The Cloistered Heart in a Noisy World

 

So Very Cloistered, Here

Of all my retreats in the (physical) cloister, one was particularly fruitful. This could have been surprising given the circumstances. The monastery was not in mountains or meadow, but situated in the middle of a bustling city. That was okay with me; there was a lush cloister garden separated from the streets by high brick walls. My plan was to sit with Bible and journal and gather together scattered threads of thoughts and prayers. The sounds of traffic around? No problem. I looked upon those as bits of background noise. I would spend the day with God, in peace. A nearly ideal set up for serenity.  

 

That is, until the band. 

From a campus nearby, there were sudden sounds of an outdoor concert. A LOUD outdoor concert. I sat in the garden surrounded by trees, holy statues, birds, and THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD. Perhaps it would have been less unsettling if I could have heard ALL of the music; as it was, I only heard the thuds. Thud thud thuds out of context, setting my nerves on end. Suddenly ordinary street sounds began to unsettle me. How long had there been planes flying overhead, one after another, and so close by?  The city seemed filled with sirens. Voices shouted, just outside the enclosure walls. Hmmpppf, thought I. However could I pray? 

And then it was time for the Office of Prayer. A bell rang, the Sisters gathered. As a retreatant, I joined them. We began the chant. One Sister quietly closed shutters to hush metallic thuds. That didn’t help, but the nuns sang on, undaunted. “O Lord, open my lips” THUDTHUDTHUD “and my mouth shall" THUDTHUDTHUD “proclaim your praise…”

I was suddenly struck by the incongruity of it all. Sirens, traffic, shouting, planes, THUD, chant.

But more than that; I was struck by beauty. By the intense, amazing, astonishing beauty of it ALL.

One Sister said, just before I left after retreat, that she was sorry I’d been there at such a noisy time. Oh no, I assured her; I had been there at the perfect time. I had seen the analogy of “the cloistered heart” in a whole new way, not in spite of the noises, but because of them. No matter what went on outside, the Sisters were there to praise God, and they would do it undaunted. Probably they didn’t “feel” very prayerful as they chanted praises they could barely hear, but they were singing to Another, and He could hear them.

Surely there are days when any one of them doesn’t “feel prayerful,” but she comes at the sound of the bell and she praises God, for He deserves it. He deserves praise and worship with the whole of one’s being. No matter the noises, no matter the weather, no matter the situations around any of us, God is worthy of praise. Period.

 

God is present, and no matter what goes on all around, He is worthy of praise. Period.

O Hermitage! Delight of Holy Souls

'The hermitage is a paradise of delight where the fragrant scents of the virtues are breathed forth like sweet sap or glowing spice-flowers. 

There the roses of charity blaze in crimson flame and the lilies of purity shine in snowy beauty, and with them the humble violets whom no winds assault because they are content with lowly places; there the myrrh of perfect penance perfumes the air and the incense of constant prayer rises unceasingly. 

But why should I call to mind these in particular? For the lovely buds of all the holy virtues glow there many-coloured, and graces flourish in an undying greenness - beyond the power of words to describe. 

O hermitage! Delight of holy souls, unfailing in your inner sweetness.'

St. Peter Damian

A New Perspective

The Finest Perfume

Painting: Léon Frédéric, Fragrance

Fruit of the Vine

The Soul's Uprooting

'Our soul is like a garden in which the weeds are ever ready to choke the good plants and flowers that have been sown in it.

'If the gardener who has charge of this garden neglects it, if he is not continually using the spade and the hoe, the flowers and plants will soon disappear. Thus, my children, do the virtues with which God has been pleased to adorn our soul disappear under our vices if we neglect to cultivate them.

'A vigilant gardener labors from morning till night to destroy the weeds in his garden, and to ornament it with flowers, so let us labor every day to uproot the vices of our soul and to adorn it with virtues.

'See, my children, a gardener never lets the weeds take root, because he knows that then he would never be able to destroy them. Neither let us allow our vices to take root, or we shall not be able to conquer them.'

St. Jean Vianney

Top Painting: Anders Zorn, Dandelions 

Bottom painting: Sir Hubert von Herkomer, The Old Gardener

Arise, North Wind!

His Garden of Delights

'You are an enclosed garden, My sister, My bride, 
an enclosed garden, a fountain sealed.' (Song of Songs 4:12)

Revisiting My Dry Garden

Monasteries are not drought-proof.  When skies close up and rains no longer soak the ground, monastery fields and gardens are no less subject to dryness than are any other plots of land.

The monastery of the heart is not drought-proof, either.  Sometimes we feel as if our souls are barren, lifeless, parched.  There are days when our prayers seem to go nowhere, times when we feel that God Himself has left the universe to dry up and wither to dust.

If we’ve ever felt this way, we are not alone.  “I could neither pray nor read,” wrote St. Teresa of Avila about one such experience, “but there I remained, for hours and hours together, uneasy in mind and afflicted in spirit on account of the weight of my trouble, and of the fear that perhaps after all I was being tricked by the devil, and wondering what in the world I could do for my relief.  Not a gleam of hope seemed to shine upon me from either earth or heaven; except just this: that in the midst of all my fears and dangers I never forgot how Our Lord must be seeing the weight of all I endured….”

So:  we’re not alone in having such experiences.  But what do we do about them?

I have found that the saints help in this kind of challenge.   

"If you do nothing else the whole time of prayer than bring your heart back and put it beside Our Lord, although each time you do so it turns away from Him, your hour will be very well employed.” (St. Francis de Sales) 

"His will is, that entering into prayer, we should be prepared to suffer the pain of continual distractions, dryness and disgust, which may come upon us, and that we should remain as constant as if we had enjoyed much peace and consolation.  It is quite certain that our prayer will be none the less pleasing to God nor less useful to ourselves, for having been made with difficulty.” (St. Francis de Sales)

This is a repost from our archives. It is linked to Reconciled To You and Theology Is A Verb for 'It's Worth Revisiting Wednesday.'  

© N Shuman.  
thecloisteredheart.org       

In A Monastery Garden

'The beginner must think of himself as setting out to make a garden in which the Lord is to take His delight, yet in soil most unfruitful and full of weeds.  

'His Majesty uproots the weeds and will set good plants in their stead.  

'We have now, by God’s help like good gardeners, to make these plants grow.  We must water them carefully, so that they may not perish, but may produce flowers which shall send forth great fragrance to give refreshment to this Lord of ours, so that he may often come into the garden to take his pleasure and his delight among these virtues.' 

St. Teresa of Avila






To our e-mail subscribers: this post features a 5-minute video, which may be seen by going to the blog itself. On a personal note: when I began viewing this, I thought it might be too long. By the time it was halfway through and the chant had begun, I wanted it never to end.

Painting: Albert Edelfelt

If a Little Flower

'If a little flower could speak, it seems to me that it would tell us quite simply all that God has done for it, without hiding any of its gifts. It would not, under the pretext of humility, say that it was not pretty, or that it had not a sweet scent, that the sun had withered its petals or the storm bruised its stem.' (St. Therese of Lisieux)

'The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.' (St. Therese of Lisieux)

Where I live, spring is suddenly upon us. It's a good time for visiting cloister gardens, so I think I'll spend the next few days doing exactly that.

Care to come along?






Painting: Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, Clare Tending Plants

For See, the Winter is Past

'Arise, My beloved, My beautiful one, and come!  For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone.  The flowers appear on the earth. The time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the dove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance. Arise, My beloved, My beautiful one, and come!'

Song of Songs 2:10-13 

Astonished by Beauty

Of all my cloistered retreats, one was particularly fruitful. This was spent in the same monastery the Lathrops visited for A Story of Courage.

As we've seen in our recent posts, this monastery is not in mountains or meadow, but situated right in the hubub of Georgetown, DC.

'There was a lush cloister garden,' I wrote several years ago, 'and it was separated from the streets by high walls.  My plan was to sit with Bible and journal and gather together scattered threads of thoughts and prayers.  The sounds of traffic around?  No problem.  I looked upon those as bits of minor background noise.  I would spend the day with God, in peace.  An ideal set up for serenity.

That is, until the band.

From a campus nearby, there were sudden sounds of an outdoor concert.  A LOUD outdoor concert.  I sat in the garden surrounded by trees, holy statues, birds, and THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD.  Thud thud thuds out of context, setting my nerves on end.  Suddenly, ordinary street sounds began to unsettle me.  How long had there been planes flying overhead, one after another, and so close-by?  The city seemed filled with sirens.  Voices shouted, just outside the enclosure walls. Oh dear.  However could I pray?

And then it was time for Midday Prayer.  A bell rang, the Sisters gathered.  As a retreatant, I joined them.  We began the chant.  One Sister quietly closed shutters to hush metallic thuds.  That didn’t help, but the nuns sang on undaunted.  “O Lord, open my lips”THUDTHUDTHUD“and my mouth shall proc” THRUMP THUDTHUMPTHUD “…laim your praise…”

I was suddenly struck by the incongruity of it all.  Sirens, traffic, shouting, planes, THUDs, chant.

But more than that: I was astonished by beauty.  By the intense, amazing beauty I was witnessing all around.  One Sister said, just before I left, that she was sorry I’d been there at such a noisy time.  Oh no, I assured her; I had been there at the perfect time.

I had seen the analogy of 'the cloistered heart' in a whole new way, not in spite of the noises, but because of them.  No matter what went on outside, the nuns were there to praise God, and they would do it undaunted.

Probably the Sisters didn’t 'feel' very prayerful as they chanted praises they could barely hear, but they were singing to Another, and He could hear them.

Surely there are days when one of them doesn’t 'feel prayerful,' but she comes at the sound of the bell and she praises God.  Why?  Because He deserves it.  He deserves praise and worship with the whole of one’s being.

No matter the noises, no matter the weather, no matter the situations around any of us, God is present.

God is present and He is worthy of praise. Period.

(this is an edited post from our archives)

© N Shuman thecloisteredheart.org  

Photos of Georgetown Visitation, N. Shuman, 1990s

This post is part of our series 'A Story of Courage.' To continue in chronological order, click this line.

Sometimes the Same Changes

'The Convent of the Visitation in Georgetown is a large three-sided structure of brick, enclosing a great garden. Across the street is a row of cosy dwellings, standing somewhat back from the sidewalk... The city and the suburb have been gradually welded into one by a continuous and expanding web of streets and houses, so that now they stretch up to the very border of the convent demesne.' (A Story of Courage, p. 6)

This is precisely what I've met with on my visits to this convent. The looming structure, those cosy Georgetown rowhouses in gentle colors of yellow and grey, all surround a garden that I find great indeed. The city has stretched a great deal more since the above was written, so that city and suburb now wrap entirely around the monastic dwelling. Yet reading this century old book, I am sometimes astonished by what remains the same.

At other times, I'm charmed to see what has changed.

'At the southern corner of the convent, the patient horse-car from the heart of Washington plods its equine way.'  It is something I cannot imagine, this horse car patiently plodding. Sitting outside in the walled garden, I've been struck as much as anything by noise. But I'm getting ahead...

'The convent proper - or, as it is often called, the 'monastery' - is a long, plain four-story brick house...'

One thing I used to find puzzling was the use of the word 'monastery' for what I was calling a 'convent.' Weren't monasteries for men, and convents for women? When I began trying to learn which was what, I would have been happy to find an 'Internet' (I was still 'patiently plodding' through stacks of library books in my study of cloistered life). Today information is literally at one's fingertips, of course, and I found the following basic definitions (here) at Catholic Online Encyclopedia:

'Monastery: An autonomous community house of a religious order, which may or may not be a monastic order. The term is used more specifically to refer to a community house of men or women religious in which they lead a contemplative life separate from the world.'

'Convent: In common usage, the term refers to a house of women religious.'

'Cloister: Part of a convent or monastery reserved for use by members of the institute.'

As we continue this little adventure, I will most likely use 'monastery' and 'convent' interchangeably - simply because 'convent' is the word most often used in the Lathrop's book.

And I interrupt this post for a bit of news... Thanks to a new scanner, plus a lot of late night digging through old scrapbooks, I can now share 20-ish year old pictures I've snapped at the very monastery we're 'visiting,' as well as in a few other monasteries (convents) over the years.

Along the way, we'll of course be looking into how what we see and read can be applied to our lives in the world, for that is what we do here, isn't it? By the grace of God, that's what we try to do.

Photo: Cloister garden, Georgetown Visitation Monastery, 1990s, N Shuman photo


This post is part of our series 'A Story of Courage.' To continue in chronological order, click this line.

The Loveliest Beauty of All

'To eyes which know how to find it, there is in the least luxuriant season of the year a beauty which is entirely sufficient. And to the perception of a nun, the quiet and solemnity of a convent contain all the loveliness she needs. Just as there is no season without its particular beauty, so there is no health of soul without beauty; and the beauty of holiness is the truest and loveliest of all.' (Lathrop, A Story of Courage, p.2; punctuation slightly edited)

Click this line for information about A Story of Courage.

Painting: Carl Friedrich Lessing, Klosterhof im Schnee 


This post is part of our series 'A Story of Courage.' To continue in chronological order, click this line.

Today in the Cloister Garden

Revisiting What God Really Said

Reviewing the basics of the cloistered heart analogy, I'm reminded that our 'call' is that of every Christian.  The analogy we use is simply a way of helping us envision it.

Each of us is called to live according to the will of God. Our Creator placed us on this earth and gave us instructions on how to live (Genesis 2:16-17). It was pretty simple, really, and absolutely do-able.  God said, in essence:  I have put before you all you will ever need. A splendid bounty. You don't even have to work for it. All I ask is that you trust Me, trust that I know what's best for you, and just do not eat of that one single solitary tree. 

Ooops.

All these millenia later, we still face the same basic choice. Because of that first ooops, we were not born into Eden - but thanks to Our Savior, we do have an eternal garden of glory awaiting us. And the way I look at it, we also have an opportunity to live, even on earth, in the best location possible. A place from which we can look with anticipation toward our eternal Home. A place in which we can be assured that God is ordering our circumstances (even when we see them as painful or murky) toward nothing but good.

Of course, I'm speaking of the will of God, the boundaries of which are mapped out for us in His Word and through His Church.

Yes, this is very basic stuff.  But oh, how easy it is to lose sight of basics! Which is why I'm grateful for the imagery of enclosure, and of grillwork, because these help me as I try to practice the basics day by day.

In circumstance after circumstance, we are presented with the question: 'Did God really say?'  This threads through our culture, usually as a general assumption that He said no such things. 'In this enlightened, scientific, sophisticated age, do you mean to tell me you think all that stuff in the Bible is really true? You think God really said? Why don't you just open your eyes and judge for yourself!?'

'The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom...'  (Genesis 3:6)

The woman saw. The woman judged for herself. She could see no reason not to eat from that particular tree except for one teeny tiny detail, surely a small matter that could be overlooked.   

God said.  


This is a slightly edited repost from our archives. It is linked to Reconciled to You and Theology is a Verb for 'It's Worth Revisiting Wednesday.' 
 
© 2015 Nancy Shuman
thecloisteredheart.org   

Our Garden

'Let my beloved come into His garden,' says the spouse of the Canticles...   Now, the Divine Spouse comes into His garden when He comes into a devout soul, for since His delight is to be with the children of men, where can He repose better than in the soul that He has made in His own image and likeness?  In this garden He Himself plants the loving delight that we have in His goodness, and on which we feed our souls.'  (St. Francis de Sales)

Painting at top: Mańkowski, Sister of Charity
Painting at bottom: Cesare Laurenti, 1892

Visit To A Cloister Garden

'Was not this entire visible universe made for your dwelling?... The earth was adorned with flowers, groves and fruit; and the constant marvelous variety of lovely living things was created in the air, the fields, and the seas for you, lest sad solitude destroy the joy of God's new creation.' (St. Peter Chrysologus)

The Passionist Nuns of St. Joseph Monastery recently shared the above quote, along with delightful photos of their summer garden.

So what are we waiting for?

Let's visit them by clicking here!



Painting: Liebermann

In The Cloister Garden

'Our mortifications, humiliations, prayers - in a word, all the exercises we practice, what are they but acts of virtue, which are like so many beautiful flowers, that send up a perfume extremely sweet before the Divine Majesty? Therefore, we may well say that religion is a garden all sown with flowers, very pleasing to the sight, and very salutary to those who wish to inhale their fragrance.'

St. Francis de Sales


Painting: Allston Collins, Convent Thoughts