Category: Refectory Book

We have completed the reading of a biography of a most remarkable woman, Sr. Thea Bowman, FSPA. ( Theas Song: The Life of Thea Bowman by Charlene Smith and John Felster . Orbis, 2009.) Her cause for beatification and canonization is being promoted at present, and this book makes a convincing case for the Church’s official recognition of her life. The book follows the chronology of her life, from her birth in 1937 in Yazoo City, Mississippi to her death from breast cancer in 1990. Converting to Catholicism at the age of nine and being educated by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, she joined that community in La Crosse WI in 1953. This stark transition from a Black Southern culture to the white culture of a northern city was only the beginning of the transitions and barriers that she would pass through in the course of her life. Through the strength of her indomitable character, she flourished in situations that would have overwhelmed lesser mortals. Her own life passed through the tumultuous racial conflicts that rose in the 60’s and continue to trouble our society today. She persistently advocated the values of the Black culture which she embodied in her own person and life. A highly educated woman, she insisted on the indispensable importance of education for fostering the self worth and potential contribution of every individual. She was acutely aware of the adverse effects of racial discrimination in the Church, as well as in society as a whole. She could chide a white audience by saying, They think they’re being erudite when they’re only being quiet. She was actively involved in confronting the barriers that had been placed on the Black population and was in demand because of her own skills in communication and drawing people together. Her own life was deeply embedded and instrumental in the cultural changes that marked the mature years of her life. Her last years were spent in a wheel chair because of the cancer, but she continued to participate in speaking engagements until her last breath. Her mantra was: Let me live, until I die. And she meant to live fully in a way that only death itself could stop. She was a living force who moved to bring people together and a revelation of what personal courage and self-sacrifice can realize in changing the world. Knowing her could well change you. Her question: Are you with us?

We have completed the reading of a biography of a most remarkable woman, Sr. Thea Bowman, FSPA. ( Thea’s Song: The Life of Thea Bowman by Charlene Smith and John Felster . Orbis, 2009.) Her cause for beatification and canonization is being promoted at present, and this book makes a convincing case for the Church’s official recognition of her life.  The book follows the chronology of her life, from her birth in 1937 in Yazoo City, Mississippi to her death  from breast cancer in 1990.  Converting to Catholicism at the age of nine and being educated by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration,  she joined that community in La Crosse WI in 1953.  This stark transition from a Black Southern culture to the white culture of a northern city was only the beginning of the transitions and barriers that she would pass through in the course of her life.  Through the strength of her indomitable character, she flourished in situations which would have overwhelmed lesser mortals.  Her own life passed through the tumultuous racial conflicts that rose in the 60’s and continue to trouble our society today.  She persistently advocated the values of the Black culture which she embodied in her own person and life.  A highly educated woman, she insisted on the indispensable importance of education for fostering the self worth and potential contribution of every individual.  She was acutely aware of the adverse effects of racial discrimination in the Church, as well as in society as a whole. She could chide a white audience by saying, They think they’re being erudite when they’re only being quiet.   She was actively involved in confronting the barriers that had been placed on the Black population and was in demand because of her own skills in communication and drawing people together.  Her own life was deeply embedded and instrumental in the cultural changes that marked the mature years of her life. Her last years were spent in a wheel chair because of the cancer, but she continued to participate in speaking engagements until her last breath.  Her mantra was: Let me live, until I die.  And she meant to live fully in a way that only death itself could stop.  She was a living force who moved to bring people together and a revelation of what personal courage and self-sacrifice can realize in changing the world.  Knowing her could well change you.  Her question: Are you with us?  

“There is no mistaking what is going on ; it is a regular exodus.  It is without head, tail, or leadership.  It’s greatest factor is momentum, and this is increasing despite amazing efforts on the part of white southerners to stop it.  People are leaving their homes and everything about them, under cover of night, as though they were going on a day’s journey – leaving forever.”  So reported the Cleveland Advocate on April 28, 1917.  “The Great Migration” of black citizens, about six million people between 1915 and 1970, fleeing the “Jim Crow” south to make new lives in the north and western states.  Isabel Wilkerson in the Pulitzer Prize winning “The Warmth of Other suns”, is educating the monks concerning the gritty details of life in the south for blacks prior to the civil rights movement.  This is a tough read and some graphic descriptions of violence were not read in the monastic refectory.  But we have heard enough to have formed a completely new appreciation of the courage, imagination, and faith of millions of migrants stirred by the most elemental call to give expression to their God-given dignity, as well as a desire to develop their talents.  Isabel Wilkerson is the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. 

We have just completed (February 4th) reading A Different Kind of Cell: The Story of a Murderer Who Became a Monk.  While the title didn’t seem  to offer anything more than a potential script for a James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson  1950’s film, it proved to be a very challenging biography. It is the story of Clayton Fountain, a man convicted to prison for the murder of five people.  Written by Rev. W. Paul Jones, a family brother at Assumption Abbey in Missouri, it describes the transformation Clayton experienced while in solitary confinement.  The drama portrays not only his conversion, but the incredulity and disbelief his conversion  continually encountered.  Even Jones, who began an acquaintance with him in 1995, entitled one chapter: From Skepticism to Friendship.  He had established relationships with the monks of Assumption Abbey and was accepted as a family brother there, although he was never able to see the monastery. The book raises questions about a penal system which seems to thwart any attempts at rehabilitation and denies the very possibility of someone not deemed worthy of continued existence experiencing a transforming conversion through God’s grace.

We recently finished Bonnie Thurston’s Hidden in God: Discovering the Desert Vision of Charles de Foucauld.  The book provided quality spiritual reflection on the life and thought of this singular man whose uncompromising response to God has inspired and challenged many.  Thurston provides adequate biographical information to frame her own reflections.  Her basic divisions are geographical, rather than chronological: the hidden life of Nazareth; the spiritual struggle of the desert; and the public life of ministry and service.  She obviously parallels the life of Charles with that of Christ.  The book ends with a chapter on The Cross and Christ with some insightful reflections on the failures and sufferings of life.  Throughout her writing, she calls on the observations of other spiritual writers, most notably Thomas Merton.  A prolific author and Scripture scholar, she writes with the accessible and understandable style of someone who has taught and communicated well.  The book is even suggested as one that a person could use in making a personal retreat.

We recently completed reading To Pray and to Love, a work of Roberta Bondi.  This book was published in l991 (Fortress Press) and thus has been around for a while.  It is a deeply reflective study of the practice of prayer as inspired by the teaching of the desert fathers and mothers.  Raised in the Protestant Christian tradition, she was surprised to discover the wisdom and realism contained in their writings.  The initial part of this work is aimed at introducing the roots of monastic living to an audience wary of the value of sequestered spirituality.

Bondi shares her own experience of expanding her understanding of prayer through contact with the desert tradition.  She moves outside the formal and verbal practices of liturgical prayer and underlines the silent and wordless forms that prayer can assume.  As any relationship changes, the relationship with God will evolve and change through the events and experiences of one’s life.  She insightfully connects the ascetic formulations of desert teaching with the interpersonal and psychologically-filtered struggles of contemporary experience.  She place discussions of humility, discernment and virtue in familiar contexts which can connect the latter with a personalized spirituality.

The chapters of the book move through a progressive development of thought, beginning with the scriptural mandate to “Pray Without Ceasing” to the final “The Desire for God.”  Midway through the book is a helpful treatment of “Only Myself and God” which underlines the solitary and unique dimension of living with God in an unstable and fragmented world.  She addresses questions that are often piously ignored. Her style is personal and clear, and the book offers thoughtful material for examining one’s own assumptions and practices in responding to the call to unceasing prayer. 

Mid-day meal is the main meal at New Melleray, the time when, having put in a morning’s work, you arrive at table with an appetite and a three course meal waiting for you.  It is an odd juxtaposition then to sit down to eat, following the prayer, and hear the Refectory Reader for the week introducing us the teaching of St. John of the Cross, one of the most ascetically challenging programs for spiritual renewal ever devised by a Catholic saint.  Fr. Mark O’Keefe, a monk and priest of St. Meinrad Archabbey, is introducing us to John in his book: “Awakened by Love: The Liberating Ascent of Saint John of the Cross”.  Are you enjoying the taste of that garlic bread with the pesto spread?  Forget it.  In the “dark night of the senses” all such enjoyment will be taken from you as preparation for the “dark night of the spirit” and then the real fasting begins.  Actually, all St. John is teaching is what Christians have believed since the time of Christ: that the gift of authentic and deep prayer is bestowed on those whose daily living has made them fertile ground for the gift of contemplation.  Also, Christians learned, centuries before St. John, that on’es feelings or particular “experience” in prayer are not the best measure when judging the quality and depth of one’s prayer or communion with God.  “Do not run from the bitterness that may be found in spiritual exercises”, John tells us.  Our own Cistercian spiritual masters, especially St. Bernard of Clairvaux, had a special devotion to the humanity of Christ and Cistercian spirituality has often been characterized as “the school of light” in contra-distinction to the Carmelite “school of darkness”.  Cistercian monks seek an experience of God, (with apologies to no one), and excel at finding the fullness of God in human realities, especially community and friendship.

In a famous talk given to engineers in 1901 at a meeting in Chicago, Wilbur Wright, wanted to demonstrate to engineers the challenge of achieving the equilibrium required to keep a flying machine in the air.  Suspending a single sheet of paper in the air, he dropped it and invited the audience to note its erratic motion and lack of decorum as it descended curling, flipping, twirling, darting right or left, at no point keeping any respectable appearance of its original flatness.  The story of the Wright Brothers related by David McCullough, and especially the story of Wilbur Wright might be summed up as the story of a man managing to become airborne while maintaining something of the original flatness of the son of a Methodist bishop.  Actually, the rather distinctive lifestyle of the Wright family is one of the surprises of this very well written book.  The Wright Brothers never went to college, and their father, the Bishop, didn’t trouble himself much if they didn’t attend church so long as their absence was explained by absorption in a worthwhile activity – like originating man-powered flight.  The brothers were not adventurers but amazingly deliberate, methodical, and thoughtful inventors who spent countless hours observing the flight of birds.  I don’t recall God’s name being mentioned in the book so far.  Surely the quintessential American inventor and genius met God at a moment as he was being carried through the air.  It is left to the reader to imagine at what that moment that might have happened and how the Wright Brothers might have talked about the encounter.  Over all, the monks have appreciated learning more than we ever knew about these admirable men and their unique achievement.

“The Noonday Devil: Acedia, The Unnamed Evil of Our Times” by Dom Jean-Charles Nault, has been a vivid reminder to the monks of that mysterious spiritual malady that assails the soul of a monk at mid-day.  The original Greek root of “Acedia” meant to be without care – specifically, to be careless with respect to the honors due to the deceased.  Think a moment about what such carelessness reflects about the interior condition of a human being and you are pointed right at Dom Jean-Charles’ central thesis: that Acedia is a much graver and destructive spiritual malady than mere “sloth”, as it came to be thought of in the Medieval period.  This message is delivered by the author with a certain urgency and compelling seriousness which impressed the monks.  Among the chief aims of this “demon”; this actual distaste for the love of God itself, is to conceal from the monk afflicted by it that fact that he has any problem at all.  Weariness, melancholy, feeling overworked, discouragement, depression, might all be more readily recognized as pointers to this disease of the soul, but instability and activism are likewise signs that a monk has been overtaken by this demon.  Finally, Abbot Jean-Charles challenges his contemporaries to recognize that, left to our own devices as “authors” of ourselves and of our own destinies, we ultimately despair of ever being able to find a meaning for our existence.  Acedia, in the end, is rejection, distaste, even revulsion toward the truth of your greatness as a son or daughter of the Most High God.  But one must enter the struggle against this demon with hope and indeed there is grounds to be hopeful.  As Evagrius, (one of the first monks to teach and write about acedia) wrote: when one has actively and in faith engaged in combat with this demon, “a state of peace and ineffable joy ensues in the soul after this struggle.”

In preparation for the 170th Anniversary of the founding of New Melleray Abbey on July 16, the community is reading about our history as recorded in various sources.   Our present refectory book is a thesis written by Benedict Julian Hussmann of the University of Iowa in 1989.  The author sets out to study the major facets of the recent history of New Melleray as related to him by monks at that time.  Hussmann is particularly interested in the changes in the monastic culture which came about under the influence of evolution in both church and secular culture following Vatican II.  The very substantial growth in the population of the monastery from the late 40’s and through the 50’s was a blessing with long term effects as the community undertook a major building project to accommodate the newcomers.  Among on-going challenges which followed in the years of the “big influx”, was how to bring monks to agreement on how the vow of poverty should be lived individually and communally.  Concerning the departure of so many monks following Vatican II, Hussmann engages a complex reality.  Some monks left monastic life because they wanted to avail themselves of opportunities for personal development which the culture at that time greatly encouraged.  Others left because they regretted the mitigation of the rigorous ascetical practices of Trappist life prior to Vatican II.  This life represented to them the real possibility of giving one’s whole self to God.  Life in the monastery after the reforms were introduced seemed not to give expression to their own highest aspirations as they understood them.  This reviewing of the long and complex history of our abbey is thought-provoking.  It also awakens prayer to God in thanksgiving for the mystery of this place and for the witness provided the church and the world by so many men who lived here.