Monk Habits for Everyday People

“The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people of gifted people, but deep people” (Richard Foster). This is how Dennis Okholm opens his book, Monk Habits for Everyday People. Plain and simple: the sheer noise, distraction, stimulation, and escapism that is American culture is as much against the way of Jesus as a BoSox fan is against the Yankees. While American Christians might claim the desire to cultivate such a deep spirituality, the actual practice of cultivating that spirituality often times barely gets off the ground, if it flies at all. People spend their lives either reading about it, without doing anything about it. Or they spend their energy just doing a whole bunch of things without any sense of meaning or understanding that leads to wisdom. Or they stand off to side, ignoring the nudge towards that deeper spirituality they feel in their hearts, hoping that it will just go away so that they can get back to whatever cushy life they’ve created for themselves.

Why Benedictine Spirituality? For one, because it’s so absolutely contra-celebrity. American Christians (specifically Evangelicals) tend towards the celebrity. We switch churches for the one with the new, rising star. Pastors write books, leave their churches, and go on book tours. Fame is the measure of truthfulness, aparantly. We flock to the bookstores to buy the latest book that we think will cure our spiritual apathy and delusion, rather than turning to ancient words of the Scripture, and the Psalms in particular, in order to get our bearings.

Benedictine spirituality is largely a rule of life comprised of the Scripture. It was written by a man who had so digested those ancient holy words that they couldn’t help but invade what he was writing to his monastic community. Scripture is the original rule, but Scripture is always accompanied by the lived experience of the people, which meant that it spoke to them personally. Also, in its day, the Benedictine Rule was not the hot new answer to all of our questions. Benedict stands in history as one of the great consolidators of monastic spirituality. He gathered the essentials and put them all in one place, leaving off to the side some of more arcane and, to be honest, just downright weird aspects of the monastic life (just read some of the sayings of the desert fathers). The Rule was utterly traditional, contrary to most writers today who want to sell us the latest new thing, some answer that they have discovered that no one else thought us. As a rule, the further back, and thus more inclusive one goes in the tradition, the better. New insights will be gained that will help us more forward, but not without a deep reading of the past. This is how you know who you can trust.

Okholm notes several reasons why Protestants might benefit from a Benedictine spirituality:

1. To their credit, Protestants are historically bent towards piety to begin with: daily devotions, regular worship. This is a good thing. Where a Benedictine Spirituality becomes immediately helpful is in regards to the Protestant (especially Evangelical) bent towards individualism. The monastic community (the cloister) recognizes the beautiful relationship between action and contemplation, community and solitude, engagement and withdrawal.

2. It forces Protestants to embrace a wider ecclesiology. Again, tending towards individualism, Protestants (especially Evangelicals) seem to write off too easily other parts of the Christian tradition. One way to know if you’re in the company of a safe and healthy pastor/speaker/theologian is to see how widely they read. Do they read only the books produced by Evangelical celebrities, kitsch pop-culture Christian fluff, or do they readi Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anabaptist, Anglican, African, Latino folks as well. (Note: this doesn’t mean that they are experts in all of this, but that in some way, shape, and form, their imaginations are being influences in the widest possible way. Narrow influences are an indication of narrow imagination.)

3. Protestants are good at doctrine but bad at living. The rule is a way of putting the words of Scripture and theology reflection into practice. It really is about living good days.

4. The Protestant emphasis on Scripture blends nicely with the Benedictine Rule. As I said before, Scripture is the original rule, but Scripture is always accompanied by the lived experience of the people. The Rule arose out of the depths of a man who had so immersed himself in the Scripture that it couldn’t help but invade what he was writing to his community. 

5. If nothing else, Protestants tend to write off Benedictine Spirituality without really understanding it. We need at least become better acquainted with it because it’s a part of our past.

6. Protestants are typically instant kind of Christians: Instant access to God, instant answer to prayer. We don’t do well with waiting. Benedictine Spirituality sees Christian maturity as something one attains only through a disciplined way of life. It’s the image of the athlete in training. The monastics called it asceticism. While Protestants often look back on the moment of their conversion experience and wonder why things are not as good as it was back then, the monk sees life as a kind of training for the kingdom way of life. We grow and mature, like a tree, into the fullness of life with God in Christ.

Thoughts?

Next time: Benedicts thoughts on learning how to be silent.

Rowan Williams and the nature of Christian community

I am currently making my way through Where God Happens by Rowan Williams. This is about as good as it gets when it comes to articulating that nature of Christian community. I thought I would highlight one aspect of the book in hopes that it might speak something to someone today.

For the sake of context, allow me to clarify that in the book Williams is attempting to draw on the tradition of the desert fathers and mothers (around the 4th century) in order to get at the nature of Christian community. How we are in relationship with one another speaks of how we are in relationship with God. "The actual substance of our relation with eternal truth and love is bound up with how we manage the proximity of these human neighbors" (12). The goal, he says, is "to put the neighbor in touch with God in Christ" (15). Williams goes on to tease out exactly what proximity means here. "What if the real criteria for a properly functioning life, for social existence in its fullness, had to do with this business of connecting each other with life-giving reality, with the possibility of reconciliation or wholeness" (25)? From the desert tradition, Williams notes two modes of relational wholeness that are absolutely necessary if we are to be in the business of connecting one another to God, which he calls being a place where God happens, where the doors are opened for others to find healing and wholeness (24). These two modes of relational wholeness are called fleeing and staying.

I'd like to highlight his thoughts on fleeing and offer, perhaps, a few thoughts of my own.

There is a saying attributed to Abba Macarius that goes like this: "Abba Isaiah asked Abba Macarius to give him a word. The old man said, 'Flee from human company.' Abba Isaiah said, 'But what does it mean to flee from human company?' The old man said, 'It means sitting in your cell and weeping for your sins.'"

Flee from the "obsessional search  for absolution," from the "heavy burden of self-justification" (71), from "what makes us feel smug and in control (86). This leads not to a truthful examination of our inner life, but to the need to control the way others perceive us, typically by putting them down either by accusing them - in ever so subtle ways, if not directly - of their own sinfulness. This begins with a chain of obsessional thoughts and fantasies through which we seek justification, status, dignity, and power. Once these thoughts take over the inner life they spill out affecting and infecting the lives of others so we become a place where God does not happen.

The nature of Christian community is seen in those who "develop a ruthless eye for hidden weaknesses," not of others but of ourselves (77). Only those who so keenly examine their own brokenness are able to so delicately address the needs of others

How we speak and use language matters a great deal when it comes to the nature of Christian community. Paul's urging to speak the truth in love is at the heart of this (Ephesians). Thus, from the desert tradition emerges a theology of silence that has perhaps best been adapted by Simone Weil's notion of hesitation (84). Try some of these quotes on for size:

-"We 'hesitate' as we might do on the threshold of some new territory, some unexplored interior. It is an aspect of our reverence for each other."

-"Unless we are capable of patience before each other, before the mysteriousness of each other, it's very unlikely that we will do God's will with any kind of fullness" (84).

-"The times when we can be absolutely sure that we are wasting words are when we are reinforcing our reputation, defending our position at someone else's expense - looking for a standard of comparison, a currency in the market of virtue" (87).

And this one is perhaps the kicker that brings it all together:

-"So it isn't a matter of trying to run away from yourself but running away to yourself, to the identity you are not allowed to recognize or nurture or grow so long as you are stuck in the habits of anxious comparison, status seeking, and chatter" (91).

Flight and silence and hesitation are ways of speaking about one aspect at the heart of Christian community. Our goal is to put one another in touch with God. It is to recognize that when we look at others we are looking at Christ. It is to see Christ in the other. Flight is about a kind of relational proximity that is necessary for our connection with God, the distance, space, and room that we all need in order to work things out, with God's help, so that we don't squeeze the life out of each other (91).

We're like planets caught in each others gravitational pull. If we get too close we'll run into each other and die. If we stray too far we'll lose the presence of God that comes to us in the face of the other, which also leads to our death.