The Abbot’s Notebook for January 18, 2017
Blessings to you! It is wet, grim and gray weather here for this past week. I like it better if it gets really cold and there is sunlight. We are famous for having sun almost every day and that is one of the elements that helps keep a community happy. But sometimes in the grim month of January, there is less sun, more cloud cover and just unpleasant weather. Because I like all four seasons, I accept the challenge of this kind of weather.
Now when we are only 35 or 40 monks in the house, the community seems small. When I arrived here in 1974, I was the third monk in the community. We remained a small community for many years. We laughed in 1982 when Abbot David Parry told us that we needed to have at least 25 active monks in the community to live the life that we stated that we wanted to live: a strong Benedictine life very close to the Rule of Saint Benedict as much as possible.
Over the years we grew but we built for only 24, thinking that we would probably never be that large. Now we are building again and we feel small when there are only 35 or 40 in the house. This indicates a lot about how we can adapt to various sizes. For sure, the larger size gives us more options and we are more able to help other houses and to help our own Congregation. It is a real challenge, however, to keep forming a larger group into a community that functions as a community and not simply as an institution.
Along with that kind of concern is the challenge of living here, so far from everything, and having to maintain our own water and electric systems and provide for recycling and garbage disposal—and, finally, trying to assure that the propane trucks can come and deliver the needed propane in sufficient quantity to allow for those times when our road is not passable.
Only once in the years that I have been here have we really considered moving out of this place and seeking another. The reason at that time was the proposal to raise the water level behind the Abiquiu Dam. Raising the water level would have cut off the roads north of Abiquiu and would have forced us who live north of the Abiquiu Lake to make a detour into the mountains and to come to the Monastery through Tierra Amarilla. That would have added about two hours extra to the journey from Santa Fe, which was already two hours away. We wondered if we could live so cut off from access to a larger town. In the end, the plan to raise the water level was abandoned and we have stayed here in our canyon.
This week our water system failed us, but only four a few hours. Then the electricity went off at the north power house and that also was restored fairly quickly. In the past, when these systems failed, it sometimes took us a week to get things back to normal and we simply adjusted.
Spiritual life is often about adjusting to the real life that is happening. The early monks recognized this challenge. We can often be virtuous when everything goes as planned and as expected. It is the unplanned and the unexpected that challenge our spirituality because we have to adjust immediately and often do not have time to prepare.
There are stories of the early monks speaking among themselves. One of the monks tells how he thinks he has overcome all temptations. The other monk soon shows him that he has not overcome all temptations but has only arranged his life in such a way that many temptations do not come to him. When they come once again, the brother has not overcome them but must struggle with them. In these stories, it is again the element of the unexpected and the unplanned for that cause the temptations to arise once more.
Part of the value of monastic life is that normally we avoid a lot of temptations by living in a somewhat controlled environment. But today, even in a controlled environment, there are lots of unplanned things that happen. One of the great challenges is how to discipline the use of the internet and the means of social communication. This is a challenge for everyone right now, not just monks. A serious spirituality knows that there must be a strong and vibrant discipline in the use of the internet and social media.
For myself, I find that I sleep better if I don’t use the internet at night. I pray better if I don’t use it in the early morning. So I work to use the internet only from 9:00 am until 7:00 pm. That does not always work, but it is still my aim in order that my spiritual life and even my human life may flourish in the Lord.
Young people today come to the monastery being used to being connected 24 hours a day to the social media. Weaning the young people away from such a use is a great challenge. Most of the older ones don’t have that tendency but once in a while even the older ones have to learn how to take more distance from the internet and social media. When I was younger, sometimes a spiritual director would speak about the danger of reading novels! That seems not the problem today that it was years ago. Today the challenge is learning how to relate with discipline through the internet and social media.
For the monk, the first value of our life is to establish a deep and strong relationship with the Lord and to keep that relationship primary in our lives. Saint Benedict asks of the one who wants to enter monastic life: does he truly seek God? It seemed normal that those who would come to the monastery would be interested in doing that, but today it cannot be taken for granted that people even understand what that might mean in their lives!
There is no going back. So we must keep moving forward and finding ways to draw the new monks to that deep and nurturing relationship with God that can sustain a lifetime of prayer and sacrifice.
Enough for this week! I promise my prayers for you and for your intentions. I will celebrate Holy Mass once this week for you and I ask your prayers for me and for all the women and men associated to our monastery. I send you my love and prayers.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
