“Radical Love”
January 24, 2009, 8:58 am
Posted by Mollie Wilson O'Reilly
Time magazine has a lovely photo essay (with audio) on their website today, focused on the lives and vocations of cloistered Dominican nuns in Summit, New Jersey. The images are beautiful, and it’s enlightening to hear a couple of the sisters discuss their vocations in their own words.
If that piques your curiosity about the cloistered life, the Summit sisters offer regular virtual glimpses of monastery prayer, work, and recreation on their blog. And photographer Toni Greaves has more pictures on her site.
“A person on the way toward God cannot expect continual progress or
unwavering determination. We wobble along the journey, stumble off
the path, find ourselves attracted in other directions, stand still,
even regress. This is almost a universal experience. What is
significant is the strength of the reflex that keeps bouncing back.
There is something we keep returning to: a vision, a dream, a hope.
Something gives us the courage to get up after each fall and resume
the journey. This is the concrete evidence of the Spirit’s work, far
more potent than any spiritual euphoria.”
~ Michael Casey,OCSO “Toward God”
“I do not say that for those called to this work [the feeling of
grace] will not last forever and dwell in their minds continually.
It is not so. For the actual feeling is often withdrawn from a young
novice in this work for various reasons. Sometimes to avoid
familiarity, thinking that it is within one’s own power to have it at
will. Such a way is pride. Whenever the feeling of grace is
withdrawn, pride is the cause. Sometimes the feeling is withdrawn
for their negligence. In such cases they quickly feel a bitter pain
that bites them and hurts. In other cases our Lord will delay the
feeling of grace by a ruse. By so dealing with them their desire
grows and they esteem more what had been lost when it is newly found
and felt again. This is one of the clearest and compelling signs
that a soul may have to know if it be called to do this work: if it
feel after such a delaying and a long lacking of this work that when
it comes suddenly, unpurchased by any means, that it has a great
fervor of desire and more love and longing for this work than ever
before. Often, I believe, there is more joy in finding than there
ever was sorrow in losing. And if this be so, then this in an
unmistakable sign that such persons are called by God to work in this
work, whatever they are now or had been in the past.”
~ “The Cloud of Unknowing”
To whom do we pray? This is not the main question of the monk (gender inclusive. This is not the central question of the monk. However when this question is asked, there really is little room left for other things. This is the most important question that can be raised, or it is the question that someone can make their most important question.
It is far from an easy question. When someone makes this question the center of their meditation, they discover it involves every part of themselves because the question, Who is the Lord to whom I pray? leads directly to the question, Who am I who wants to pray to the
Lord? And soon someone will wonder , Why is the Lord of justice also the Lord of love; the God of fear also the God of gentle compassion? These lead to the center of meditation. Is there an answer? Yes and no. Somebody finds out in meditation. Some day someone might have a flash of understanding even while the question still remains and draws them closer to God.
This question cannot simply be one of many questions. In a way it needs to be someone’s only question around which all that they do finds its place. It requires a certain decision to make this question the center of someone’s meditation. If someone makes the
decision to make this question the center of their meditation, they realize they are embarking on a long road, a very long road.
These are thoughts of John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO as told to us by the late Henri Nouwen in his book “Genesee Diary.”
In the early 90′s I discerned a vocation at the Dominican monastery in N. Guilford, CT, part of the same community that we see at Summit.
While that was not the life for me, I can say unequivocally that my time and interactions there completely shaped the foundation of who I am in my life, work and ministries today.
There are so many people, Catholic and non-Catholic who truly do not understand the kind of life that the sisters have in the enclosure. Any opportunity to learn more is a gift.
I recall being at the profession of one of the nuns at N. Guilford and the homilist spoke of the idealized views of cloistered life and the reality of the annoyance of how another sister sweeps the broom or clears her throat.
Those words have never left me and are a reminder of being called to a life of community and forgiveness, no matter our vocation.
The photo essay is beautiful indeed.
Thanks for the photo essay. I had non-cloistered Dominicans as teachers in elementary school. Their mother house was in Caldwell, NJ. After watching the photo essay, I checked the Internet to see if the Caldwell Dominicans are still around, and I was happy to see they remain active in teaching and in social justice endeavors. Though our family lived in a relatively affluent suburb, my parents insisted that their children–all ten of them–attend the inner city Dominican elementary school. Though there was griping at times by my siblings and me (all of our friends went to either the suburban public or Catholic schools), we got a great education from the Dominicans and the life lessons we learned were, as the commercial says, priceless.
Frances Rossi’s comment about how the petty annoyances of cloistered/monastic life can fester reminded me of an anecdote told by Nancy Klein Maguire in “An Infinity of Hours,” her excellent book about the Carthusian monastery (Parkminster) in Great Britain. If you’ve seen the film “Into Great Silence” about the Carthusian monastery in the French Alps, you’ll know that Carthusians are allowed about an hour or so a week of verbal exchange among themselves. Maquire tells the story about a Carthusian who seemed noticeably upset about something, but his friend didn’t have the opportunity to ask him about it until they could talk with one another about a week or two later. The still upset monk tells his friend, “Didn’t you see the way so-and-so handed me the bell rope!”
Frances, I agree, it is a gift to learn more about this hidden aspect of the church’s life. I thought this was valuable because it wasn’t watered down by the usual religion-journalism approach; it just lets the sisters talk about their own experiences of vocation and religious life without trying to translate what they mean by, for example, “falling in love with Christ crucified.”
Your memory of that homily (and William’s anecdote) reminded me of Robert Browning’s poem “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.” It’s a monologue in which one monk expresses his extreme dislike for another — and of course, all his reasons are completely petty: “When he finishes refection, / Knife and fork he never lays /Cross-wise, to my recollection, / As I do, in Jesu’s praise.”
Mollie–
Thanks for the Browning poem! It’s not one I was familiar with.
The lines that immediately follow the lines you quoted are also very funny:
“I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp —
In three sips the Arian frustrate
While he drains his at one gulp.”
Thanks so much for posting this, Mollie.
Visiting a Carthusian Charterhouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc_mb7wu_a0&feature=related
The photos are lovely, as are some of the words of the older sisters, but…am I just being curmudgeonly, or does it raise at least small red flags when a young woman says “people think ‘wouldn’t it be great to have someone else make all your decisions for you’” or “following God’s will for me just seemed safer than following my own.”? I worry for them, and wonder if they’ll ever be challenged to dig deeply into statements like those. I certainly hope they will, but…