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| Photo: Nancy Bauer, OSB |
Last week, we
at Saint Benedict’s Monastery, St. Joseph, Minn., had invited several leadership
persons from other Benedictine monasteries to join us for one week. Their role
as visitators was to schedule one-to-one visits as well as small and large group
listening sessions.
Visitators ask questions that allow community members to verbalize what seems to be working well within the monastery and what needs to be shifted to facilitate ongoing vibrancy. The community members open their hearts to receive the visitators’ report, commendations and recommendations. This allows the monastery to make honest choices about how to continue to build on our strengths. It also allows members to tweak their life together in ways that make the community an even stronger, unfolding human-God work of art.
Visitators ask questions that allow community members to verbalize what seems to be working well within the monastery and what needs to be shifted to facilitate ongoing vibrancy. The community members open their hearts to receive the visitators’ report, commendations and recommendations. This allows the monastery to make honest choices about how to continue to build on our strengths. It also allows members to tweak their life together in ways that make the community an even stronger, unfolding human-God work of art.
There’s
something in the balancing artistic rock sculptures of Michael Grab that seems
to encapsulate what happens in this communal experience. Here is how Grab explains his work:
"The most fundamental element of balancing in a physical sense is finding some kind of tripod for the rock to stand on. Every rock is covered in a variety of tiny to large indentations that can act as a tripod for the rock to stand upright with other rocks. By paying close attention to the feeling of the rocks, you will start to feel even the smallest clicks as the notches of the rocks in contact are moving over one another. These "sculptures" have no support other than the rocks themselves.”
"The most fundamental element of balancing in a physical sense is finding some kind of tripod for the rock to stand on. Every rock is covered in a variety of tiny to large indentations that can act as a tripod for the rock to stand upright with other rocks. By paying close attention to the feeling of the rocks, you will start to feel even the smallest clicks as the notches of the rocks in contact are moving over one another. These "sculptures" have no support other than the rocks themselves.”
Mary Rachel Kuebelbeck, OSB
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