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.