Cultivation Blog

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!

Today I thought I’d do something a little different and share a short poem I discovered recently. This particular poem is by Robert Frost, and since it reminded me of the Abbey (and you can never have too much poetry in your life), I thought you might enjoy it on this lingering, summer Friday:

“Devotion”

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean –
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

There’s a yearning in the poem, and a humility. When I read through it for the first time, I liked the image of a vast ocean and a faithful shore, but the more I thought about these four, short lines, the more they reminded me of our own monks here at the Abbey – or any Benedictine community.

When someone takes on the Benedictine way of life, they commit, not only to prayerful obedience, but also to stability. The monks at Belmont Abbey belong and hold firm here as a meaningful part of their vocations, and Belmont Abbey College has always depended on the Abbey fathers and brothers as central to the spiritual life of this remarkable place. They teach, guide, and encourage students, certainly, but their prayers, their lives of stability, community, and love, also permeate campus in ways that transcend the visible.

As a community, these monks model the shoreline in continuous devotion to God, whose power, like the ocean, is beyond our comprehension but also intimately close, even touching our lives. The Abbey holds a faithful curve, a shape receptive to the ocean, and prays continually, in litany repetitions that may seem, on the surface, monotonous, but which accumulate as “counting” does, and which, by holding still to the ocean waves, allow these waves to slowly transform it.

Our relationship with God, too, is one that never arrives at a complacent or static boundary. Sometimes we might encounter the waves as challenging, even painful, in the ups and downs of our lives. Though we find stability in daily acts of faithfulness, this doesn’t always mean an easy or direct path. As we live out our particular vocations, however, God tirelessly shapes our capacity to receive Him, so that, rejoicing in His infinite goodness, we will never stagnate, but only exult in the never-exhausted discovery of His beauty.

I can think of no greater devotion than holding still in trust, as close to Him as the shore is to the ocean. So this week I invite you to consider: how does this emerge in your own experience? Where might you recognize the shaping presence of God, and what quiet response does it invite in your life? We each have our own, endless repetitions, our daily acts of faithfulness to a particular vocation. May they continue to form us for ever greater joy in Christ.

I suspect I’m not the only one who surveys a new year with both excitement and anxiety. While new beginnings can certainly motivate and inspire, more often than not – at least in my experience – the running start can be a bit frantic, and it quickly loses steam…

So this year I’ve decided, in lieu of overly ambitious projects or massive life goals, to set myself three small challenges: little, daily things that will help me to grow in mind, body, and soul. Let’s call them baby steps on the Benedictine way. And if you’re so inclined, I’d invite you to join me with your own versions of these mini challenges.

Challenge #1: Start carrying a (friendly, paperback) book around.

While I’m waiting for coffee or eating lunch, I can take a few minutes to read – maybe even set aside twenty minutes or half an hour for reading before bed. Rather than set a numerical goal, I’ll cultivate the habit of reading at least a little every day. The pressure doesn’t need to be great. I can fill the well a bit at a time, and as I do, I’ll send a quick glance upward, reminding myself that contemplation and the life of the mind can open up new conversations with Him.

Challenge #2: Stand up and stretch for 30 seconds every hour during the workday.

This may sound silly, but as someone who spends far too much time sitting at a desk, in a car, or on a couch, it’s a start. If you’re further along in cultivating your body – your temple of the Holy Spirit – you might spring for a daily walk or maybe an extra fruit or vegetable at lunch.

Challenge #3: Offer my day to God as I’m getting out of bed in the morning.

This may sound like the smallest thing of all, but if it helps to form a habit of turning my mind to God before doing anything else, it can actually change everything.

The monks of Belmont Abbey orient their days by rhythms of ora et labora, prayer and work. As someone outside of a monastery, it may not be possible to pray the Divine Office every few hours, but I can orient my day toward its source from the very beginning, remembering that the day itself – all I do, say, or make – and all I am in mind, body, and soul – can be a prayer.

As you embrace the new year and consider its many possibilities, remember to give yourself a little grace. It’s good to have goals, but you’re already loved more than you can fathom. Just respond to that love and continue to grow, each day, in your personal vocation.