It was a tough night to sleep, what with all the commotion going on - a call from my son at 11:00 -for nothing in particular, thank goodness - and decisions to be made on publication, chores, finances and upcoming necessary travel. In such times - awake at 6 AM still wondering and worrying - the meaning of the "desert of the soul" comes through with distinct clarity, as Kathleen Norris intended in her book of essays, "Dakota." For her, the desert of the soul is not a dry and lifeless place, no; rather, it is the place of small things, of timeless things, of weather and pace that lends one to delve further within.
Talking to Benedictine monks in Dakota, she finds that the greatest complaint made by acolytes after their first 6 months is "boredom." They do not have the business going on about them as the rest of us do, and this at first presents a problem. But after many years, they come to live more and more the interior life where, as one put it, "ten years is a small thing for a monk."
Boredom; peace. As kids, we all shriveled our noses at the thought of the vision of heaven given to us by the elders, with harps and clouds and tranquility. At 20, the loudest of us proclaimed that we would prefer hell. But we did not understand what we were missing. Norris tells us what that is, at a fittingly deliberate pace.
Says one pastor of the plains, a man who graduated from Princeton, "City people want hymns that reassure them that God is at work in the world, but people in the western Dakotas take that for granted." How difficult is it to see the workings of God in a hassled life? And how difficult it is NOT to see It in the endless expanse of sky and earth that rolls out like an ocean?
Again - A Sioux who is also an Episcopal minister addressed an assembly of Lutheran pastors with these words: "Ghosts don't exist in some cultures..." Instead, "They think time exists." Time is a thing of busy people; in the desert, as with the monastery, it is a cyclical thing, the seasons and the liturgy as one, and timeless. Of course there, without time, ghosts exist; of course there, we are what we are at any given season, true and known.
But as with the seasons and the liturgy, there is change: "Ironically, it is in choosing the stability of the monastery or the Plains, places where nothing ever happens, places the world calls dull, that we discover that we can change. In choosing a bare-bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power." Could it be more precise? Don't we all know this?
At the end, she quotes the monks, the first one from our own time: "You have to let the place happen to you...the loneliness, the silence, the poverty, the futility, indeed the stillness of your life." And from an ancient, this account: "What," the monk is asked, "is it necessary for the monk to be?" And he repies,"According to me, alone with the Alone."
Kathleen Norris can say it better than I, and that is important, for in saying it right, we find that we are all monks in a way, all souls seeking the desert. Like them, the desire always returns to dispense with the commotion of the outside to grow inside; to internalize the infinite that is about us at every moment, above us as the stars shine. We know this, but are distracted. The desert of the soul is the peace and simplicity that is required to understand the infinite and at times, the chaotic. It is our paradox - for as we look farther outside ourselves, we need more to fill what has been left hollow inside. And when the monotony of place forces us to look within, we find beyond the boredom the glimmerings of eternity and eternal life. It is to this point that all true religions and beliefs direct us; beyond that, I think we find, little by little, that what we seek we have known all along. FK
Talking to Benedictine monks in Dakota, she finds that the greatest complaint made by acolytes after their first 6 months is "boredom." They do not have the business going on about them as the rest of us do, and this at first presents a problem. But after many years, they come to live more and more the interior life where, as one put it, "ten years is a small thing for a monk."
Boredom; peace. As kids, we all shriveled our noses at the thought of the vision of heaven given to us by the elders, with harps and clouds and tranquility. At 20, the loudest of us proclaimed that we would prefer hell. But we did not understand what we were missing. Norris tells us what that is, at a fittingly deliberate pace.
Says one pastor of the plains, a man who graduated from Princeton, "City people want hymns that reassure them that God is at work in the world, but people in the western Dakotas take that for granted." How difficult is it to see the workings of God in a hassled life? And how difficult it is NOT to see It in the endless expanse of sky and earth that rolls out like an ocean?
Again - A Sioux who is also an Episcopal minister addressed an assembly of Lutheran pastors with these words: "Ghosts don't exist in some cultures..." Instead, "They think time exists." Time is a thing of busy people; in the desert, as with the monastery, it is a cyclical thing, the seasons and the liturgy as one, and timeless. Of course there, without time, ghosts exist; of course there, we are what we are at any given season, true and known.
But as with the seasons and the liturgy, there is change: "Ironically, it is in choosing the stability of the monastery or the Plains, places where nothing ever happens, places the world calls dull, that we discover that we can change. In choosing a bare-bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power." Could it be more precise? Don't we all know this?
At the end, she quotes the monks, the first one from our own time: "You have to let the place happen to you...the loneliness, the silence, the poverty, the futility, indeed the stillness of your life." And from an ancient, this account: "What," the monk is asked, "is it necessary for the monk to be?" And he repies,"According to me, alone with the Alone."
Kathleen Norris can say it better than I, and that is important, for in saying it right, we find that we are all monks in a way, all souls seeking the desert. Like them, the desire always returns to dispense with the commotion of the outside to grow inside; to internalize the infinite that is about us at every moment, above us as the stars shine. We know this, but are distracted. The desert of the soul is the peace and simplicity that is required to understand the infinite and at times, the chaotic. It is our paradox - for as we look farther outside ourselves, we need more to fill what has been left hollow inside. And when the monotony of place forces us to look within, we find beyond the boredom the glimmerings of eternity and eternal life. It is to this point that all true religions and beliefs direct us; beyond that, I think we find, little by little, that what we seek we have known all along. FK
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