wfn.org | Episcopalians: Trinity Institute explores Benedictine spirituality

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May 15, 2003

2003-108

Episcopalians: Trinity Institute explores Benedictine 
spirituality

by Nathan Brockman

(Trinity News/ENS) The Benedictine way of life is alive, well 
and precisely relevant to shaping holy lives. That was the 
subtext underlying this year's annual conference of Trinity 
Institute, April 28-29.

Addressing the conference theme, "Shaping Holy Lives," were the 
Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the new archbishop of Canterbury; Joan 
Chittister, outspoken author and former Benedictine prioress; 
Laurence Freeman of the Monastery of Christ the King, 
Cockfosters, London; and Kathleen Norris, poet and former 
Benedictine oblate. 

It was the first time that Williams had returned to Trinity 
since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He preached 
at the opening Eucharist on the Benedictine value of 
"listening," and closed the conference with a "prosaic" look 
inside "God's Workshop." 

Chittister tackled the essential values of St. Benedict, among 
them creative work, holy leisure, humility, and peace, drawing 
from those values a kind of "holy warfare" aimed at righting the 
world's wrongs. Freeman asked why the ancient Rule of St. 
Benedict was attracting adherents to this day, and Kathleen 
Norris examined the quality of "holy realism" through poetry.

Transparency rooted in honesty

For Williams it was a low-key visit to New York. He had 
originally accepted the invitation when he was still archbishop 
of Wales and the possibility of a translation to Lambeth Palace 
was uninformed speculation. His references to September 11 and 
the war on Iraq, which he had opposed, were glancing. 

In his main address to the conference, entitled "God's 
Workshop," he discussed the themes of transparency, peacemaking 
and accountability in terms of Benedictine spirituality. "The 
monk must be transparent; the monk must be a peacemaker; the 
monk must be accountable," he said. 

Transparency, he explained, is rooted in honesty with others and 
within ourselves. "To become in this way open to your own 
scrutiny, through the listening ministry of the trusted brother 
or sister, is to take the first step towards an awareness of the 
brother or sister that is not illusory or comforting," he said. 
"If we are to become transparent, we must first confront the 
uncomfortable fact that we are not naturally and instantly at 
peace with all." 

For this reason, he noted, with transparency comes a need for 
peacemaking: "The precepts are clear enough: there should be no 
retaliation, no malicious gossip, no hatred or envy or party 
spirit Stability requires this daily discipline of mending."

Daily mending can prove a difficult task in the 21st century, 
Williams acknowledged. "We have been told--rightly--that it is 
bad to deny and repress emotion; equally rightly, that it is 
poisonous for us to be passive under injustice," he said. "The 
denial of emotion is a terrible thing; what takes time is 
learning that the positive path is the education of emotion, not 
its uncritical indulgence, which actually locks us far more 
firmly in our mutual isolation. 

"Likewise, the denial of rights is a terrible thingwhat takes 
time to learn is that the opposite of oppression is not a 
wilderness of litigation and reparation, but the nurture of 
concrete, shared respect."

Accountability, he said, concerns our state of being answerable 
"both to God and to the spiritual realities of the people [we] 
deal with." 

"Everyone in the community that the Rule envisages is 
responsible both to and for everyone else in different modes, 
depending on the different specific responsibilities they hold, 
but nonetheless sharing a single basic calling in this respect 
The workshop is manifestly a collaborative venture with the aim 
of mending vices and preserving love'  The workshop is at the 
end of the day a solid and tough metaphor for that spirituality 
which is a lifetime's labor, yet also an expansion of the 
heart." Williams said. 

Essential values 

Should a 5th century monk influence today's world? This was 
Chittister's question, in an address on the essential values of 
St. Benedict, among them creative work, holy leisure, humility, 
and peace. 

She arrived at her answer--an emphatic "yes"--through 
excoriating "pseudo-contemplatives," "pious moles," and the 
United States government for exorbitant defense spending. She 
was particularly searching during her evaluation of Benedict's 
notion of holy leisure. 

"In the mind of Benedict, life is not only lived by doing," said 
Chittister. "Leisure is an essential part of spirituality as 
well as work. The real measure of holy leisure, Sabbath leisure, 
contemplative leisure, has more to do with the quality of life 
and the depth of our vision than it does with play and 
vacation."

Chittister then outlined the depth our vision should reach. "If 
anything has brought the modern world to the brink of 
destruction, it must surely be the loss of Sabbath," she said. 
"The purpose of holy leisure is to bring this balance of being, 
not a balance of time, back in to lives gone askew and to give 
people time to live a thoughtful, a contemplative, as well as a 
productive, life. It's the reflectiveness of holy leisure that 
brings us to ask what it is to follow the Gospel.

"When people sleep in a Metro station, it's holy leisure that 
asks, Why?' When a high-ranking [U.S. government] official was 
asked by the media last week why there were no estimates of the 
Iraqi dead reported, and the official's answer was, that is a 
number in which I have no interest whatsoever,' it is holy 
leisure that breaks the secular silence and asks the Sabbath 
question, Why don't you?' 

"Holy leisure asks how our today became more important than 
God's tomorrow. In other words, holy leisure is the foundation 
of contemplation, and contemplation is the ability to see the 
world as God sees the world." 

A transformative tool

Freeman suggested that the sense of measure and order that 
Benedict espoused was actually a transformative tool. If someone 
could be convinced to look at life with measure and order, and 
to do so over time, a transformation of perception could be 
achieved. 

Trying to determine why the Rule of St. Benedict remains so 
influential, he examined its basic principles, such as 
"moderation, measure, good order, respect for those who are 
different from ourselves, compassion for the old, the young and 
the sick, generosity for the stranger who turns up after the 
guest-master has gone to bed, a balanced lifestyle, good time 
management, vertical and horizontal forms of authority, 
listening to everyone, social equality, and justice."

He argued that the Rule was pertinent today, even when what it 
means to be holy has changed. "Time was when everyone agreed 
that the right aspiration of life was holiness, but what does 
holiness mean today, when holiness is often a neglected value in 
Christian circles? It lives on, maybe in diminished forms. 

"In the aspirations of some New Age spiritualities, we speak of 
wholeness," Freeman said. "None of us would mind being called 
whole persons. Wholeness is that which has been fixed; what has 
been repaired, healed, made whole again."

The "eternal principles" of the Rule were easily translated into 
other ways of life, Freeman observed. He spoke of two oblates, 
from different countries and stages in life, whom he had 
received into the Benedictine order. 

"One of them was a 24-year-old Italian engineering student. The 
other was an 84-year-old French-Canadian retired businessman. 
When I asked them on different occasions what made them want to 
take this step, they gave surprisingly similar answers: 
simplicity of life, spiritual friendship, the need for a 
framework of values in their life, and the sense of being part 
of a community that is itself an expression of a living 
tradition." 

Holy realism and poetry

Norris's address examined the influences of one of America's 
best-known poets. Her goal was to "overturn our false notions of 
holiness," to bring it back down to earth, and she did so in 
large part by reading reams of poems. 

She introduced the concept of a Benedictine-influenced "holy 
realism." The concept would prove a refreshing about-face from 
piety, and an illuminating case for the holy power of poetry.

"The popular wisdom is that the words holy' and realism' don't 
go together. Aren't holy people, like poets, dreamy and 
sentimental...not of this world? They are always dreaming of 
other things." 

She read poems by herself, her husband and others, including 
Mark Van Doren, Marilyn Nelson, Kate Daniels, and Elizabeth 
Bishop. Each described aspects of "holy realism." 

The first quality of holy realism, according to Norris, is that 
"we recognize it when we see it and we can't help but remark on 
it its qualities are universal." 

However, "if we recognize holiness in ourselves, we are dead 
wrong" and heading down the road to narcissism. Further, "Holy 
realism is grounded in the real world and not, especially not, 
in our heads. Holy realism rejects false images and it reminds 
us of who we really are. Holiness is humbling, and that's a 
point St. Benedict makes quite forcefully, devoting an entire 
chapter of the rule to the subject of humility." 

Norris also said what holy realism is not: "It is the opposite 
of Narcissism; it welcomes the presence of othersas gifts from 
God." It seeks deep connections between people. 

Finally, "Holy realism is the ultimate realism," said Norris. It 
is a conviction that "life does have meaning; it is worth caring 
about."

------

Texts and additional reports are at: 
www.trinitywallstreet.org/news

The full proceedings can be viewed or heard at 
http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/video 

(Advisory to Episcopal Communicators: Speaker photos from 
Trinity Institute available at www.trinitywallstreet.org/PR . 
Register with your details and Trinity will provide you with a 
username and password.)

--Nathan Brockman is managing editor of Trinity's web site. 
Additional reporting for this article was provided by Maria 
Luisa Torres and John Allen.