The Abbot’s Notebook for February 8, 2017
Blessings to you! Here I am back at Christ in the Desert and still working at adjust to the 14 hour time difference between here at Vietnam. I am always happy to be home even though there are challenges to being here and to serving as abbot. There is no life, at least that I know of, in which there are no challenges and in which everything is perfect!
The return trip from Vietnam found me and the two postulants who were traveling with me taking into the inspection section of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. When I was in the airport, preparing to leave, one of the boxes that I was bringing with me had fabric in it and there was space for a few other things. My friends who were helping me put in the individual packets of coffee and also packaged nuts and packaged pasta sauce. That was all that I was aware of. When I declared what I had, I did not mention food because I had been told many times that packaged foods did not need to be declared.
The inspector told me that ALL foods had to be declared. And when they opened the box, they also found unpacked ham products, of which I was completely unaware. I was fined $500 and also lost my Global Entry membership. So coming into the United States was filled with surprises. Such is life when living and not supervising every detail of what went into the box that I had checked!
So I was home on Friday night and Saturday morning Joshua the Beagle and Thumper the Beagle/Bassett mix, went out for the usual time in the hills. Joshua did not return and now I am distressed with that. It is not easy to be attached to pets! And some would say that monks should not have pets at all.
So what do Christians do when confronted with mistakes in others or in themselves? Do we panic? Surely we can apologize. In the case of passing through Customs, we may pay fines and lose status, but that is not the end of the world. The challenge is simply to go on living and to remain loving to all, even customs agents who have jobs to do that can make us feel badly!
Such an experience is just part of living and we must learn how to love everyone else, even those whose jobs put them at odds with us from time to time. In the monastery, the real challenge is to love the brothers whom I find difficult or with whom I would probably not related if they were not here in the monastery. So often we monks joke and say: these are not the people that I would choose to live with if I were living outside of a monastery. Instead, God sends us all kinds of brothers with whom we must learn to live and for whom we must be willing to sacrifice our lives.
As I reflect on the challenge of loving others, I also reflect on the pain of loss. When Joshua the Beagle disappeared, my heart began to think of parents who have lost children and often don’t even know where their children have gone. I thought also of children whose parents, one or both, have disappeared, and often the children have no idea where they are. Our world is full of such situations and of people who have deep wounds from such losses and separations. If I can grieve over the loss of a beloved dog, how much more others can grieve over the loss of a child or of a parent!
Separation from the people we love also happens with death, which in some ways is a kinder separation than an unexplained disappearance. I had a seven year old nephew who died in my arms in 1975. Even now, forty-two years later, when I think of him, I feel the pain of loss in my heart and in my being. When I think of our Brother John Dat who died unexpectedly from a brain aneurism at age 37 or of our Brother Odilon who drowned at the age of 26, I still get tears in my eyes and feel the pain. There is no healing of such wounds but time allows us to live more graciously with the pain.
True life always has both the sadness of suffering and pain of various types and the joy and delight of all that is good as well. Our spirituality has to help us walk through the valley of darkness and also live the joy of delight. Spiritually we can speak of consolation and desolation. Joy and sadness temper one another without dulling our perceptions. Consolation and desolation are part of our experiences and help us be aware of the full fabric of our human existence.
On the other hand, there is part of us that longs for that time when joy will take away all suffering and pain, when tears will be wiped away by the triumph of God’s love for us. Some saints have expressed a concern that they might not be so aware of God’s love if there is no suffering. Yet our faith tells us that no eye has seen nor ear heard what truly awaits us in the final embrace of the Lord at the time of our death.
January and February in our Monastery of Christ in the Desert always bring the challenge of darkness and still long nights, of cold and still snow and mud, of the lack of great celebrations and the coming of Lent. We adjust our life here in these months for at least a few weeks of extra sleep in order to gentle the challenges of these days. This is another example of this awareness of joy and sadness, consolation and desolation. There is wisdom in learning how to live!
As always I send you my love and prayers. I will celebrate Holy Mass for you and for your needs and intentions once this week. Please continue to pray for me and for all of the women and men associated with the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
