Hard to believe that it’s thirty years since I left seminary in Chicago in order to serve four Montana fellowships. That’s a long enough time to have lost my grip on some subjects, if I ever had any. So I need to do a little catch-up on monasticism, a human impulse shaped by circumstances and institutions. In the early Christian tradition, there are three kinds: eremitic (the solitary ascetic hermit), the coenobitic (the dedicated community) and the skete, which is a mid-way form with characteristics of both. In societies ranging from New Guinea tribes, where old men create “booths” in the jungle where they can be alone, to the urban artists and poets who occupy SRO hotels where they can concentrate on solitary work, this is a recurrent way of life, sometimes chosen and sometimes imposed or maybe both.
Christians have worked out a good deal of history and much prescription about how such social phenomena should be run, especially when there is a political element. There have been times when the communities were able to accumulate and protect considerable wealth, which then exposed them to raids and dispersal, sometimes by kings. At other times they have sheltered civilization: writing, writing, writing. Providing medical care. Raising orphans. Sheltering outliers. Providing retreats.
In Asia an old person might simply walk the streets while carrying a begging bowl, at the mercy of the generosity of the people, to demonstrate absolute acceptance of the simple fact that everyone dies. They escape the suspicions directed at European monasticism, which is always being examined for unworthy motives, like escaping prosecution or fomenting heresy. I don’t know of any described monastic communities in the aboriginal tribes of the American continents, though there were no doubt priesthoods and ritual adepts. No one has looked or written. The elements of asceticism, discipline and virtue (hard to describe as it is) might be missing or hard to see. Some hippie communes might qualify and others not. Avoidance of sex is often an element, but not necessary. It’s just that pairs are not usually the basic unit, whether or not they produce children.
Scientology says it has a monastic group called “Sea.org” which seems to me bogus verging on criminal. It is a demonstration of how easy it is to twist something idealistic through power corruption. At the other extreme are monastic groups that are ecumenical, stepping away from control by institutions, because an institution too easily becomes devoted to its own perpetuation regardless of the virtue of its goals.
Going back to the original three categories, my preference is eremetic. (Tim’s is nearly coenobitic.) And yet his nomadism has been connected to the eremetic wanderer while my staying-put is related to community, a double-community of the reservation and Valier. Mine is print-centered; his has been art-centered and -- more than that -- addressing healing and hospice. The imagery in his vooks is often the hooded monk.
We are united in what I take to be a forming new religious understanding (NOT an institution), welling up through science and nature to change the way we see the cosmos. It can be quite terrifying, since it shrinks human beings down to a molecular recipe, rising out of the soup of creation and pre-consciousness into a temporary dance that predicts its own demise. It motivates monasticism because it sees that all hoarding is futile and because the terror of the night demands some kind of shape. Every flame must have a chalice. Monasticism is a chalice.
http://www.stpetersabbey.ca/ is the only Catholic monastery I know very well. Intended to support homesteaders on the Saskatchewan prairie, it is an outreach from the Collegeville, Minnesota, Saint John’s Abbey. http://www.saintjohnsabbey.org/ Those Benedictines came to Minnesota in 1856 from St. Vincent Abbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and, earlier, to Latrobe in 1846 from the Bavarian abbey of Metten in southeastern Germany. http://wn.com/Metten_Abbey
I know Saint John’s Abbey mostly through their journal, “Worship,” which addresses theories of liturgy in a way I find useful. They are a highly sophisticated and arts-friendly group, to say nothing of their bread and spirits tradition.
St. Peter’s also has publications: http://www.prairiemessenger.ca/Andrewbook.html A quote: “As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer, because the fewer expectations we have, the more good things of life become unexpected gifts that we accept with gratitude.” Etty Hillesum. (Accompanied by a snow photo taken by David Strachan -- my maiden name -- who is not related to me.) Andrew Murray Britz, OSB writes from the protection and support of his monastery in the same way that Tim and I try to do, though our content probably only overlaps a bit with his. I’d bet that an objective reader would find quite a bit.
The internet has made possible a new kind of community in which people are present with their minds and hearts, their on-going conversation, but never with their physical selves, which might be anywhere on the planet, any age, size, shape, gender, level of prosperity. Far from scratching out copies with a quill, we are at keyboards and smart phones, flashing and linking images alongside our print. Many are not religious, simply passing the time, having fun, turning a profit. That’s okay. They should go on their way.
When the Unitarians and I visited St. Peters’ in Muenster, Saskatchewan, we were aware that at least one woman lived in solitude in a small cabin. We were instructed to leave her alone. Also, it was impressed upon us that it is a great earned honor to live in religious solitude and that no one in the movement is allowed to live that way when they are young. It is not to be a retreat, but a privileged devotion. Not an evasion, but a dedication. As a great sacrifice, this woman occasionally taught, which interrupted her prayers in a solitude that was not a confinement.
I find that my eremetic tendencies chose me rather than the other way around. I’ve drifted into the ancient Christian worship pattern, even spontaneously rising at 3AM and 6AM. The Baptist bells next door keep me reminded of 9AM-noon-3PM- 6PM, but they don’t ring at 9PM or midnight. I am out-of-step with most of the culture, but I am not just religion-centered, constantly praying. I’m not able to say to whom I would pray or to what end.
Rather I am spinning books into blogs. Or winnowing. No longer do I think of grand schemes of success. It is enough to use my library (which will be dispersed on my death) and create my blogs (which will be orphaned on my death or disability). How is that different from writing a best-seller that is forgotten in a decade?
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