What's Wrong With Millenials?

What’s wrong with millennials? NOTHING! That’s what I think anyway.

The topic is on my mind because I was raised to paroxysms of anger recently when I read an article, presumably not written by a millennial, which took the line of how could they possibly turn out okay if older generations didn’t pass on their values and faith. Now, I have nothing against passing on faith and values, if they’re good ones. As a baby boomer myself, I know I exhibit certain baby boomer characteristics, like being confident in the rightness of my own opinions, so I tend think I have a lot of good ideas to share with people both older and younger than myself. What I really disliked about the tone of this article was the way it suggested that people of the writer’s generation had been entrusted with some blueprint of faith and morality and that all the rest of us would be lacking if they didn’t brainwash us into being exactly the same. It was millennials who came in for the full force her concern, but baby boomers and generation X-ers were also implicitly found wanting.

In response, I would like to say this: I work with a millennial who is one of the most sensitive, caring women I know. She and her generation-X parents seem to have managed quite well. I live next door to a college composed of nearly 2,000 millennials. I never cease to wonder at their sense of social justice, their concern for those who are marginalized by society and the stream of volunteer projects they undertake to make a difference. I recently read about a 15-year-old Muslim girl who has started to fast for peace and now has a whole group of people fasting with her. 

This is what I think. Age has nothing to do with goodness. There are wonderful seniors, baby boomers, generation X-ers and millennials, and there are nasty ones, too, in all those groups. Instead of trying to prove that whatever age group we are in is somehow better than the others, I believe people who want to live in a world that rates justice and integrity highly should seek one another out, regardless of age, because together we can make a better world for all generations and the generations to come.


Karen Rose, OSB                                                                    April 26, 2019

Waiting for Silence

Silence is on my mind right now. We are approaching the holiest time of the year, the Triduum. This is the period stretching from the evening of Holy Thursday to the evening of Easter Sunday. It's three days but it's also one day, symbolizing the Paschal Mystery, an arch that begins with death and ends with life.




At the monastery, apart from services, we keep silence for most of the Triduum. The silence begins this evening, Holy Thursday, after the Mass of the Lord's supper; it continues until after Mass on Easter Sunday, which we celebrate at dawn on Easter morning.


The silence is a time for inner reflection, a time to spend with God and the mysery and wonder of  Christ's passion, death and resurrection. I'm waiting for it in a state of nervous anticipation. I love this communal silence but I also find it quite daunting. This isn't because I don't like keeping silence. I do, but there is something a bit scary about standing on the edge of silence and waiting to dive in. It's like jumping off a cliff into a deep, dark pool. I don't know how deep the water is; I don't know what I'm going to find in the darkness of the silence. I know God will be there, but what does that mean? What will I hear in this silence where there's just me and God? WilI want to hear what I hear? Will I be called call to something difficult or challenging?




At this time (10 a.m. on Holy Thursday) , I simply pray that I'll be ready for whatever awaits me in the silence.


Karen Rose, OSB                                                                     April 18, 2019

What I Don't Believe

“If I had a God whom I could understand, I would never hold Him to be God.” Meister Eckhart

I find it’s easy to fall into shorthand ways of talking about God and the divine. I think this stems from the desire to make God manageable, containable, understandable. I also think I do myself a disservice when I allow this to happen. Every time I describe God in terms of something that I know, I make God smaller than God is. If I keep making God smaller, then I deny myself the possibility of becoming part of God’s greatness.

Here follow things I do not believe:

1. I do not believe that God is something separate from me or from creation. God is creation. God is in me, sustaining me right now.
2. I do not believe God has a plan. Plans are linear, they move from point A to B to C. God is not constrained by points or goals or targets.
3. I do not believe suffering is a mistake on God’s part. Although I don’t understand it, I accept that it is a part of the world as it is created. My task is to find where God is in it.
4. I do not believe that God prefers me, my family, my country or anything else particularly associated with me to other people and their connections. God doesn’t have to single me out. God loves each one of us infinitely, including people who are much nastier than I am.
5. I don’t believe I have to name God to know God. God is not bound by any theories or rules that I, or anyone else, makes up. God transcends everything and is simultaneously in everything. People can be aware of that without being conscious that they are aware.
6. I do not believe that the afterlife will be like a large family reunion. I don’t know what happens after we die. I just trust.
7. I do not believe I need to know anything about God. I need only to trust enough to allow myself to be open to falling into a Mystery I can’t understand. I hope that God will do the rest.

 

          Karen Rose, OSB

Wanting Nothing

There was a period for several years before I found the monastery when more and more insistently I found that I wanted nothing. I don’t mean that I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted, but that I actively wanted not to have anything. I didn’t want to be burdened by possessions because I felt that having things weighed me down and kept me from God. Things demand attention and maintenance and I wanted to be rid of that to make more room for God in my life.

Mistakenly, as I now know, I thought everything would be taken from me when I entered the monastery. I thought my life would become simpler, that by not owning anything personally, the detachment that I sought would be handed to me on a plate and I wouldn’t have to think about possessions anymore.

It doesn’t work like that. First of all, if you live in the monastery, you are given the necessities like shelter, food, warmth and clothes. Once you realize you will have these things, you start to have opinions about them and you start to feel that your room is your little kingdom. At least, that’s how I felt. Secondly, although if you buy something like a book, you’ve bought it out of the communal money pot, it doesn’t feel any less that it’s my book. Thirdly (this was the biggest blow to the dispossession dream), you discover that, as a member of the monastery, you bear a moral responsibility for how the community makes and spends its income. Thus, the problem of having things was doubled, not diminished. Ever since I came here, I have had to bother not only about my personal relationship with possessions, but the communal dimension as well.

Initially, I was also thrown by the fact that we lived rather comfortably in the monastery. Then I realized that things aren’t being run for my benefit. I may have wanted to struggle with living more spartanly, but some sisters need a special diet or have conditions that mean they feel the cold, so places have to be warmer than maybe I would choose. This was a good lesson for me in that I let go of the pride of wanting to be a martyr and instead became grateful that all these things were available to me.

At a deeper level, I have also started to understand that wanting to have nothing was not really about the possessions themselves. Just letting go and being grateful meant I didn’t angst about their absence or presence. I find now that I can take pleasure in things, but my happiness isn’t dependent on them. A new chair might be nice, but it’s not essential. If I get the new chair, I can enjoy it, but if it’s removed, then it doesn’t disturb me. I’ve discovered that I only want the necessities of life, because the non-necessities are not essential to my inner peace.

 

 Karen Rose, OSB                                                                         April 5, 2019