Brother Ed’s quote, the one I mentioned in “Drawing from the old Wells 4-6” is important. His teacher, he said, was his cancer. This showed me Ed had transitioned away from being a student. At some point, according to Benedict’s Rule, either the spiritual guide proves himself adept at dealing with the challenge that psychology and daily life issue to God, or the spiritual guide becomes a less important teacher than life and psychology themselves. The remaining steps of humility (seven through 12) depict a man who has stopped looking to abbot and novice master for guidance. From the 7th “Step of Humility” onward, a monk’s journey moves inward and gets honest.
Brother Ed Shivell might be a good example of someone making that transition. But it’s in the life of Brother John Corrigan that the last 5 steps of Humility stand out in sharpest relief.
In steps 7 through 12, a monk’s focus shifts to things like “being truly convinced that he’s of less value than others. (Step 7)” Benedict says a monk in these more interior stages “only does what’s endorsed by the rule and the common life. (step 8) ” Somewhat naturally, the Rule’s author says, a monk who has followed the rule down the rabbit hole “isn’t given to ready laughter (step 10).” Such a man “only speaks unless asked a question (Step 9),” and “speaks briefly and reasonably (Step 11).”
I’ve been racking my brain for stories about brother John that might demonstrate these truths. But, in keeping with the quiet humility that’s the Rule predicted result, those stories exist only in skeletal form. If anything can speak some flesh onto those bones, it’s the places from which John wasn’t seen or heard.
For instance, if sometimes John didn't come to dinner, I would often learn, later, that he’d been fixing the archaic grading machines that cleaned and packaged the eggs our chickens laid daily.
John was a lay brother, a man who entered the monastery declaring that a life of work and quiet rather than clerical responsibility was what he wanted. In the 1960s The Trappists abolished a man’s ability to declare himself permanently a brother. Ostensibly this was to adjust the reality of the life to Benedict’s rule which never mentioned the distinction between clerical and lay states. Practically it also dealt with a hubris that had cropped up among the brothers, that they ran the place while priests sat on their asses.
While that was, perhaps, the case, belaboring the point divided communities. It was better to simply say “everyone here’s gonna strap on their work boots” and move on to observing the Rule’s more important particulars. Many argued that the baby got thrown out with the bathwater. The gentle diligence which shone through the lay brother, they feared, would be part of the luggage his Hubris departed the monastery with.
On the whole this is accurate—something is lost, and will be, more so, when the oldest of those presently in monasteries die—but it was not so with John. He was tapped to be the work boss, which meant he was the person who had to keep the understaffed monastery moving. And he did it with gentleness, despite the occasional unrealistic expectation on the part of the Abbot, the occasional broken machine in the grading house, and the frequent discontent that the brothers all to predictably showed for their jobs.
At best, I made an attempt at manifesting step 7. I was not above bitching about my jobs. But I'd gotten my jobs from my Novice master and the Abbot--terrible dunces, both of them, I thought--not from Br. John. I pride myself on recognizing the kindness with which John performed his duties, and being a person he could basically move around as he needed to. I could never quite balance farm work with the additional jobs of de facto choirmaster and frequent infirmary assistant, but that wasn't John's fault. Anyway I tried not to treat him like it was.
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| Br. John Corrigan |
I bring up John because he quietly proves the point. The rule simply facilitates a transition: from looking for guidance from authorities, to looking for guidance from the communal life and chosen elders, to looking for guidance from within. The monk transitioning through step 7 comes defeatedly to statements like “Alright! I know I have issues with authority! And some of them really are the bumbling idiots I take them for. But, for Christsakes, so am I. We’ve all taken jobs we’re not qualified for.” I came eventually to see their authority as an unfortunate disadvantage. My bumbling idiocy could be somewhat anonymous. But bullshit flows uphill in hierarchical organizations. Their bumbling idiocy, happening, as it did, in their positions of authority, gained them calumny and blame.
Eventually I learned how to stop bitching, and be a more prudent newbie. To one who’s lived in a monastery, Step 8 (acting only on the rule and the communal example,) is actually not as limiting as it seems. No aviary of rare birds could hold a candle to the monastery’s collection of very old, very odd ducks. I eventually learned that, if I wanted to do something, I simply had to find an old guy who was doing the same—someone so cantankerous that the abbot had stopped challenging him. When a young monk’s cries of “I want what I want” become “I only want to follow that guy’s example” the abbot’s a bit harder-pressed to deny the request.
Admittedly, following the most idiosyncratic of his elders’ examples is the most prudent, and least mature move a young monk can make. Eventually, I set my sights on the old guys whose conduct was truly admirable, and strove to follow that as well.
In formation classes, there were other transitions to be made. I must confess that, back when I monked-it-up, I didn’t rise to the occasion as I should have. When I was in the monastery, I was still full of desire to receive authentic spiritual guidance from those in authority. It was often frustrating when the level of "feeling, intuition and transformation" I felt called to was bypassed for the sake of conversations about smelly-old Bernard of Clairvaux. I think, if I had it to do over again, I would be more adept at allowing myself to enter into miserably unsatisfying things like formation classes: sometimes, I’d tell myself, life is simply unsatisfying. And it’s just permission to look for what is satisfying wherever it’s available. I am grateful for the freedom departing-the-monastery afforded me: I’m not sure I would have discovered all of this otherwise.
In a similar vein, in my early days as a monk, I was scandalized by what seemed like Benedict’s prohibition of laugher. I see it differently now. I’ve simply observed myself enough to know that sometimes, I laugh when I’m nervous or sad or afraid. It’s a response entirely ill-suited emotionally, a felt-conspiracy of “governmental cover-up” proportions. It’s hard to have the right reactions: to sleep when I’m tired, to voice anger and frustration without over-reacting, to excuse others when they drop the ball and laugh at my own inadequacies. These days, though, having appropriate and measured emotional responses is one of my overt goals. These days, I’m not sure Benedict was prohibiting laughter as much as saying “a time will come when you laugh at things that are funny.” I chuckle a bit at how oblivious I was to this, grateful for how much simpler things are now. I look forward to them becoming simpler still.
As often as Br. John was asked to speak, he never, in the true southern sense, “held court.” For those of you who’ve never experienced life south of the Mason Dixon Line, “holding court” is being a pleasant windbag. It’s treating my turn to talk like it’s a football I’ve been given to run with. Old men in monasteries speak briefly, then return to quiet. Brother John is an expert at this. I aspire to say the same of myself eventually. If I had to guess, I’d say the transition happens because of two things. For one thing, as life starts being my teacher, it’s less useful to tell the bumbling idiot chosen as my spiritual guide what’s going through my own bumbling-idiot head. If I can dial down the panic of not knowing, life will present me with as many answers as it does questions. I just won’t get to determine when that happens.
Also, however, monasteries are too much like the Navy. In monasteries, the eager and talkative get jobs. I asked to join the monastic choir because I wanted to get to know the brothers: I didn’t realize it would become my responsibility for as long as I was a monk. In my latter monastic years, and ever after, I acquired a little voice in my head that says “Sailor, it is imperative that you shut the fuck up. It’s spelled NAVY because, for Godsakes, you should never again volunteer yourself.”
To restate the point: life itself becomes the teacher: it speaks, and the implication’s that I become the listener. It's Benedict's contention that a person who's done this work ultimately demonstrates the gospel by how he lives. I have long-since parted with the hope that the Rule will yield gospel-grade humility in every last brother, even as I’m convinced that I've known some whose humility is undoubtable.
And in the Rule's gradual yielding of authority--from Abbot and Novice Master, to Rule and community, and finally to life itself-- in this, even flunky monastics, filling the blogosphere with noise, can find hope of humility. The aspiration voiced at my profession of temporary vows has lost its ecclesial robes (and perhaps the leg it had to stand on) but it remains an aspiration still. “May the one who began this good work in you” it said, “carry it through to completion.”
The 12th Step of Humility is that a monk always manifests the title-track virtue “in his bearing no less than in his heart.” I won’t lie, I love that life uses both my girlfriend, and blessedly non-benedictine bacon double cheeseburgers to humble me these days. But I still hope the completion mentioned at my first profession happens. More than that: I hope, whatever my work in the process is, that I cooperate with it. Those who came before me did this with gentleness and diligence. In my own way, I hope I can do the same.
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