Volume 30, Nr. 2, June 2000 Richardton, ND 58652
I have recently returned from the International Medieval Studies Congress in Kalamazoo, MI. This annual event attracts around 3000 persons from around the world to some 500 offered sessions on every aspect of medieval life. Needless to say, many of these sessions have some connection to monastic history and spirituality, from the archeology of the buildings to the lives of major figures, such as Bernard and Hildegard, to the liturgical life of the monastery. It also goes without saying that there is a great diversity in the degree of understanding and sympathy with which scholars address this history.
Among those presenting sessions is the American Benedictine Academy itself, as well as the Cistercian Studies Institute, who have contributed greatly to an understanding of the life from the inside and have done much to improve the communications and the relations between the scholarly world and the practitioners. At one of the ABA sessions, a prominent scholar, who has written extensively about monastic history and spirituality, asked a very important question. He expressed curiosity about how monastics really feel about the great proliferation of both academic and popular works by "outsiders."
First of all, it was good of him to recognize and ask the question. Too often, we are portrayed as the scenery in someone's personal (but they believe definitive) journey or as an intriguing topic for some amateur social scientist in search of an aboriginal tribe. The problem, of course, is that there is no one answer. The writings of these observers run the gamut from those who present sensitive and very accessible portrayals to the notorious scholar who, upon visiting Eibingen, told the sisters there that they were not singing the office as they should because she was a scholar of Hildegard and her music.
We are often too close to ourselves to know how to explain it to anyone else. While some recent books by monastics have been very good in their articulation of the values, someone like Kathleen Norris is able to answer questions for contemporary people like herself in ways which we could not ourselves do, and she has clearly touched a vast audience who might otherwise never have known us.
On the other hand, there is a danger that any of these views become a single lens for observation. There is at least one popular press book, for example, which actually dares to define lectio by describing one single prayer method (some relative of centering prayer, I believe). St. Benedict would no doubt be very shocked to find this in a book's glossary. Yet the reader has no way of knowing that this is grossly inaccurate and, perhaps, the author himself does not know it if he has simply generalized from his experience at a single monastery.
The single-lens problem is not only one of outsiders. In my work with oblates and retreatants, I often find people whose appreciation of the Rule is based almost exclusively on the interpretation of a single author. The popularity of someone with the wisdom and experience of Sister Joan Chittister is wonderful, but there is a delicate line between appreciation of the Rule and devotion to Joan's particular vision of the meaning of the Rule.
This is only one area where people may come to adore us in the ideal and set up expectations of themselves and us which have a weak basis in reality. Many monastics find themselves embarrassed when they read the romanticized reports which would have us living a blissful life of peace and prayer in warmly lit chapels far from the world and its turmoil. Wouldn't it be better if people knew that we struggle against our temptations and our busy schedules and our annoyances with each other, just like they do, and can give them some wisdom from our experience, not our escape? This is what the best of the popular-press offerings do. This, I believe, is what is bringing us the great influx of holy, sincere, energetic oblates and retreatants. If we do not continue to invite them, educate them, offer them literature which is sound, in conjunction with actual exposure to us as real people, they will look uncritically at the current trendy publishing wave of "monastic" works.
This is what has made the ABA so important at Kalamazoo. This is why talented and sensitive writers, both monastic and lay, need to produce solid works for the mass audience. This is why our own monasteries must be welcoming, and at the same time challenging and realistic, with the visitors and scholars who come to us, as well as with the vocation and oblate inquirers. We have much to offer the world in a time which desperately needs some of our values. It is not really in our power to control who says what about us. We can only control the example we give these observers so that the world can discover the truth.
Judith Sutera, OSB, Editor
Mount St. Scholastica
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