What's a Benedictine?

When I was first thinking of entering the monastery, I was often asked the question, “What do Benedictines do?” It’s a question that people still ask me periodically. I find it both simple and hard to give an answer.

It’s simple because Benedictines are committed to seeking God through a life of prayer, work and community living. It’s hard because we don’t “do” a particular thing. We are not, for instance, a teaching or nursing order, although many Benedictines are teachers and quite a few work in health care.

When it comes down to definitions, a Benedictine monastic vocation is not essentially about doing; it’s about being. Work is one of the ways that we seek God, but it’s not the reason for the existence of the Benedictine order. Primarily, we live together as a Christian community, following the teachings of Christ as laid down in the Rule of Benedict. We pray together, share a common table and try to adopt a pattern of life which enables each one of us to find a framework to assist in our journey to God. We desire to reach out to others through our liturgies and our ministries because we want others to be able to share the many positive things about Benedictine monastic life which are transferable to life outside the monastery. These are values such as awareness of God, peace, hospitality, love of learning, etc. But we can really only share these values by living them out day by day so that people can see that it’s a good way to be, a way to show God’s love in a troubled world.

For me, being a Benedictine is a work in progress. There are many challenges, such as managing relationships in community, my prayer life, the demands of work and the need for leisure. I struggle at times to not feel overwhelmed by all the things I have to do. Yet, as I look back over 10 years of professed life, I can see a consistent thread, which is the desire to keep drawing closer to God and a deepening understanding that it is only as I live more and more unreservedly into the life that I’m able to appreciate how it’s helping me to get there.

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                               May 31, 2019

 

Graced by Aging

In monastery terms, I am relatively young, but actually, I’m getting up there in years. It’s an interesting experience being younger and older at the same time. I was, for example, surprised when my dental hygienist asked me were most women older when they entered the monastery. (For the record, I was 50 when I entered). I was so used to being told that I’m still young and that your 40s, 50s and 60s are the prime of life, that I was taken aback.

At some levels, I easily believe that I’m young because I’m fortunate to have a lot of energy and I don’t have any major health conditions that limit my activity. On the other hand, I notice that I need more sleep. I can, for instance, still manage to stay up really late, if necessity dictates, but whereas 20 years ago I would have carried on as normal the next day, now I’d appreciate a couple of days to laze around and recover.

I also notice that I take more intense pleasure in smaller things. It sounds a bit trite to say this, but I revel in things like spring blossoms, blue skies, fluffy white clouds and the sight of dew sparkling on the grass. I don’t have the same desire to travel that I used to have, nor to seek out the exotic and unusual. I can wonder at the smallest things right on my doorstep.

As I said, I’m pretty healthy, but I did have my first brush with major illness about a year ago when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was early stage and I never felt ill with it, so it seemed theoretical quite a lot of the time. However, I had two moments when it struck me forcibly that I could die of this. Reflecting on these feelings helped me to come to terms with my own mortality in a way I never had before. When I was younger, I knew intellectually that life would eventually end, but it didn’t seem real. Having cancer made death real, but in a very positive way. It was a pleasant surprise to find that I could accept fully that one day I would die and that this didn’t make me feel frightened, but simply me made me more conscious of how much I appreciate my life, the world around me and the people in my life. It helped me to live each moment more intensely in the present.

In fact, I don’t think much about my age, but I definitely feel graced by the aging process because I’m aware it helps me to live my life with a greater sense of gratitude and a deeper love for the gift of every day.

 

PLEASE NOTE: There will no blog for the next two weeks (June 14 and 21) as I will be away. See you on June 28.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                               June 7, 2019

 

Hearing "No!"

Obedience is one of the three monastic promises we make when we profess as sisters. We declare that we make these promises “according to the Rule of St. Benedict, the norms of the federation of St. Benedict and the living tradition of this community.” The fact that it’s a living tradition means that we don’t try to replicate living like the monks did when St. Benedict wrote his Rule in the 6th century. Our endeavor is to live the spirit of the Rule in a way that is meaningful in the 21st century. This means that we are constantly challenged to assess how obedience looks for us today.

We make all the promises freely and in the knowledge that we are willingly handing over some of our power to make decisions as individuals in favor of what we see as a greater good: becoming part of a community seeking God together.

Obedience is not simple. It is not about doing exactly as you are told, like a child. In monastic life, there is a concept of mutual obedience, which means listening to one another, tolerating ideas and views that may not be the same as your own and trying to do this in a spirit of love and openness. Ultimately, the prioress is in the position to make final decisions, but we are expected to contribute our piece of wisdom.

What happens when things don’t go the way I’d like? It’s taken me 10 years to be able to say this, but I’ve realized that it is a great gift to be able to hear, “No!” When I get a “no” to a personal request, or when a decision is made on behalf of the community with which I don’t agree, my monastic promise of obedience asks me to accept that, without grumbling, and make whatever has been decided work. If I take obedience seriously, I can’t stand aside and say, “Well, I don’t agree, so I’m not going along with that.” I’ve bound myself, under a prioress, to the spirit of the Rule, the norms by which we are governed and the living tradition of the community. I’m part of whatever is decided, for better or for worse, whether I like it or not.

You might be asking, “Where’s the gift in all this?” Well, it’s being able to hear the “no” and not be shaken by it; it’s the realization that my inner core of peace is not disturbed, for example, whether we do or do not change the use of a building. I may have a view, but getting my way isn’t central to my well-being or to my relationship with God. Like everyone, I prefer to see my views prevail or be told it’s okay to do the thing I want to do but I’m very grateful to know that I don’t have to get my own way in order to be at peace and to realize that God is there, unchanging, whatever I am asked to do and whatever the prioress and community decides.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                              May 24, 2019

Loving Life

I’ve always been a person who enjoys thinking about the meaning of life. As a student, it was one of my greatest pleasures to spend an evening with one or two close friends holding deep and meaningful conversations, trying to fathom how we could save the world and what exactly was our place in the great scheme of things.

My meditations on the meaning life have probably become less grandiose over the years, but there has never been a time when these big questions ceased to fascinate me. Something that has surprised me, though, is the way aging has made me more aware of how much I love life and how important it is to make the most of every day.

When I was younger, I assumed that it was the best time of my life and it was, indeed, a time full of energy, growth, happiness and challenges. It came with a sense of time being limitless, even though, theoretically, I knew it would come to an end sometime. It was as if I could keep searching and trying things because I had all the time in the world to find exactly the right way to save the world. If I thought about getting older, it was with a sense that the best would be over, I would have done what I had to do and there would be no more glorious striving.

As I’m getting older, I find I think differently. I’m conscious that more of my life is behind me than ahead of me, but what that’s done is make me more aware of how much I love being alive. As the number of moments left to me become fewer and fewer, I love each individual one more and I’m very conscious of the need live each one with care and purpose. I enjoy this! In fact, I’d go so far as to say that, as I age, my interior life gets better and better and I love living more and more.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                        May 17, 2019

 

Go Letting

People talk a lot about letting go. It’s seen as something that you do actively. You decide to clear out the closet and let things go; you decide to stop eating out as frequently and you’re letting that go. However, as I look back over 10 years of monastic life, I realize that the letting go has happened to me. Sure, I’ve made some choices about living more simply, not accumulating as much stuff, but mostly it’s been a process of accepting that less is more. I’d say that I’ve been letting the go happen.

When I entered the monastery, I was very sure I was following God’s call. Ten years on and, despite many bumps in the road, I think I was right. But it always felt like an active process: I listened to God, I heard the call, I acted on what I heard.

As I review where I am now, it feels different. I find I simply don’t have the need to do things that I used to. I loved to go to the movies, opera, ballet, restaurants and there was always another place entering my list of places I wanted to travel to. I still love that those things exist, and I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to indulge those interests. I think they’ve given me pleasure, broadened my horizon and generally been a good thing in my life. I don’t actively think that I couldn’t bear to do any of them anymore and, in a moderate way, I still do some of them occasionally. However, I find more and more that I’m content with less and I don’t feel a real, impelling desire to do any of these things. If some of them happen, that’s fine, but if they don’t, they don’t, and I’m not bothered. They’ve let me go.

When I felt called to monastic life, something I wanted badly was to become more detached from things. I sought an interior desert. The challenge is that you can’t just make detachment and the desert happen. I’d have to say that the monastic way of life, with its rhythm and particular way of looking at the world, has done it for me. I’ve become more detached. This isn’t the same as not caring. I care very much about how people treat one another, about integrity and making ethical decisions, but somehow I now do that from a place of greater calm and emptiness. I’ve been let go.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                            May 10, 2019

Dealing With Death

I had experiences of death from an early age. My father died when I was five and the two grandparents who were living when I was born died when I was aged six and eight respectively. I would never recommend this as an experience for children, but I have always felt that it was a lesson in how good can come out of bad and sad. I was fortunate to have a loving and very competent mother, who dealt with the challenges of being left a widow at an early age in a way that helped me still to feel loved and secure. There were also other adults in my life who cared about me and I didn’t lack positive, loving male influences in the shape of uncles and family friends. It definitely could have been much worse.

There came a point in my life when I recognized that, although I undoubtedly missed my father’s presence, it was possible to have something bad happen to you, to come to terms with it and go on to have a happy and satisfying life. I guess I learned that absolute perfection in all areas of life isn’t required to make life fulfilling. You can have pockets of sadness, but the underlying fabric of your life isn’t destroyed.

I worked in hospice for several years and experienced death from another angle. That, too, was sometimes very sad, but also positive because it made me realize how precious life is and the need to live every day consciously to the full because none of us ever knows when the end is going to be. All this was, I think, a good preparation for entering the monastery. St. Benedict tells us to “keep death daily before us.” This isn’t morbid. It’s simply good advice about making the most of the present moment and accepting that life on this earth does not go on forever.

Don’t get me wrong; I have no desire to die at the moment, but I think my life experiences and periodic meditation on St. Benedict’s words have definitely had an impact on how I look on death. I don’t see it as something bad that we should try to avoid but the culmination of who we are now. I don’t have a clear view of what lies beyond and I don’t really worry about it. My focus is on living as fully as I can in the belief that my dying is a part of my living and I hope I can make it a worthwhile part of my life. I’d be dishonest if I said I don’t have any fear of death because I think we all worry about the process and how we’ll cope with physical or mental infirmities, but that doesn’t stop me from aspiring, when the time comes, to make my death a significant and meaningful part of the days and years that have gone to make up the gift of my life.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                                    May 3, 2019