{Lent 2024 arrived and I determined to write about rooms for forty days. Why not?}
I have written previously in this Peace, Grace, and Jazz blog of my annual monastery retreats in the early years of my ministry. Each summer, the Guestmaster at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, VA would welcome me and five other guests for a Monday through Friday spiritual sojourn in the Trappist guesthouse near the banks of the Shenandoah River. Fr. Stephen was a bear of a man, with gentle voice, warm sense of humor, and lots of stories about his Cistercian (Benedictine) vocation. I was usually the only “Protestant” in the house, but Stephen continually stressed the historic hospitality that followers of the Benedictine Order offered.
The guesthouse back then had been a re-purposed tenant farmhouse about a half mile away from the main abbey buildings, yet still within the gated confines of the cloister. Each guest had a small bedroom on the second floor, generally furnished with just a cot-like bed, a simple desk, a modest bureau, and maybe a closet. We were free to set our own schedules, that is, there was no requirement that we participate in the daily monastic routines or offices. Breakfast was on our own, but lunch and dinner were served in the guesthouse dining room at a certain time. I recall that lunch was fairly simple, and that dinner was prepared in the main monastery kitchen. Even though the monks were vegetarian, guests often had meat for the main meal.
One of the few rules of the house was that we guests were to clean up after each meal. The guestmaster was our welcomer, guide, and spiritual director, not our kitchen servant. You might be wondering about the Trappist vow of silence and how that impacted the fellowship around the table. Father Stephen had no problem conversing with us during the day, if there was a need or desire on our part. While we guests were requested to observe silence during our stay (to avoid intrusion on the silent retreat of fellow guests), meal time was intentionally a time to share, and Stephen’s presence with us at table guided conversation and story-telling. After the meal, we bussed the table, and gathered in the kitchen to wash and dry dishes and put them away.
Now, there was a dishwasher in the kitchen, but Stephen said it was off-limits. He insisted that our communal time around the kitchen sink did more to build community than quiet living room conversations or chomping on roast beef in the dining room. Whose turn to wash and whose to dry? The daily ritual of “doing the dishes” was a sign of servanthood as well as fellowship. We served one another not only by passing the plates (family style) around the dining room table, but by washing one another’s plates and flatware and mugs and glasses, so the next day we could start fresh, meal-wise.
It was so simple. It took less than twenty minutes. We continued meal-time conversations, got to know one another better, and grew into a family of sorts by the end of our week-long stay.
About the time I was enjoying those monastery retreats, someone made a movie called “The Jesus Roast.” It was a comedic take on Jesus’ last meal with his disciples. I know that sounds sacreligious, and at first viewing it did seem odd to hear Jesus’ closest friends “roasting” him, that is, jesting with him about their three years together. But then, that’s what true friends do sometimes: they are painfully honest, they cover their uncertainties with humor, and even at a memorial gathering, people laugh to shield or treat their sorrow. So, Jesus’ friends said the kind of things most of us would hold in. There was comedy at the table. And when the last supper was over, the Jesus whom we know to have been a foot-washer as his friends first arrived, took a towel, cleared the table , and washed the dishes. His disciples watched in discomfort.
Cleaning up after one another may not have been one of the Commandments or subject of the sermon on the mount, but doesn’t it flow from those teachings? And isn’t it a good practice for Lent?
Peace, Grace, and Jazz! 