The Patterns of Life

“How often in this busy, complicated, overcrowded, difficult world do I make the time to sit and listen to its changing rhythms?”

Of course I had to stop myself when I read this quote in Fenton Johnson’s book, Keeping Faith. And I would be shocked if it didn’t stop most people who consider themselves to be on some sort of journey into the Spirit. The book chronicles Johnson’s journey into Christian and Buddhist monastic life, and although we are not done reading it (My friend and I have been using as a means of staying connected during the pandemic.), I think we’d both give it a high recommendation.

I read that line before last Wednesday’s Silent Peace Walk. Amended, again for the pandemic, we walked spaced apart here at the monastery for our monthly Peace Walk, and it was quite a powerful experience. Even in this slowed down time, I hadn’t taken such a mindful walk around the monastery in the past few months. I was able to notice the greening of the trees, the blossoming of the flowers, the sounds of the birds, and the general rhythms that spring months bring with them. I had noticed that spring was here, of course, but it really did give me an opportunity to pay attention, even if for just thirty minutes.

“How often in this busy, complicated, overcrowded, difficult world do I make the time to sit and listen to its changing rhythms?”

The most startling thing I noticed was a hydrangea bush beginning to flower. I consider myself pretty familiar with this plant, and we have many of them around the monastery, but I had never noticed the pattern of this particular bush in our backyard by the compost bin.

I couldn’t get over how patterned the blossoms were—perfect rows, pair-by-pair. You can even see how each “blossom set” (for lack of knowing the proper term) blossomed in patterns, too, with the outside ring opening first.

I was just blown away. And when I re-read these lines from a particularly good and challenging chapter titled “Being in Doing,” I couldn’t help but think of this hydrangea. I hope you have had space to notice similar beauty in nature these days.

“How often in this busy, complicated, overcrowded, difficult world do I make the time to sit and listen to its changing rhythms?”

Let us walk in the holy presence.

“Baptizing the Ordinary”

I am re-reading Old Monk’s book, Peace is Our Calling. Written about four decades ago, the book explores the question of what contemporary monasticism has to offer to the peace movement. And even though forty years separate us from its initial publication, its relevance remains today. This quote describing monastic life (from Thomas Cullinan, OSB) captured my attention and resonated in my heart:

“‘Monastic life is baptizing the ordinary,’ he explained. ‘When our neighbors heard we were moving in they were all keyed-up for something extraordinary. I think they’re rather surprised, and maybe a little disappointed. Monasticism is very low key. We are just common people who try to show by our lives that holiness is natural and not very difficult.’”

While I might argue about the relative ease or difficulty of holiness (at least for me!), everything else is so on-point. When I initially entered the Erie Benedictine community a lot of people were curious about how my life would be drastically different. Yes, it is, but it’s not really. When we enter deeply into the horarium’s rhythm without too many *extra* things going on (like these still semi-quarantined days), there is a certain quiet and calm and ordinary nature to it all. We have our prayer time and common table time, and now with a bit more free space, you can see many sisters taking walks around the monastery, stopping to wonder at the marvel of the spring season. You see others gathering to play cards a little more often. Ordinary—if you ask me. And lovely. And perhaps inching toward holiness. Baptizing life with presence and attention along the way.

Let us walk in the holy presence.


(Here are some ordinary findings in my meanderings these days.)

A lovely sunset...

A calm creek...

The oriole enjoying some grape jelly for lunch...

Perfectly fragrant lilacs...

Is It Spring?

With signs of springtime everywhere, it's still hard for my body to belief it's really here. We had snow on Saturday, temperatures below 40 degrees as I headed back to the office for the first time since March 16th, and I am beyond eager to wear open-toed shoes outside...comfortably.

But, there have been some lovely days, and the buds and blossoms are definitely showing. One of our most beautiful, "show-off" trees anchors the courtyard. You can see that even Scholastica can't stop staring...

And here are the blossoms closer up...

But, one of my personal favorites is this smaller tree. Not sure the variety, but when she buds, she's gorgeous...

And, then these little delights...the violets in the inner courtyard. I happened to open a Mary Oliver book, Blue Iris, and found this poem...

Spring
Violets have many leaves, each one so earnestly

   heart-shaped that you could not imagine the plants have
thought of anything else to do. But they have: they make
   blossoms, which rise yellow or violet, in multitudes, the
violet ones with violet-colored spurs. They like
   dampness, they like hillsides and are comfortable also
in the shady woods. They like to be alone, or congregated
   together in the grass, looking up as you pass by, saying
Hello. Hello. And what else do you imagine

they might do? Sing? I don't think so, I suspect

   they know when any further ambition would be
unseemly. So all their time is used up in happiness—
   in becoming the best they can be
for the greater glory of _____.
   In fact, they know it's okay to rest for the rest of
your life just saying: Thank you. Oh cast of thousands,
   as are the stars of heaven, Thank you.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Welcoming the Guest

Although we still cannot have guests and visitors in our monastic home, it doesn't mean I am not trying to practice hospitality these days—it just looks a little different right now.

There was one day last week—the weather followed this predictable, yet peculiar pattern. For about thirty minutes or an hour, the sun would shine brilliantly in the sky. Then, almost instantly, the gray cloud cover moved in and snow began blowing through the air. Then, again, the bright yellow sun. And again, the snow. And again and again. The entire day. I had seen the sun and clouds play before, but never so seemingly aggressively and remarkably consistently.

Predictable, yet peculiar.

As we read 2015 papal encyclical, Laudato Si, for an initial monastic formation course, I shouldn't be surprised to find myself feeling a similar pattern these days. We are a part of nature, after all, even when we forget that very basic truth. What happens to our earth happens to us.

The smallest things are providing me great joy and light, but then I quickly sink back into the discomfort and gloom of these quarantined days. Just like that day last week, a movement between darkness and light. Spotting two herons and a few friends on Friday made all the difference in the world. Saturday's sunshine did the same for me. But, yesterday's dreariness echoed my mood...at least until I made a lemon meringue pie at night and was lifted back up a bit.

When people ask me how I am doing, I usually respond, "It depends on the moment." Because it really shifts that quickly for me right now. I know it is a natural experience, those ebbs and flows of our emotional life, but the movement seems so fast sometimes that it startles me when all of a sudden a sense of lethargy comes, or in the opposite way, I spontaneously want to just get up and run.

I don't know what exactly to do with it other than try to breathe peacefully with the movements inside me and say to them, "Hello, and enter." Rumi's poem, The Guest House, reminds me to welcome it all. As we end National Poetry Month, I'll include it here.

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Let us practice hospitality, however the opportunity appears.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

lemon meringue and the beginnings of a camp fire

Beautiful Stories

And here is the serpent again,

dragging himself out from his nest of darkness,

his cave under the black rocks,

his winter-death.

He slides over the pine needles.

He loops around the bunches of rising grass,

looking for the sun.

Well, who doesn’t want the sun after the long winter?

I step aside, he feels the air with his soft tongue,

around the bones of his body he moves like oil,

downhill he goes

toward the black mirrors of the pond.

Last night it was still so cold

I woke and went out to stand in the yard,

and there was no moon.

So I just stood there, inside the jaw of nothing.

An owl cried in the distance,

I thought of Jesus, how he

crouched in the dark for two nights,

then floated back above the horizon.

There are so many stories

more beautiful than answers.

I follow the snake down to the pond,

thick and musky he is

as circular as hope.

Well, I realized that I should probably be keeping track of time and noticed that, lo and behold, it is April. It's National Poetry Month! So, if you're here, you've already read Mary Oliver's poem, Spring, above. Isn't it just perfect, totally fitting, for right now? It would be perfectly fitting in a "normal" year, but especially during these days.

The imagery Mary Oliver paints resonates as we keep "looking for the sun" in the stories of kindness and compassion we hear, in the generous hearts of people reaching out to those with greater needs. And of course, near the end, those ending lines, "...so many stories more beautiful than answers." We must lean into those stories of hope. 

At our Emmaus Soup Kitchen, people's generosity is on full display with anonymous donations, extra masks delivered, and Easter offerings. Here at the Mount, a group has been sewing masks for a number of days now, and they were able to contribute a handful to the soup kitchen today. 

And another sign of hope these days? A just-beginning-to-bloom daffodil.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Simultaneous Life In the Time of COVID-19

When I was teaching fourth grade another teacher would come to my classroom to help during math. She would work with a smaller group of students, as well as help the children learn their times tables using all the tricks she had gathered in her 40-plus-year teaching career.

Sometimes she would have the kids stand side-by-side and give them a multiplication fact. Often times they would answer at the same time. The entire class would respond, "Simultaneous." Not only were they slowly putting the facts into their memory bank, but they were also learning a REALLY big word, by fourth-grade standards.

I always think of that when I think of the word "simultaneous." And I am thinking of the word often these days because there is so much simultaneous joy and fear tugging at me all the time.

And it's for all the reasons you might imagine...

On Friday night we gathered at a social distance to enjoy Quarantine Follies, a monastery talent show. Some people who live outside the monastery joined in via Zoom as we began with a "letter" from Heaven that Ed Sullivan wrote to us reminding us of Sisters '66. Sisters '66 was a performance from that same year which we used to financially support the building of our new motherhouse. (Enjoy the performance on his show below!) (And yes, we did end our evening this past Friday with a wonderful repeat of Kumbaya.) 

The evening included musical talent, poetry reading, a lesson in statistics, some puns, Donald Duck impressions, hula-hooping, as well as a drumming rendition of Love Will Keep Us Together. It was simply pure delight to gather that way and to be able to find joy and laughter in some lighter shared moments during this pandemic.

And yet, there is this pandemic, and there are the very real statistics always in front of us. And there is the total uncertainty surrounding just about everything. It's hard to trust those oft-used gospel words, "Do not be afraid" in these moments because fear is a natural response to feeling uncertain and out of control.

I find myself vacillating so quickly between the two, or feeling them simultaneously, and it's more than a bit uncomfortable. Mary Oliver writes about it well:

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.

What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.

There are no answers for how to deal with this abundance of emotions playing out inside, but there is breathing and there is staying in the present moment and there is gratitude for daffodils blooming and for all those working tirelessly to respond.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

The Questions We Ask

"You have to write this down, Val."

I was talking to a friend on the phone this morning...about...what else...Covid-19.

We were talking about the complexity of upholding one another while the entire global community is in pain. When we speak of community, we often speak of the gift of the strong upholding the weak, the joyful uplifting the sorrowful, the healthy caring for the unhealthy and how that all balances out over time as we each experience our own highs and lows.

But, right now, in this moment, that isn't so easy. Everyone is hurting for one reason or another in the unique ways this affects us all. There is a communal heaviness across the world, and one of the hardest parts is that we do not know when it will end. How long will we have to carry ourselves in this incredibly vulnerable way?

Sure, we can joke about how introverts are grateful for all this solitude or that the Brits love not giving hugs for a while, but we know, deep down, that this reality is deeper than any of that.

There are no answers; there are questions; there is an uncomfortable attempt at patience; there is hope.

"Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." --Rilke

Let us walk in the holy presence.

masks that my friend sewed