To the Pinnacle (Part II of There-and-Back-Again)

This is Part II of a four-part blog series called "There-And-Back-Again". You can find Part I here. Together they tell the story of my mid-semester break, wherein I spent the ten days living as a contemplative nun at Jamberoo Abbey in NSW. 

If you're still reading, I assume you're along for the ride - don't feel the need to chomp through all four parts in one go - Jesus gave me ten days of silence to process all this, so if you want to take any of it to prayer before reading on, please do! 

There and Back Again
Part II: To the Pinnacle

Golly, Jamberoo’s beautiful.

Lush farmland surrounded by native bush; a driveway closely flanked by deciduous trees that turn golden, then amber, then bare; sweeping views down the mountain and out towards the south coast of NSW; a backdrop of Illawarra escarpment cliffs.

And that’s before you even meet the nuns.

My first afternoon at the Abbey, I was received with hugs and an unconscious outpouring of God’s radiant peace. We filed into Vespers in a chapel that overlooks the forest through a wall of glass. We chanted ancient words proclaiming Easter joy.

Over the next ten days, I got to live the life of a Benedictine nun – rising early in the morning to pray Vigils in the chapel before sunrise; gathering for the different ‘hours’ of prayer as punctuation to craft work (where I learned how to carve the candles below); reading beautiful texts explaining the core of contemplative life; hiking in the surrounding bushland; befriending the cows, chickens, and dogs of varying temperaments who’d been rescued from cruel situations (puts a new meaning on 'even the sparrow has found a home at your altar).

Love is the first rule at Jamberoo. St Benedict instructed followers of his way to ‘listen with the ear of your heart’. The cloisters are mostly silent, but it’s an open, receptive silence rather than a cold austerity. You’re always greeted with warm smiles and pairs of eyes that seriously just look like Jesus.

By my third day there, I was starting to feel uneasy. I had absolutely no intention of being called to contemplative life and yet, as my mind slowed down and began to get clearer, I found myself desiring the life I saw around me.

Yes, the nuns chose poverty – but I wanted a life free of worldly possessions and the competitiveness they fuel. Yes, they chose obedience – but I’ve learned so many times since I finished NET that a life under your own jurisdiction often feels far from ‘free’. Yes, they chose to enter that monastery and stay there for the rest of their lives – but lately I’d been begging God for a signpost of permanence in a world addicted to fast fashion and transient truth.

I loved the quiet. I loved the simplicity – a life pointing just towards God. I loved the pursuit of deep wisdom and eternal Truths. I loved the version of myself I was getting to know by looking at myself through the Father’s eyes.

In prayer, God had drawn my heart to contemplate humility.

In one of the readings in the folder for aspirants, I read: “A millionaire is enslaved by his wealth, for it dominates his mind and heart, and gives him no rest.”

Jesus began asking me – what dominates your mind and heart, thus enslaving you?

So I poured out my heart to Him: I’m enslaved by my to-do list. I’m constantly concerned about my appearance. I’m obsessed with achieving highly at uni and work. I’m afraid for the emotional wellbeing of people I care about. I think incessantly about the future and where my life is going. And I’m so caught up in the world’s definition of ‘virtue’: Be independent. Be strong. Achieve your potential. Having a big ego is useful if it helps achieve your goals.

Humility – littleness – is so foreign to a world focused on ‘building a life you love’. Humility tells us that the only way to actually achieve the fullness of our identity is by ceasing to assert that identity.

Humility says that you don’t discern your vocation based on which of your gifts you can use, or which of your hobbies you get to keep. Humility reminds us that these things are shifting sands, not the rock foundation.

God was reaching out to me with a truth I was scared to hear: that nothing else really mattered to Him. He didn’t care that I was a good student or a singer or a youth ministry or an environmental advocate or a poet. He cared that I was.

You are a Christian. That is the one necessary thing, and the answer to the questions you’ve been asking.

Because I’m a nerd and God speaks to me through grammar, He drew my attention to a few things: 

• The verb is ‘are’ – not will be. Your identity is in the present tense, not the future. It’s also a being verb, not a doing verb. You don’t do Christianity. You are a Christian.
• The article is ‘a’ – not the. You are not the only Christian and you don’t have to be all things to all people. You are one little cog, part of an interconnected body that together achieved the fullness of its purpose. Zoom out.

I zoomed out. And wherever I looked, He was the way, the truth, and the life. I was a Yearning Octopus whose tentacles were finally grasping the One Thing they had always wanted: home. Him.

Aaaaaaannnndd I started to have one of those “too good to be true” moments. Contemplative life couldn’t be an actual option, could it be? There was an actual place where I could spend my life in intimacy with God, dwelling right in the heart of the kerygma and everything I’d ever desired?

It sounded pretty stupid. I was burdened by guilt – the feeling that I would be choosing the easy part, the life removed set apart from the workload and cynicism of middle-of-the-world evangelization. I felt like I’d be curling up in my comfort zone of insularity, and steering clear of the world’s mud.

But Benedictine life was a legitimate vocation. The centuries had proven that. So I had to acknowledge that it could be my legitimate vocation.

I felt like Naaman-the-leper when the prophet Elisha tells him that the way to be healed is go bathe in the river seven times. “Seriously? That’s too easy.”

Naaman’s servants reminded him that if the prophet had told him to do something difficult, he would have done it. So why not accept the prophet’s prescription, even if it felt like the easy road?

Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.

It was then that Jesus brought up a memory.

When I was about seven or eight, I dreamed of being small enough to climb into the tabernacle and curl up in Jesus’ arms.

Several times in my life, the memory of that desire has come back to me, a haunting ‘deep calling upon deep’. What I wanted most was the sanctuary – to crawl into the tabernacle and be His eternally.

Do you see now the purpose of humility, my darling? Only in your littleness can you fulfill that dream.

I felt like I’d been climbing a mountain my entire life – especially in the five years since I started discerning my vocation – going round and round in circles that I hoped were a spiral path to the peak.

Now, on top of a literal mountain, I felt like I was finally glimpsing the summit.

At this stage (we’re still only on day four of my stay at the Abbey) I decided to read through five years’ worth of prayer journals (as you do), extract all of the bits that sounded like a call to contemplative life, and rearrange them in some semblance of ideological continuity, vis á vis the following:

Go the way of your wishes, from first to last, and you shall find out what it is you want most. A spiral has a centre point. A mountain has a peak. Your heart has a core. You look outside of yourself to discover who you are and what you should do, but I am within. Follow your deepest desires to their natural end.

If you live only at a superficial level, you shall never hear deep calling on deep, reassuring you of your most fundamental identity. I am not in the earthquake, wind, or fire. Mine is the still small voice that calls on the depths of your heart. Come to me and find rest for your weary soul. You are so filled with aching and yearning for fullness – and I say to you I AM.

Find your centre of gravity in my love and allow yourself to fall deeper into the core of your identity. I do not care about all of the roles you play, for these do not define you. I care that you are a Christian, one who is ‘in Christ’: you are defined by your relationship with me.

You will never find the validation you are seeking in the esteem of other people. You will not find the love that gives rest to your soul elsewhere. You are thrashing and dislocating your spiritual joints in the attempt to be all things to all people.

I think it is time you understood something – you are more fruitful in stillness. Yes, you can manage many tasks and commitments and relationships and projects – but not without compromising the most vital aspects of yourself. If you spend your whole life showcasing the Beloved, you will cease to know Him.

I don’t want to be an afterthought, darling! I want to be an integrated part of your every breath and movement. Christianity flows from hearts hidden away in God. I do not thirst for what you can do for me. I thirst for you. I need you to understand that you are not with me for any service you can offer, rather that you might hear my voice.

Big missions can only be entrusted to little souls. It is not crusaders who most change the world, but little children who pray for peace. Your role is not to be Christ to people, but to point out Christ to people. Even as you seek to comfort the afflicted you must be serenely convinced of your powerlessness to do good in their lives. Your duty of care is to bring Me to them, and bring them to Me, not to try and fix things by becoming the answer yourself.

What does it mean to live an unnamed life of love? Why is it that you believe you have to make a name for yourself in order to be mentioned in God’s story? Listen. Receive. I do not call you to work for glory – rather I invite you to childlike faith, freed from the burdens of wealth, power, and honour. Be little and lovely. Live reverently, touching all with your gentleness. I call you to do fewer things with greater love.

Yes, I call you to become a Saint. That does not necessarily mean big, loud, visible things – but being countercultural in tiny heroic moments. I become incarnate within all that you offer me, it is true – but that need not fuel competitiveness within you. Remember the widow’s mite. Stop judging by external standards and judge by true standards: the laws of love already written on your heart.

Stop defining the borders of “yourself” and enter into the limitless “we” that my cross made possible. There is no “my mission”. Only “Love’s mission for us.” Beloved, I know how much you wish to achieve for my kingdom. Fall deeply in love with me and let that love reveal Truth to the world. Come just as you are, for that is how I want you. That is what will invite others to me, not your striving and facades. Strip it back again. Stop trying to grow and then maybe you will.

You have been created with the capacity to receive – to live in awed acceptance of all the ways the world reveals me to you. Revelation is accomplished in attentiveness. My word is scattered recklessly throughout the ebb and flow of your day. How attentive are you? Every single moment I am communicating with you, reaching out in the very things you appreciate and desire. Do you hear the echoes?

You believe that prayer exists to give you strength for action – no! Action prepares your heart for prayer, which is the highest calling I have placed on your life.

Martha, Martha, leave Mary be. Do not feel guilt for sitting here at my feet. You are not being lazy – you are fulfilling the highest calling on your life – intimate communication with the only one with any ability to carry out those other tasks which you strive to do alone. I don’t want you to be Martha. I want you to be Mary. Come, waste your love at my feet even if the world complains that you had other potential. I have anointed you as my vessel to draw many hearts to my kingdom, but believe me when I say that you do this chiefly without trying.

Your gift lies in living ways and sharing those fruits of holy living with others. I have anointed you as my muddy-footed witness to contemplate the realities that you and others live in the light of the Gospel, and so make them clearer and more sanctifying for others who walk the path. If I told you to do something very difficult, you would – then why not bathe in the river of my peace and healing? You do not have to be an agent of change, merely a recipient of grace. Never again be a herald of franticness. That is not the right kind of urgency. Rather acknowledge the ‘urge’ to make Eternal Peace known and loved.

Run into the arms that you know will always embrace you. Follow the relentless, insatiable yearning of your heart and come abide with me in the sanctuary. You wrestle and wrestle with your unruly heart, but ultimately you know what you want: a life wrapped up in eternity. Until you find me once more you will be living off echoes, not the True Song.

If you read between the lines of every desire, you will see that you most deeply desire union with me. The other things you seek are merely tools for the conversion and expansion of your heart. What if I told you that your life’s purpose was to trust in me – that trust is not the accessory of other goals, but the Goal itself and the end to which I am leading you? My darling, I myself am the answer. Before my presence all other questions fade – even the act of inquiry loses its allure. For here is peace: peace is with you.

So I ask you: are you praying to rediscover your purpose, or rediscovering that your purpose is prayer?

Reading back through it, I was pretty convinced. The next day I resolved to ask Sr Hilda how soon I could join.

~~~

So descends the curtain on Act II of our play. But the story is not yet told – God still has surprises in store for Kate. What could they possibly be, you ask? Read on in Part III.