My Visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani: A Personal Reflection

Recently, I had the privilege of making my first visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. It was a pilgrimage of sorts. Thomas Merton is my favorite Christian writer and to simply walk the grounds where he had lived for so many years was an amazing and humbling experience.

It was Easter Sunday; and I could think of no better way to spend Easter than to make that journey and attend Mass at the Abbey. We woke up early to make the drive there from Louisville, which takes just a little over an hour. It was a cold, rainy morning. You take the Interstate out of Louisville and then before you know it, you find yourself out in the middle of the country; where it's just miles and miles of wide open spaces; fields and farmland and forests. For someone who calls the city home, it is an almost alien landscape. Some of the areas seemed so remote I almost began to question whether my GPS was leading me to the right place.

Eventually we came to a very small town. It was there that I first realized why many have dubbed that area "Trappist Kentucky". Several of the houses had statues of Jesus, Mary and Saints on their lawns. We went underneath a bridge where there was a makeshift shrine to the Mother of God, complete with a beautiful, tall statue of the Virgin Mary and flowers all around it. At the center of this town was a fairly large Catholic church that was filled to capacity for Easter Sunday. Everyone who lived there was probably at that church.

Once you get through it, all you see is miles of forests. It was strikingly beautiful. And then, suddenly, you come upon the great Abbey of Gethsemani; looming like an enormous fortress, almost as though it were something out of the middle ages. It was overwhelming just to be there in this sacred space. As a light rain fell, I walked the grounds.

Finally the bells began to ring and I knew it was time for Mass to begin. As I made my way up to the church, I came across the gated entrance to the monk's private area where I saw a sign that read "God Alone." I lingered there, staring at those words that had been carved so long ago. Those two simple words, to me, reflected the monastic ideal. When one enters into the monastery; they leave the world behind, they leave the life that they knew behind; relying on "God Alone." Moreover, they leave that false sense of self behind, the self that says "I am this" or "I am that"; the self that says I am a collection of my striving, a collection of the things that we possess, or the worldly titles by which we identify ourselves. One is stripped of all that they thought they were as they enter here, leaving nothing but "God Alone." I sighed heavily. If only I could reach that point myself. If only I could open those gates and cross over into that threshold of "God Alone." Everything that I am is as nothing before the truth of those two words.

As I entered the church I happened to pass by a couple of the monks. They nodded at me in silent greeting. They do not speak. I took my seat next to my wife and the Mass began as the monks took their places in the choir loft, which is the picture shown here. They began with the chanting of the Hours. At this point, tears were just streaming down my face. I love Gregorian Chant. To hear it in person like that just set my soul ablaze; it was as though I was hearing the music of heaven itself. It makes me laugh to think about Merton's journals; that he had so many complaints with the chanting; how they would be out of tune or someone would sing the wrong lines! They sounded good to me!! The Mass itself was phenomenal, and my overall experience there was one of enormous importance. I carry the Abbey with me in my heart, and I hope to return there someday on a full retreat.

It also got me thinking about the monastic way of life and how important it is for us today. I know the various monastic orders, both in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions have seen dwindling numbers over the years. Their influence seems to have waned a bit as well. There are many reasons for this.

One, I think is because they are often misunderstood. You think of a monk and the first thing that comes to mind is someone who has 'given up' the world' and shut themselves away from it. This isn't the case. Historically, it was the monks who were primarily responsible both for the spread of Christianity and the preservation of Christianity in the middle ages. In more recent times, I think of villages in Greece and Russia where the monks would go into towns and teach the people; or the people would come to them for advice. 

And speaking personally, I had the privilege of befriending a Greek Orthodox monk and learning from him...at a book discussion group of all things! He was far from 'cloistered!' The Father was always travelling around, seeing people, ministering and assisting in the local Orthodox Churches. 

The second major reason why I see the influence of Monasticism dwindling; and this is a bold statement coming from a Methodist (!) is because of Protestantism! While the Reformation succeeded in some areas; it failed drastically in others. And one of those key areas of failure is the interior spiritual life of the individual. Protestantism has always emphasized two things; study of the Bible and corporate worship. Click on the website of just about any Protestant or Evangelical Church and you will quickly see the emphasis on the 'coming together in the Body of Christ' and the corporate nature of worship. I am not saying this is bad! What I am saying is that for centuries we have seen the emphasis on the one, to the exclusion of the other. Martin Luther had been a monk. But after his battles with the Catholic Church, he rejected monasticism completely. He saw it as false piety. John Calvin took it even further. 

In his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion he first (wrongly) asserts that monasticism was unknown to the early church. While it is true that monasticism did not exist in the Apostolic Age; the precursor or the ideal of monasticism was most certainly present. The ministry of Jesus was a public one; yes, but people forget that he went off into seclusion to pray on more than one occasion. He went into the wilderness to be tempted; which in turn became the mission of the early ascetics. They retreated into the desert to battle their own demons and the false self. If Jesus Himself was the model; then how can we rightly say its presence was absent? Next, Calvin tears them apart with accusations of corruption and false humility. He says that monks were guilty of a crime if "any one color deviates in the least degree from the prescribed form in color or species of dress" and that to be a contemplative meant a "life of idleness." 

"[M]onks place the principal part of their holiness in idleness. For if you take away their idleness, where will that contemplative life by which they glory that they excel all others, and make a near approach to the angels?… [I]nstead of Christians, we hear some called Benedictines, others Franciscans, others Dominicans, and so called, that while they affect to be distinguished from the common body of Christians, they proudly substitute these names for a religious profession…"

His judgment on monasticism gets worse...

"It is fine to philosophise in seclusion, far away from the intercourse of society; but it ill accords with Christian meekness for any one, as if in hatred of the human race, to fly to the wilderness and to solitude, and at the same time desert the duties which the Lord has especially commanded.

Were we to grant that there was nothing worse in that profession, there is certainly no small evil in its having introduced a useless and perilous example into the Church."

 So there you have it. A complete and total condemnation of monasticism from one of the 'godfathers' of Protestantism. This was the theological equivalent of dropping an Atom Bomb on the monastic orders and the monastic ideal; and that radiation has seeped its way into all forms of Protestantism ever since.

Now Calvin had some good points. There was corruption. There were monks who wanted to completely flee from society, as though the people were somehow their lessers. But one should condemn the practice not the institution. The monasteries needed to be reformed. Thomas Merton talked about this even in the 50s and 60s; how monks should be standing for social justice and actively condemning the Vietnam War and advocating peace. His own writings were censored several times for being too 'vocal' or 'provocative'. There is good and bad with every institution, however. Did Luther and Calvin think, for example, that their writings and words would give birth to literally thousands of different denominations? Would they have seen such a thing as a goal? Certainly not! 

But because of such bad theology in this case; most Protestants have lost out on the wise teachings of a whole tradition. The closest thing Protestantism has had to a monastic order was the short lived group known as the Shakers, from about 1774-1932. But they were outcasts. Mainstream Protestant Christians rarely accepted them. The influence of Calvin spread that far!

I sometimes wonder if the Protestant emphasis on 'corporate worship' is because subconsciously we fear being alone in a room by ourselves; subconsciously I think we  all fear the wilderness and the desert of the ascetics. Why go out into the wilderness and wrestle with God all night like Jacob when we can instead safely sit in the pews for an hour; then return to our 'normal' lives? 

I would argue that while corporate worship is indeed important; that retreat into the wilderness, that cultivation of an interior life is equally as important; in fact I would say it's exactly what we need today.  In our modern age; people are driven to distraction. We run an endless rat race from which we can never seem to slow down. Who has time for God? Who has time for practicing spiritual disciplines? Who has time for quiet, contemplative prayer? 

Indeed, the monastic way of life would have much to teach us, if we could but slow down for a moment to listen. Imagine, not a life that is idle; but unhurried. A life that retreats from the world so that it can learn to truly love the world. This is the true monastic ideal; and in our fast paced, frantic and hurried lives, we need to hear that voice. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend the movie Into Great Silence, about life inside a Carthusian Monastery. When you see the profound simplicity of their lives; it will stop you in your tracks and make you think about your own walk with God. I have provided a link to the trailer of it at the end of this post. Check it out, it will seem out of this world!

In ages past, ascetics and monks would retreat into the desert to draw nearer to God. Today, we must bring that desert into ourselves. The desert must become part of our hearts, our souls. Now how do we do that, though? There will be more on this to come....

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOHG0Kcr4Q4

Belief in the Unseen

I was asked yesterday in a friendly discussion how I "could believe in a God that is unseen", and indeed; why would I need such a belief at all to be a "good human being?" These were very good questions; questions that I once wrestled with myself as an atheist. 

The basic idea is this: something needs to be seen to be believed in; a thing cannot be true unless we are able to verify it empirically. Religion, then, was something that 'primitive' man used to cope with the forces around them. A flash of lightning streaks across the night sky and the people tremble. The rains fall, the crops bear fruit, and the people give thanks. Because 'primitive' man did not understand the world around them, they had to attribute these forces to something supernatural, to something unseen. This is why in primitive mythologies 'the gods' were most often seen as elemental forces. The priests and shamans were seen as holy men and women that could interact with those forces and serve as intermediaries between the people and the gods. 

Fast forwarding a bit; as the middle ages gave birth to the Enlightenment, man's thinking began to shift from the supernatural to the sciences and from the unseen to the seen. The view of a personal and knowable God that once dominated the thought of theologians and philosophers gradually gave way to a deist version of God; a God who is a divine watchmaker that set the universe in motion, but is altogether unknowable. 

But it was the Modern era that forever shifted our thinking towards the unseen. Man had progressed to new heights. Our achievements in industrialization, technology, the arts and the sciences (among other things), left us with a world that no longer needed the supernatural to explain the nature of things. Nietzsche, who was seen as a precursor to Modernism famously proclaimed that 'god is dead, and we have killed him'. It was his view and that of many other philosophers of the time that religion and God was the invention of man. Man had needed a God to explain the world. Man had needed a God to derive a system of ethics from which to guide the masses. Science had taken us beyond that point and man could now create their own morality.

In this way, belief in the supernatural was seen as irrational. If it cannot be seen; it is not there. But is this view as sensible as it sounds? I would argue that it presents us with a logical fallacy. If I make the statement "a thing cannot be true unless it is empirically verifiable", then by reason of my own argument what I just said cannot be true! I am unable to empirically verify that statement; I have no way of measuring whether it's true or it isn't. 

Huston Smith likens science to a searchlight beam probing the night sky. "For a plane to register, two things are required: it must exist, and it must be where the beam is." Science can illumine our understanding certainly; but it can only do that at fixed points. It is a powerful beam, but it does not light up the entire night sky. Science can't answer questions like "why am I here?" and "does life have meaning?" 

And ultimately; neither can I if I believe that there is no objective reality or universal truths. I am left only with the sum total of my subjective experiences. The Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer put it this way: "Without the infinite-personal God, all a person can do as Nietzsche points out, is to make “systems.” In today’s speech we would call them “game plans.” A person can erect some sort of structure, some type of limited frame, in which he lives, shutting himself up in that frame and not looking beyond it. This game plan can be one of a number of things. It can sound high and noble, such as talking in an idealistic way about the greatest good for the greatest number. Or it can be a scientist concentrating on some small point of science so that he does not have to think of any of the big questions, such as why things exist at all”.

In a materialistic culture we would define that 'game plan' as achieving personal wealth and satisfaction. One could argue that this is the 'greatest good' of our postmodern society. Just as we can only believe in what is seen, we can only measure self-worth by what we possess. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements for the latest, greatest things. We stand in line for hours for the latest gadget. We seek romantic love as perhaps the highest ideal, because we think that it will somehow validate us. But as Pastor Timothy Keller suggests; all we have done is attach ultimate meaning to conditional 'things.' We have made our own false gods.

Religion warns us against such views. In the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism; we are taught that our suffering comes from our attachments. Buddhists see the things of this life as transitory; as "passing phenomena." There is nothing wrong with seeking a happy life. All of us want that. But at the same time; we cannot attach ultimate meaning to conditional states of being, because as the Buddha says, "there are no permanent states of being." The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible echoes this truth; likening man's relentless pursuits for material pleasure and wealth as "chasing after the wind". But if we cannot hold onto external things or even our own states of being; is there anything we can hold onto?

I would argue yes; that we can hold onto the very thing that the Modernists were so quick to deny; the unseen. This is why the Lord said to "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." Just because the searchlight beam of scientism cannot find this unseen reality in the night sky doesn't mean it isn't there. Religion teaches us that reality is much bigger and much greater than what we can comprehend spatially.

Still, this is not something that is easy for us to do. In postmodern thought, religious belief is seen as taking "a leap of faith"; as though we are somehow moving from the rational to the irrational. This was an error of some of our own theologians in the 20th century; divorcing belief from the rational. It is more a product of Existentialism than it is traditional religious belief. Our greatest saints from ages past would have never held such a view. For them, belief in the unseen was not only rational; but super-rational. The things of God; the eternal, the infinite, transcends our perception altogether. This is why the Mystics have always said that we must put on a "Cloud of Unknowing" to truly seek God. We must empty ourselves of our own sense of perception so that He might fill us.

But again; this is difficult for us to do. The question, as in my discussion yesterday ultimately becomes "if God is real, then why doesn't He reveal Himself?" We say "If God revealed Himself, then I would believe." This is a sound objection. I wrestled with that same issue for many years. Now as a Christian, I certainly believe that God has revealed Himself in revelation; both in His Word and in creation. The fact that I exist at all is a 'sign' to me. But what if we had an even more direct revelation? What if the voice of God suddenly bellowed from the Heavens, "I am here", would it really help?

All one has to do is study the Sacred history of the three great Abrahamic faiths to see that this is not the case. God parts the Red Sea and leads the Israelites out of Egypt and feeds them with Manna on their journey. Yet when Moses goes up on the mountain, the people begin to build idols for themselves. In Islam, the Polytheist tribes made war on the early Muslims; and yet the Muslims won battle after battle even when they were hopelessly outnumbered. But so many still refused to believe that the One God was on their side. The Holy Koran says "And they swear their strongest oaths by Allah that if a sign come to them they would certainly believe in it. Say: signs are with Allah. And what should make you know that when they come, they believe not?"

I can think of no greater example than when hearing of the appearances of the risen Lord; Thomas still refused to believe. It wasn't until he placed his hands on the wounds of Jesus that he was finally able to believe. Thomas, I think, represents our human condition. We are hardwired to believe in God and the unseen on the one hand because it is the Image of God reflected in us; but at the same time our fallen and broken nature rebels against that and refuses to believe without 'signs.' In that sense, our very nature is in a perpetual state of conflict. Even when the miraculous is in our midst, we still struggle to believe.

That is why the Lord says to Thomas after he touched Him: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

This is the essence of our faith. It is not a belief that is irrational; rather it is a belief that transcends our own limited understanding. If God were to shout from the heavens demanding us to worship Him; it wouldn't be faith and mankind wouldn't be free. The unseen reality is there; but God gives us the choice to believe in it or not.

God does not speak to us in a booming voice from the heavens, He speaks to us in a whisper. He speaks not as a roaring lion, but as a gentle wind rustling in the trees. Let us strive to hear that small voice; for we are blessed because we have not seen and yet we believe...