On Community

This weekend is our annual community weekend. The formal one. Our sister Joan Chittister will be speaking on the Synod and synodality to the community, which includes many of our oblates who will join us beginning today. Some, coming from a greater distance, have already started trickling in, making for a nice, fuller choir at prayer this morning.

Last weekend was a different sort of "community weekend" as another 100 trees were planted across the street on our property at Glinodo. Many helping hands joined to plant the trees, mulch around them, and protect them from hungry deer with cages. Even our Sister Lucia, 89-years-old and still-going-strong (!!!), came out to help on a rather glorious fall day. The trees were planted as part of the Re-Leaf project from LEAF (Lake Erie Arboretum at Frontier), with a goal to plant one tree for each citizen in the county over the course of a few years. They serve a double purpose, though. The trees will grow where the goats (who were here in the summer) gobbled up invasive species. This helps to prevent as much re-growth of the multiflora roses and other varieties that had taken over by the creek. Native berry trees made up the majority of one hundred planted.

Planting along the creek

Thanks, Lucia!

Jackie looking like she belongs on a holy card!

Jackie liked that I was wearing an appropriate shirt; it reads, "Cultivate community"

Certainly these trees and their roots will strengthen each other as they add more beauty to our property.

The Thursday before Saturday, eighth graders from St. Luke's parish school came to Emmaus Grove to clear the garden for the winter, providing a great help to our master gardeners who volunteer their time to plant and harvest over 2,000 pounds of fresh produce each season for guests at our food pantry.

We know that caring for the earth is a communal effort, so it's wonderful to watch so many people coming out to help with these good projects.

And fall is definitely here, so the work must get done sooner rather than later! It’s hard for me to let go of the warmth and fullness of late summer. You know those days when you might need a sweatshirt but can still get away with shorts if you really want to? As I scraped my car this morning for the first time, I knew summer had really ended.

Fall is here.

But, goodness, isn't it beautiful?

Natural proof that blue and orange belong together!

One of Jackie's goddaughters snapped this photo...I am obsessed with the shadows.

Mom snapped this one and sent it to me! She said it never stormed though...

I love the vibrant, richly colored hydrangeas next to the bare black-eyed susans... talk about diversity in community!

I thought our "library tree" couldn't get any more beautiful than it does during its spring blossoming, but this red hue might be close!

The letting go and trusting that the fall season calls us to are much more bearable when we are surrounded by community...by each other and by the beauty of nature.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

On Beauty

I recently listened to a great Ezra Klein podcast featuring Chloé Cooper Jones, the author of the memoir Easy Beauty. I haven't read the book yet, but it's next on my "to-read" pile after another memoir I just picked up, Solito. (Yes, the memoir is my favorite literary genre!)

A lot of moments stood out to me in the interview, and, of course, I listened to it a few weeks ago, so I don't remember much. 

But I do remember one point she made.

She said we sometimes feel weird when we don't experience beauty and awe in places and spaces where it's more-or-less expected, but instead, experience them in some inconspicuous moment. For instance, you might have just visited the Louvre, seen the Mona Lisa for the first time, but it's outside the museum, watching a pigeon pecking at food crumbs that moves you to tears.

I also copied down this quote from Chloé during the interview:

Beauty gives us an opportunity to step outside the palace of self-regard.

Well, if that isn't humbling! It was made even more humbling because I listened while taking a walk in downtown Erie, in and around our ministries and up to State Street (the street that divides the city into east and west). I saw a family—mother, father, and son—whose children I taught at daycare. And I wondered, why were they walking all the way up 10th Street during the school day. And I saw a couple who eats at the soup kitchen across the street from me, and we waved at each other while cars passed by. And I saw a pile of belongings from another man who comes to eat with us from time-to-time, all his belongings in the nook of a doorway on 11th. He wasn't there, but his things were; I knew it was his stuff because I've seen him there, spending away the hours—in that nook. The thing that killed me was the green top of a fresh pineapple, just the top, now wilted and brown. And his dirty stuffed tiger.

Chloé also said, of the experience of experiencing beauty:

I am broken out of the prison of myself.

We know it well. Stare at a full moon in the clear sky. Watch children playing in a fountain. Take in a field of delicate, bright wildflowers. Find the top of a pineapple of a homeless person you know on the street. See how your ego melts away.

How good and how pleasant it is

when all people dwell in unity. (Psalm 133)

And, of course, I'd add...how beautiful.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

On Monastic Prayer

Seven years into my monastic journey, and, at this point, I am not quite sure if I could be sustained without communal morning prayer.

Sure, there is the familiar recitation of psalms, the comfort of the Benedictus, the necessary reminder in the Prayer of Jesus to forgive and to let God do God's thing for the day, but...

There is also what happens to human beings at 6:30am!

It's great!

As a sister remarked to me once, "Chapel is a circus."

Just this morning, one verse too early, a sister began to stand up for the Doxology. With monastic reflexes and groggy brains, up went the other two sisters sharing the row with her! They all looked at one another and laughed while they sat back down for a couple more lines, until getting up once more to praise the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.

But, this smile-worthy story reveals a bit more of what's happening underneath in the monastery.

As cenobitic Benedictines, that is, monastics who live a communal life, we vow ourselves to one another. We vow to go to God together. Sure, we have to work on ourselves, but we are also accountable to each other. We aren't going to God alone, and we can't go too much faster than another sister, or we'll have to stop and let her catch-up. Vice versa, too, of course.

Sometimes not just our brains, but our lives get a bit groggy, too. We aren't attentive, don't listen deeply enough, fall down a bit. And that's when the beauty of going to God together appears. We have others surrounding us who, too, have committed themselves to seeking God. We can reflexively join with them on our own journey. They get up to praise God, so we get up to praise God.

For monastics the chapel holds so much of the symbolism and ritual of that communal journey. And, of course chapel is a circus...we're human!

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It always amazes me when our sisters who we know are in dementia pray with us as if nothing is wrong, their brains still fully there. They follow along with the psalter, utter a liturgical response, or sing a hymn they've sung most their lives. How can someone not be able to name any sister they've lived with most their life, but still sing the Salve Regina perfectly, in Latin no less!? A moment like this happened last night; it happens most nights. I witnessed it not only from one sister, but from another, who is in an even more significant stage of cognitive decline. We sang, and she tapped her feet while covered in a fleece blanket, itself covered in virtuous words such as "peace," "trust," and "faith."

These sisters lose their ability to do so much, but in chapel we see the fruits of a lifetime of prayer. It is who they've become.

We live this life faithfully, lovingly, and enduringly so that as we change, as we age, as we decline, as we evolve, all that's left is praise.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

The Lingerers and The Letting Go

It's that time of year.

(I feel like we could say that anytime, and some appropriate metaphor or story would follow.)

Well, right now, it's that time of year when some of those last blooms are hanging on for dear life! Or, are they?

A walk through our inner courtyard revealed just a few of the myriad examples you can find outside during these autumn days.

As I noticed them this morning, I referred to these flowers as "the lingerers" in my mind. They stick around to the last possible moment before letting go. Who knows why...

Just to show off...Because they still have life in them worth living...Because they're not ready yet...Some other reason... Really, who knows?

As we do know, though, nature is very generous in the ways it allows us to flex and create metaphors that help make meaning we want to find, meaning we sometimes need to help us make sense of life. Who hasn't seen a tree and given thanks for the ways it reminds us to root deeply and let go?

If you want to read a good book, pick up Pico Iyer's Autumn Light. I am only about 60 pages in now, but I am finding it a beautiful narrative reflection on letting go, in light of the death of the author's father-in-law in Japan.

However you are lingering yourself these days, how is nature calling you to growth? How is the autumn season calling you differently this year than previous ones?

And, just because, here is one of my favorite trees on our property. Look at that red color. Today I learned that it was struck by lightning some years back and not expected to survive. Well, here it is. (And don't forget about that full moon tonight!)

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Oh, Happy Day, Kathy!

If you look around the monastery, you might notice a few differences:

There are some colorful, bold mums lined up outside, next to a door that goes into our chapel.

There are unique, yet familiar cookies in the kitchen...

There are extra tables and chairs lined up in the community room...

Yes, today is a special day because our dear Kathy is making her final profession to this community. It's hard to hold back a smile when you spot these differences making your way around the monastery. And more "indicators," if you will, of this grace-filled day will pop up as the day continues. The Paschal Candle will be set up in chapel. Friends and family will walk through the front door. The joy and excitement will build in anticipation of the late-afternoon profession liturgy.

The traditional Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts, will interlace the Gospel proclamation during the ceremony. I spent some time listening to varied arrangements and performances of the song yesterday to center myself. It is a well-known and oft-used song and tune, so I shouldn't have been surprised to discover all I found, but perhaps the one that surprised and delighted me most was Aaron Copland's arrangement.

Community is a celebration of so many gifts, simple and layered, coming together to be something greater than the singular. The gifts that Kathy brings to community are both simple and multifaceted, too. Decades of working in L'Arche communities has gifted Kathy with a patient and gentle presence. Kathy also has a deep love and respect for the natural world. When she was a novice, she revived our composting efforts at the monastery and has helped to care for new trees, reduce plastic in the house, and transport glass recycling that can't be picked up here. Plus, Kathy's infectious smile and laugh make it hard to resist your own.

Kathy was the next woman to enter community after I did, which makes me her "angel"—the one who tried to help with the little things when she began her monastic journey...things as mundane as where to find everyday items or how to turn on the dishwasher. But, of course, few, if anyone, would argue that I have anywhere near the angelic qualities of Kathy. She is one-of-a-kind, and it feels like such a gift to welcome her fully into our community today.

Blessings on you, Kathy.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

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Enjoy some other versions of Simple Gifts.