What the Monks Taught Me

This weekend I had the honor to be the recipient of Benedictine hospitality.  For 48 hours I stayed in the guest house of the Abbey of Gethsemani in the rolling hills of Eastern Kentucky.  The monks have all taken a vow of silence and they ask their guests to do the same while present.  Even the communal meals are eaten in silence.  I came away from this experience with a deep appreciation for the rich varieties of the Christians faith and having drawn close to God in a new way.  While at the Abbey, I took the time to write down some of these insights and thought I would share them with you for your own edification.

Reflections from Gethsemani:

1.  Monks see their silent, prayerful work as missional.  This may strike some as rather odd since they are literally cloistered off from the rest of the world.  Indeed, I've heard many evangelicals criticize the monastic life because it seems too self-focused and neglects the duty of all Christians to "Go, therefore, into all the world..."  So it was quite eye-opening for me when I heard a monk claim that their work is not for themselves, but for the sake of the world.  How so?  Through prayer.  If we truly do believe that prayer changes the world and that God literally acts in the world in response to human prayer, then we must conclude that the prayerful life of this abbey is missional.  Thomas Merton, the most famous of the monks of Gethsemani, once compared the work of monks to trees.  Trees just stay put and remain silent, but they give oxygen to the world.  I see the work of monks this way now and it is spectacularly beautiful.

2.  Unsurprisingly, my time here has reminded me that I do not often quiet myself before God.  I am literally addicted to distractions.  The silence can be fearful for a distraction-addict.  Like a cigarette smoker trying to break his habit, I find myself reaching for my iPhone or a book or music or the TV or food in order to take my mind off of the deafening silence around me.  I thought that choosing to remain silent for one weekend would be a piece of cake for me, being the introvert that I am.  But it has been far harder than I expected.  Language can be one more form of distraction.  But when I truly am silent, I begin to hear things that oft go unnoticed:  the crunch of leaves under my feet, the flutter of birds in a bush, the ripple of water in a creek, the silence in which God makes His dwelling.  It is a bit frightening in its own way.  All things that are holy inspire a sense of dread, awe, or even fear.

3.  The monks pray corporately seven times each day (or eight if you count the mass).  Each gathering for prayer lasts almost exactly 30 minutes.  This means that they spend three and a half hours of every single day in communal prayer -- most of it praying the Psalms.  They take no breaks for the weekend, no holidays, no vacations -- ever.  365 days a year the monks join to pray at 3:15 a.m. (Vigil), 5:45 a.m. (Lauds), 7:30 a.m. (Terce), 12:15 p.m. (Sext), 2:15 p.m. (None), 5:30 p.m. (Vespers), and 7:30 p.m. (Compline).  This means that a monk will never get more than six hours of uninterrupted sleep.  They awaken in the middle of the night to pray for the world as it sleeps.  Last night I woke myself up to join them and was deeply moved by their humble prayers uttered in the middle of the deep darkness.  They are praying for me.  They are praying for you.  They are praying for the lost, the orphans, the widows, the sick, the elderly, and the poor.  And they simply do not stop this prayer.  I feel as though I have been given the greatest gift I could be given to have forty men pray for me at in the middle of the night when I cannot sleep and am filled with anxiety, as I rise in the morning to face a new day, as I care for the poor in our food pantry, as I study for my sermon in the middle of the afternoon, as I return home to eat dinner with my family, and as I lead challenging board meetings at First Church in the evening.  Through it all, these forty men dressed in white gather and pray for me and for the world.  Who knows where I would be without their prayers?  Who knows where the world would be?  The two Cistercian monks who came to this part of Kentucky in 1848 arrived on one day and began prayers the very next day.  Every day since 1848 without exception the monks have prayed for the world seven times.  These prayers will continue, according to one monk, "until the end."  They will not cease. 

4.  Protestants don't do a good job of using their bodies in worship.  A simple practice that I have found very helpful during my time here is to regularly bow at different intervals during worship.  This act of bowing felt odd to me at first.  It reminded me of the time I visited a mosque and watched as hundreds of Muslims packed into a small room bowed in unison.  But, not wanting to stand out in the midst of these devout Catholics, I chose to bow with them and I am so glad that I did!  Now it is my favorite act during Vespers, Compline, Vigil, and so on.  It is a way that we all physically communicate that we are not lords, but servants of the One True Lord.  We face the front of the sanctuary and bow because we have a King and this King demands our full allegiance, obedience, and submission.  The monks have taught me that what I do with my body does matter -- it shapes the way I think, what I believe, and the way I behave.  May I never stop bowing regularly to my Master.

5.  For an evangelical like myself, the monastic form of worship strikes me as very formal, rigid, and structured.  I cannot picture a brother or sister in Christ running up and down the aisles here after "getting blessed" or even raising their hands and shouting "Hallelujah!"  And yet there is here a genuine aura of worship albeit rather reserved (critics might say "repressed").  I have found the structure of the liturgy, the formality of dress, the cold stone architecture, and the monotone chants to awaken me to a fresh appreciation of the transcendence of God.  Christianity has always held in tension the transcendence (otherness) and immanence (nearness) of God.  And although I do believe that if I had to choose one over the other I would choose to focus on the mystery of God's immanence, this can easily become unbalanced.  The Roman Catholics have reminded me that God is beyond me, above me, and mysterious -- He transcends me.  I needed this balance.  Too often evangelicals treat God like He is their buddy or pal.  They speak to God like they would a friend down the street.  But when I see God on His throne, I'm not going to say, "What's up, man!?!  Gimme some skin."  Rather, my utterance will echo that of Isaiah: "Woe is me!  I am undone!"  I once had a friend in college who playfully (and perhaps sacrilegiously) changed the words of the popular worship chorus "I Want to Know You."  He would sing, "I want to know you; I want to kiss you; I want to make out with you."  Being college guys we all laughed, but I understood the point he was making:  in our enthusiasm to focus on God's nearness to us, we have lost a sense of awe, reverence, respect, and, yes, fear when we enter God's presence.  The Trappist monks have reminded me of God's transcendence and I am deeply grateful for it.

6.  Structure is our friend.  Living in the inner city, I see a community which is in utter chaos.  There are no routines.  People stay awake all night and sleep all day.  They eat whenever they feel like it and rarely take time to sit down together to share a common meal.  Toddlers fall asleep in front of a TV at 2 am with a bottle of kool-aid in their mouths.  Is it any wonder why people surrender to ghetto nihilism?  I must confess that such chaos has infected my own life at times on the days that I am conformed to my world rather than transformed by the renewing of my mind.  But the monks show me that structure and routine is my friend.  The bell rings as I type this to call the people to prayer once again, just as it has six times before on this day.  This repetition of order is a reflection of creation.  God made the world to operate in cycles -- the sun and the moon alternate places, the moon waxes and wanes, the seasons switch from summer to winter and back again, the breath in my lungs moves in and out, and the monks keep eating at precisely 7:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. -- no variance, no exceptions, no snacking!  Just as the ancient Hebrew people recited the liturgy of Genesis 1 in their worship, so the Trappists cycle through the Scriptures -- the whole Bible in three year cycles and the 150 Psalms every two weeks.  Repetitive?  Yes.  But so is the cosmos.  Perhaps we would do ourselves a tremendous favor to embrace these structured cycles in our own lives.

7.  Father Damien invited us to join the monks for prayer during the 3:15 a.m. vigil.  He said, "You may come, but you don't have to.  That is our struggle and our vocation, not yours."  He said it with a genuine smile and with not an ounce of resentment or judgment in his heart.  If only I would bear my own vocational crosses with such grace and humility!  If only I could learn to be awakened at night by the knocks on my door of people asking for food or money with as much grace as Father Damien awakens each night to pray for me!  If only I could be interrupted during my studies with such patience!  If only I could accept verbal abuse and insults without complaint or bitterness!  Thank you, Fr. Damien, for modelling for me a joyful attitude in the midst of vocational struggles.  I am simultaneously convicted and inspired.