The Abbot’s Notebook for January 25, 2017
Blessings to you! Life sometimes gets crazy for me, especially when most of the other superiors of the monastery are away and I get to pick up all of their work. At the beginning of any New Year, I am also responsible for closing the accounting books for the past year, and that sometimes takes a considerable about of time. This year it was complicated because I was supposed to leave for Vietnam for a short visit on January 24th and return on February 3rd. It would have taken me two days to get to Vietnam and two days to return, so it would have been indeed a short visit.
What happened was that I forgot to get a visa for Vietnam and only realized that on the morning of January 23rd. How embarrassing! I had to send an e-mail to more than 25 people in Vietnam, apologizing for changing my plans and thus affecting their plans. It takes at least 48 hours to get a visa for Vietnam is one is living close to a Vietnamese Consulate. Here from Christ in the Desert, it would take me normally at least a week. Thus there was no possibility of putting off the trip for a few days. And changing tickets would have been costly. So, I simply had to apologize and announce to all involved that I could not go to Vietnam.
Then Brother James who is in Vietnam waiting for me, wrote me an e-mail and told me to look at getting an online express Visa that I could get stamped in the Ho Chi Minh Airport. I did not believe that this could be done, but was obedient to my brother. Sure enough, even with only a few hours before my departure, I could still do this and would have to print the letter in an airport on the way but could show the digital version to the airport agents and board the plane. What an up and down day Monday, January 23rd, was for me. So I left at 2:00 am on January 24th to catch a 6:00 am flight in Albuquerque to begin the trip to Vietnam.
The last time that I mentioned that a lot of our brothers were traveling, someone wrote and wondered how we ever pay for all of the travel that we do. That is a good question! When I arrived here, we did not have family visits. On the other hand, if something important came up, we were allowed to go home. We were only three monks at that time and all from the United States. Now we are about 50 monks and from 16 countries. Eventually we were told in a formal evaluation from outside (a Canonical Visitation) that we should arrange to have vacations every year. We resisted that and agree to have a family visit once every three years because we did not think that we could afford more than that. Eventually we moved to a family visit every other year, depending on our finances.
We get the money for these visits from our work and from donations. We don’t let the families pay for such visits because that is not the right thing to do. We always have to think what is right in these situations. I remember when I was young and a monastery gave each monk two weeks of vacation each year and also gave them $25 for that two weeks. That meant that those who had wealthy families or families with money could go home but those who lived a long way away could not go home. One monk had not been home in 25 years. So when I was appointed superior here and when we were asked to introduce some kind of family visit, we all tried to make it an equal experience for all.
God has always given us enough resources here that we can share them with others. We are not wealthy but when we need money, it shows up as a gift from God from others. Sometimes it is from people we don’t even know. At other times, it is from people that we know well. For me, it has been one of the miracles of this monastery: always enough but never so much that we don’t have to work.
This clearly affects our spiritual lives! Saint Benedict is so clear in his Rule that idleness is the enemy of the soul. We monks need to work every day in order to maintain a spiritual balance in our lives. Saint Benedict values prayer and reading the Scriptures very, very highly. If a monk cannot or will not spend time reading the Scriptures, then that monk is to be given work so that he does not spend his time in idleness.
Spiritually, we need to learn to wait on the Lord, to do the work of the spiritual life and to remain humble as we go about trying to be faithful. This is not easy in a world that values immediate results and success. The spiritual life is about patient endurance, about keeping on even when there seem to be no results, about continuing on the path even when it seems useless. This is not easy!
Some weeks ago, a brother told me that I should have my memory tested because I had been showing signs, to him at least, of forgetting things more than I should. When I realized that I had forgotten to obtain a visa to go to Vietnam, I wondered again if I were having memory problems. So far it does not seem like it. I did have my doctor go over this possibility but so far there seem no indications—just normal forgetfulness. Both of my parents had dementia, so I watch for such signs. They both had glaucoma and macular degeneration as well, so I am regularly check for those possibilities also. So far, no signs of any of that. This is part of the challenge of living, but also of spirituality, as we age. We cannot control lots of things and so learn to check out what we can and to be at peace with whatever happens.
So here I am, writing this to you and it will arrive to your e-mail or online when I am still in the air on my flight to Vietnam. This is not the quiet monastic life that Saint Benedict described in his Rule for Monks, but it is the life that I live today, trying to follow his Rule and be faithful to the Lord Jesus. It would have been impossible for Saint Benedict to have imagine our monastic life today and yet we still try to live as closely to his Rule for Monks as is possible for us.
Be assured of my prayers for you and for all of your needs and intentions. Please keep me in your prayers and pray also for all the sisters and brothers of our community and the communities associated with ours. I send you my love and prayers.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
