IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Monks have secrets worth knowing, and these can be invaluable when a coronavirus pandemic is forcing millions of us to live like monks.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of us have been forced to stay at home, work from home, practice social distancing from everyone except those in our own houses and have minimal social contact with the outside. In a manner of speaking, this has turned many of us into monks, like it or not. What’s the secret to thrive there?

Well, I’m not a monk, nor a mental health expert, so what I share here isn’t exactly the rule of St. Benedict or a series of professional mental health tips. It’s the fruit of what I’ve learned from monks and from living in the give-and-take of a religious community for fifty years.

Here are ten counsels for living when we are in effect housebound, that is, living in a situation wherein we don’t have a lot of privacy, have to do a lot of living within a very small circle, face long hours wherein we have to struggle to find things that energize us, and wherein we find ourselves for good stretches of time frustrated, bored, impatient and lethargic. How does one survive and thrive in that situation?

1. Create a routine – That’s the key. It’s what monks do. Create a detailed routine for the hours of your day as you would a financial budget. Make this very practical: list the things you need to do each day and slot them into a concrete timetable and then stick to that as a discipline, even when it seems rigid and oppressive. Resist the temptation to simply go with the flow of your energy and mood or to lean on entertainment and whatever distractions can be found to get you through your days and nights.
2. Wash and dress your body each day, as if you were going out into the world and meeting people. Resist the temptation to cheat on hygiene, dress and make-up. Don’t spend the morning in your pajamas: wash and dress-up. When you don’t do this, what are you saying to your family? They aren’t worth the effort? And what are you saying to yourself? I’m not worth the effort? Slovenliness invariably becomes lethargy and acedia.
3. Look beyond yourself and your needs each day to see others and their hurts and frustrations. You’re not in this alone; the others are enduring exactly what you are. Nothing will make your day harder to endure than excessive self-focus and self-pity.
4. Find a place to be alone for some time every day – and offer others that same courtesy. Don’t apologize that you need time away, to be by yourself. That’s an imperative for mental health, not a selfish claim. Give others that space. Sometimes you need to be apart, not just for your own sake but for the sake of the others. Monks live an intense community life, but each also has a private cell within which to retreat.
5. Have a contemplative practice each day that includes prayer. On the schedule you create for yourself, mark in at least a half hour or an hour each day for some contemplative practice: pray, read scripture, read from a serious book, journal, paint a picture, paint a fence, create an artifact, fix something, garden, write poetry, write a song, begin a memoir, write a long letter to someone you haven’t seen for years, whatever; but do some something that’s freeing for your soul and have it include some prayer.
6. Practice “Sabbath” daily. Sabbath need not be a day; it can be an hour. Give yourself something very particular to look forward to each day, something enjoyable and sensual: a hot bath, a glass of wine, a cigar on the patio, a rerun of a favorite old sitcom, a nap in the shade in a lawn chair, anything – as long as it’s done purely for enjoyment. Make this a discipline.
7. Practice “Sabbath” weekly. Make sure that only six days of the week are locked into your set routine. Break the routine once a week. Set one day apart for enjoyment, one day when you may eat pancakes for breakfast in your pajamas.
8. Challenge yourself with something new. Stretch yourself by trying something new. Learn a new language, take up a new hobby, learn to play an instrument. This is an opportunity you’ve never had.
9. Talk through the tensions that arise within your house – though carefully. Tensions will arise when living in a fishbowl. Monks have community meetings to sort out those tensions. Talk tensions through honestly with each other, but carefully; hurtful remarks sometimes never quite heal.
10. Take care of your body. We aren’t disembodied spirits. Be attentive to your body. Get enough exercise each day to keep your body energized. Be careful not to use food as a compensation for your enforced monasticism. Monks are careful about their diet – except on feast days.
    Monks do have secrets worth knowing!

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

GUEST COLUMN
By Meg Ferguson
In the grand sea of types and styles of prayers, I’ve found myself at home in

prayerful ponderings. I love to take a virtue (like gratitude) or a specific topic (like suffering) and investigate it from all sides in hopes of clarifying how I can better live out this virtue or gaining some deeper insight into the topic. I could look at Scripture passages or writings of saints that relate to that theme, try to imagine what their lives were like, ask questions, and see what new insights speak to my heart. Usually, I will ponder one topic over days or weeks mulling the idea repeatedly in my head asking for the Holy Spirit’s inspiration. Recently, I’ve been meditating on pregnancy and the mystery of creating new life, and I would like to share my small insights with each of you.
Since I am currently pregnant with my first child, it’s no surprise why the topic of pregnancy has been weighing on my heart lately. My husband and I got married this past December, and we are so blessed to be able to start a family right away! Our little one is due in October, and we just found out it’s a boy. The joy and anticipation that fills this chapter of my life can hardly be put into words!
In my prayers, I find myself focusing on two passages in Scripture over and over again: Psalm 139:13-14 and 1 Kings 19:11-13. In Psalm 139, the psalmist is praising God for his greatness and all-knowing, all-powerful nature saying, “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works!” (Psalm 139:13-14). This passage makes me feel elated and, indeed, wonderfully made, and a little confused. I can’t help but get stuck reading the metaphor of being ‘knit in a mother’s womb.’ I thought to myself as I read, is God like a master knitter? Somehow, the image of God the Father sitting in an old-fashioned wooden rocking chair intently focused on a knitting project made me smile (and laugh a little). But on a more serious note, God is like a knitter who meticulously crafts something beautiful. In Psalm 139:13-14, the beautiful creation God is so focused on is a child in utero. And in this metaphor, the mother is the one supplying God with the yarn, so to speak. That is, a mother provided the raw materials for God to create a new unique and truly awe-inspiring tiny human. God could have chosen to create new life another way, without the contributions of human men or women, but He chooses to work with us. How amazing is that!?! In all pregnant mothers, God, the Creator of All Life, is at work in a special way. But it’s not just pregnant mothers who work with God, fathers, too, are co-operating with God’s creative action.
In thinking about this brief Bible passage, I am reminded that God is not a God who is faraway uninterested in human life, like a divine watchmaker who winds the watch and lets go. God is actively involved in our lives every day! Every breath we take is a gift God personally hands us like a flower picked for a special gift.
In 1 Kings 19:11-13, Elijah recognizes God’s presence in his life. God tells Elijah that he will be passing by, and Elijah diligently waits. A tornado-like wind sweeps by, an earthquake shakes the mountain where he is, and a fire rages on, but Elijah knows God is not present in those destructive powers. Rather, when he hears “a light silent sound,” Elijah recognizes the Lord. When I read this passage, I connect the small gentle sound to the little baby kicks I have only recently started experiencing. God is present in the tiniest wiggle of my little one, and I am filled with joy! I ask myself, ‘How often do I miss the other tiny moments when God makes Himself present in my life (like a phone call or text from a friend, or the kind act of a stranger)?’ ‘How often to I forget to thank God for all that I’ve been given?’ I hope and pray we all strive to see God’s presence working in the everyday moments of our lives.

(Meg Ferguson is the director of campus ministry at St. Joseph Starkville.)

From the hermitage
By Sister alies therese
It is heaving I mean fierce good ‘ole tropical summer Southern Mississippi rain and I imagine God weeping over us. Weeping and weeping, weeping over Jerusalem because we just don’t get it. What is ‘it’? Well, we are made in the image of God, each one of us, not just the privileged. Do we experience our God gazing with love at us and mourning, almost saying, ‘after all that trouble My Jesus went to…?’

The band-aid has been ripped off some of the cancerous wound. Can we be cleansed? I find that difficult. You? I am reminded that our systems advantage one and clearly disadvantage another. (Consider Frederick Douglass’ speech on July 4, 1852.) Or worse, I suppose, is that ‘I know’ and ‘have known’ all along but have done nothing, or very little. Why does change only come when there is murder, anxiety, systemic racism, death penalty, abortion, virus, disease, abuse, hatred, hopelessness and brutality? They all sound very death-dealing to me. None very pro-life! Right. Death to them all! Easier said than done.
I suppose the Gospels would inform my conscience and practice more if I’d dare to read them wanting to change (like wearing a mask) … but since I am advantaged I’d prefer, perhaps, to read them as a way of comforting myself rather than accepting Martin Luther King’s challenge: “Let us be dissatisfied.” (MLK, 1967, SCLC speech) We know some of things he was dissatisfied with: racial injustice, economic inequality, hunger and war. All those boiled down to his bottom line: he was satisfied with nothing short of the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community, the Kindom of acceptance, of love in practice. I’m not sure I want to work that hard. You? At the heart of all this is reconciliation, not necessarily integration or assimilation or whatever the fashionable buzz-word is. In that same speech he reminded us: “I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes.”
Racism is particularly ugly and over the years has been worth writing about. In 1989 the Pontifical Commission ‘Iustitia Et Pax’ produced ‘The Church and Racism. Towards a More Fraternal Society.’ (pub. CTS, 1989). This always makes me think:
“Harboring racist thoughts and entertaining racist attitudes is a sin against the specific message of Christ from whom one’s ‘neighbor’ is not only a person from my tribe, my milieu, my religion, or my nation: it is every person that I meet along the way.” (page 34)
That sin hasn’t changed. Have I? How have I begun to be an ally? What am I willing to give up? How do I understand the anguish of another and stand with them? Is each person another Christ?
The Venerable Dorothy Day twigged a similar awareness as she sat in jail: “I am the mother whose child has been raped and slain. I was the mother who had borne the monster who had done it. I was even that monster, feeling in my own heart every abomination.” (Day, From Union Square, 1938)
Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961), offered this:
“If people really wanted peace they would sincerely ask God for it and God would give it to them. But why should God give the world peace it does not really desire? The peace the world pretends to desire is satisfaction of animal appetites for comfort and pleasure … really no peace at all … so instead of loving what you think is peace, love other people and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.” (page 121-22)
Langston Hughes in his ever-famous poem proposed a question we still need to answer:
“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like as a sore — And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over
— like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?” (Langston Hughes Reader, 1958)
We have seen a few explosions (the many murders, brutality and ‘the-19’) and in these days we have had some wonderful peaceful protests. We have seen some changes (like the Mississippi state flag). Maybe we are able together to fully turn our hearts toward God and learn how prayer and action need to match. That would be a clear delivery of the mercy of God and we could show forth we are indeed, created in God’s image, all of us.
“Love your neighbor like something which you yourself are.” (Shmelke of Nikolsburg, from Buber’s Early Masters, 1947)

(Sister alies therese is a vowed Catholic solitary who lives an eremitical life. Her days are formed around prayer, art and writing.)