Abbot Clement's Talk on Monday August 4, 2003
Our monastic life is a rhythm of solitude and community. One important monastic practice is that we have in the monastic tradition is Lectio Divina. Part of that rhythm is doing Lectio. The condition is that we have been able to put both of those in a kind of balance.
The culture we live isolates us to a great extent. Everybody has their own car, their own room at home. Everybody has their own computer. Some children are raised by being propped before the boob tube and other such things that isolates us even as young persons. So you may have solitude but it is not very fruitful. It is isolation.
The related and resulting problem is that you really don
=t come in touch with yourself. We escape ourselves in many ways. I had an aunt. We went to Pennsylvania to visit with her daughter, my cousin. We rode the bus for two hours. My aunt talked the whole way. I couldn=t even get a word in edgewise. Her whole life was going from parish to parish, from city to city playing bingo. It was lucrative for her. She made at least $300.00 a month doing this, over and above expenses. So she was busy and always talking. She never really came in touch with herself.Obviously, it isn
=t easy for human beings to really quiet down and be in touch with Ame@. Even though our monastic rhythm provides opportunity for solitude for us through our daily monastic practice of Lectio Divina, this does not automatically not mean that we Agetting in touch with ourselves@. We each have our own way of blocking the truth of ourselves, which we discern, in part, in solitude. It is hard work. Now, suppose we do become somewhat in touch with ourselves. Well naturally, one of the things we discover is that we are sinners, and that we have things about us that are not so pleasant. So we develop a negative attitude toward ourselves and we=re not happy that we are Awe@; that I am me.Yet, God is a master affimer. He is not like the griping sessions that we hear among other people, (of course, not monks). God says,
AEverything I made is good.@ When He made man God said, AIt is very good!@ When we do experience a moment of self-discovery, do we get stuck on our sins and shortcomings, or do we let in the master affirmer=s remarks? That we are good. That I am very good. What is it based on?When we quiet down and begin to see ourselves as we truly are, we see things that are negative about ourselves, and then we get stuck on those. If you don
=t have a good spiritual director, or if you=re not honest enough with yourself, then you stay stuck on that. You never cross the line between being a creature and being a child of God. Therefore, you don=t walk around very happy about being alive and being in God=s family. You can find all kinds of reasons outside yourself and blame everybody else. It has nothing to do with everybody else. It deals with Ame@.God has given us tons and tons of opportunities to move past that line into the freedom of the children of God. Lectio itself is one such great gift. As I always stress, the Eucharist is perhaps the most powerful gift to do this. Here we are affirmed incomprehensibly. Jesus gives His whole self to you and me. To receive this is to be transformed.
When, based on your own experiences, do you have the best time in the monastery? For some of us, it is in relationships outside the monastery that we really dialogue with someone about truth and love in such a way that we reach each other in a positive affirmation. We just feel good about it, because we are transformed by this positive interpersonal relationship. This is exactly what happens when we go out and you really have a good time. It
=s not just the pizza and the beer. It is this capacity to be in the truth out of love. We need to be more radically honest about our monastic practices of solitude and Lectio and really put the blame where it is, here; but in such a way that we open ourselves up to the master affirmer.