Week Twelve: September 1-7 (Final Week of Sabbatical)
The weekend of Labor Day we spent with Kristine’s family. It is always good to be together with family. On Tuesday morning I was off to spend part of the week at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, near Big Sur (it is near Ragged Point). The retreat center is two miles off the road, inland side of PCH, and is truly beautiful location to be cloistered. Located on Highway 1 at Lucia, the New Camaldoli monks live primarily in silence, prayer, and monastic community (the follow Benedict’s Rule).
The hermitage is primarily silent. Speech is allowed in the bookstore or on the road, but not near the sanctuary or rooms or trailers. Silence can be crushing but then also welcoming and enveloping -- strange. There is too little silence in my life – whether it is the chatter of children or the din of my own inner or outer voice. In fact, as the outer world has grown more quiet at this monastery, the interior world has become more of a voice. I’m not sure actually if it is louder, or perhaps that the outside world (of family, television, internet, radio, traffic and chatter) has grown still and so now I can hear the noise within more clearly. It is my suspicion that my interior noise is always this loud, it is just that I am carrying on too loudly to hear it. I would also maintain that the anxiety of life arises from this interior noise and not so much the exterior stuff. The interior noise is the reaction to the exterior reality – and, as Friedman (previous read) so pointed out, it is from our reaction to stressful situations that real stress occurs.
The day is formed and focused by prayer. We (about 12 retreat participants besides the 14 monks) gathered for Vigil at 5:30 AM, Lauds at 7:00 AM, 11:30 AM for Eucharist, and concluding the day at 6:00 PM for Vespers. I also used the Divine Hours between these settings for pray (I addressed this resource earlier in the Sabbatical blog). I wondered at what the monk’s life is like everyday. It seems very leisurely. However, after 1 ½ days of the silence and solitude, of days formed by scripture reading and prayer – it is my question now which is the harder work: what I do in parish life or the monastic life.
I clearly do not have enough silence and solitude in my life to stay focused on God’s voice. In fact, I was comforted this morning by the patristic reading from St. Gregory, who confessed that he felt focused in the monastery but scattered “by idle talk and the concerns of the day” in parish life. So if Gregory the Great has this problem, who am I to belittle myself over the same problem (I will never be so esteemed by my work or piety to be labeled “Great” -- Nor is greatness my aim but, as 2 Corinthians 5 indicates: “Whatever the conditions, cheerfully pleasing God is our aim.”
The prayer of the day (St. Gregory) seems fitting: “It is by loving-kindness and forgiveness that you rule your people, O God. Listen kindly to our prayer and in communion with Pope Saint Gregory give to your Church’s shepherds the spirit of wisdom so that the spiritual progress of their flocks may be to them a source of unending joy. This we ask of you. Amen.” To that I add my hearty “Amen!”
Reading
Bob Roberts, Glocalization: Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World, Zondervan, © 2007.
N.T. Wright, The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God – Getting Beyond the Bible Wars. New York: Harper Collins, © 2005.
William P. Young, The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity. Los Angeles: Windblown Media. © 2007.
What an amazing book that has gotten a very wide readership. I understand the Wednesday morning study read through the Shack. This book and the other I finished this week (Glocalization) make the same point: the mission of church must be about loving and caring relationships, across denominations and religions. These messages dovetail into theme focused upon on Sunday at First, Inglewood regarding world and local mission. I think most of what he says about faith is true: it’s all about love and grace and relationship with God (he even says that everything is about Jesus, and in the end every knee will bow to Jesus – wow, what a churchly point-of-view). It is too bad that Young, who chooses the easy route of bashing the institution of the church, had not read Glocalization…or for that matter considered that the church builds orphanages, hospitals, and does amazing humanitarian work in the world (not attached to any conversion-strings or manipulations, that he claims the church is often about). Sad, but easy to bash the church. I wonder where he got all this theology and Biblical knowledge and the “grace-alone” idea if it wasn’t from the church.
Worship
New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur (nine times to be exact). The settings were always liturgical, and with the Camaldoli spin on the Benedictine Rule, largely focused on the Psalms. It was hard to follow, heavily ritualized, but the community was very accommodating and hospitable to this outsider.
First Lutheran Church, Inglewood, CA. Pastor Kristian Johnson caught my attention a couple years ago as a person interested and experienced with global mission. He is a part of the Synod Outreach Committee. First Lutheran is an older congregation, but very diverse: primarily African-American and White, but also including Asian and Hispanic worshippers. They have a morning service in English and an evening service in Spanish. Their musicians played in a relaxed jazz, spirituals style and the music was very engaging. Pastor had a great sermon on the text and on their work on global reconciliation (they did three mission trips to El Salvador this summer and yesterday they had a “block party” style basketball tournament as an outreach event). The worship was relaxed liturgical, in style.
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