Sunday read: "There is no Wrath in God".

A greeting from Chuck's retreat at St. John's Abbey, a story from the inner monastery, what we are reading to get through a time like this, and an invitation to share.

A bronze of the young Benedict on the campus of St. John’s Abbey.

Dear fellow pilgrim, let me extend a warm welcome to the many new readers who found us reading my last piece on the screaming preacher man. Thank you all for responding so kindly and engaging in this discussion on toxic religion. I am glad you are here at our heart’s “Cloister” where we write from our heart to yours.

What a week this was! Am I the only one who feels like a truck has driven over me? Thus I looked to my husband Chuck who often sits and reads like the events of the world do not hit him as much. Can you write for us, I asked him, and share some of your calm and wisdom? And also some of what you are reading, please? And so I am glad he did. Will you join us in the sharing? Peace and Love, Almut

Dear Friends,

Every weekday morning for the past two months, I have walked or biked through what is charmingly called “Central Park” here in our small midwestern town to take Hannah to daycare.  Sometimes I have our five-year-old daughter on my shoulders and she carries her backpack.  Sometimes we walk together. Sometimes, when she is tired, she is in the baby carriage.  And sometimes, when I am late, she is in the bike trailer. 

It always feels idyllic, with Victorian houses, old maple trees, and clean sidewalks. And yet, there is a ghost that haunts me occasionally on the southwest corner of the park.  It is where the preacher man stood on his stool of corrupt self-righteousness and screamed obscenities at my wife Almut.  She writes about this with calm insight here, and if you have not read it, it is worth your time.  Still, it is the shades of the small gaggle of accusers in their rumpled suits that haunt me there.

But also, sometimes not.   Some fine mornings, Hannah and I walk through that corner and smell no lingering trace of the sour brimstone. 

Perhaps your week has been like this.  It has indeed been a difficult and wrenching week.  Wars and rumors of war.  Lingering pestilence and plague.  Political unrest.  One longs for those moments of idyllic peace and pleasure.  And longs to hear that all will be well. 

This weekend I have been at a Retreat at St.  John’s Abbey about 2 hours drive north of Central Park.  And the Conferences have been about inspirational Benedictines.  Yesterday was Julian of Norwich.  She too lived in frightening times.  This weekend I have heard not only her famous phrase “All will be well.” I have also received a glimpse of her visionary theology.

Remarkably for her time, Julian insists that
“There is no wrath in God” and that “God delights in us.” 
This is not sour brimstone.  Nor is it naive optimism. 
It is a fulsome vision of God, full of love for God’s own creation. 
It reminds me of how I delight in my daughter (in my better moments). 
And it reminds me of how I should delight in her. 

But for now, on this blessed Sunday, take this blessing from the monastery, and from St. Julian:

Peace to you from the monastery, Chuck (with Almut and Hannah in spirit).

PS: Below you find what I am reading these days. Please join the sharing and let us know what you are reading, too, in the comments.

What Chuck is reading

• Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now.

Have you ever felt trapped inside your to-do list? It seems bigger than you are: both solidly objective and immovable and deeply personal and threatening. Every item seems urgent. The most urgent ones seem impossible. Anxiety itself makes it harder to choose. Catastrophe lies in wait around every corner?

Ah, yes. That is Tuesday for me. Or any other day, for that matter, at least when I have one of those regular “deer in the headlights” brain-freezes.

Early last Tuesday morning I was reading Richard Rohr’s “The Naked Now” and this comment struck me: “Martha never gets there by being more of Martha, and yet Martha’s running, distraction, and clumsy, futile attempts at love are the beginning of her eventual transformation...” Here is grace, and not judgment, for Martha. Martha, too, is on the path to the presence of Jesus. Just like Mary. Almut has written about Martha earlier this year, with much the same message. If we knew how to look at our suffering correctly, from within the piercing light of God’s love, we might see our burden and busyness differently.

And so it is with my fearsome to-do list. It is my fear, and I can look at it in the light of God’s love and learn from it. Then I am truly on the way. Simple. And also very difficult.

• Primo Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved.

I also have in my backpack Primo Levy’s last book of essays before he died. Levy was a survivor of Auschwitz, a chemical engineer, and a writer of luminous prose and piercing insight. This slim book will open your mind and humble your judgments (and complicate, perhaps, your wrath). It mines his memories from the holocaust, but also his long career afterward engaging in dialogue to help us see it in its complexity and (in)humanity.

His essay “The memory of the offense” resists easy psychological analysis in order to tease apart the multitude of strands of memory that enrich and mislead the rememberer. He staunchly insists on not excusing the heinous offenses, but helps us consider the humanity even of those who were most inhumane. The same could be said for his most famous essay “The Gray Zone,” which explores the mix of motives among prisoners, guards, those prisoners who were made into guards, and also the historians and memoirists of deeds and places that still shimmer with evil.

I find its somber and sharp wit a helpful antidote to our current times when every disagreeable person is labeled a Nazi.

Previous Cloister Notes, in case you missed it

Coming back from the brink.

This recent essay by Almut is a small reminder that the things can get better, and that the greening power is still within us. And, by the way, the little sprout in the picture is a full small bush now, filling the pot.

Shedding outer Layers

Here is an interesting thought piece on the inner way by Almut. She uses her philosophical wisdom chops to tease apart what is happening as we peel away our layers of defense in meditation. It is a useful guide to practice. Read it slowly.

Coming up at The Cloister

We are playing with the idea of having a small in-person retreat at St. Johns Abbey guest house this Fall. We would use the contemplative setting and daily prayers to help us find places where we are stuck and to let them go.

It would be 2 1/2 days on weekend, and we would reserve rooms in the Abbey Guest House on the lake and near the Abbey church where you could join the monks for morning, noon, and evening chanting of the psalms.

Are you interested? Let us know of your interest below:

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