Presence
Though I only stayed once at St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, California, I feel close to the community there through several friends who are actively involved in the life of the monastery and through reading its quarterly “Chronicle.”
In the most recent issue there is this reflection by a longtime visitor who is a Missionary of Charity. Here is a portion:
As I dragged my steps wearily past the refectory I could see the light on in the kitchen. At that time the kitchen windows were still clear, not opaque as now, and I could see the little tramp alone inside. He had just finished the mopping, and he stood there for a few moments, surveying the counters, the stoves, the work-tables. Everything was in order, all the utensils in their drawers, all the surfaces tidy. He stood still for another moment, then quietly, reverently genuflected, went slowly to the door, turned off the lights and left.
His action woke me with a start from my headful of thoughts, fantasies, fears and worries.
God is truly here, palpably present in this very place, in this very moment. Christ is truly present in the kitchen, breathingly alive here where I stand outside, as the quail make their little night noises beneath the junipers. To genuflect, to bend the knee, is to proclaim one’s faiththat God becomes flesh in Jesus, abides with us tenderly in the Eucharist. But my little hobo finds him truly present in the empty scullery, feels him heart-breakingly near amid the quiet clicking of the ovens as they cool. It doesn’t matter what tomorrow brings, the Holy One is here, now. That’s all I need. Like my fellow wanderer, I am at peace. Whatever tomorrow brings, wherever the road leads, God is there. All days and all roads are encompassed in this moment in this desert night. Emmanuel, God-with-us, is evoked, recognized and adored in the humblest gesture of the least of his brothers. I am the witness, and for a moment I understand, I see.
The Abbey’s website is: http://www.saintandrewsabbey.com
The rest of the reflection can be found by clicking the link: “Valyermo Chronicle.”
Fr. Imbelli,
The hobo reminds me of Brother Lawrence, who also worked in the kitchen, and whose classic “Practicing the Presence of God” has become a popular spiritual work in the USA. I have always felt that the American drug culture is not just a materialistic attempt at an immediate, pleasurable experience, though it is that. For many people (e.g., Aldous Huxley) it is a search for *both* the transcendence and immanence of God, the sort of experience described by Bro. Lawrence — a seeking for the presence of God not just now but literally *here*.
Yes, Americans want immediacy, and who can blame us. But I’m sure that for us the old sort of medieval spirituality which sought a deep personal relationship with God only within the depths of the soul to the *exclusion* of His presence in the material world simply is not we need. (Not to mention that such other-worldliness often tends to misvalue this world.)
In reading the mystics of various sorts, I’ve come to the conclusion that the hobo’s experience of the immanence of God in the world is far different from that of the cloistered mystics, and it is *not* what is generally called “nature mysticism” (what Zaehner calls the “pan-en-henic” experience) in which mystic and God are interpreted as one reality. There is also the hobo’s kind of experience, the kind described in Brother Lawrence’s work. Let’s call it an “Emmanual experience”.
It also seems to me that there are different kinds of Emmanual experiences, some relatively ordinary, but others extraordinary. Merton describes an extraordinary, overwhelming experience of God in nature. But others, like the hobo’s, and some of Bro. Lawrence’s are more down to earth. (Not that Lawrence didn’t experience rapture too — maybe he did.) It is the less dramatic kind that needs more attention from the mystical theologians because, I suspect, it is the sort of experience that would be most appealing to ordinary Americans.
Theresa and John and the others were, of course, great saints, but the Church needs to investigate different sorts of spiritual experience, especially the sort that inspires a genuflection, a physical manifestation of thanks for the awareness of the presence of God in matter as well as in spirit.
Also, if people became more aware of the reality of such experiences they might open their minds to the possibility that Jesus is actually, really present with us in the Eucharist in the most extraordinary way of all.
Ann,
Thank you for your ever thoughtful comments. If I can claim to be attuned to any spiritual tradition within the Church, it is the Benedictine. I love the spiritual materiality of the Rule’s respectful bringing together of the altar vessels and the kitchen vessels.
Fr. Imbelli –
Could you tell us more about what you mean by “spiritual materiality”, please. Would this be an instance of it:
There is a Benedictine monastery near here (St. Benedict’s Abbey) with some murals done around the 50s by a Dutch Benedictine, Dom Gregory deWitt, an eccentric if one ever lived. The murals include one in the refectory of the Last Supper. On the painted table are some salt shakers and an ash tray. I really wonder about the latter.
Ann,
I was trying to name what you describe in these words: “the Church needs to investigate different sorts of spiritual experience, especially the sort that inspires a genuflection, a physical manifestation of thanks for the awareness of the presence of God in matter as well as in spirit. ”
I think with Teilhard that matter can appear diaphanous to spirit and hence become revelatory. Those who perceive this remove their sandals…or take up their paint brush.
I’m not sure about Dom deWitt; but I would certainly invoke Cezanne.
A lovely moment well-captured, well-remembered, and beautifully shared! Thank you for bringing it to our attention here.
I can’t help thinking of this real-life vignette in relation to the ‘troubles’ that currently afflict us as church and believers. We do need to struggle and to argue and to seek a speakable and livable truth for present and future as so many did over recent days in dotCommonweal’s discussion begun by Peter Steinfels on the question of the church being ‘done.’ I applaud all who took part in that wide-ranging and honest exchange. And yet, beneath all the stress, the stressors, the pain, the uncertainty, the lack of peace and the good reason for it, moments like that lived and remembered by Brother Ben Harrison retain their own ineffable value – perhaps even more in present circumstances than in days of (relative) peace.
Thanks, Father. Yes, the artists do seem particularly susceptible.
The paradigm of such an experience by a poet is, to me, Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. He is often interpreted as pantheistic, but I don’t read him that way. It seems clear to me that in this passage he is recounting his awarenes not of himself identified with all of nature, but of an awareness of something *other* than himself. It is not a full image of the Christian God, but . . . The poem talks about his youthful experience of the beauties of nature, but it goes on to his mature experience of, well, read what he says:
. . . For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,–both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,–both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.
Sorry about the repetition — do go down to the bottom of the quote. I think he’s clearly talking about God.
Although a Dominican, not a Benedictine, I can imagine St. Martin de Porres doing something like what Fr. Imbelli describes above whether he was sweeping up hair in his barber shop, making up medicine, or taking care of a sick dog.