Cultivation Blog

When we start to approach the new year, it can be tempting to look over the top of that dividing midnight and invent some shiny, perfect version of ourselves for the other side. Of course, we probably don’t frame it that way when we’re considering what we might learn, or do, or try this year. But at least in my own experience, the more grandiose and ambitious my plans for the coming months… the more likely it is that I’ve envisioned some alternate self to stand triumphant at the end of it.

Usually I try to combat this tendency by scaling down my goals, choosing small things I can do each day – an extra prayer, a quick note, one more vegetable at dinner… Small steps to better seek the Good in my life.

But as the monks of Belmont Abbey continue to teach me – through the Benedictine prayer and work that so permeate this remarkable place – the hallmarks of stability and stewardship offer a gentle, corrective vision to my tendency to reimagine a “New Year me.”

Stability, through which the monks live out their collective and individual commitments to this Abbey, invites us all to embrace the circumstances and the space into which God has called us. It offers a discerning groundedness that clarifies who we are and where we stand. Stewardship, meanwhile, takes loving responsibility for cultivating the gifts that flourish in this very rootedness. Usually when we think of stewardship, we think in monetary or environmental terms, but really we are called to respond in active, joyful gratitude to all the blessings of our lives.

Keeping this in mind, I hope to approach my resolutions this year from a slightly different perspective: less “who do I want to become?” and more “how can I be more fully the person God made me to be?” Certainly God speaks to us in the desires and aspirations of our hearts, but sometimes we forget, too, that (as the Abbey’s chaplain, Fr. James Raber, recently reminded me) “we are God’s gift to ourselves” and to others. Already.

As we consider our new year’s goals through this Benedictine lens, let’s ask for the grace to see ourselves with God’s vision – in clarity, humility, and merciful love. Starting the year isn’t about transforming to match our own (or anyone’s else’s) idealized preference. It’s about embracing the gift of our lives with trust and allowing Christ to lead us, in the concrete circumstances of this gift, wherever He’s inviting us to go.

This weekend let’s take a few minutes to ask the Holy Spirit what invitation He’s extending to us, not just in what we want to be and do, but in what we already – albeit imperfectly – are.

What gifts has He given you in the tenderness of His wisdom, and how might you cultivate these to become ever more fully the image of God you were made to be?

Wishing you a blessed 2025!

My nephew is three years old. He’s a funny, shy little guy, and he doesn’t much like the pool. So when my sister explained to him how the carpool line would work at his new preschool, he imagined a different scenario than the one she was trying to describe. A long pause followed her question, “Do you understand, buddy?” And then a little, determined voice from the backseat said, “Yes. I will be brave. I will close my eyes and jump in.”

Ever since I heard the story, I’ve had this quote on a sticky note at the base of my computer screen. I put it where I can see it every day because – for all the truly beautiful and inspiring words I’ve been blessed to encounter in philosophy, in poetry and literature, and in the stunningly great texts of our Western canon – I can remember few things that have ever cut with so little ceremony across all my distraction and self-consciousness. “I will be brave. I will close my eyes and jump in.”

As human beings we enjoy complexity. It’s delicious to delve deep into a question, or explore a difficult puzzle, or relish the symphonic workings of a natural phenomenon. People are complex and interesting; life is complex and interesting; and our emotions and relationships do and should reflect this complexity. It’s good to rejoice in the playful and profound multiplicity-in-unity that fills creation. But sometimes we forget, also, that “one thing alone is necessary.” There’s a reason Christ has to remind us to “become like little children.”

My nephew understands what it means to be brave. He can’t dispute the question in existential terms or tell a thematically complex story about fortitude. And he had trouble grasping what a carpool line is. But he also sees through to the heart of something important – and with a clarity and a moral honesty I often fail to match in my own life.

When we talk about the benefits of a specifically Benedictine liberal arts education, we don’t typically mention humility. But the fact that one of the ten Benedictine hallmarks grounds us in our littleness is actually a profound gift because – as we go about the good and necessary work of developing and maturing our human capacities of body, mind, and soul, becoming all that we were created to be – humility reminds us of our own, beloved smallness, within which a child’s innocent simplicity always has something to teach us.

This weekend, as we approach the beautiful season of Advent, let’s remember that the God who became a little child for our sake also speaks to us in the humblest, simplest of ways.

Maybe it’s the family photo I’ve been using as my desktop background over the past few weeks, or maybe it’s this month’s Feast of All Saints… but I’ve been thinking about faces lately.

When we remember someone, either living or deceased, we usually picture their face, investing it with the memories and emotions associated with the particular person in our minds. But a face is also more than a symbol.

Arguably the most expressive part of us – and home to four of the five senses – a face draws our focus when we attend to another person: to listen, ask, or understand. In a sense, it incarnates a site of encounter; we might even call it sacramental. When I look into my brother or sister’s face, something is at work beyond just reading an expression or refining an image-memory. It is essential that this person in front of me is turned toward me as well: another person, vivid with distinctive selfhood, a Thou whose willingness to engage with me is, itself, a freely given gift. That the word “face” is both a noun and a verb seems particularly appropriate to the active and personal nature of the encounter it embodies.

So when the psalmist urges us to “Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always” (Psalm 105:4), this verse points to something beautifully intimate in the way God invites us to relationship with Him. And the mystery of His ineffable tenderness only deepens when we think that God took on our humanity – bringing His face to us in the human face of Christ – so that we could approach Him, encountering Him freely and humanly within our finite capacities, both in Himself and in us: all those called to be Christ to one other. To “seek his face,” then, is neither an abstract nor a purely metaphorical call. Certainly we rejoice in the way God’s image echoes throughout His creation, but “seek[ing] His face” invites us to much more than this. It invites us to personal encounter.

When we orient ourselves freely toward His face, both within our souls and within the mystery of His incarnate and sacramental presence in the world, we respond to this invitation to active and expressive encounter. We seek the face of God each day in the sensory immediacy of the Blessed Sacrament; in the faces of our brothers and sisters, our loved ones; in the Word; and in honest and vulnerable prayer. We seek because we know our God not only comes to meet us but also makes it possible for us to engage with Him, even when His ways are unclear to us. He meets our gaze and does not turn away.

This weekend, as we conclude a hectic and polarizing election cycle, let’s ask for the grace to seek and love His face anew in our neighbor, our community, and in all the circumstances of our lives. May He fill our vision with the truth of His loving presence.