devotional life

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March 11 – Four LIttle (Life Changing) Steps

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on March 11, 2014
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Mary Geegh traveled throughout India teaching men and women, pastors and school principals and Indian Pundits, how to hear from God.

She spoke with women who were determined to run away with their lovers, and with unfaithful men and with teachers and business people who had known terrible failure and disappointment.  The message was always the same . . . hear from God.  The result was the same . . . God’s wisdom intervened and lives, marriages, careers, and most of all, souls were rescued.

Oh, the story of Mary and the egg!  Here it is …

She had been sent to a new mission site.  She determined to begin on the right foot and set aside a time for listening to God . . . she made a “Pact With God” concerning her devotion to Him . . . she had no Mother Superior or cloistered sisters with her, but she had a vocation.  She had God, our God, and confidence that He leads His sheep

Serious difficulties arose between Mary and her colleague; tensions mounted.  That can happen in dedicated lives.  Mary sought the Lord.  She followed the steps she had been taught.  God’s guidance to her was that she must take her colleague a fresh egg.  She considered this . . . and scratched it out of her notebook.

She went on about her day . . . she reasoned that this guidance could not be from God.

But . . . what do you suppose she saw in her chair when she went home for lunch?

Before we go on . . . what were the four steps?

1)     Get quiet . . . silent . . . before God and listen, and 2) repent of all sin, and 3) write down the guidance God gives, determining to obey, and 4) tell others what you have discovered.

When she came home for lunch, after a difficult morning, in her reading chair she saw … a chicken.  That had never happened before!

She shooed the chicken off the chair, and, surprise! … there was a a freshly laid egg!  Mary considered that this had to be the kind intervention of God so that she would continue with the counsel Dr. Scudder had given her.

Even so, Mary was embarrassed to take only ONE EGG to her coworker, so she sent the egg in care of the woman’s son.

That afternoon, the woman approached her at work.  “Oh, how could she have known!”  At breakfast the woman had cooked the last eggs in the house and divided them among the children and had herself gone without.  But the egg that Mary had sent!  It was the tastiest egg EVER!  And so kind and just at the right time!

Mary believed God.  She told her coworker what had happened, and everything started to change between them.  They became a powerful force for good and in the ministry together.

1) wait on the Lord

2) repent of all known sin

3) ask for God’s guidance and wait for it, determined to obey it

4) share this plan of listening to God with others.

VERY MONASTIC, don’t you think?

Kedar Range

Kaustahb, by permission, Wikimedia

“God Guides” is available for purchase online

March 7 – Taking Stock

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on March 7, 2014
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Tomorrow is a big day in Cor Unum.  Someone is coming to speak through the grille of time on the subject of God’s guidance.  In true monastic fashion, let’s get ready!  Let’s take a few minutes today to examine our Opus Dei up to this point.  Is the work of God at work in us?  Let’s prepare our hearts for more, because more of God is our hearts’ cry.

Have we chosen points of “conversatio” to bring about small, definite changes in our lifestyles or our character?   Some may have . . . stopped biting the nails on one hand!   Some have started speaking to God in blessing and gratitude first thing every morning, speaking the words that roll through heaven, words of praise and adoration,”Holy, holy, holy Lord!”   Others have determined that they will pray for their spouses or someone in great need for at least one full minute each day, and some are fasting second helpings or desserts … or wasted time.

We agreed that what counts in this cloister is that we choose things we absolutely will do and then not turn back from doing them.

Have we determined to watch for opportunities to do little, often unobserved things, purely for the love of God, like answering the phone as if we were expecting a call from Him, taking an interest in others, or sending a letter to someone, as if they were utterly precious to Jesus Christ, because, of course, they are.

Have we settled into a more interactive Bible study, praying and worshiping as we read, asking our questions and keeping track of the things we see as we go along, letting the word of God change us as it so beautifully will.  Maybe, like the red bird in the frozen tree, we have warbled a song or two when all around us seemed bleak and unyielding, ourselves refusing to yield to despair or discouragement or even plain old distraction in the light of the love of God?

We have covered a little ground in Cor Unum, haven’t we?  Certainly we have not seen all the change we hope to see, but we are not the people we were when we came through the doors, either.  Tomorrow we will learn a lesson that changed many lives and does so to this day.

Abbey photograph

March 6 – D. T. M. (Divine Time Management)

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on March 6, 2014
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High up in the Alps grow the tiny little flowers called Edelweiss.  They bloom in rocky crevices where they may blossom and die without ever making imprint upon the eye of any living creature, except perhaps a few mountain goats.

How is it that our God would plant so many flowers in places where He alone will see their struggle up from the soil, the breaking of earth through which they emerge, twining around stones and clinging to brambles, only to bloom for such a short while and return to the earth?

What about us, in Cor Unum?  We know that the right-hearted things we do in the dedicated places we fill on earth do show forth the glory of God.  What about those hidden places of devotion that no one sees but God alone?   What about those times of which we have spoken, when we trade intercession for the internet and meditation over television?  No one may ever know.  Even our children may think we’re just getting up early to get a jump on the laundry, which sometimes we do before we pick up our Bibles and go off to be alone with the Lord.

Whether we live very public or very private lives, each may choose to lift his countenance to God.

John Wesley used to spend hours alone with the Lord in the early morning.  As his influence grew and he began to travel the thousands of miles that he would cover in his lifetime of ministry, he continued to remain two or three hours or more with God at the start of the day.  When questioned about his time management, he said that it was only the hours he spent alone with God that enabled him to carry out his Father’s work after the sun rose.

When all the little blossoms of the hills and fields were opening their faces to the sun, John Wesley was back on his horse, riding off to yet another location where the Gospel of Jesus Christ had yet to be proclaimed in the power of the grace of God.

Our Lenten service may be just the same: hidden, unnoticed, unimportant to all but God, at least until its effects begin to be known.  If nothing else, between our blossoming and the light of His Presence, there will be joy.

Edelweiss

Bohringer Friendrich, by permission, Wikipedia

March 3 – Fasted Lifestyles

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on March 3, 2014
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Devotion is a wonderful thing.

In a world that manages to yank us from one calamity to another, living lives that are often more full of the stuff of other men’s lives than our own, it is powerfully good to be able to choose a fasted life style.

What’s a fasted lifestyle?  There are many words we could substitute.   We could call our lives devoted, disciplined, monastic, or we could just say we’re in love!  People will say we’re in love, when we begin to “fast” busy-ness, hurry, worry, agitation, ingratitude, and grumbling for the sake of the love we have for our Lord.

THAT’S WHY THEY DO IT . . . the true monastics!  They have learned the joys of devotion!  The little disciplines of life that most say they ought to do and hope to get around to doing, all those are built into the monastic year.  One might be permitted a Lenten fast of, let’s say, “light reading” in the monastery (everything is done by permission, and that is one of the greatest disciplines of all, as every monastic will tell you,) but everyone fasts.  Certain food items in the already bare-bones diet disappear overnight, such as butter and cream.  When all you have for breakfast each day is coffee and a piece of bread, the removal of the butter is a real “penance.”

When speech is curtailed to only one or two hours a day, one is loathe to spend those minutes in gossip or slander, and it will never be permitted, anyway.  This is what every wise Abbess must know: backbiting will devour the house.

Monastics sort of “love” to fast, because after the first time or two, the results are so euphoric that the next will be welcome for its results.  No one wants to grumble when everyone is doing without.

Let it be so with us here in Cor Unum. We will embark on this Lenten fast two days from now, so let us choose what will draw us into our own true life with the Lord, whether that will be less food or more prayer, if it be less entertainment or more silence, or for some of us … all of the above!  Let us “fast” the speech that wounds and the hurry that destroys, and above all, let us love with this little fast, and enjoy it fully!  Let us be sure we are not just fasting from, but fasting to better enjoy our wonderful, privileged lives in Christ Jesus, King of kings, and Lord of all.

Korean Temple Food

by Jule, by permission, Wikipedia

February 26 – What Nuns Believe

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on February 26, 2014
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         There is a vast difference in life between “meant to be” and “ought to be.” 

 

         Those who firmly and actually believe they are meant to be successful, nearly always are.  Those who believe they ought to be successful rarely make it to the top.

 

         The same is true with those who believe they are meant to be good friends or good doctors or teachers.  Those who believe they ought to be good at what they do are always either failing or failing to enjoy the successes that do come their way.

 

         Nuns who stay in cloister believe they are meant to be there.  Nearly always, those who think they “ought to be” nuns do not last very long.  The community finds them out and although it may still want them to stay, much more than “ought to” is necessary to survive the grueling parts of cloistered devotion.

 

         “It’s a calling.”  This is what a professed nun will tell you.  Not that she chose the cloister, but it chose her . . . that the Lord chose her to dwell with Him there.

 

         For us in Cor Unum, we know that every true calling must come through faith, and faith comes by hearing, and hearing the Word of God.  Let’s discover, as the true monastics we are, what power the Word of God has to call us and keep us.  Let’s discover our “calling,” listening to Jesus’ Voice.  We know above all that we are meant to “abide in Christ,” and He will remain in us.  (John 15:4)  We are meant to bear His image in this world.  (Romans 12:1, 2)  

 

       That’s why we are here in Cor Unum.  This is not for us an exercise in what we ought to do but what we are meant to do and to be and to become.  “Ought to” might get us started, but “meant to” will keep us going.  That’s what these nuns believe!

 

 

John 15:4 …  Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  (NIV)

 

Romans 12:1,2 … Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

 

 Teresa of Avila, by Rubens, public domain

foundress of numerous Benedictine Abbeys

 

February 24 – Lovesick

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on February 24, 2014
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         Who cannot relate to that season of young love, where the object of our affection consumed our thoughts and directed us to actions now humorous or comic, perhaps, but very much the display of the power of attraction?  The monastery is a place where the lovesick can feel right at home, and the wise will never scorn our watching at the gate!

 

         The Shunnamite in the Song of Solomon wrote, “He brought me to His banquet hall, and his banner over me is love.  Sustain me with raisin cakes, and refresh me with apples, because I am sick with love.”  (Song of Solomon 2:4,5)

 

         The true monastic can’t get enough of Jesus, and to him or her, that means a life of unending relationship through worship, intercession, solitude, Lectio Divina (the interactive study of the Word of God, with prayer,) and meditative focus during work and recreation and even during meals.  The idea is never to leave him alone for a moment and never to spend a moment of life without Him.

 

         Most husbands and wives, let’s be honest, would soon find that kind of love somewhat suffocating.  Jesus doesn’t!  “Seek with your whole heart,” He tells us!  “Abide in me . . . and I in you!”  The monastery is for those who have that kind of love to give; perhaps we should say that the monastery is for those who would like to give that kind of love.  None can, at first, and few would say they have mastered “nearness” even after decades of enclosure, but that is the goal.

 

         How many are there in society today who have been labeled “needy,” who are, in fact, only monastic.  They just have not learned where to direct their keen desire to love and be loved.  This kind of love does not demand enclosure, but rather abiding in Christ, giving heed to His matchless promise to come into the tabernacle of our souls and remain with us.  Truly, He never gets enough of us, never bores or tires of the pleasure of our company.  (John 15:7-11)

 

         Tomorrow we will look at one of the orders that have chosen an almost absolute solitude, to see what we can learn.  While solitude is not for us, yet we bring ourselves into the Lord’s Presence, and here we practice never leaving, no matter where we go or what we must do.  Ours is a marketplace monasticism, but it is as real as the Nearness of the Lord, here in Cor Unum, the monastery of the heart.

 

 

John 15:7-11 …If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

 

 

Dominican Cloister

Alconcaqua, by permission

February 10 – Divine Reading

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on February 10, 2014
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“Lectio Divina” is the Latin term for “divine reading.”  There is nothing more divine in our study of the Word of God than to encounter Him there and then to walk with Him in faith after we close our Bibles and go on with our day.

 

This is the purpose of “Lectio.”  Its practice is making a big comeback in many circles as lay men and women have begun to discover the effectiveness of the prayerful, expressive, listening, worshipful, humble application of the Word of God.

 

Prayerful.  Expressive.  Listening.  Worshipful.  Humble.  All of these are relationships we would like to say we have cultivated toward God.  In “Lectio,” we shall.

 

Today, let’s look at that powerful, miraculous passage in Hebrews 4:12.  First, as we open our Bibles, we pray, asking God to show us what we may see there, to show us what we could never see without Him.  What an enormous difference it makes when we humble ourselves always, in all things, to pray first!   Now we read in the Presence of the Lord.  We make note of what we see, of the questions that arise, of the things that are evident, of the revelation of the character of God.  We can read again and again until we feel we have begun to hear these words as from the Lord Himself.  This is the training we have undertaken in Cor Unum, one of the slow and steady conversions that we know will bear fruit in our lives.   We will always read larger segments of Scripture, reading through the Word of God year by year, but we will take time to pause and consider and be changed as we go.

 

Now we read again and make a list of as many elements as we can draw from the text. 

 

Here is an example, from Hebrews 4:12 . . .

 

• the Word of God is alive

• it is active, it DOES something

• it is sharp, it cuts . . . sharper than a sword that cuts both ways

• hmm . . . wonder what that signifies?  (It is honest to ask questions, without doubting)

• it pierces so deep as to divide our souls and spirits

• (like dividing?) joints and marrow … apparently our souls and spirits are not one and the same

• the Word of God judges the thoughts of the heart … does my heart think on its own?

• it judges the intents of the heart … that would be a valuable assessment 

 

Those are the items that are clearly stated, even if we don’t completely understand them.  In Cor Unum, we cannot read over the Word of God to get to the next point, the tag line, the “zinger,” or the end of our assigned reading!   After we see the literal, factual elements, we can begin to apply them, prayerfully, and we do well if we take time to let the living, active Word act upon us at some point whenever we read.

We can pray for ourselves and others as we travel through the Scripture.  “Lord, Your Word can live in me and in those I love; it can change anything and everything.  You can show us what we’re really like, and Your Word can form in us the strength and faith and love that makes people new and free.  Judge my thoughts, Lord; judge my heart.  I’m not afraid of Your judgement … You gave Your Son so that we don’t even have to fear our own sinfulness and our failures.  We are safe with you, and when your sword cuts, it heals, I know.”

 

As Professor Agassiz’ students learned to look, to keep looking, and to SEE their fish, we will begin to see God in ways we never dreamed He could be known.  We will see the Son of God, obedient to the Father, full of compassion, powerful in meekness, conqueror, not victim.  We will be able to see our hearts as His home; that He lives in heaven and He lives in us.  Cor Unum Abbey will become to us a place of sweetest delights and liberating truth, because here we dwell in the Presence of God, and here he dwells in us.  Just the time we take, just reading and praying, looking and listening, is healing and strengthening.

 

“Look, look, look!  Look at Jesus, the Word made flesh!  Look at the Lord of life!  Look, look!”

 

 

“Candlemas Day”

Marianne Stokes, by permission

 

 

 

 

January 28 – Carmel

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on January 28, 2014
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For the Carmelite nun, the words “monastery” and “cloister” are not as descriptive of her new dwelling place as the word, “Carmel.”  The Carmelite does not go into a convent or abbey so much as into a desert place, by her own definition.

It was on Mount Carmel that Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, and the Lord God vanquished them; there, God Almighty answered by fire (1 Kings 18.)  On Mount Carmel, the Shunnamite woman found Elisha and would not let him go until he came to her rescue (2 Kings 4.)   A rugged desert range, preferred by prophets, where the enemies of God breathed their last, and from whence a dead child would breathe again.

There are some naturally taciturn men and women among us.  They speak little, however much they might have to say, and silence seems to be their native soil.  There are those whose diet can or must be limited or even “strict,” who find no difficulty with it.  We all have acquaintances who prefer large portions of solitude to a full social calendar.   Carmel could accommodate all of these, but Carmel is something more.

Carmel is to love discipline and difficulty as the dearest and best of friends, intrinsically.  Carmel does not merely accept hardship – it flings wide the door!

Carmel as a way of life is not the work of a week, nor of  months, or years.  Carmel is bearing the burdens of others and so fulfilling the law of Christ. (Galatians 6:2) Carmel is hard; it is demanding, but purposefully.  It is not easily understood.  Carmel closely resembles . . . life, without pleasant distractions. without false comforts, and even without bona fide comforts if they will get in the way of Christlikeness.   The Carmelite might well say that they have “meat to eat” most of us “know not of.”  (John 4:32)

There are forces to be vanquished here in Cor Unum.  Selfishness and haughtiness and apathy are among them.  There are places in our hearts that will live again, if we will open wide the door to the remedies God provides within the hardships life supplies.  Can we trust the Mojave of discipline?  Can we befriend the Sahara of difficulties?  With interior fountains of joy?

Among the other orders, Carmel takes on desert survival training.  For each who will remain, there is an Arm upon which she may one day be seen coming up out of the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved.  (Song of Solomon 8:5)

 

 

Song of Solomon 8:5 … Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Under the apple tree I awakened you. There your mother was in labor with you; there she who bore you was in labor. (ESV)

Tomas Castelazo, Wikipedia, by permission

January 15 – In the Refectory

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on January 15, 2014
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If you were spending the New Year in a Carmelite monastery, you would have the incalculable joy of not having to tweak your diet after the Christmas “holydays.” Just think of it!

In some houses, breakfast is coffee and bread, eaten while standing and preceded by several hours of worship and prayer, also standing, with kneeling thrown in for good measure and enough sitting to keep you from keeling over with exhaustion.

Coffee and bread for breakfast, followed by a period of work and instruction and more prayer and worship, and then a monastically substantial noon meal: this is the daily fare for Carmelites and many other pre-Vatican II orders.

Monastically substantial is a diet of “veg” and protein. Through part of the year, usually during Lent, a modified diet, lovingly referred to as the Black Fast, is observed. Some orders abstain from butter, cheese, milk, eggs, and flesh meat during those weeks. At times, some have also limited daily meals to one, in the evening. That would lower your cloistered cholesterol considerably! Several studies over the last decades have been conducted using monastic samples, because the data is so pure . . . all eating the same food at the same hours, getting the same amount of sleep and exercise, enjoying the same pursuits. Overall, nuns are documented long live-ers!

The typical evening meal is a “collation,” sometimes a cold meal, such as breads and salads or hard-cooked eggs, when permitted, as well as fruits and raw vegetables and sometimes soup. These menus have been altered considerably in the last thirty years and differ from order to order and from house to house, but suffice to say, most cloistered nuns do not have the run of the kitchen or access to vending machines.

Imagine having your New Year’s resolutions resolved for you by the house in which you have chosen to live! Study is required, and exercise and work and lots of worship and prayer and plenty of sleep, and a healthy diet. The catch, of course, is that your sleep is interrupted at midnight for prayer in the chapel, and the food you eat is that which is put before you. Exercise takes place within the garden walks and walls, and for the first years of your formation, your reading is chosen for you. Rather like going back to college, without the parties . . . or money from home!

WHY are these women so universally happy?  Free from care? Not really.  The Abbey doesn’t fund itself, and nuns do have to eat, even if sparsely.  They do get sick sometimes. There are temperaments that don’t fit at all well together.  We are doing what we can to learn from them this year, and from other monastic souls.  Perhaps their unusually bright and pure smiles have something to do with the fact that they knew what they wanted and went after it with all their hearts.  We can do that.  Married, we can learn to honor and enjoy the one to whom we have been given in marriage.  Single, widowed, we can practice the rare joy and privilege of putting Jesus first in all things and living in the closest imaginable friendship with Him.

Take time today during one meal, or all three, and set a place for the Lord.  Turn off the tv and silence your cell phone.  Enjoy the Guest at your table Who is, in truth, the Founder of the Feast.  Engage your children if they are gathered around.  Or … just make sure that in the cloister of your heart, you dine quite intentionally in God’s Presence today, at least once.  Put a Scripture about the Lord or about His faithfulness before you, and see how deeply you can attend to it while you eat.  Enjoy every bite!  Enjoy the Lord’s Nearness!  A thousand tiny practices of devotion, if they should yield only one pure draft of love for God, would be well worth it.

It won’t take that many … it won’t be long.  We can train our souls to feast upon the goodness of our God and King.  Bon appetit!

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”

Revelation 3:20

Cor Unum Abbey photo

January 10 – A Personal Note

Posted by Cor Unum Abbey on January 10, 2014
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You’ll see this on the morning of January 10th.  I’m writing it on the evening of the 9th, the day that the reality of a full at-home monastic vocation came to me.

For years I had been reading, studying, and inquiring into devotional practices from all kinds of monastics, Protestant and Catholic, young and old, men and women, married and single.  I laughed my way through The Abbey Up the Hill by Carol Bonomo as she told the story of her path into Benedictine oblation, the society of lay sisters and brothers of that order.  For her, it was AA therapy on steroids.

In This House of Brede was great story-telling, and The Story of a Soul brought realities of cloistered life home for two housewives whose purpose was to see if anything like that kind of devotion could be achieved at home.  I had a friend who was feeding me “nun books,” and before long I was starting to write about what we found.  We were both married with children, grandchildren, mortgages, laundry and good old American “busyness”  filling, as we thought, every corner of our lives.

What a discovery!  Monastics in hospitals and watch shops, in universities and in the movies!  A then-famous starlet, after giving Elvis Presley his first on-screen kiss, who went on to other major rolls and loads of fame and lots of money, who had a devoted suitor and his offer of marriage, walked away from all of it, even the man who loved her deeply, and entered a closed monastery (monasteries usually are closed; convents only sometimes.)  Delores Hart still appears on screen occasionally, because she is wise and witty and still a voting member of the Screen Actors’ Guild – the only nun on the roles!  She gets to break cloister to appear on talk shows.  People are still fascinated with a life like hers.

We wanted a life like hers, my friend and I, only it would have to be uniquely ours, fitted to our circumstances.  MIddle-aged married women, already too old to be considered for any novitiate but our own.  We made a start.  Small increases in prayer.  Tiny fasts.  Regular hours of prayer, even if they only lasted for minutes.

Then one day, one of our husbands left to be where we were so happily headed, into the Presence of God.  My husband, in fact.  I hope I’ll never forget the grin on his face some mornings when he would come around the corner and see me giving thanks around a string of old wooden beads … one of the earliest and best of our practices, still very much a part of our happy discipline.  He understood, he gave it all his blessing, he thought it was something valuable, and in the years before he died, the two of us had begun to read and pray together in the morning, coffee mugs steaming at hand.

That very night, on the day of his death, as I was getting into bed without him and feeling that unbending realization that this was my new normal, I knew that I was now the Lord’s alone, if He would have me, and that very reminder made me smile.  Have me?  He had made me ready when I thought I was sort of playing at devotion.

Frank didn’t have to die for me to live monastically.  My friend continues in her at-home cloister, and her husband is still there, still delighted with his wife, and probably still grinning at her when she finds her prayer corner in their library, lights a candle or two, and hunkers down with God.  Others have joined us.  For me on that night, the truth of “going solo” lifted me into the arms of God.  Here was a purpose where purpose had died … my life’s purpose was that night lying in a morgue, and yes, those thoughts did come to call.  Monasticism made everything easier.  I had lived for Frank, and he had lived for me, and the best parts were when we found delight in one another, laughing, dreaming, rejoicing.  Would Jesus mind if I laughed and dreamed and rejoiced with Him?  I knew the answer.

Oh my dear Sisters … whatever the calling on your life … Jesus Christ is so much fun to know!  Come, since we must do this alone, let’s do it together.

Coffee for Two

Cor Unum Abbey album