Spiritual renewal, desert style

WEDNESDAY: I’m starting to get into the groove of the place. The psalms are seeping in (we sing about twenty-five or thirty a day), and they grab my ear in new ways. It helps to sing them, although the Gregorian notation is confusing and the tunes are pitched about five notes too high for my range. I am a squeaky chanter among a lot of tenors.

I check twice to see what day it is; there are no calendars, and the rhythm of each day has caused me to lose track. It’s remarkable how quickly that happened. Most of the monks wear wristwatches so that they can get to worship on time.

The Benedictine life is a balanced life, with four hours given equally to the “Work of God” (praying the psalms), study and reflection, and manual labor. Today I was assigned to work in the book store. It was a slow afternoon, with three departing guests as the only customers. That gave me time to read a good bit of The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, a wonderful book by Belden Lane. It’s a profound book, and quite appropriate for this setting. Here’s just one quote:

The dainty and delicate will not thrive well in desert-mountain terrain. A life that is comfortable or too safe will avoid such landscapes at all cost. Wild places are uncompanionable to those compulsively anxious to please. They disclaim the false niceties of home, the small lies and pretenses by which an entire life can sometimes be shaped. In fierce landscapes, one knows that being good, being sweet, being nice will not cause life to sing. There the fragile ego loses its props and supporting lines. Its incessant need for validation is ignored. Count on it; great insights have come to some people only after they reached the point where they had nothing left. (p. 43)

Touché. In pastoral ministry, we often meet people at moments of great extremity, where the easy assurances of faith don’t cut it. There are many occasions when a minister doesn’t know what to say (quite awkward for a preacher-type, let me tell you). To simply affirm “God will help you” is to deny how it feels to wonder if there is a God, or to ask where this God might be. And that’s why so many of the psalms are left out of Christian worship. The church is officially afraid of The Silence of Psalm 74: “O God, why do you cast us off forever?”

Out here in the desert, you have to confront The Silence. There are no easy answers. You are cut off and alone. The welcome distractions of daily life are hushed, and you have a lot of time to listen to the voices banging around in your brain. As the Baptist college chaplain three doors down whispered, “I come out here every year to deal with the Big Guy.”

In the midst of theological loneliness, Psalm 74 begins with the address, “O God.” God may not be convenient, helpful, or readily available. But God is present in the silence. Somewhere. Out of view. But not quite out of earshot. In worship, I have the deep awareness that God is listening to our psalms. As we practice the ancient discipline of “apophatic prayer” (desert prayer that consciously lets go of all pretension and quick assurance), we are forced to take God on God’s terms. And that has become a holy moment.

The anonymous painter next door has gone home. So has Tim, a Presbyterian minister from Maryland who reminded me that we met twenty years ago. People come and go around here; there are between six and ten guests at any given time. There’s no time for friendships, and few opportunities for conversation. We don’t know one another’s names, and occupations are irrelevant. I find myself being drawn to these folks, praying for them, and receiving whatever unnamed prayers they hurl skyward on my behalf.

It’s a peaceful night, and for the second time today, we pray for a peaceful death.