My monastic experience

Quotes from a great source on modern monasticism: Journeying with the Northumbria Community
"Alone in God we will find ourselves together and know the gift of Community."

"Often it is prophetic people, visionaries who are used by God to pioneer and found these new communities, so that what develops is not only reactive and responsive to current trends, (that is wrong) but it is also proactive and prophetic in pioneering new ways of being Church. (How can we help put it right?) So Community begins, not as Community but as individual pioneers responding in vulnerability and originality to the call of God. Following a vocation but not knowing how it would appear or what it would look like in the future. Their pioneering drew others who shared a similar heart and a common commitment to the values and way of life being forged on the anvil of their experiences.  Often it is a journey without maps, with risk taking and experimentation characterising the early formative years. As they pioneered and explored, a Community emerged around them, unplanned and spontaneous. Then out of a life actually being lived, with shared relationships and common values, a way of life was formed. The Rule becomes the interpretive framework for vocation and vision of all subsequent Companions in Community; a means of handing on the tradition."

My own monastic experience (written spring 2008)

In the Celtic tradition of Christianity there is an idea of monasticism that involves seasons of both isolation and service or community.  The idea of contemplative isolation for days, weeks or months at a time comes from the belief that God does speak to us through our own thoughts, reading scripture and in simply clearing all mental clutter.  This would be done in a cell - a self sentenced prison, only this is not to keep the devout from getting out, but to keep the world from getting in.  But that was only half of the idea - the other half involves the coracle - the little boat-for-one that, having received a vision or a word or a command from the Lord, the devout would take to the seas and go to whatever far-off pagan Isle they felt led. 

The idea of the cell and the coracle is one of the main ideas behind the Northumbrian Community - a group of modern monastics who have turned to the Celtic Christians not as an example of the ideal golden age, but simply as a model for living out the ideas of Christian Faith in a day to day life - private contemplation, community, discipleship and service.

After Molly was hospitalized I stopped going to church - actually, we had been slack in our attendance for a few weeks on account of Sylvie's impatience with sitting and being quiet for long stretches of time.  We could not bear to put her in the nursery and yet we were having a difficult time paying attention to what was going on outside of our own pew.  This only escalated our frustration with the tone of the church’s message. 

But once Molly was in the hospital I could not bring myself to church - it was not a problem with God, nor any problem I had with Christianity - only a problem I had with spending any more time separated from my family than I had to.  I spent my Saturday and Sunday mornings bringing my two and a half year old to the hospital - down Geddes road, around the bend, down the hill to the hospital - and for those few hours we were together again - a family - and our home was that hospital room.  And once Aine was born and Molly was home - we spent our mornings going to see our newborn daughter.  All the while I knew that it was God that had helped Aine beat the odds and survive.  I knew it was God (aided by some remarkable doctors and nurses) that was seeing to her growth.  It was God that was seeing to it that her lungs were strong and her mind was developing.  No - I felt closer to God when I was holding my miracle baby than I had ever felt in church for the previous year.  I was bitter, not towards God, not towards Christianity, but towards some Christians who, it seemed to me, saw church as a social club and saw God as a self-help guru whom was expected to hand out blessings but was to expect no real commitments in the lives of his followers.  So during this time and for the year after Aine's birth, I did not rely on church for my spiritual growth.  I read scripture, I read the inspired words of others, I prayed, I contemplated - in short, I had formed around me my own spiritual cell in which I was working out my own salvation with fear and trembling.  It was about eight months after Aine was born, five after she came home to us that I began to feel the word or command from the Lord - I was given a vision and I began to feel the urge to leave my Cell and take to my metaphorical coracle and go to my mission.  The problem was that it is difficult to leave a metaphorical cell and get into a metaphorical boat and find my mission, when all I had was a distinctive vision of what the Lord wanted me to make of myself, without a clear picture of how I would get there.  It is easier, I think to find your way out of a real cell and into a real dingy and to a real island of real pagans. 


(Upon Further Reflection, 2010)
Two years later, it seems, I have been blessed to see that vision begin to grow into a reality.  In 2009 we began meeting with an old friend with similar yearnings for community, and over time we gathered more friends to join us.  Re-reading the quotes from the Northumbrian Community's webpage, it seems they were prophetic words for our little community.  Together we discuss deep philosophical and theological issues, watch movies, play games, and share meals, worship and our burdens together.  When I re-read these words that I had written for myself two years ago, I was excited to see how far we had come in that time, and I look forward to where God may lead us in the future.  Amen!