sleepless in the monastery

It has been five days since I left Our Lady of Guadalupe Cistercian Abbey. My exterior residuals include a) a lingering tendency and preference towards silence b) an interior clock that still gets me up in time for the "Vigils" office that the monks pray at 4:15 AM each and every day c) a lack of interest in the presidential election, in answering the phone, or least of all in Anglican Communion church food-fights.

I regret to report that I cannot a) levitate b) walk on even shallow bodies of water, nor c) tell with any accuracy how many Inquisition victims the monks have chained in their dungeon. No dungeon even; they do have a fairly clean laundry room though where you can see their white and black robes whirling in the spin cycle.

I'm indulging in some harmless sarcasm as I think I will be discovering and processing the gift and experience of living with the Cistercians of OLG for a long, long time, and it is important to me that I claim absolutely no mystique or false level of "illumination" at having been privileged to live and work and pray intimately among them for one month. It was a luxurious experience spiritually speaking, and I am very grateful to you all members of Saints Peter and Paul as well as my intrepid wife and kids in allowing this to happen.

It's a luxury to live so intimately with members of one of the most venerable and, within living memory, most private and seemingly mysterious Orders within monasticism. Thomas Merton's autobiographical books began in the late '40's to open the Cistercian world to those curious or those seeking spiritual food from ancient sources. Since the reforms in the RC Church of the early '60's the Cistercians and other Orders have sought to free themselves of archaic customs and overly-rigid attitudes that actually obscured the purpose of their lives. The Cistercian "purpose", if I might be so bold, is to seek God in simplicity, silence, and in community. As an outsider coming in, I'd say they are pretty straightforward about that today.

There is not and never was a "vow of silence" per se; that is a romantic notion. Rather talking is to be brief and to the point, and certain times of the day as well as certain parts of the monastery are to be utterly quiet unless at great need. This "honors silence" and honors the God who speaks in a "still small voice." Silence is not an abstract imposed suffering for these men; it is embraced for the sake of listening. Some monks are naturally introverted and take to silence with little strain. Others are extroverted by nature and the practice is difficult for them.

They pray the "hours" of the Divine Office, the communal prayer of the ancient Church consisting of Psalms, hymns, and readings, seven times each day starting with the "night office" of Vigils at 4:15 A. Simply put, they think that some sleep-deprivation is worth it to pray in the darkness to God and for the world while the world sleeps.

If you can hack the celibacy, it's actually a healthy and balanced life with no gratuitous suffering (hair shirts, self-beating) woven in. Food is healthy and balanced albeit with no flesh-meats save a little fish on occasion. Six days a week the monks work and everyone participates in keeping the house and grounds and in working the small businesses they run to keep themselves afloat financially. Their attitude to work is enlightening--during work hours they work steadily but without anxiety; when work is done it's done and they walk away and forget it until the next day. There is flexibility and space in the day, and each monk has a "cell" or private room that's actually a little bigger than a college dorm "single". The grounds are beautiful and most of the monks like to hike. They deal with one another with respect and all the monks have a say in things that effect them all. The Abbot is elected by the membership and the office is reviewed every seven years.

When I thanked the Abbot for their hospitality towards an ex-RC renegade turned Episcopalian, he waved his hand in the air and replied that it is their pleasure, and that the baseline to their life is not denominational identity but the search for God which provides a ground in which to meet and engage with many sorts of people with respect.

One woman staying at their guesthouse for a weekend was very impressed that I was staying with the community "for a whole month" and said with the best intentions, "You'll leave here transformed."

That remark made me very uncomfortable and I think I remember waving my own hand like the Abbot although with less patience. Perhaps I was keenly aware that I and my month-long stay was a dust-mote on the 900+ years of Cistercian history and a blip before the commitment of the quiet and modest men who were in the Abbey for a lifetime of almost invisible faithfulness. I told her that I would settle for a new tool or two with which to continue my journey.

What I learned there, as recorded in the journals which I almost filled with at times feverish writing, was a re-appreciation of the ancient and unfashionable virtue of humility and of my need for it. I learned that much in me that I thought had been healed in terms of past experience was not as healed as I thought. In the relative silence and reduced outside stimulus, the superficial identity given by role and title and duties, lots of old material came bubbling up in a nearly-overwhelming fashion. My dreams were positively psychedelic, Peter Max and Salvador Dali having an "unplugged" session together with Karl Jung as consultant. I had a palpable sense of vulnerability much of the time. When I reported this to the Abbot and the other monks, they chuckled and avowed how this was completely "normal" and continued for most of them for years in some cases.

I learned that I was tired of trying to pray and realized that I cannot pray. And I learned that this is a valuable step, as we cannot pray. The Spirit prays within us and the goal of Christian prayer praxis is not to plug and plug away and bang one's head against the divine brick wall until one gets it "right". The goal is to learn by grace the art of getting out of the way and to be attuned to the Spirit praying within. In my head I knew this and I probably passed that on to other people with the best of intentions. At the abbey I learned that I was not "practicing" this myself.

And all of this sounds like grim and depressing news. But it is not. It is freeing, liberating. I feel like a beginner again. And I like the feeling.

Not all the moments at the abbey were fraught with "emo" inner turmoil and angst. Praying Vigils and watching the land slowly lighten with the midsummer sunrise halfway through, with the sense that the awakening birds were joining in the Psalms...private prayer in the "interval" between Vigils and Lauds at 6:30 AM and experimenting with the "ancient art" of lectio divina, praying with the Scriptures and listening for the divine voice...work outside and chatting easily with the monks who reminded me at those moments of my father's hardworking, hard-handed friends...looking down a hallway and seeing a habited monk framed by a white arched doorway and shivering, wondering if I'd been transported to medieval France...listening to some of the journeys of the men who have taken permanent vows and never for a moment believing that these guys were "hiding from life"; rather they were embracing life and their particular path within it...meditating in their Zen-style chapel and smiling as some squirrel peered through the clear ground-level plate-glass window and seemed to mock our piety by sitting up and clasping his impudent little claws in prayer.

Made some new friends--some living, with whom I have every intention of staying in touch. On my last day men who had not spoken one word to me came up and said how they had enjoyed my presence and that I was "welcome back anytime I wanted." Some dead, like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great intellectual and spiritual figure of the early days of the Cistercians in the 12th century. I'd always avoided Bernard because of his unsavory medieval political adventures--preaching the Second Crusade, making himself the worst nightmare of the scholar Peter Abelard, assisting in the foundation of the Knights Templar. But I read Bernard's piece on "Humility and Pride" and felt it had been written somehow with me partially in mind. And his other writings breathe an energy and love for the spiritual quest, a deep devotion to the humanity of Christ, and wonder at the transforming mystery of the Incarnation. All of these are Anglican-Episcopal notes as well, at least when we're at our best.

I begin to have thoughts about how monastic principles can help inform and deepen parish life as we first began to examine some seven years ago. And I want to patiently see what permanent marks may be left on my soul from this very privileged time.

I missed my wife and kids with a tangible ache in my flesh, and was wildly happy when my wife and older daughter arrived and picked me up on my last day. I am not, repeat NOT, called to celibacy and the stay made me realize that my decisions long ago to embrace marriage and priesthood in the Episcopal Church were "right" for me. But I do not mind telling you that as we drove away I had tears in my eyes.