Cultivation Blog

One of my favorite saints happens to have a feast day at the beginning of October: St. Therese of the Child Jesus, often called “The Little Flower,” was a Carmelite nun whose autobiography, Story of a Soul, is still widely read and loved.

Therese wasn’t always my favorite. On the one hand, it’s hard not to admire this beautiful saint whose “little way” embraces small things with great love, and who wanted to spend her heaven showering roses on earth. On the other hand, it can be hard – at least for me – to relate to someone who’s been painted as nearly perfect, even angelic, in her holiness. The stubbornly fallible part of me starts grumbling at the prospect, or just plain distrusts the image.

I’ve come to realize, however, that the “Little Flower,” beyond espousing a way of life that’s frankly beautiful, is also a tenacious and imaginative saint. To be martyred for one’s faith is certainly a profound and glorious affirmation of love. To undergo daily anxiety, annoyance, frustration, and discomfort – to carry the chronic crosses, day after day, is no less profound an opportunity. To take the irritating circumstances of grinding teeth and clacking beads, the mundane chores or thankless errands – the whining, pestering, broken circumstances – and meet them with love takes an incredible act of will. It looks at the world and sees, not what’s immediately obvious to our last nerve, but the transformative, even creative potential by which we participate in God’s ongoing gift: that Love by which He holds us unarguably in existence.

From the outside, it might look as if nothing bothered Therese, or as if she was somehow immune to temptation. But when I think about what it takes to seize the moment with determined love, I recognize a stubborn joy that acknowledges – and flatly refuses to be turned away by – the unpleasant aspect of an experience. It’s more like athletic strength, muscled and deliberate, than a show of virtuosity. Therese, after all, was no less human than the rest of us; her virtue is most heroic in that she had to choose it at every opportunity. “I can prove my love only by scattering flowers, that is to say, by never letting slip a single little sacrifice, a single glance, a single word; by making profit of the very smallest actions, by doing them for love,” she wrote.

When I think about it, I have to remember that even a “little flower” holds a fierce root grip in the earth, drawing from its particular circumstances life-giving water. Its leaves have the power to transform light into food, and its color and fragrance attract in order to pollinate, enriching the complex system of relationships in which it grows. While certainly the prospect of drifting rose petals is a lovely one, the reality of root and pollen, sap and fiber, fill me with renewed hope. And when I receive a rose from my sister and friend, Therese, it reminds me of the energetic grace teeming in the soil and atmosphere of daily circumstances: in all its challenging, uncomfortable, and glorious reality.

So when we face the crosses of our daily lives (and we all have them), let’s seize the opportunity to transform each one with love, as St. Therese did. We, too, can relish the opportunity to live with our whole hearts, even (or especially) in situations that seem rough, difficult, or undignified. Remember – the battle is already won!

On this tempestuous Friday, so different from the Belmont Abbey Homecoming we’d planned, it nevertheless seems appropriate to take a moment to think about what it means to be at home, to return home after a long time away, or even to long for it from afar. As human beings we might find ourselves “at home” in a specific place or within a particular community, even as we travel toward that ultimate home of “many rooms” where Our Father prepares a place for us.

Different languages and cultures, of course, evoke home and homecoming in different forms, but all seem to share the significance of belonging, either enjoyed or desired. The Welsh, for example, have the lovely word, “hiraeth,” which has no direct equivalent in English but blends a longing homesickness with the warmth of nostalgia. There’s a yearning as you speak the word, a keenness and a lengthened aspiration that evokes the wistful memory of that deep, savoring breath you take on arriving home at last. It reminds me, in a word, that home is also a site of longing for the true rest and belonging we find in God: the beautiful now and not-yet of our pilgrim lives.

And speaking of journeys, the Ancient Greeks explore “nostos,” the hero’s homecoming, over and over again in myth and literature. The most famous instance is probably Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey – weeping for Ithaca even on Calypso’s island paradise – but the Greeks often turned their attention to heroes pressing on toward home despite overwhelming obstacles. These obstacles challenge and affirm the hero’s human identity with a people and a place, even as he pours his superhuman effort (and godlike prowess) into reaching them once more. In a way, these stories place the human and divine in tension with each other within a single man, not only asking who are we? and where do we belong?, but also uniting these questions, so that neither can be answered in isolation.

But it isn’t just the journey home, or what it means for mortal man, that fascinates the Greeks. “Xenia” was a related value, involving an ethic of hospitality. When we think of hospitality today, we might recall the Benedictine hallmark: its ready generosity to share a meal, open a door, offer a home. In Greek myth, however, hospitality was an important means of deflecting that double-edged sword of the gods’ attention. Certainly it offered critical refuge to travelers in a dangerous and unforgiving world, but as a host, you also never knew when you might be entertaining – or turning away – a god in disguise. Not only, then, was home a site of the familiar – of one’s deep, human identity – but it also became a place where mystery or the divine might well visit unannounced.

From this wandering reflection, I can’t help but return to our beloved monastic community at Belmont Abbey. Of course, Benedictine monks don’t welcome the wandering stranger out of fear. The prospect of being transformed into unflattering shapes or otherwise punished by vindictive deities doesn’t feature in their motivations the way it did for the Greeks of myth… But in a deeper way, the monks do extend their generous welcome, not only to all of us: students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends, but also to Christ, Himself, who feeds us with His presence and makes His home in our souls. God dwells with us, far beyond what the Ancient Greeks believed possible. And by sharing our earthly home, He invites us, in turn, to that life in Him which alone can satisfy our marveling “hiraeth.”

Whether or not you are an alumnus, and whether or not Hurricane Ian has prevented you from traveling this weekend, I hope you’ll have a chance someday soon to come and walk the Belmont Abbey College grounds. Step into the cool quiet of the basilica or tree-lined avenue of Abbey Lane. Wherever we roam, the Abbey invites us to cultivate, as pilgrim people, the peace of our true home, while rejoicing in this earthly echo of beatitude to come. Come join us. You are always welcome.

It’s not always easy to focus when I’m sitting alone with God. I love these moments of peace, whether in the St. Joseph Adoration Chapel, the Our Lady Help of Christians Basilica, or elsewhere – and I miss them when something unforeseen interrupts me – but even so, I find my mind wandering at times, as I sit in the quiet of a holy place.

For a while, my distractibility caused me more than a little anxiety. Somehow, I thought I should be able to grip prayer without letting go: keep a kind of laser focus on Jesus, who was, after all, right in front of me. Without putting it quite in these terms, I thought that “pray[ing] without ceasing” was something I couldn’t really accomplish until I’d conquered those wayward tendencies that brought my “outside” life into the church in ineffectual eddies with me. I’d jolt guiltily back to myself and dart a look in His direction, apologizing, then casting around for something to say, some way to address Him and wrench myself “back on track.” In other words, I thought praying well was a matter of effort on my part, and even as I acknowledged God’s presence in the abstract, in practice I was denying its living, breathing place in my prayer.

It’s taken years for me to realize that I don’t have to “carry the conversation” in my visits with Jesus, that my human foibles don’t preclude quality time with God, and that there really is no such thing as “outside” life. The monks of Belmont Abbey, in their daily rhythms of ora et labora, prayer and work, treat prayer as conversation, but work and prayer aren’t mutually exclusive to them. Community, companionable life, is more than this, and not all conversation need be vocalized.

I’m still learning how to live and love in His presence, but these days, when I spend time with God in prayer, I try not to grow anxious if I find the concerns of life intruding. And I try not to fill every second of this time with prayer aids or the sound of my own, internal voice. Although there are many beautiful and fruitful forms of prayer – from the rosary to lectio divina, from reading the psalms to giving thanks for His many gifts – I’ve begun to realize that those exist as means to the end of a greater intimacy, a deeper quiet, not as proofs of individual piety. God wants us to share our whole lives with Him, not just segmented moments in the morning or before we go to bed. And sometimes sitting with Him, giving Him the things that distract me, resting there in His presence as we can only with those who really know and love us, allows me to hear His still, small voice a little more clearly in my life.

This weekend, I hope we each have the chance to settle in His presence, not with the taut, nervous itch we sometimes apply to prayer, but with that trust in simply being with the Beloved One, who wants – more than we want it ourselves – to fill our souls with joy. May the Benedictine hallmarks of prayer and stability dissolve the boundary we put up in our lives between being with God and being busy with our daily lives.

In honor of Labor Day, Belmont Abbey students, faculty, and staff enjoyed a three-day weekend last week. I personally enjoyed this as a chance to embrace a little extra leisure in the midst of preparing for the Fall Semester. The gift of the extra day also made me consider the relationship between work and leisure, and how each informs our lives.

When I start to think about work, I often find myself looking at my hands, almost as extensions of my will and capacity. I can grasp, hold, or handle with them, all of which are also ways to characterize mental, as well as physical, responses. With my hands I can touch or form things, manipulate objects, gesture “hello.” We pray with our hands, talk with our hands, cook or clean, threaten, or soothe. And when we have nothing to do with them, sometimes it’s actually difficult to make them still.

Considering hands in this way, as metaphorical sites of work, I start to see that work itself entails not only this sense of active, often tactile engagement with the world around us, but also a reaching out, a giving property: not only hands clasped around a hammer or a pen, but also hands open and offering. Community, which depends on service to each other, provides a space where work takes on new meaning. Hands as symbols of care, generosity, and connection are linked (dare I say “go hand in hand”) with hands as symbols of labor.

This is not to say that those of us who live alone, or with physical challenges limiting our range of motion, have any less worth or any less potential for fulfilling work. As members of the body of Christ, we give, after all, not only in visible, but also invisible ways, and not only to others in our family, our parish, our neighborhood, but also to God in the intimacy of his dwelling with us, a precious community of its own. St. Benedict’s “Ora et Labora,” prayer and work, unify these things, rather than setting them in opposition.

It’s also occurred to me that leisure is not simply the absence of work. Just as community brings with it the idea of open hands, extended in generosity, it also reminds us of hands extended to receive. If work is a way of giving, leisure is that time in which we quiet ourselves to receive from God the rest we need. Both work and leisure require a kind of humility, a trust that God, who works and dwells in us always, holding us existence with the sheer force of His love, will bring about more than our human hands are capable of doing and refresh us in ways beyond our imagination.

As we end the weekend and begin a new work week, I’ll be praying that your hands are filled with God’s blessings and purpose!

On my way into Stowe Hall in the morning, I’ll stop to watch the goldfinches, hummingbirds, and tiger swallowtails enjoy the flowering shrubs outside.

If you’ve never seen a Tiger Swallowtail caterpillar, they look nothing like their metamorphosed selves. Green and oddly lopsided, with weird eyespots at the bulbous end of their body, these critters might give us a puzzled moment of pause, but they probably won’t fill us with the same awe as delicate, yellow wings trimmed in black lace.

So after watching those adult swallowtails in the flowers outside Stowe, I started thinking about the difference between those goofy, green creatures and their elegant counterparts. In grade school, I learned that when a caterpillar builds its cocoon and goes through metamorphosis, its body actually melts down within the protective pod, forming a disconcerting, caterpillar soup, rich with preserved genetic code. And it’s from this liquified mess that an apparently new creature flowers into completion, essentially from the cells up. One form becomes another, but it’s a much more radical process than I’d imagined as a child.

This caterpillar being recreated anew is what happens when we say “yes” to God in the present, even in small ways. We take all the jumbled contents of our past and actually perfect them, or, rather, allow God to perfect them. Even the wanderings, which, after all, influenced the people we are today, get poured into the present affirmation, informing it and finding in its “yes” a redeeming mercy.

As I watched the lovely wobble of butterflies in the flowers, I realized that when we give ourselves wholly to God, He makes use of everything we are and have, transforming it. The fresh form, our new life in Christ, might feel entirely different, but no part of our past experience is wasted. Even those times in our lives we may consider now with embarrassment or shame: He can make everything work to the good, to today’s beautiful metamorphosis.

Wishing you hope and bright wings!