In 2003 I entered a Benedictine monastery. Little more than a year later they kicked me out again. When I entered I expected to stay longer. I expected to stay my whole life. But by the end of a year it was clear I wasn’t going to make it. They said new members should fit into the existing community like “a hand in a glove.” We could all see my hand and their glove did not even have the same number of fingers.
They were a tiny community. The two older sisters had been together 40 years. A younger sister had just been fully professed after six years. That’s not much diversity, but it was all they were willing to embrace.
From a distance their inability to accept me is unsurprising. Our joining meant crossing an enormous cultural and theological divide. The old sisters were from devoutly Catholic, mid-western farm families and had entered Benedictine life as very young adults in the 50s. I was raised by committed agnostics with formative years in Muslim Northern Nigeria, an Quaker boarding school in England, and an Israeli kibbutz. Also I was born an eccentric, universalist pantheist who not only talked to trees, birds and rocks but believed they were talking back – and one day she would understand what they were saying.
Yet my call to enter this monastery had been unassailable. It came all at once during a social gathering on a retreat weekend. I felt as if my heart had been split open and filled with an intense light. Worse than the worse sort of head-over-heels falling in love, from then on a thick rope of light ran from my heart deep into the land of the monastery. What could I do but follow that directive and trust the Spirit to work things out?
It wasn’t easy. They called their community “ecumenical” but by that included only traditional Christians who fit easily into liberal Catholicism. Although I’d begun to imagine Jesus was my guru, I was far from a traditional Christian. After a long, arduous, two year process of examination they let me in. It seemed the Spirit had working things out.
All went well for a while, but the honeymoon didn’t last.
I’ve explored a lot of interests – from research science to sculpture to writing. Yet through it all, my primary road to spiritual illumination has been gazing vacuously into space while lying in a field, on a mountain, in an arroyo. Although I can overwork with the best of them when in the throes of creative passion, I am also an idler. I want time to play, read without agenda, or do nothing – for hours. By contemplative I meant one who merely sat and listened. They meant one who busied selflessly from one duty to the next administering the monastic environment for guests.
As young nuns, the two older sisters spent 12 hours days nursing or teaching under the minute direction of strict workaholics. For “leisure” they shelled peas or cleaned. From their point of view our work load was relaxed. From mine it was driven. Far more than theology, it was this cultural chasm that separated me from the other sisters. It was also the reason they gave for not wanting me.
It tore my heart apart to leave. I loved monastic life: the rhythm of daily meditation and prayer, the concentrated spiritual study, the other sisters, the land, the guests, and, after a long inner battle, the liturgy. Despite continuous struggles, I often felt buoyed up in a sea of divine presence, light and love. But after leaving, I slept well for the first time in months and no longer felt vaguely queasy all the time. I hated to admit it but I was no more able to eat their spiritual food than they were able to share it with me.
So here I am – having been perhaps the most unsuitable Benedictine novice in modern monastic history. Sometimes I'm simply thankful I got to try it for that one year. Other times I want to shout angrily in their faces, “Look at yourselves! Just look at yourselves and stop blaming all your problems on the new people that come.”
Healing will take time.
Meanwhile, I can’t simply take up the reins of job and house and car and social life that kept me busy before I entered the monastery. I want monastic life, with all the challenge and all the joy it brings. But I do not want to live behind a mask of dissembling as I translate my real spiritual perceptions into someone else’s traditional language.
Where is the monastery for people like me?
Where is the monastery for open-minded seekers of no particular tradition?
copyright R. Elena Tabachnick, May 2006
The main reason I write this blog is to find others, such as yourself, who are drawn to monasticism, yet are uncomfortable with the traditional structures. I still want to live out monastic community. I hope through a conversation on the topic we might envision another way to be monastic.
ReplyDeleteHave you read "Ordinary People As Monks and Mystics: Lifestyles for Self-Discovery"? I stumbled across it a few years ago and found it interesting. Although, it loses the community aspect of a monastery, if I recall -- it's much more geared towards people who would love to be in a hermitage.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was more in touch with the Pagan community, some of the groups there were trying to envision and create monasteries that would be more interfaith. I haven't checked back in to see if any of those got going; I think part of the appeal of Christian or Zen monasteries is that they've been doing it for a *long* time, and have presumably worked out some of the early kinks in the process. :-)
I think you are right. I spent some time searching through community listings on the web and found a huge range of faith approaches, especially in pagan, new age and ecospiritual communities. From what I've heard and read, however, the same issues abound. Many groups soon erect a power hierarchy (either explicit or hidden) that ends up magnifying the egos of some while suppressing others.
ReplyDeleteLongevity is also always an issue.
For whatever reason, like you, I seem drawn to traditional (especially Christian) structures. Maybe because, as you point out, they have been trying it a long time. The various histories and rules codify experience with normal human foibles that derail spiritual aspirations of developing open, compassionate hearts, etc. Others have already dealt with these problems. No point re-inventing the wheel if those solutions work... So that is the question: Do those strategies work?
But, maybe I'm drawn to traditional structures for no good reason at all.