An Answer About Me

Someone kindly asked if I am a layperson or a religious in the Catholic Church. I am a layperson, a convert who entered the Church just four years ago from Protestantism. However, it's no exaggeration to say that God led me to the Church via a monastery road.

I have been carefully nurtured by many Catholic priests and religious along my road of conversatio...here are a few.

Sister Mary, who is one of the most loving, honest and supportive souls I have ever met, who carries healing in her touch and in her words.

Father Denny, who was my spiritual director and led me through conversion to Catholicism.

Father John, who taught me about Benedictine monasticism and chant.

Father Frederic, who welcomed me as an oblate, while I was yet a Protestant.

Brother Jerome, who first taught me about lectio.

The many monks at Monastery of Christ in the Desert, who, by their hospitality and example, nurtured me in the prayer of desert solitude.

I thank and love each one, for they have helped to form my laywoman's heart to be ardent in prayer.

The Waterfall Photo

The photo posted below really is great, isn't it? I can't take any credit for it at all, but have posted credit to the photographer in its title, and you can visit him at his website for more great images.

BenedictaJoy

Trying Not to Fall from jdhodges.com 

Falling Down, Again and Again

What Benedictines Do

In considering my last post, it occurs that there may be hope for me yet, even if I don't immediately find my Rule of Benedict. To be persistent in prayer and life is, as I recall one of my monk friends telling me, the heart of Benedictine life.

Not knowing much about monastics, I asked him what monks do all day. He sighed, and I realized that monks are asked this question all too often. Instead of giving me the long answer about their prayer schedule, or the short answer, telling me that they eat, sleep and do what other people do, which is also true, he grasped a teachable moment. Fortunately for him and for me, there is an ancient monastic proverb that provided a wonderful answer to my hackneyed question.

"We fall down and get up, fall down and get up," he told me.

Remember babyhood? Vaguely? I don't remember much, but I have a vague sense of that "thud" of falling down. That whomping sound of diaper on linoleum, or the bonking sensation of my hands or head on the ground. Sure, I cried a little, but it didn't bother me a lot. It seemed like part of the program, part of learning to walk or run.

I do remember that the older I got, the more it bothered me. Falling off my bike. Slipping off a curb and dropping my schoolbooks. Now, falling down is an awful experience, especially in public. Not only does it jar my bones and rattle my teeth, I'm mortified to think that people have seen me in an extremely ungraceful moment. I'm so self-conscious that, halfway to the ground, I'm already taking a mental inventory of who's in the room, what perspective he or she has of my backside, and thinking how I wish I'd never been born so clumsy. Then there are those other mistakes that I make, those sinful "falls" that people see. I hate those, too. Sometimes it's easier to just walk on and pretend they didn't happen, easier not to apologize or acknowledge that I was out of line.

Too bad falling, which used to be such a learning experience, became such a trauma. Of course, it is farther to the ground, now. Gravity hurts. Being human is painful. But most of all, I think it's the social pressure and the laughter and my own pride that make falling so hard.

My Benedictine, monastic friends reminded me that falling down isn't just for babies. It's for all of us. They remind me, even now in soft voices in my head, that it's not the Fall that finalizes and defines us, but the Rising and walking again. So I keep praying for the grace to grin at myself, wave at my admirers, wipe the leaves off my backside, get up and try again. Again and again.

Now that's good Benedictine stuff.

Conversatio Light by Light

Another Ordinary Day in Exile

It's Wednesday morning and I'm realizing what a sorry excuse for a Benedictine I've become. I've looked in that flowered cardboard box under the bed, on the cherrywood bookshelf, in the not-so-neat bedside drawer, and I can't put hands on my soft-cover, red Rule of Benedict. I thought it was right...there. Didn't I just have it just a few...months ago?

Fortunately, I recently unpacked some of my devotional books, and although I haven't read them in (well, we don't really have to say how long, do we?), the covers still look familar. So it's come to this, a kind of public confession. I'm not only a Benedictine in exile, but once again I've wandered away from the disciplines that once comforted and formed and convicted me. Daily. Hourly. Not that I was ever a strict sort of person. But I had a framework of prayer and devotion in my life.

What happened? Ordinary stuff wore me down. Grad school and migraines. Marital problems and moving. Hospitalizations and a divorce. Trying to graduate and find a job. The horror of middle age dating. I didn't lose myself, and I'm not going to claim that I "lost God," because God is entirely too faithful to put up with that sort of nonsense from me.

I'm not going to claim that I "lost God," because God is entirely too faithful to put up with that sort of nonsense from me.

It would also be an insult to this blog and to your intelligence to overdramatize my state with some sort of "one day I was in darkness and the next day I was in light," or vice versa, paradigm of conversion. Surely these things happen; they've even happened to me--I only wish the light had been brighter when I did. These dramatic "conversions" can happen to peddlers and pimps, Benedictines and Baptists and even Catholics and Lutherans (oh, I tease, but with love as only a survivor can).

However, I believe that this is not what conversatio is about.

If only it were, I think it would be easier. I'd like to wake up one day with all of the lights streaming on my heart. I think, though, that conversatio may be more like this...like going to bed with a single nightlight on and being glad in the wee morning hours to find that it hasn't burned out--then to see that God, in His infinite mercy, has brought another sunrise to warm my bedroom.

Then, that the stove light works when I can't quite see if my eggs are done.

And the table lamp works when I want to read.

Light by light, God gives me what I need to see my progress through the day. Then, God gives me the grace to navigate through the furniture and choices until the sun sets and I'm alone with my nightlight again.

So what happened that I lost my Rule and my rhythm of Benedictine reading and prayer? I'm not sure, but I know when it happened. Sometime between the move away from the abbey and the trips to the hospital, around the time of the divorce and the feeling unfit to be around other spiritual people. I stopped reaching out to other Benedictine oblates and asking for their prayers. I still read the oblate newsletter, but felt like it was from another time, another place, too far for me to reach.

So honestly, it's no excuse, but I believe that the very nature of conversatio is why I keep misplacing my Rule of Benedict, now that I'm alone.

Those lights of conversion are so dim, and I'm fumbling around here all by myself.

I think that's why most Benedictines try very hard not to live alone, or at least try to get out and pray with others now and then. You need someone to reach over and hand you your prayer book, sometimes, or to nudge you when you doze off, so early in the morning, or at Evening Prayer.

Is anybody out there?

Gate at Trinity Heights 

Trinity Heights 2 

On Conversatio

How one woman's Benedictine experience of conversatio began

Some years ago, I fell among Benedictine monks, and began to grow in prayer. It was a happy turn at an unhappy time. When I came to them, at Mount Michael Benedictine Abbey in Elkhorn, Nebraska, I was despondent, having lost a child and thinking that I may be on the verge of losing even more than that...my sanity, my marriage, my way on the road of life...

It was Kathleen Norris' Cloister Walk that had lured me to the rhythms and eccentricities of Benedictine life and prayer. I became an oblate there at the urging of a fine old monk named Father Frederic, whose deepest and wisest advise to me was "Pray as you can--don't worry about how you can't." Father Frederic has since gone to glory, where I imagine he's wearing his coveralls and taking good care of the grounds, but his smile and his simple words guide me still.

"Pray as you can--don't worry about how you can't."

I've moved hundreds of miles away from the abbey and from my community of oblates. I miss them. I've also moved far away in terms of suffering, sin, and experience from the person that I was when I first became a Benedictine oblate. Things seemed much simpler then. Back then, I dreamed of sanctity. Most days now, I think I haven't got a prayer. I've been thinking lately, though, about what it means to be a Benedictine , and I decided to begin this blog in hopes of connecting with others who are interested in the idea of ongoing conversion or conversatio. It's a fine idea, once it gets under your skin and into your heart, that throughout your life, you turn and return to God, and that God turns and returns you to himself.

Just an aside. As I begin, I ask to be forgiven in advance for something. I ask to be forgiven for referring to God as "he." I know I'll do it, and I know it might offend or hurt some tender hearts and disciplined minds. It's a habit that I once tried to break, when it used to be offensive to me. I was once a feminist Christian, and couldn't even call God my Father for a while. I couldn't conceptualize God as male, and tried very hard to image and speak to and of God as without gender. I think God probably is without gender, as we know it, but I really can't speak that way. As I came to forgive the painful "He" in my past for the hurts he inflicted on me, and that part started to heal, I came to peace with my limited vocabulary. For me, God can't be an "it." I just can't have intimacy with an "it." I don't see any advantage to God as "she," so I'll stick to my tendency toward "he." It's my weakness, I've owned up to it, and since it's my blog, I suggest we move on. Or, I bless you on your way as you click to a different site.

For you who have decided to stay, I invite you to comment and join me in considering what ongoing conversion, or conversatio means. Conversion to what? Holiness? Perfection? And what might those things mean? I'll try each time to end with something from St. Benedict or a Benedictine writer to fuel our thoughts.

"First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to God most earnestly to bring it to perfection." (Prologue 4, Rule of St. Benedict)