Category Archives: Monasticism

The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it

Hie thee over to the Byzantine Anglo-Catholic’s place for a fascinating post on the Camaldolese order and their spirituality. I’m stealing from there the entirity of the Brief Rule left by their founder.

Brief Rule

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish.
The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of
your good will, you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God’s presence, and stand there
with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

On the BCP and Benedictine Values

Scott points us to this wonderful reflection on the Daily Office, the BCP and a life formed in prayer. I’ve not encountered this blog before, but if Scott gives it high marks, it’s worth a read.

One tiny quibble, however. Fr. Hayes writes:

Prayer is the heart and soul of any life. Benedict was/is so correct
when he states that “To pray is to work; to work is to pray.” THAT is
why the church exists – to help people to pray.

Unless I’ve both misremembered and missed it in a quick electronic scan of the rule, Benedict doesn’t actually say this. It’s present by implication through Benedict’s practice of referring to the fixed hours of prayer as the Work of God (opus Dei). But it’s not explicit. Rather, this formula  is very similar to a quotation from Cassian’s Institutes (can’t give you a citation; my Institutes are 600 miles away…) but Cassian’s intent is something different.

In this passage, he’s talking about the twinned manual labor and prayer of the Egyptian monks. In it, he marvels at how long and hard they work and wonders if it is the work that makes the prayer possible or the prayer that makes the work possible.

Don’t get me wrong–I think Fr. Hayes is absolutely right in what he’s saying about prayer being the heart and soul of life and that the great function of the Church is to connect people with the reality of the life hid in God with Christ through prayer (including the sacraments). The reason I take the trouble to bring this up is because I think fussing with this point is necessary for a healthy and helpful understanding of the priesthood of all believers, the theological vocation of those of us who are not clergy or monastics.

I’m still wrestling with what it means to fulfill the Pauline and deeply monastic command to “pray without ceasing”. On one hand, virtuous work well done can be a kinetic act of prayer for those of us who live and work in the world. On the other hand, I wonder if we sometimes let ourselves off the hook too lightly when we take that tack. I sometimes think that the manual labor jobs I’ve done in the past lend themselves more fully to a true mingling of work and prayer of the sort Cassian describes than my current forms of intellectual labor. That is, aren’t there varying levels of passive mindfulness and active prayer that can still be pursued by those in the world?

I don’t know–I’m still fussing with it. In any case, go and read the post and tell me what you think…

Help the Cause!

Between the spider-bite thing, M not working, and now the move, things are a bit tight around here. (Of course, that’s nothing new for us…) Despite that, M and I are planning to send a donation to the Order of Julian of Norwich to help their expansion plan.

I feel very strongly about supporting this endeavor–and here’s why…

We Anglicans are a liturgical people. We believe that prayer matters. We believe that forming people into the mind of Christ matters. The catholic side of Anglicanism has strongly supported the retention of monastic forms and communities. It’s not because monastics are better or inherently more holy than the rest of us, some kind of spiritual super-class. Rather, it is a recognition of vocation.

We’re all called to do things in this world. We’ve all been given natural and spiritual gifts and graces. Those who excel in the gifts and skills needed to be geophysicists–and who are called to do it—ought to darn well go and be geophysicists. Yes, they could bag groceries or drive a desk, but to have the gifts, to have the calling and to reject it is to reject part of what God invites us into. The same is true of contemplatives just as geophysicists. Some are called to renounce property, sexual relationships and our highly-prized-though-largely-mythical personal autonomy for a life focused on the process of falling deeper and deeper in love with God and, by extension, his creation.

I’m not one of them.

I’m deeply drawn to things monastic and to our liturgical spirituality. I’m not called to be a monk. I’m called to be a husband and a daddy and I love those things with a passion that confirms my calling to them. However—I can be an oblate. I can be connected to and nourished by a monastic community. I can receive spiritual direction and insight from those whose focus can be more profoundly and constantly directed towards God than my own scattered life. And from them I can learn how to experience my scattered life as a process of falling deeper into love with God.

That’s what this expansion project is about. It’s not just about connecting some buildings in a place in Wisconsin. It’s about connecting members of the community despite increasing mobility problems, and it’s about connecting those of us outside the monastery with those inside it through increasing space and capacity for the monastics to share their wisdom, their folly, their simplicity, their own broken and woundedness with the world.

A lot of people have the wrong idea about philanthropy. They think it’s about giving money away. It’s not. It’s about investing. It’s about investing in your hopes, dreams, and goals in an organization with those same hopes, dreams and goals. An organization that not only shares them but, more importantly, can make a difference with them. I feel the order is one of those; take a look–I think you’ll agree.

So, I encourage you to hop over and check out the plans and download the pdf.

I don’t see a PayPal link or anything like that at the moment, but if you feel moved, shoot off a check to :

OJN Expansion Fund
The Order of Julian of Norwich
2812 Summit Avenue
Waukesha, WI 53188-2781

Monastic Mysticism: Diadochus of Photice

I’m doing some reading around to prepare for my next Cafe article that’s in the works and ran across some good stuff from Diadochus. There’s no way this’ll make it into my final text, but I thought this was pretty cool and definitely worth sharing.

I’m looking at Andrew Louth’s The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981) and his chapter on “The Monastic Contribution”. Of course, he’s doing a quick survey of a huge field and subject and the thinkers about whom he speaks are representatives of types that contribute to his synthesis. It’s not comprehensive nor exhaustive by any means, nor is it intended to be. In this chapter he looks at three folks/texts: Evagrius of Pontus, the Messalian homilies attributed to Macarius, and Diadochus. Those who know their history will note a common thread between the first two—they were both condemned as heretical… The way he sets it up, Diadochus is the synthesis between the thesis and antithesis set up by the first two. That is, Evagrius is an intellectualist and emphasizes the spiritual nature of prayer while the Messalians are intensely practical and center themselves very much on feeling.

The best part of Louth’s treatment of Diadochus and what really caught my eye was his discussion of the place of baptism:

The center of Diadochus’ spiritual theology is perhaps his clear grasp of the significance of baptism. Neither of the monastic traditions we have discussed in this chapter gives any place to baptism. Evagrius does not mention baptism, and even his understanding of the basic significance of faith cannot be related to baptism, as he regards faith as an innate capacity. The Messalian position explicitly rejects any place in the spiritual life for baptism. [ed: Indeed, this is an issue with monastic theology as a whole—even in Cassian, monastic vows seem to trump baptism…] In rejecting this tenet of the Messalians, Diadochus is led to develop an understanding of the spiritual life that sees God’s work in the soul through the sacrament of baptism as the foundation of that life.
. . .
In baptism, according to Diadochus, two gifts are given. The first, given at once, is restoration in the image of God. [ed: cf. Athanasius, On the Incarnation—to the delight of M and Anastasia…] The second, which far surpasses the first, is restoration according to the likness of God, and this is not given at once but depends on our cooperation.
. . .
Diadochus uses, as Macarius [of the Messalian homilies] has done, the analogy of a painter who, in this case, first traces the outline and then applies the colors. The grace of God first traces on man in baptism the form of the image that he had in the beginning, and as he begins:

“with all his will to desire the beauty of the likeness and stands naked and undaunted in his work, then grace causes virtue upon virtue to blossom in us and it raises the form of the soul from glory to glory and bestows on the soul the form of the likeness. So the spiritual sense reveals to us that we are being fashioned after the likeness, but the perfection of the likeness we know through being illuminated.” (Century 89)

The spiritual sense, then, is that by means of which we progress in the spiritual life. It is by discovering it and using it that we cause the image (eikon) in ourselves, which has been restored in baptism, to take on the full glory of the likeness (homoiosis). Through it we acquire virtues . . . and thus adorn the soul with spiritual beauty. But beyond all that our spiritual sense can do there lies perfection. This is to receive ‘spiritual love’ and it can only be received when the soul is enlightened in complete assurance by the Holy Spirit. The final perfection of the likeness can only be accomplished through love: ‘no other virtue can acquire impassibility for the soul, but only love.’

I love this image of the spiritual life! Through baptism, a line-drawing (as it were) of the image of God is restored in our soul. Then, through the cultivation of the virtues and our own opening to the working of the Spirit, the drawing is painted in (or perhaps the colors effaced as we slip between virtue and vice) until we hold in ourselves a portrait of the likeness of God, only completed by the iridescent glow of love.

Suburban Homesteading

The new blog Suburban Resistance points to this promising beginning of a new series on suburban homesteading–the idea of becoming more self-sufficient in some ways but (I’d suggest) ultimately makes us more aware of our interdependencies on nature and God for what sustains us. I’ve always been into this concept but have never had the time or resources to follow through.

As a youngster in suburbia, our family had a huge garden where we grew all sorts of veggies: swiss chard, broccoli, cucumbers, squash, green beans, etc. Being from rural stock my folks were into organic gardening back in the 70’s and 80’s despite having the opposite political views one normally associates with such things. I spent a lot of time with the venerable Back to Basics (ours was the first edition) which left home when I did… Back then I decided that when I grew up I’d have chickens, goats (for milk, cheese, wool, and meat), bees, and a fishpond along with my garden and greenhouse. I was also a wanna-be herbalist. The closest I’ve come so far is a clutch of container gardens where M and I have farmed
tomatoes, peppers, and herbs in our various rented apartments and homes.

Part of this tendency in me comes from nurture—I was raised with it; it’s just what you do. Another part comes from American individualism—a desire to be entirely self-sufficient. As I’ve grown up and have acquired a more grounded sense of things, I’ve realized that the desire for self-sufficiency is an illusion and may even approach the level of delusion. I’ve now come to the place where I see this activities as moving back into a place where we begin to recognize and integrate ourselves with the mysteries of incarnate reality: the cycles of the sunrise and set, the cycles of the seasons, the cycles of wet and drought. If anything, return to a more intimate connection with our food sources helps us realize how utterly dependent we are on others for our survival. Other people, communities, creation and its Creator.

In the Rule, Benedict points towards sufficiency almost as a by-product of the redeeming value of manual labor.  He prefers when the monastics grow their own food, noting that labor of the hands joins them with the apostles and the fathers, making them “truly monks” (RB 48.8). It’s interesting to read ch. 41 from the perspective of one used to electric lights: the focus on the rhythms of the sun reminds us of how alienated we are from the natural cycles by our technology. Too, it’s worth noting the kinds of food Benedict assumes to be available in ch. 39: bread, fruit and vegetables when in season, and not four-footed animals.

My wandering mind reminds me of just how much space John Cassian allots to discussions of gluttony. Certainly he considers it a problem for monks as a full stomach leads to an increase of libido, but issues of food, food cultivation, and consumption were necessary parts of considering the spiritual life for these authors. And, for him, these topics are also linked to issues of possessions, envy, and theft. (Stories of biscuit-stealing seem to abound in certain chapters…) But when was the last time you heard anything on gluttony recently? And yet that is, as I see it, part of what the suburban homesteading movement is about: curtailing consumption, of processed and factory-farmed food, yes, but also of the cycles of gluttonous consumption which our society glorifies.

So–I’m interested in a variant of this movement that does not seek to cut itself off from others in a drive for sufficiency, but to recognize the cycles within which we exist–the healthy, the unhealthy, and those good cycles that have been altered or perverted from what they ought to be. Peak oil may be a reality in our lifetime—or not. I clearly lack the scientific chops to weigh the various arguments about human-driven climate change especially as they are repeated and distorted y various outlets. But what I can do is recognize sound theological calls for prudence, temperance, moderation, and respect for the creation within which we exist and concerning which we are stewards.

An Act of Recalibration

Go read Christopher’s latest post. He and I have been working around some similar themes of late especially in terms of what is going on at a national level in the church.

Christian social justice is not separate from personal holiness nor vice versa. In fact, they’re really not in opposition to one another despite what various “culture warriors” want you to think. However, both of them are only Christian when they flow from the Gospel.

Christopher makes mention of the Benedictine tradition. Now, when I think and say “Benedictine”, I often conjure up in my head a kind of idealized Benedictine spirit that I believe existed in ninth century Europe as mediated through my experience with Benedictine teachers I’ve had and monasteries I’ve visited.
But there are other very real and important parts of the Benedictine tradition that I would do well to remember.

The monastic house of Cluny, founded in 909 was by the end of the 11th century to become the head of a sprawling family of houses throughout the Continent and in England as well. At its founding it was devoted to a strict interpretation of the Rule. As time went on, things changed… Because of its later years, the name of Cluny is now associated with liturgical excess. A reading of its customaries reveals that the monks were actively in choir over eight hours a day. Now—liturgy is good; but that doesn’t mean that more liturgy is better. Rather, Cluny lost the balance of the Rule that demanded physical labor and study in addition to hours in the choir. Many scholar of the period regard the use of lay brethren as a kind of second-class citizen to do the physical work as a sign of the decay that eventually led to Cluny’s collapse.

What came in its stead was the Cistercian revolution. More ascetical, less liturgical (by comparison—still far more liturgical than anything most of us have ever known) The Cistercians re-emphasized the principle of balance. They did not jettison the old. Indeed, the use of silence outside the choir was a central feature of Cluniac spirituality retained and heightened by the Cistercian reformers. Fundamentally as an act of Reformation, it was an act of Recalibration. 

While I make no secret of my love of Cluny and its liturgies even when they tend to excess, the Cistercians proved themselves a necessary and important part of the Benedictine tradition. And, in their in their path of Recalibration it would suit us now to walk.

We face different challenges, of course. And yet—the balance of the liturgical life, the intellectual life, and the active life still, I believe, burns at the heart of the Anglican way. We would do well to recalibrate.

A Bleak Glimpse Forward

Lee directs us to this sobering post on peak-oil, population, and food supply.

From the Rule, Chapter 48: On Manual Labor:

And if the circumstances of the place or their poverty
should require that they themselves
do the work of gathering the harvest,
let them not be discontented;
for then are they truly monastics
when they live by the labor of their hands,
as did our Fathers and the Apostles.
Let all things be done with moderation, however,
for the sake of the faint-hearted.

It seems clear from the passage above and others like it that Benedict envisions his monasteries as self-sufficient as possible. Certainly divisions of labor were well known in the economies of his day as well as later periods—but Benedict praises the manual labor that produces the community’s needs as worthy of true monastics.

In this day and age, I don’t see self-sufficiency as practical or even desirable for most of us, and yet I know there’s more that we can do. M and I have always dreamed of being able to have a big garden where we can grow more of our food than we do. M has been working on identifying locally-grown organic foods for our table.

Benedict has examples scattered through the Rule of what simplicity looked like in his time and place. As we consider our response to our various crises, I keep turning again to consider what “simplicity” can and should mean for us. Not just “consuming green” but re-accenting the motto people of our age grew up with: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The Great Emergence

I heard Phyllis Tickle speak this weekend. It was quite a fascinating talk and it gave me a lot to think about. What I’ll be offering here and now is a condensation of a much larger post that I have neither the time nor the brain cycles to write right now. And, part of me wonders if it would be a post per se or a manifesto.

Essentially, she was arguing that every five hundred years or so the Church goes through a reformation or reinvigoration—and that we’re in the middle of one now. She talked about them primarily in terms of the organization of the church writ large. Thus at around 500 we had the Great Transition; the key point was the Council of Chalcedon and the splitting off of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Next came the Great Schism around 1000 and the break between the Eastern and Western Churches. Then came the Reformation at about 1500 which split the Protestants from the Roman Catholics. She terms what we’re in now as the Great Emergence and points to the Network & Co. as just one of the splits that will occur as this shift gets underway.

So–what rude beast is slouching its way towards Bethlehem to be born? She cited Pannenberg and others as grouping Western Christianity into four major buckets: liturgical, social justice, conservative evangelical, and charismatic and pentecostal. Her understand of the emergence is that it is a remixing of the buckets that takes place in small group gatherings, local non-church contexts and preeminently on and around the Internet. Her description of what she considers Emerging sounded to me like an ecclesial flash mob—a church or body of believers that gathers on no real schedule, tied to no brick ‘n’ mortar institution but gathering by communication and consensus.

When it came right down to it, she was speaking to most of the people in the hall from an apologetic stance. She was speaking to them as outsiders—those who were not and most likely would not be part of this reality. Rather, she was educating them about what she saw coming and was encouraging them to support it and not push out those in the younger generations who would be pioneering it.

In a sense, therefore, I didn’t belong there. Some of what she said at various points rang very true with my experience and I could easily identify myself with just the movement she was talking about. However, other points I’m not so sure about… For me there was one great gaping hole. I have a feeling—given her other works—that she knows what it is and that it will figure in a book she’s working on now. (She didn’t mention one, but I got the strong sense that this lecture was the working out of ideas for a book…)

She’s right about the times of change, but she only alluded once to one major element about why they’re important. Your average Western church-goer in 500 or in 1000 didn’t give two hoots about Oriental Orthodoxy or a split with the Eastern Church. Instead, I see these points involving critical revolutions in a corporate understanding of what it means to live a truly intentional, truly Christian life.

  • 500 begins the real growth of monasticism in the West.
  • 1000 represents the reform and restoration of the primitive ideal among the new monastic movements–the Carthusians and Cistercians and others like them.
  • 1500 in England takes the hours out of the monasteries and cathedrals and restores them to the people in their own tongue.

Monasticism is important because (in my grand over-simplification) it gives us two things. First, it gives us a framework for an intentional, balanced, Christian life centered around the ultimate human purpose or telos—the praise and worship of God. Second, it relentlessly demands that the Christian life is lived in community. Even when you don’t want it to be. Especially when you don’t want it to be. (Re-read the Golden Epistle and consider how the discussion of private possessions works. Possessions aren’t bad because they’re *stuff*—possessions are bad because they give the monk the illusion that if things get too hard/bad he can just pick up and leave…)

And now? Yes, Phyllis Tickle is right about the blending of the buckets. Yes, she’s right about the power of the Internet—but she didn’t express the challenge inherent in it. Like all tools, like all people, the strengths of the Internet are simultaneously its greatest weakness. A society formed by the Internet will likewise participate in its strengths and failings. The Internet offers whole new realms of instant gratification.

  • You don’t like what you know? Learn something new—anything—now.
  • You don’t like what you have? Buy something new—anything—now.
  • You don’t like who you are? Be someone new—anyone—now.

A Christian culture shaped by the Internet will be a perversion of the Gospel unless it is grounded in balance and in simple rhythms. Stability. Obedience. Conversion of life.

The stabilizing element of this emerging thing she describes is a rediscovery of monastic principles. And, like that of the Reformation, it won’t take place behind cloistered walls. Don’t get me wrong—cloisters will and must remain for this to work imho. We in the world will always need a model to point to we just won’t all live there. Rather, it will occur in the midst of normal domestic lives but will give them a shape, a character, a rule, to enable simple intentional Christian life in an increasing driven and frenetic age.

Not everyone, not all Christians will engage in this—and that’s all right. The monastic way has always served as leaven in the lump. Not all are or need be monks or oblates, but those who are still leaven and invigorate the rest of the church. To put a finer point on it, not all need observe a rule or pray the Offices or some similar discipline, but it’s crucial that some do and will. I think that’s where we’re headed and what we’re up to.

There’s so much more I can and want to say about this—but that will have to come later.