A NOTE (to the H & H community):
Some of you have mused about the synchronicity of it all, the sudden or continued unsolicited descent in your life or the life of those close to you during this month when our focus is Practicing Descent (wondering, I suspect, if the theme itself didn’t somehow cause all this). In case the topic has that kind of power I’m wondering if next month we should change our theme to Practicing the Prosperity Gospel or Being 30 Years Younger or Receiving Word in the Mail that We Have Been Bequeathed an Island by a stranger to whom we once took the time to give directions. Or better yet, maybe we will just practice the reign of God or perhaps in a special way remind one another of our year long theme: practicing resurrection. It’s the one same mystery.
♦♦♦
One of my favorite passages in the Rule of Benedict is found in Chapter 31 where it outlines the qualities of the monastery cellarer, that is, the person responsible for providing the other monks and guests with food and drink at meals. Benedict writes: “He must show every care and concern for the sick, children, guests and the poor, knowing for certain that he will be held accountable for all of them on the day of judgment.” Notice it doesn’t say, he will be held accountable at the end as to whether or not he saved their souls but whether or not he treated them with care and concern. Benedict continues, “Above all, let him be humble. If goods are not available to meet a request, he will offer a kind word in reply, for it is written: “A kind word is better than the best gift.”
Between these two counsels about how to hold others in care and kindness is an equally understated but poignant instruction from Benedict about how the cellarer is to hold and handle objects. “He will regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar, aware that nothing is to be neglected” (emphasis mine). So how we handle a shovel or close a door or peel an orange or hold a spatula or move in our bodies through the day or treat a stranger is a Christian (and not, for example, only a Buddhist) way of being mindful and compassionately present. Perhaps Benedict’s counsel about how to hold people and things is suggestive for how we can best live in and through the unsought but essential descents of life.
In unavoidable situations that engender suffering that cannot be whisked away or removed with wishful thinking or even the most sincere prayer, the question is: how shall I hold this (illness, child, break up, tragedy, aging parent, agony, injustice, confusion, bad news, disaster, loss)?
The word that comes to mind from the spirit of Benedict’s compassionate vision and that applies to how we hold everything — our life, the circumstances of our life, the life of those we love, the lives of those we struggle to tolerate, the life of those most vulnerable, the life of our neighborhoods and country and planet and universe – is reverence.
Practicing descent during circumstances that unavoidably move us down into the dark (where it is unfamiliar, scary, and hard to see) invites an attitude of reverence, a certain tender tenacity (from tenere to hold). It is tenacious enough that “we don’t lose our grip,” that we hold onto reality when fleeing or fighting what is real are more tempting reactions; tender enough that we don’t judge ourselves (or God or others or even painful situations) too quickly or too harshly or too definitively but instead pray for the strength not just to hold on but to hold all — the good and the bad, the grace and the disgrace, the obvious and the confusing, the inspiring and the infuriating, the mystery and the madness – reverently, that is, with awe and openness. For as Rabbi Heschel points out, we do not reverence what we know and understand but only that which surpasses us, whether by way of truly seeing another human person, beholding the expansive starfield, experiencing exquisite suffering, receiving forgiveness, enduring the death of a loved one, or receiving the unreserved love of a friend or lover.
To hold reverently the circumstances that bring about descent is neither to “chase the pain” nor to glorify or romanticize it when it comes. It is rather to face it honestly and fully, in faith trusting that it is what it is and more than it is, to dare to hope that tombs become wombs and caves become cocoons.♦
REFLECTION:
When you look and listen to your life what is most likely to keep you up nights? What tugs at your heart? What might it mean consciously to hold “this” in a reverential way?