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This article appears in the Lenten Wilderness issue of Trinity News , the magazine of Trinity Church-St. Paul's Chapel.

By Kathleen Norris

I was recently afforded the unusual privilege of joining a Benedictine community in North Dakota for its annual retreat. The community is a large one, over one hundred women, social workers, chaplains, professors. Like many modern Benedictines, they try to strike a balance between the active and contemplative life, and once a year they make a retreat that returns them to the stillness at the heart of monasticism. One sister described it as drawing water from an inexhaustible well.

The retreat schedule was simple and livable, reflecting a moderation that is typically Benedictine. Morning prayer at 7:00, followed by breakfast; Eucharist at 11:00, followed by lunch; midday prayer at 1:00; coffee (optional) at 2:00; from 3:00 to 3:30 a second conference; vespers at 5:00 followed by dinner. Free time allowed for walks, reading, private prayer, naps, and assigned work, such as setting tables.

The most wonderful thing about all this is that it was conducted without chit chat. I am a frequent guest at several monasteries on the Great Plains that follow silence at certain hours, but I had never before immersed myself in the kind of silence that sinks into your bones. I felt as if I were breathing deeply for the first time in years.

To live communally in silence is to admit a new power into your life. In a sense, you are merely giving silence its due. But this silence is not passive, and soon you realize that it has the power to change you. I’ve gained a new respect for my more contemplative friends, Cistercians and Trappists; to live this kind of silence, day in, day out, must be an act of bravery.

During the retreat even meals were held in silence, with the ancient monastic practice of table reading. As we ate, a sister read to us from an excellent essay on ecology. Meals in common were holy to Saint Benedict, and Benedictine life aims for continuity between church and dining hall, a continuity that silence tends to amplify. As we scraped and stacked our dishes I noted that, as is usual with monastic people, very little food was wasted. You take what you need and eat what you take. The article reminded us that we all have a long way to go, but we could see that there was a connection between what we had been praying in church and practicing at our meal.

The meal also reflected the profound humility before nature, evident in the earliest Christian monastics, that has endured in religious life for over 1,500 years. Like mystics, monastic people have often been a counterweight in a religion that has often denigrated nature. Modern monastics are more fully grounded in the natural world than many who live in the rat-race, measuring time in soundbites or 30-second commercials. Even urban monasteries run on a natural rhythm, taking notice of sunrise and sunset with morning prayer and evensong.

I was intrigued by the conferences presented during the retreat, pithy talks on the life and ministry of Jesus given by a monk who teaches in a Benedictine seminary. I once heard him address a general audience on monastic history. But his retreat talks were not lectures; instead they were true to what Benedicta Ward has termed the essence of the ancient desert monks’ spirituality, that which “was not taught but caught; it was a whole way of life.” The retreat conferences were soundings that could only have come from someone who has lived as a monk for many years, practicing lectio divina, the Benedictine term for meditative reading. Coming out of the depths of silence, these talks elicited a response that could only lead back to silence.

I’ve done many poetry readings in my life and have attended countless more. I’ve also sat through sermons. Never had I experienced anything like this. The talks, preceded by ten or fifteen minutes of recollection, in which presenter and audience sat together in silence, were held in the church where we had Mass and common prayer. The space provided continuity and deepened our listening. Paying attention became a serious matter. “Listen” is the first word of Benedict’s Rule and, of course, it is silence that makes listening possible.

Ora et labora , pray and work, is a Benedictine motto, and the monastic life aims to join the two. This perspective liberates prayer from God-talk; a well-tended garden, a wellmade cabinet, a well-swept floor, can be a prayer. Benedict defined the liturgy of the hours as a monastery’s most important work: it is, as the prioress explained it, “a sanctification of each day by common prayer at established times.” Many people think it’s foolish to spend so much time this way, but the experience of Benedictines over 1,500 years has taught them that doing anything else is unthinkable. It may be fashionable to assert that all is holy, but not many are willing to haul ass to church four or five times a day to sing about it. It’s not for the faint of heart.

My monasticism is an odd one. It’s not play-acting, though I’ve wondered about that at times. It isn’t even a case of what monks call “Benedictine-wannabe.” No matter how much liturgy I attend with my monastic friends, I am not vowed to their communities, and that’s what counts. But through the grace of Benedictine hospitality I have felt welcomed to the church for the first time since I was a child. Theirs is, in fact, a childlike church, though it’s anything but childish. Monks sing a good deal, they listen to stories without much interpretation, and despite (or perhaps because of) their disciplined lives, they seem more at ease with their faith than most other Christians I’ve met, tending to live it quietly rather than proselytize. What began as a strong attraction — the first time I visited a monastery, I dreamed about it every night for a week — has slowly developed into something deeper.

I come and go from the monastery, of course, and when I leave I try to carry with me some of its peace. As I often depart by Greyhound Bus, I face an immediate challenge. One day in spring I left the monastery reluctantly. The winter had been hellish and I was exhausted. The last thing I wanted was a long bus ride to a conference where I’d have to be sociable. I hugged my monk friends good-bye, boarded the bus and collapsed into a seat. Glancing across the aisle, I was greeted by an incarnation of Psalm 131, which we’d read aloud at vespers the night before: “like a weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul.” A young woman, a poor young woman, to judge by her shabby clothes and traveling case, had dozed off with a small child asleep on her breast. Mother and child presented a perfect picture of peace.

Welcome to the world, I told myself; I hope I know a blessing when I see one. Later, when a young couple nearby began necking as I came across a passage from The Song of Songs in my breviary, I thought: how perfectly blessed we are. The bus sped on along the interstate, and I began to miss my husband, and as the couple’s kisses gave way to a sleepy cuddling, the monk within me sang the praises of all the simple pleasures.

From the book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris, published by Ticknor & Fields, a Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, NY. Copyright © 1993 by Kathleen Norris. Reprinted by permission.

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