Human Doings or Human Beings

There is an old retreat joke that often comes up when people struggle with contemplative issues. “We should be called human doings not human beings,” someone says.

Monastics are as susceptible as anyone else to social pressures, as well as the inner drive toward distracting activity. So like any other people, monastics can find one excuse after another to stay occupied. Good works make especially useful distractions as they are so easily justified. In the face of the world's or a community's needs, it seems the height of selfishness to merely sit alone with God, listening. But when Martha asked Jesus to tell Mary to stop listening and get her lazy butt into the kitchen, he said, "No." Mary had "chosen the better part" and no one was to take it from her.

Every Christian knows this story, but how often do we actually let ourselves (or others) be Mary? Maybe Mary didn't just choose the "better" part. Maybe she choose the harder part. We all realize we ought to make time to smell the flowers – but there is always some absolutely unavoidable reason that this must be put off until tomorrow when surely we won’t be so busy.

Monasteries have schedules or horariums. These state the hours for prayer, work, dining and recreation. Although having limited and designated work hours might help, it can't solve the overwork problem - unless those involved take seriously the need for empty time. In the monastery I was in, work kept creeping into the times for prayer, contemplation or leisure. The older sisters often went on working in their offices after the warning bell for prayer rang, squeaking into the oratory at the last minute, sometimes skipping prayer altogether. Even on Mondays - which were formally designated as empty, "desert days" - we got in trouble if we didn't keep busy with garden or house work.

I've read blog posts by practicing hermits that limiting their work to a few hours a day is one of the hardest aspects of that life.

Whether it's nursing, reading, teaching, housework, running retreats or a money-making craft - many modern monasteries are all about doing.... and doing to excess, just like the rest of workaholic America. (Although maybe this is more pronounced in women's monasteries due to added fear of an "idle" woman.) Monastery culture can be just as prone to put spiritual growth after overwork as any other institutional culture that never pretends to be about spirituality in the first place, like hospitals, universities, law firms or corporate offices.