Walking Her Home

Photo: Andra Johnson

As I write this, my best friend/sister is sleeping peacefully. She is on hospice care and it is almost time for her morphine. Not much else is on my mind. I’d like to share part of what my minister-supervisor wrote to me during this time.

Is it not great to have a friend like LaVonne? An acquaintance who opened her heart and home to you as you were going through a transition. Now, you are having the opportunity to help LaVonne move towards death so that she does not have to do it alone, in a sterilized room with florescent lighting, observed by people who are monitoring medications, machines and charts.  What a privilege to be a recipient of someone's kindness and love and then have the opportunity to give that back. A friendship and sisterhood that many people envy!

Go ahead, if you need to stand on the front porch and give a good yell of anger, fatigue, sadness. If tears blur your vision, let them flow because LaVonne means a lot to you (and you to her). If you feel panic, name it. Fear, let it take hold. Good grief, we crazily run from our emotions it is no wonder people feel tired and stressed pretending to be something or feel something that we are not.  

Twenty-plus years ago, LaVonne and I met through Vanderbilt. I barely knew her when she generously said to me, “Come on and stay with me till you get your bearings.”
I did.

And, I stayed and stayed and stayed.

Now I am walking her to a door I can’t pass through just yet…

Thank you, friend. See you later!

LaVonne died on June 8.  A little over a week later I found myself at the monastery. Yes, I walked LaVonne to a door I could not pass through. I said "good bye" but I was not the strong woman I expected to be. In fact, I was devastated. I needed to get my bearings. Gently and tenderly, the monastic who has guided me through a deeper understanding of the Rule was there with open arms. She didn’t say the exact same words LaVonne said to me many years before, but the sentiment was the same: “Come on and stay with me/us till you get your bearings.”  She opened doors and gently helped me close some so I could focus on the reason I was there. Thank you to all the monastics who loved me into knowing that I am not alone.

Pat Pickett, OblSB

Cause to Celebrate

Photo: Pexels.com

Of course, Benedictines have many reasons to celebrate because our community-minded living means we want to honor each other on special occasions such as birthdays and name days. This practice sometimes makes our calendars quite full since we also celebrate feast days, many revered saints and other seasonal days of special importance. Thus, on June 19, when Joy Harjo, well-known poet of the Muskoke Creek Nation, became the first native woman to be named as the new poet laureate, that was true cause to celebrate. 

She was born in 1951 and has authored several books of poetry including An American Sunrise, which is forthcoming from W.W. Norton, and recently finished editing a Norton Anthology of Native Poetry: When the Light of the World has Dimmed Our Songs Came Through.

According to a recent interview on Poets.org, Joy Harjo calls poetry “the voice of what can’t be spoken, the mode of truth-telling when meaning needs to rise above or skim below everyday language in shapes not discernible by the ordinary mind. It trumps the rhetoric of politicians. Poetry is prophetic in nature and not bound by time.” Lastly, Joy Harjo says, “Without poetry, we lose our way.”

Has Joy Harjo been to St. Ben’s? Yes, she was invited to a poetry reading and reflection that was part of the Religion and Contemporary Culture series “Sacred Spaces” in 1991. Is it time to invite her again?

Mary Jane Berger, OSB

A More Profound Experience of Reality

Genuine joy from Sister Laura Suhr!

Lately, my life feels inelegant, unmanageable and hard. There is sickness, suffering and death. There are fractured relationships I can’t repair. The international, national and local news is heartbreaking—divisive, ugly, violent. To counter my feelings of helplessness and sorrow, I have been watching, over and over, a six-second video of my six-year-old granddaughter cartwheeling. Her joy is so effervescent, it’s contagious.

She sprints across the newly greened spring lawn then leaps into a lunge. Her palms press the earth, legs extending to the sky. She rotates and lands confidently upright, making this amazing feat appear effortless. But her first cartwheels were disasters. Then she performed dozens, possibly hundreds, of clumsy ones. In time, her relentless practice strengthened her upper body. Her balance, flexibility and technique improved.

I could turn this into a lesson about patience, how practice leads to perfection. But I am steeped in the reality that I am powerless to change so much of what is painful in life. I don’t need another pep talk to motivate self-improvement, or a manual outlining the steps to a successful life. I need my granddaughter’s pure, authentic joy, found in the experience of cartwheels.

I’m trying to see the kingdom of heaven from a child’s point of view. For the reward of necessary joy, I’m ready to turn my adult-y, logical way of knowing how upside down.

In a video my daughter-in-law took a few weeks ago, my granddaughter is at gymnastics class, awkward, stumbling, falling on her backside. Yet even in her “failures,” her delight is infectious. She’s not judging herself. She’s set on her single-minded reason for being there—to turn cartwheels.

Michael Casey is a monk of Tarrawarra Abbey in Australia. In his book Seventy-Four Tools for Good Living: Reflections on the Fourth Chapter of Benedict’s Rule, he reveals the source of utter, incomprehensible joy in the face of failure, fear and despair. It’s about priorities. We need a single-minded focus.

If you love cartwheels, that’s what you do, over and over, not because you have to, not because you’re trying to win an Olympic medal, but because living in your wonderful body, moving and discovering its strength, is delightful. Your body is your life, your breath, your blood, your vitality. And so you cartwheel.

If we love the love of Christ, that’s what we do, that’s where we put our efforts. We, as Michael Casey writes, will “allow that love to inform our thoughts and choices, to govern our dealings with others, and to support and sustain us when we encounter situations that are hard, unfair, and unjust.” We will turn our attention to the love of Christ over and over, spending time in prayer and contemplation, reflecting on scriptures so love will guide our thoughts, speech and actions. We will pay more attention to the love of Christ than we give to mass media, social media and worldly concerns, not because we’re trying to win a black belt in piety, but because living in, moving in and discovering the strength and power of Christ’s wonderful love is delightful. It is our life, breath, blood and vitality.

We will find the pure, authentic joy we desperately need, in the experience of the love of Christ.

Tracy Rittmueller, OblSB

We Are All One-ed in Christ

I came across a very full short statement by Rowan Williams, bishop, poet and theologian: “It should be a rather exhilarating thought that the moment of creation is now—that if by some unthinkable accident, God’s attention slipped, we wouldn’t be here. It means that within every circumstance, every object, every person, God’s action is going on, a sort of white heat at the center of everything. It means that everyone of us is already in a relationship with God before we’ve ever thought about it. It means that every object or person we encounter is in a relationship with God before they’re in a relationship of any kind with us. And if that doesn’t make us approach the world and other people with reverence and amazement, I don’t know what will.”

It is God’s love that holds the universe together. Most of us live in a kind of secular mode where God is somehow distant, and detached: a God in the heavens, a God who created the world and then let it go on its own. There lingers the idea that we can observe the world objectively and analyze it inanimate part by inanimate part. Yet science has moved beyond that. Instead of a creation that occurred by divine fiat so many billion years ago, it is now.

It is love that holds it all together: you, me, everyone and everything. If God stopped loving, it would not be. Each of us in our self-important world would cease. We are all held in that love.

Each of us is in a relationship with God before we ever acknowledge it. It is not some one event. It is always. Each person we meet is in a God relationship before we ever meet. When we encounter each other, God is already working within that relationship.

It is we who may live as if, in a kind of egocentric fantasy, detached from God. If that were true, we would not exist.

To draw from another source from the 14th century, Lady Julian of Norwich, God is and always has been “Oneing” Us to himself. God knits us to himself. God is always loving us. In God Oneing us to himself, he is Oneing us to each other so that we are already one with each other.

In the gospel of John, Christ prays that we may all be one and “that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them." Christ’s prayer is not a wish, a hope, as is a fiat, a declaration that we are all in God and all One-ed together.

Charles Preble, OblSB

Alzheimer's Prayer

For some time now, I have been studying and learning about various forms and stages of dementia. Two ideas strike me deeply: an unknown author’s “Alzheimer’s Prayer” and a talk I heard recently. From the talk: Did you know that in our conversations, the following may be true when considering the importance of our so-called dialogues: 7% of what we say is how our words add up in importance; 38%, the tone of our voice; and 55%, our body language! Does that make you wonder why I keep a reminder on my desk: KYMS, i.e. Renee, keep your mouth shut? That is to say, we are not invisible, and if we had photo images of ourselves in a conversation, we might be overwhelmed by images that break our hearts!

Secondly, this unknown author’s prayer penetrates in words, what another feels in a supposedly helpful conversation:

I remember you with my heart
And I do love you!
I can’t recall where I knew you
Who you were, or who I was

Maybe I grew up with you
Or maybe we worked together
Or did we bowl together yesterday?

There is something wrong with my memory
But I do know you, I know I know you
And I do love you

I know how you make me feel
I remember the feelings we had together
My heart remembers,
It cries out in loneliness for you
For the feeling you give me now

When you leave
My mind will not remember that you were here
But my heart remembers
Remembers the feeling of friendship
And love returned

Remembers
That I am less lonely and happier today
Because you have come
Please, please don’t forget me
And please don’t stay away
Because of the way my mind acts

I can still feel you,
I can remember you with my heart,
And heart memory is maybe...
The most important memory of all

Please pray with me that God’s love give peace to those who suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia and grant patience to their caregivers. AMEN.

Renée Domeier, OSB

Becoming A Prophet

Recently, Oprah hosted Joan Chittister on Super Soul Sunday and Sister Joan discussed her new book, The Time is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage. I found the discussion both enlightening and frightening. She explained most of us in our spiritual practices recognize the “healing Jesus.” The Jesus who cures the sick, raises the dead, feeds the hungry and comforts the people. This is the Jesus we are comfortable with in prayer and petition. However, she explained, there is another Jesus we do not always identify. The “prophetic Jesus” is the man who confronted the Pharisees in the temple, who stood beside the woman who was to be stoned by her community, who risked his own life to spread the truth, the real truth, in the face of those who denounced Him. He spoke truth in opposition to the status quo of his times. The “prophetic Jesus,” she challenged, is the Jesus we most need now in our current times.

I was intrigued by the description of the "prophetic Jesus.” Yet, I was frightened as she explained recognizing and following the “prophetic Jesus” is a sign of a mature Christian. Had I not reached the stage of maturity in my spiritual journey? After all, my journey as an oblate had been both an awakening to my spiritual practices and had brought me to a prayer life exponentially beyond what I could imagine. Yet, Sister Joan seemed to challenge me beyond my comfortable spiritual practices and Benedictine values to another dimension.

What does it mean to be a “prophetic Christian” in today’s world? Frankly, I am still reflecting and praying on this question. I now have Sister Joan’s book and find her written words placing me in a greater zone of discomfort. I do realize with this discomfort, great growth will happen as I discern how the life of the “prophetic Jesus” will play out in my practices. It would be so much easier for me to be appalled at the social injustices in our world in silence and never speak the truth to avoid offending others. Yet, the “prophetic Jesus” did not take an easier path, did he?

The question remains in my mind and heart: “How will I follow the 'prophetic Jesus' in my corner of the world?" As Sister Joan reminds me, “One small step at a time.”

Mary Baier, OblSB

Have A Fun Day!

Even kitchen work is fun with a fun attitude!
Pictured left to right: Sisters Phyllis Plantenberg, Georganne Burr,
Helen Weber and Rita Kunkel

Early one morning as I was having some lab work done, the woman drawing my blood asked me what the rest of my day looked like. I told her of my plans of going to Saint Scholastica Convent and giving hand and back massages to the sisters who live there. She responded, “That sounds like fun!” As I thought about the events ahead of me on that particular day, she was right; it was full of fun. Not only would I enjoy ministering to the sisters through massage, I would have the opportunity to visit with community members I usually do not see on a regular basis. This one-word change, replacing the word “fun” where I would normally say “nice,” was energizing for me. I have a brighter view every day now when I set my eyes on having a fun day. I have started to end my email interactions with “Have a fun day.” It helps me remember to bring a positive outlook to all my activities, so now I try to create fun within me during all my activities on any given day. Having a fun perspective is an opportunity to have fun, even when the activity may not be something I enjoy. At Saint Benedict’s Monastery, I do have fun within the daily routine of any day.

If you would like more information about our way of life, please contact Sister Lisa Rose at lrose@csbsju.edu.

Lisa Rose, OSB