I have spent the last week at the Cistercian abbey in Whitethorne, Redwoods Monastery (or Abbey as they name it sometimes now). The sisters there used to make hosts for communion when I first started going there in the 1980's. Now they spin creamed honey in different gourmet flavors. If you are interested, the link to their web site is here: http://www.redwoodsabbey.org/.
It was a week of silence -- no talking, meals in silence, prayer throughout the day starting at 5:00 AM, no phones or Internet. It was an envelopment in a warm, nurturing cloak of stillness. I could hear the leaves falling from the trees in a rustling of wind. I could watch the ungainly flight of the wild turkeys wobbling down into the clearing in front of the chapel and main building, and creep almost next to the unafraid, grazing deer. I could see the highlights of brilliant yellows tinging the growth of rushes along the headwaters of the Mattole river, a frequent sight as I trekked the path between the guest housing and the chapel several times a day. I could feel the coastal fog sneak-in "on little cat feet," over the hills as evening settled after vespers, and move away with the warmth of daylight sun. The fragrance of redwood trees, the gurgling of the river over the "rapids" of the Mattole, the crispness of the dew at dawn against my cheeks, the cadences of chant (notated in Gregorian punctus, clivis, bistropha, et al) filled my senses, filled my fountain -- overflowing. It was an experience of the goodness of the Holy One, truly -- punctuated by my memories of faces I brought with me, of Ron (not his real name) -- a homeless veteran, roaring drunk the last time I saw him on MD 20/20 (in raspberry blue through a clear pint bottle where MD is the acronym for Mad Dog), trying to get admitted to detox so he could be off the Sacramento streets for three days in a warm bed and with "three squares" in a different kind of retreat, a retreat from from rigors beyond my capacity to bear, and who decided when he was eight that he would live for the good when presented with horrors of evil (we call that the fundamental option in theological lingo) in perhaps the beginning of his mental illness. Justappositions flitting across the inner sense of my vision, seeing truly. The stillness like a warm cloak, a luxurious old friend I could don for a time in that sacred space of Redwoods. It is a week for which I am very, very grateful -- my little silence wrapped in Silence.
Just in time for that experience of silence, a book became available on October 14th, just the week before. By, Amy Hereford, CSJ, it is entitled: Religious Life at the Crossroads: A School for Prophets and Mystics. I spent the time praying lectio divina with that book, in reflection. More about those reflections next blog entry. It is an assessment of the current state of religious life in the United States with a tracing of what is emerging in the future.
So, I've come home bringing some of the stillness with me, still wrapped in the friendship of that cloak to greet the Fall morning chill in the Sacramento Valley. With senses inner and outer overflowing, I have a sense now of how to proceed. The week affirmed for me that I need to live religious life in community, Franciscan, with the contemplative fueling the activity. The rest, the context, is still unfolding.
