Extreme Living

Some years ago, when I first read Michael Casey’s book on monastic living, The Unexciting Life, the blurb on the back contained a phrase about monastic life being exotic but unexciting. The phrase and, indeed, the whole book, has provided a source of reflection for me ever since.

A monastery isn’t exactly the place you think of when you are picturing somewhere exotic—palm trees, sun, sand, blue sea and dancers in hula skirts! What makes it exotic is the way we live. There are around 200 Sisters of Saint Benedict. We range in age from 31–103. We come from different backgrounds, cities and countries, yet we choose to live together for one simple reason: the pursuit of God through living under the Rule of St. Benedict. That's an extreme choice, so you could describe it as exotic, in the sense that it's not usual.

We are all adults, but we don’t have our own homes, our own bank accounts or our own cars. We don’t even have control of our lives because we live under obedience to the prioress and to one another. The prioress does not assume the role of a dictator, because we are all freely choosing to live in this way. She takes account of the opinions of the community and cares about sisters as individuals. Nevertheless, as professed sisters, we all understand that we have given up control of our lives. This is extreme living, exotic living.

Despite all our differences of taste and temperament, we choose to live together as a community. We believe, as St. Benedict tells us, that we go to God together. That doesn’t mean we become unthinking automatons. Our aim is unity, not uniformity, and our commitment, as I see it, is more about helping each sister to build the framework of life which helps each one in her search for God. It’s about caring for one another and being sensitive to the needs of the other.

Really, this is quite a tall order. It is not easy and it is not exciting. It can be a daily grind. We rub against one another and we’re not always kind. As in many walks of life, we have an ideal and, as humans, we often fall short of the ideal. Monastic living means that when we fall short, we are committed to getting up and trying again, whatever that takes. And always, always, always, the falling and the rising are lived out in community, which carries the need to consider not myself and one or two other people, but myself and 199 other persons. A different way to live? An exotic way to live? I would say, “Yes!”

Karen Rose, OSB                                                                March 1, 2019