{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?
February 23, 2024 at 2:27 pm
Jeff, your reminiscence took me back to my own pilgrimage to the Benedictine monastery at Conyers, Georgia, forty years ago. For me the service of Compline was most memorable. The chanting of the Psalms in unison transported me to a realm beyond the smog, noise, and congestion of life in the big city. I could use a little of it still now. The next best thing where I live is the chanting of flocks of birds that descend upon our grounds in the dead of winter. (Psalm 104)
February 25, 2024 at 3:21 pm
I have a recording of one of the Holy Cross services. The chant was of many voices blended into one by the daily repetition of the song. I can still pick out the guestmaster’s voice. My first visit there was in our 3rd year when Ken Goodpasture took us there.
February 26, 2024 at 7:52 am
Jeff, this took me back to a retreat house in Maine, Greenfire Farm, where I stayed two or three times, when I was a Director of Christian Education at an Episcopal Church. It was run by a small group of women who were Episcopal priests, one of whom had been one of the “Philadelphia eleven.” It was housed in a converted farmhouse and barn.
My first evening there, we gathered in a cosy room with a fireplace for the daily practice of a half hour group meditation before dinner. There was an altar with symbols from Buddhist practice as well as Christian. I was nervous. I was pretty sure I would be unable to make it through the thirty minutes. The meditation time began with the use of a large hand-made glass singing bowl. We were told to close our eyes and listen to the sound as it sung out, and then as it died out. We were to let the quieting of the sound take us into the quiet. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I found that there is strong energy in a group of people meditating together. The 30 minutes flew by, and I was hooked.
Thank you for this meditation. I’m loving all your rooms.
February 28, 2024 at 10:35 pm
These spiritual retreat moments, half hours or weeks, are life changing, aren’t they?