The Monastery Experience

I'm writing this from Holy Cross Monastery. I'm using one of the computers in the library. Yes, they have computers in the monastery. They even have a relatively sophisticated computer network that helps them carry out various functions of their common life (like manage guest house bookings and the ~16,000 volume library and the incense business and on and on). Anyway, so I'm writing this from a computer in the monastery library with a nice view of the Hudson River below. There is a rolling green lawn that slopes down the River. Turkeys graze there tentatively, glancing up at the monastery buildings between bites of insects.

I think the best way to describe life in the monastery is to say that it is simply an effort to organize a community around the intention to know and love God. The brothers do this by organizing their common life and individual practices around ancient means to that end. They attempt to balance the four foundations of Benedictine spirituality: Prayer, Work, Study, and Leisure. More than anywhere I have ever lived, here there is some harmony in daily living. We pray, we eat, we do the little jobs that we are asked to do, and we do this in such a way that we have time for everything in our day. In helps that this happens in the context of extraordinary natural beauty.

I started off my time here on Friday with a meditation retreat. We were practicing the discipline of silence, and it was neat to notice just how simple my life became when I only had to do what I had to do--praying, meditating, eating, resting. But the feeling goes way beyond simple relief from the burden of "normal" life--when you live this way you see things and experience things that change you. They were always there, but it becomes possible in holy living to know them. This is nothing less than the truth of the world offering itself to us at every moment. It's an incredible thing to listen to what the sun rising over Hyde Park has to tell you about time or what your body has to tell you about the evening time.

There will be a lot to do when I get back to Toronto. But really only is one thing necessary--to know and love God. If I can manage that, by shaping my life habits according to my best intentions, everything else will follow--the growth, the kingdom, the happiness, and everything else desireable.

One of my most imporant ordination vows (one that I renewed when the Bishop "Invested" me with the responsibility for COTM in his chapel at the Diocesan Centre last week) is "holiness of life." What else could possibly meant than this, to live in a holy manner? And that's not a vague thing. It's a crystal clear reality that you can feel in your bones if you allow yourself to do so.

I've been coming here to Holy Cross for something like 10 years. I was even married here. And everytime I come it gets a little thinner to me--a little more transparent. And through that thinness I can see deeper into the reality of the holiness I seek behind the monastery, and that's the real treasure of this place to me. The buildings and the chant and the Rule and the way of life point the finger of intention to something grand and powerful and life changing. I'm just going to sit here and let that truth change me....

-t