboard," wrote Charles de Foucauld, "you must first wipe off what is written there.”  

Several things occur to me as I read this.  First of all:  chalk is not permanent.  Nor are my sins.  Once the “board” has been erased, the original mistakes can no longer be read. 

Second:  a blackboard cannot be erased unless something is done.  Someone has to actually take action and clean the board.

Third:  a chalkboard eraser is not a steel wool pad.  It is soft.  It’s made to clean the board, not harm it.  If a blackboard could feel, I doubt it would cry “ouch.”

“God,” wrote St. Gregory the Great, “scourges our faults with strokes of love, to cleanse us from our iniquities.” 

Strokes of love.  Not lashes, but strokes of love.

Jesus wants to erase every one of my sins.  He knows I cannot do it on my own.  He has given the Sacrament of Reconciliation as a loving, healing Eraser.  I pray for the grace to “confess my sins, do penance, and amend my life."  May Our Lord write what HE wants on my life; may He make it totally His own. 

© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org     


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A Direction of Intention

Midafternoon and the bell rings again.  The office of None is beginning, and residents of the monastery gather from all corners to take their stations in chapel, in prayer.

But what if one of the nuns is responsible for, say, caring for a Sister in the infirmary?  What if Sister Anne is ill with a tummy bug that won't hold off its dire effects until Sister Maria R.N. returns from chapel?  Sister Maria would certainly be excused from one way of serving God in order to stay with Sister Anne and thus serve Him in another.  

As we live for God in the midst of the world, we have many moments like this one of "Sister Maria."  We do not leave our baby alone in his highchair in order to go off, find a quiet corner, and kneel to pray.  No, we pray while we tend to the baby.  And having made the intention to give this day and all its duties to God, we realize that God accepts our care for the baby AS prayer.  We don't leave our family's dinner unprepared, we don't run out of a meeting in our office at work, we do not let stacks of laundry sit unwashed while we pray.  We do the necessary tasks of life, and even if we forget to pray AS we do them..... if we've made the intention of offering them, we can trust that God accepts our gift.  

We have probably offered God our whole day, perhaps using words like these of St. Francis de Sales:  "My God, I give You this day.  I offer You, now, all of the good that I shall do.. and I promise to accept, for love of You, all of the difficulty that I shall meet.  Help me to conduct myself during this day in a manner pleasing to You." 

Amen. 

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© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org     
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Loving With the Strength of Our Arms

Afternoon, and it's worktime again.  Everyone in the monastery has a particular assignment.  Gardening, cleaning, cooking, bookkeeping, and in many cases doing some sort of work to bring income to the Community. 

We probably all know a few of these monastic endeavors.  In order to enable our Brothers and Sisters behind the walls to continue their lives of prayer, we may have purchased (just to name a few) ...  












Vestments
http://vistyr.org/our-work/chantal-artisans











Coffee
http://www.mysticmonkcoffee.com/store/storefront.php



And what about our own time of work?

As I go about the tasks of this day, am I doing my job(s) for the love of God?  It can be a tough question, for the truth is:  I've developed a HABIT of slotting prayer into prayer time, leisure into leisure time, work into work time.  Like nickels and dimes dropped into a coin sorter, the moments of my life get categorized into little neat rows.

Habits are hard to break.  By the grace of Our Lord, however, I am convinced that they can be broken.  I'm quite certain that, if I just start to cooperate, the power of Christ is able to transform even me, so that one day all I do could be done for the glory of God.

"If the fact that God sees us were fully impressed on our consciences, and if we realized that all our work, absolutely all of it, is done in His presence - for nothing escapes His eyes - how carefully we would finish things and how differently we would react!"  (St. Josemaria Escriva)

"Let us love God, but with the strength of our arms, in the sweat of our brow." (St, Vincent de Paul)

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Inside the Walls

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One More Thing

Recreation ceases with the ringing of the bell.  I wonder if anyone ever feels she'd like to finish this important conversation, or maybe add just one more teensy thought, before going to her assigned task for the afternoon.

Several days ago, one of our friends referred to a book by Blessed Columba Marmion.  "He mentions the importance of immediately responding to God's will," our friend says "... which will manifest differently for each soul. He talks about the fault of having the attitude of, 'in a minute...I just have to finish this one thing I am doing.'  How often I have said that!!  It really is a mortification to stop something we are engaged in to follow where God is calling us."

It is one of my own primary mortifications.  Or would be, if I graciously accepted it as such.  "I'll be there in a minute," I say (even if not in words) to people and tasks and, yes - all too often to prayer.  "I just need to finish this one more thing."  

I pray to hear and answer (promptly) the legitimate calls of "the bells."  

In the Parlor, we've had a discussion of fasting.  I think it's time for me to start fasting from "one more thing..." 

© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org      

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To Speak, to Serve

Afternoon recreation often finds nuns or monks strolling in their cloister gardens, soaking in the fresh air and sunshine.  They generally engage in conversation as well.

In his book The Holy Rule, Dom Hubert Van Zeller speaks of the importance of community recreation.  "The dispensation from the normal state of silence was originally granted to monks not because silence was found to be a bore but because recreation was found to be a good.  By mixing with one another and enjoying one another's conversation, monks came to have a better understanding of the family life, of the mystical body, of humanity supernaturalized...... The monk who absents himself from occasions of association with his brethren is withdrawing from a primary monastic influence; he is withdrawing from a unity, from the whole.  Given that he is present, moreover, the monk must make it his business to contribute to the purpose of this common recreation.  He is not a passenger, he is not there to be entertained merely.  He must serve - and serve in charity."  (Van Zeller, The Holy Rule, Sheed and Ward, NY, 1958, pp. 239-240)

Thinking of this tonight, I was struck by one significant difference between conversation in the monastery and conversation in the "world."  That is:  people living in a monastery are pursuing the common goal of living totally for God.  They speak with one another with a goal of "serving in charity."  Their talk does not drift toward idle, immoral topics because their minds are not centered on such things.  Their minds are on God.  Their actions are for God.  Every facet of the monastic jewel is cut to reflect the glory of God.

It is different, isn't it, out here in "the world?"  Conversations we encounter might easily drift toward less than Godly territory.  In can be tough not to find ourselves swept along, like a piece of driftwood bobbing in a muddy river.  In our pursuit of life lived for God, we can feel a bit, well....  lonely at times. 

It occurred to me (thinking of this) that we are blessed to know, as we check in here, that others are "here" with us.  Like nuns or monks praying and working and studying alongside one another in a monastery, we know we're not walking this path alone.  We are in various states and countries and continents, and the circumstances of our lives may differ widely... yet we have all chosen the same path.  We want to live for God.  

© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org      

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Between Dinner Bells

Again the bell rings, reminding the monastic family that it's time to move from one activity to another.  In this case, it is time to eat.

As we mentioned earlier, the midday meal is normally the main one in a monastery.  The nuns or monks file silently into the Refectory and take their places. Again they will hear spiritual reading as they dine, for time is never wasted here. 

Today's refectory reading will be a selection from a book we mentioned in our last post.  Being today's reader, I sit in a chair in front of everyone else (I'll have my food later), announce the reading material, and begin....

Today I'm reading a few scattered excerpts from the introduction to the book Praying Scripture for a Change, an Introduction to Lectio Divina, by Tim Gray.

The book begins with a quote:  "'Well, let's now at any rate come clean.  Prayer is irksome.  An excuse to omit is never unwelcome.  When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day.  We are reluctant to begin.  We are delighted to finish.  While we are at prayer, but not while we are reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us.  And we know we are not alone in this....'"  (C.S. Lewis). 

"We are not alone in finding prayer difficult.... The necessity of prayer is seared into the Christian conscience, and yet many of us live our lives short on prayer.... We hear stories of saints who seemed to talk with God as easily as placing a direct call, and we erroneously imagine that prayer was effortless for them, marked always with joy, consolation, voices and visions.  Against this backdrop we grow discouraged.... If you have trouble praying, then welcome to the human race.  The fact is, we don't know HOW to pray.  Everybody, including the saints, begins life not knowing how to pray.... Our first parents enjoyed unbroken communion with God (shown in the book of Genesis by the image of God 'walking in the garden' with Adam and Eve, speaking with them freely and they with Him).  With original sin, however, everything changed.  The imagery of Genesis is vivid and profound.  God doesn't hide from us; in fact, He comes looking for us.  But we hide from God (see Genesis 3:8), our sin and shame opening a gulf between God and man and shattering the communion of 'the beginning....'  Bridging the chasm between Creator and creature is no simple matter.... as we shall see, in the person of Jesus, God not only calls us but brings us into friendship with Him and teaches us how to pray... Indeed, the crucial thing for us to understand is that God is eager to teach us how to pray.  So eager, in fact, that His Spirit is already at work in us creating the 'divine discontent' we so often feel about our prayer lives.  God does not judge our attempts at prayer anymore than a natural father would chide an infant taking his first steps.  Rather, He cheers us on, motivates us to try again.... The reason anyone anywhere at any time has ever been moved to pray is because God, by His Spirit, was drawing them toward Him... God doesn't just teach us how to pray; His Spirit empowers us to pray.... We must always keep in mind that prayer is God's invitation to enter into an intimate relationship of love and life with Him.  If we forget this is what is happening when we pray, we start treating prayer as simply an obligation...  God desires a personal relationship with us through our Lord Jesus, who has paid with His blood to open the door for us to enter into that relationship.... the God who has put into your heart the desire to know Him ultimately will fulfill....." (1)

Suddenly, the bell rings.  
No matter where I am in whatever book has been chosen, I stop reading.  The bell has rung.  No matter how abrupt the change may seem, the time for dinner reading is concluded. 

The voice of God now calls us on.

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_________________________
(1)  Tim Gray, Praying Scripture for a Change, an Introduction to Lectio Divina, Ascension Press, 2009, pp. 1-9.  See a review of this book by clicking on this line.

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Around the Corner: Lectio

I have now realized that the posts of this Next Monastic Day are (so far) being inspired by things said by you who generously share your lives. I find this enlivening and encouraging and... well, quite wonderful!  To me, it is a precious sign of God working among all of us. 

Something beautiful was shared yesterday. Our friend, who tries to pray the Liturgy of the Hours regularly, said this: "If it's 9:00 and I want to pray the mid-morning prayer and as soon as I sit down my daughter needs me for something, then it's God's will that I not pray at that time or stop praying when half finished or whatever. I may want/need that time because I crave the peace and rest or I desire to worship God. However, God may want my obedience to my vocation as a wife and mom right now over my prayer. I figure that if I'm able to pray certain hours of the day, then that's what God wants. If my family needs me for something else at that time, then that's what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't try to make up for it or squeeze it in later. I just move on and try again at the next scheduled prayer time...."

I find our friend's perspective extremely important..... particularly as we prepare to look more toward the practice of Lectio Divina.  We want to embrace aspects of the monastic life:  primarily, the total commitment to God that draws every one of us.  For some of us, regular prayer hours are possible, depending on our circumstances.  For others, life brings so many changes in one morning that we can barely keep up with them.  Our hearts can be totally committed to God, but the external circumstances of our lives are likely to be far different from the life of a cloistered nun.  "No incense-scented hermitage awaits me," I wrote some years ago.  "No hidden chamber but the one within. Acceptance of my enclosure must mean acceptance of the clutter, the noise, the interruptions..."  (from cloistered heart book)

We might also recall something from an earlier post entitled "A Seamless Gift."  In that, our friend Rose (mother of a large family) wrote "I remember reading, I think from St. Teresa of Avila, that obedience to one's superior is more meritorious than all the self-imposed mortifications, fastings and prayers.  Then I realized my superior is really my vocation as a wife and mother.  Therefore, my duties and responsibilities of motherhood must come first.  And, done with the right intentions (as St. Francis de Sales says, 'for the greater glory of God'), all my actions are lifted up in prayer." 

In this part of our "next monastic day," the bell has rung for "prayer time."  But what will that be like for each of us..... individually? 

As we prepare to look more deeply into Lectio Divina, I suspect we will have things to share about this.  In the meantime, I've just ordered a book that I suspect will be of help in future "Lectio discussions." I am greatly looking forward to digging into it and living it.  One of our dear "Parlor friends" has just written a review of it, which can be found by clicking on this line to get to the blog My Desert Heart.  

I pray we will continue to hear and answer God's bells, to the glory of our great God.

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© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org      

Bells, Bells, Bells, Bells

A monastery bell is ironically consistent about one particular thing.  It always calls for change.  Time to stop one activity and begin another.  The sections of a monastic day are spoken into being by the bells.  

Part of me hungers for such bells.  I almost crave the insistent rhythms of their voices.  Predictable, familiar, reliable, steady bells that would insure my prayer and rest; bells that would regulate and balance the pieces of my life.

"Just as soon as we are familiar with one set of daily bells ringing," wrote one of you in the Parlor, "another set replaces them."  Don't we know the truth of this.  Seasons come and go, bringing school bells and wake-up alarms, church bells and wedding bells, baby cries and phones and stovetop buzzer "bells."  They change with every passing year.

Predictable, familiar, reliable, steady?  No.  Out here, it's just not that way.

During this monastic day, bells of "things that must be done" ring out to me.   The calls to prayer, however, are not automatic.  I must find ways to ring them for myself.  Notes stuck to a mirror, a watch alarm, a phone beep....  I have to make my own reminders. 

When it comes to prayer, I must ring my own bells.

© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org     




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Go Forth

A few days ago, someone shared this from the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena:

"Go forth from this place of contemplation, and bear fruit that will last."

This has been sticking to my spiritual bones.  As I begin a new monastic day,  I won't be lingering for hours in my place of contemplation.  Even those living in a physical monastery do not do that.  Work time always cycles back around; there are things that must be done.  Hopefully the "vein of prayer" has been opened and I'm able to carry on a dialogue with God as I begin another day's work.   But at some point I WILL be going forth.  Maybe to another room to scrub a tub, maybe out to drive carpool, maybe to a job in the city.  

Wherever my day takes me, I have been sent forth.  I've been commissioned.  Whatever my vocation or my occupation(s) may be, I am sent forth by God to bear fruit that will last.  

It's really quite an opportunity.  I wonder what will happen if I spend today thinking about it, letting myself grow in awareness of it, watching for ways in which I can drop a seed of good example here and a word of encouragement there?  Jesus is the Vine, I am a branch.  My Heavenly Father looks upon me as I interact with family and co-workers, as I answer the phone and run out to the bank and write a letter to a friend.

What kind of fruit does He see? 

"The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patient endurance, kindness, generosity, faith, mildness and chastity."  (Galatians 5:22-23)

"Let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His Name."  (Hebrews 13:15) 

© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved.
thecloisteredheart.org      

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Lord, Open My Lips

One facet of monastic life that looks "greener on the other side of the fence" to me is the call to prayer.  The bell rings, it's prayer time, and there's no putting it off.  No opening a newspaper, no checking the morning news, no doing "just this one thing" before settling down to prayer.

I don't know about you, but if I do "just one thing" before giving God a few minutes, all too often one thing turns into ten, and before I know it "things" have crowded out prayer altogether.  Again.

Of course, there are important reasons why some of us need to squeeze prayer into a "To-Go-Box" from the minute we get out of bed.  Babies need feeding, kids need to be gotten off to school or schooled at home... but these are not the things that take up my personal time, not anymore.  Even when I have a busy day ahead, I can usually grab at least a few minutes to NOT turn on morning news and NOT check e-mail and to instead give that little chunk of time to God.

But do I?

I will just say this:  it's a struggle.

Sometimes I long for the discipline of a bell.  I long for the accountability of those who will notice if I'm not in my choir stall.  Oh, I know my mind might wander if I were in fact standing there, breviary open before me and my mind still half asleep.  But at least I'd BE there.  I would be praising God, and giving Him at least a chance to whisper...  something... to my sleepy heart.

I sometimes compare "the first prayer of morning" to a time when I received an i.v.  During preparation for the birth of my second child, I was given an i.v. of saline.  Wondering why this was necessary, I was told that it was in case I needed medication administered quickly at any time during the birth.  The doctor wanted to have an open vein, ready to receive help on a moment's notice.

Years later, the memory of that came back to me as I pondered the grace of morning prayer.  If I pray, even briefly, early in the morning, I am in effect "opening the vein."  Once I've begun conversation with God, prayers on-the-go are somehow easier throughout the day.  I believe inspirations from God are more easily grasped as well.

At the start of our first monastic day (three weeks ago!), some of us talked about how we fit dedicated time with God into our days.  Have there been any changes in our prayer in these last weeks? 

Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise.  

"Live on in Me, as I do in you.  No more than a branch can bear fruit of itself apart from the vine can you bear fruit apart from Me.  I am the Vine, you are the branches.  He who lives in me, and I in him, will produce abundantly, for apart from Me you can do nothing."  (John 15:4-5) 

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Our Next Monastic Day

Just as I was preparing to write this post, someone wrote me something which so struck me that I'm beginning our next monastic day with it.

"While I know the cloister itself is not calling me," writes our friend, "how I can better serve our Lord does."

Ah ha.  Isn't that the very core of it?  Isn't that why we're looking into the idea of monasticism?  Isn't that why we're here on earth?  To serve Our Lord? 

We have seen how the day begins in a monastery.  If the Community is one that gathered to sing praise at the call of the Night Bells, the Monks or Nuns have gone back to bed for a few hours before rising again.  They wake to another time of prayer.  Sometimes a monastic community has a period of individual, silent, mental prayer (in chapel) before they chant the Morning Office.

In my own private prayer today, I've been (again) considering reasons for monastic life, and why it calls to me so deeply even as I live "out here" in the midst of the world.   

I am drawn by monasticism's absolute totality. As I've written before, the person coming into the cloister doesn't stick her head inside the enclosure and leave her arms and legs dangling outside.  It just won't work.

Yet how often do I (maybe without even knowing it) give God "only so much," holding little corners of my life in reserve for, well... me?  Obeying some of His commandments, but ignoring the ones I don't particularly like.  Trusting Him to take care of this thing and that thing... but managing this other one myself, because I'm not sure what He will do if I put THAT into His hands.

Absolute totality.  It is a process.  It's a process even for those in the physical monastery, for while they've pulled their bodies inside, parts of their hearts (surely must) linger for awhile outside the walls.

But even though the totality is a process, for the cloistered individual a decision has been made.  "I do not want to settle for anything less than a total gift of self":  that is the heart cry of a monastic.

I do not want to settle for anything less than a total gift of self:  that is my heart cry.

And so, as we proceed through the rhythms of our next monastic day, I want to keep in mind the reason for monasticism, for it applies to us as well:  To better serve Our Lord.

"One cannot give Christ a limited place in one's life."  (Louis Bouyer, The Meaning of the Monastic Life, PJ Kenedy and Sons, NY, 1950, p. x)

"Monastic life is nothing else, no more and no less, than a Christian life whose Christianity has penetrated every part of it.  (Bouyer, p. 13)

"The monk is precisely the Christian who has recognized in Christ 'the way, the truth, the life' and who intends to act logically over this discovery, a discovery of such a nature that it should not leave any of those who have made it tepid or indifferent."  (Bouyer p. 68) 

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The Nights of Many Bells

In some monasteries, the new day begins in the middle of the night.  Never having lived this sort of life, I again turn to the experience of one who has done so.  "Not long after midnight," writes Mother Mary Francis PCC, "Sister Sacristan...sets her jaw for what is at once a beautiful and a grim task:  to rouse all the other sleeping nuns.  It is a beautiful task because the sacristan's bell is summoning the community to a midnight tryst with God.  It is a grim business because Poor Clares unfortunately carry their souls about in the same clay casing found on the rest of humanity.  Consequently, though the soul is ready and waiting to go to the choir... the flesh finds the idea not at all stimulating.... Blackness clings to the great, tall windows in the choir, and the huge grille over the altar reaches long fingers of shadow down toward the chanting nuns.... I always feel.. that we are walking down all the avenues of the universe, lighting God's lamps on every corner."  (A Right to Be Merry, pp. 115-118)

Out here in the world, I can't identify with bells that rattle me from sleep in the middle of the ni...

O but wait.  O yes.  I can.  The nights of many bells were several decades ago for me now, but some of you are reading these very words between two such nights.  We know what it's like.  We're deep into a sound sleep, having finally fallen exhausted into bed, when the baby cries.  Is it time for her to eat again?... oh, it can't be!  We drag to our feet, get the baby, feed her, and now she needs a diaper change.  Three hours later, this sweet voiced little "bell" rings again.  Several months after this, Baby Girl is finally sleeping six hours straight, but her brother has begun having nightmares.  And then there are those times when a virus sweeps through the family....

Parents, no matter how much we love our little ones, carry our souls about in the same clay casing found on the rest of humanity.  Our hearts want to rush to the baby, want to comfort a scared five year old.  But our flesh does not find crawling from a warm bed stimulating.

On we walk, however.  Out of bed we climb.  We sacrifice comfort to the summons of the night bells.  We are the ones God has put in charge of lighting lamps of love with our tenderness.  If God has placed little Michael in my life and my home and my heart, then little Michael's cry serves as a bell.  Even at midnight.

May we be given grace to hear the goodness in the bells.

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© 2012 Nancy Shuman.  All Rights Reserved. thecloisteredheart.org