Still Here

Yesterday, July 11, was my 10th anniversary of profession, so this is my last blog of this series. It’s been a profound and very growthful experience for me, ordering my thoughts and feelings about monastic life. Thank you for sharing this stage of my journey.

This week, I’m asking myself these questions: “Why do I stay? What do I get out of it?” I’m finding it’s surprisingly easy to answer them. Fundamentally, despite the niggles, disappointments, losses and detours along the road, I stay because this life is shaping me into a better, more loving person. I have undoubtedly had periods where I have felt that the mystery that is God was receding from me, but if I look back over the 10 years, I can see that the setbacks were temporary. I am more immersed in God and closer to loving others unconditionally than when I started.

Why is that? Cardinal Basil Hume once said that monastic life takes place in the tension between the desert and the market place. It sounds uncomfortable and, at times, it is, but I’ve learned that it’s that tension between extremes that is the place where I am most apt to find the wordless answers to the questions that have followed me all my life: What is God? What is my place in the universe? What does it mean to live a good life? Monastic life is not all contemplation, and neither is it a full-on immersion in the material.

Sometimes, I veer more one way, sometimes more the other. It’s that constant search to find the still point, neither rejecting the world nor being dominated by it, that is the essence of being a monastic. And it is in finding the still point, or at least constantly striving to find it, that I realize the monastery is the right place for me to be.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                            July 12, 2019

The Road Not Taken

There is a famous poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken. You come to a fork in the road and you have to choose one of the paths. That happened to me when I made profession at Saint Benedict’s Monastery 10 years ago. The road that I didn’t take was staying in England among what was safe and familiar, with people I knew and loved. Going back there recently made me acutely conscious of what I lost through not taking that path.

It is the strangest sensation to be somewhere that was home but has now become less so. I felt connected but also disconnected at the same time. Places were familiar, but they had also changed. People had changed, too. So had I. It was a great experience to be able to visit with family and friends face to face, but sometimes there would be an undercurrent of melancholy. I could enjoy them now, in the moment, but I knew it was fleeting; the moment couldn’t last because I would get on a plane and go back to my life in the US.

After profession, there were many years where I flirted, sometimes very seriously, with the idea of leaving and going back to England. I’m always going to love my homeland, but this time I recognized that I didn’t have the same sense of overwhelming belonging. I hope I never lose touch. I hope to visit England many more times in the future, but rather sadly, this visit was the time when I realized the rightness of my decision to enter the monastery. I’m mourning my losses now, but it’s the kind of grief that has gratitude at its heart. I’m grateful for all that my life in England gave me and I know it will always have a cherished place in my heart. I’m also grateful that it prepared me to make the choice for monastic life here at Saint Benedict’s, where I’m traveling a different road, but one that I think is the right road for me.

 

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                               July 5, 2019