Benedictine Oblates November 2009

Benedictine Oblates November 2009, originally uploaded by Edith OSB.

I’m having the opportunity over this fall and winter to plan the program for the Oblates of our monastery. While I’ve given a few oblate retreats, this is the first time I’ve been able to meet with the group several months in a row.

What’s an Oblate, I hear someone asking. Oblates are lay people – mostly Catholic but also some Protestants – who feel called to live the principles of the Rule of St. Benedict in their everyday lives – and to do so through connection with a particular monastery. They study the Rule for an extended period of formation, and then make vows of conversatio morum, obedience, and stability. They are connected not only to the sisters of our monastery, but also to each other in community.

An interesting discussion of living out the vows at the October meeting prompted me to plan the meetings for November, December and January around the three vows. This photo came after our extended discussion of stability using Gerald Schlabach’s Stability in the World: An Oblate’s View.

Given a choice, they put Obedience off to January. So, in the heart of Advent, we will be discussing conversion of life.

Mid Heath and Heather

Image by Flintlocker via Flickr

I was surprised, and tickled, to find that a little English Country dance I wrote quite some time ago was submitted to the newsletter of the Country Dance and Song Society of America – and published in the Summer 2009 issue.

I haven’t been to a dance in a few years – not since the drive back from calling in Lansing on Thanksgiving Saturday became just too much for my 50-something energy level.  (Okay,  I could still do the drive. I just couldn’t make sense to my 8:00 a.m. class on Monday morning.)  There is a bit of dancing here in Duluth, but it’s so different from all the country dancing I’ve done elsewhere that I couldn’t make the switch.

The last month has brought people and music from that part of my former life back into focus.  Not only did Jacqueline Schwab come to Duluth for a delightful concert, but that event helped me find out that some other country-dance oriented people were in the area, largely speaking.

The College’s new wellness center has a beautiful little dance and exercise studio; it overlooks the creek, and one can often see the deer leaping through the woods.  I’ve had half a notion to see about having a country dance class of some sort.  Having found someone else in Duluth with experience in country dance organizations and music, it just might be the right time to look into it further.

Coed dorms in the news

Image by es0teric via Flickr

I remember when my college made the dorms coed. A recent study, published today in the Journal of American College Health, prompted me to think about that change again.  Those coed dorms really might have more of an impact than we once believed.

It was winter quarter – my sophomore year, I think – when the administration decided to allow the switch.  A variety of living situations were arranged. One dorm remained all-male, another all female.  Within the remaining dorms, all-male and all-female floors alternated with several co-ed by room (two men in one room, two women in the next) floors.  Almost everyone on campus moved one Minnesota February weekend.

Prior to that time, the philosophy of in loco parentis was strong on college campuses – that the college would set the standards and determine acceptable behavior in the college just as parents would in the home.  On our campus, women were allowed in the men’s dorms on Friday evening and one afternoon a week – I forget which one.  Men were allowed in women’s dorms on Saturday evenings and one afternoon.  Visitation in opposite sex dorms on Sunday afternoon was permitted. In addition, women had to sign-out if they would be coming in later than 10 p.m., and the doors were locked at midnight.  People who came in late lost points and could be grounded if they lost all of their points in a year.

All of that changed in a single weekend: the hours, the sign-out, the disciplinary apparatus.  At the time, other people our age were going off to war in Vietnam; students argued that people old enough to die for their country were also mature enough to set their own standards. Most colleges include community standards in their Codes of Conduct: still presented by the college but defensible as necessary for the common good.

Life was certainly different in the coed dorms.  The dorms were more social – there were more parties, more hanging out in the lounges,probably somewhat less work getting done.  At the time, I didn’t think much of it.

The study published today has some startling statistics.  A mind-boggling 42% of students who live in coed housing reported binge drinking once a week or more. Of the small group in gender-specific housing – most assigned there by housing lotteries, not by choice – the proportion is small, only 18%.  (Seemingly fraternity and sorority students binge drink at a rate well beyond 42% – wow!).

I’ve seen the negative effects of that kind of drinking on students at my own college’s campus – and the trail of relationship chaos, failed courses, depression it leaves in its wake.  If – as the study indicates – the selection effect accounts for only a small portion of the difference between the gender-specific and coed dorms, perhaps colleges might want to consider re-instituting some of those old practices.  Ones that do would probably be less popular in the recruitment phase, but might make up for it in better retention of the students who do come to college.

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St Nicholas stopping an execution

St Nicholas stopping an execution, originally uploaded by jimforest.

I’m preparing to teach my course on the Death Penalty again next semester. Each time I’ve taught it, one or another element of the issue has come to the fore. This time, I was asked to highlight religious aspects simply because some of the Honors students need a 2 credit course with significant religion content to meet their requirements. It’s not a difficult request to honor.

In addition to the obvious – looking into the current statements of various faith traditions about executions and capital punishment – I plan to bring out the strong non-violence in the earliest centuries of Christianity. So I was delighted to come across this story of St. Nicholas – one I had never heard before – and the icon, on Jim Forest’s Flickr collection.

Generation that never knew the wall

The news reports are full of stories and remembrances of the toppling of the Berlin Wall.  Some are poignant – people who were able to see parents or children when they thought they were separated forever.  Others put the celebration of the end of the wall in the perspective of the later difficulties of re-joining two Germanies whose culture and perspectives had diverged so sharply in the years of Communist East Germany.

I’m very much aware that most of my students have little understanding of the event.  Most of them were born after the Berlin Wall fell.  East Germany, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia as a nation (and communist), the entire idea of a Soviety bloc, and the threat of the Cold War:  all of that is history, not lived experience, for students in college now.

In the 21st century, we have the building of national walls – at least in the US and in Israel – that are designed to keep out people that we either fear or consider undesirable.  From that vantage point, students have a hard time understanding a wall that was built to keep people in – a wall on which people lost their lives as they tried to find a way over and into a society with greater freedom.

A poll last week asked Russian citizens who built the Berlin Wall, with surprising results.  A few – 10% – thought that people in Berlin built it themselves; 6% thought Western nations built it and 4% thought it was a “bilateral initiative” of the Soviet Union and the West.  More than half – 58% – just had no idea who built the wall; only a fourth knew that it was built by the Soviet Union and its then-communist ally, East Germany.

It is amazing to me that the Cold War has passed out of memory.  It so terrorized the world during the time I was growing up – “duck and cover” drills in the grade school classrooms, the University of Chicago’s underground library stacks a designated shelter against atomic warfare – that it is hard to believe people don’t remember it.  It has left its mark on the societies that experienced the rule of communism and their economies, and continues to echo in diplomatic troubles.  But, overall, the Cold War simply came to an end in a very short period of time, and its traces are blowing away like chaff.

It gives me pause about our current over-arching threat, terrorism.  Will there be a time when it, too, simply crumbles as a failed method for bringing about change?

My Alma Mater tops the $50K mark

When I went to college a few decades ago, I was looking for a small college in a small town – I was younger than usual, and was afraid of being overwhelmed at a huge university or in a big city.  I certainly wanted a good education and interesting classes but – if the truth is told – I really didn’t have a clue what to look for. The guidance counselor at my high school pointed me in the direction of Carleton College, and the next fall, I was on my way to Minnesota for the first time.

It was certainly not an easy school! Several of us who took History 10 from a brand-new faculty member that Fall showed up in the Dean of Women’s office begging for intervention or grades of “Incomplete” because we just couldn’t figure out how to write the papers this professor wanted – and we had a hard time understanding the books we were reading.  Even though all of us had graduated from really good high schools, the gap between what was expected of us as high school seniors and as college freshmen seemed enormous.

I don’t remember all of the books on the reading list, but I have firm memories of reading Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents” and E. P. Thompson’s “The Making of the English Working Class” without fully understanding them.  Sociology 10 used an early edition of Coser and Rosenberg’s “Sociological Theory: A Book of Readings” which was filled with extended excerpts from the original authors – long German-style sentences and all.

When I compare those books with the pre-digested textbook pablum that we – and I mean “we” because I do it too – offer first year students today, I sit in stunned amazement.  On the one hand, my students  struggle to master the the concepts even in the best of the “learner-centered” textbooks which come complete with chapter summaries, websites with practice test questions, outlines, and flashcards. On the other hand, the books I had in college put me face-to-face with real thinkers and asked that I understand and grapple with their ideas. No firehose of government statistics, flashy photos, graphs and charts, and thousands of details to remember, as we have in the textbook. No – Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx and Carleton’s own Thorstein Veblen simply assumed that we – like they – knew the facts about the world.   As college freshmen, we didn’t – but we didn’t want to look bad, so we just did a lot of other reading on the side to catch up.  In the process, we learned to be independent scholars,.  The real question was “why?” not “what’s happening?” and, with that question, we were invited into a world where ideas mattered and were taken seriously.

A report in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education lists Carleton College among the 58 private colleges and universities that  have topped the $50,000 per year tuition+room-and-board mark, although just barely ($50,205).  It was probably close to the top when I went there, too.  From what I can tell, they are still able to lure in bright young students who discover, almost immediately, that the intellectual work they’ve done before is much less than what is now being asked of them.  They may wail a bit at first – the Dean of Women certainly seemed to have seen students like my small band many times before.  She was not unkind, and she did arrange for us to get a little more time.  But her message was pretty clear: “Yes,  dear, it really is this difficult. That’s what real academics is like. Instead of asking for the task to be changed, why not figure out how you are going to accomplish it?”  But, like my little group, most of them pull themselves together and graduate four years later not only with a lot of knowledge in their heads, but with a suite of attitudes and skills that serves them well wherever life takes them.

While $50,000 is certainly a tremendous amount of money – and I’m glad that these colleges also have financial aid programs that put them within reach of students of very modest means – it nonetheless pales in comparison with the human capital that one “buys” with that sum. The dividends on any investment in education are priceless.

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A Good Wife (Month of Proverbs)

In Bombay with my mother and sister, 1959

When one finds a worthy wife,
her value is far beyond pearls.
Her husband, entrusting his heart to her,
has an unfailing prize.
(Proverbs 31:10-11)

Several times in the first 30 chapters, the book of Proverbs speaks of quarrelsome wives – advising young men that it would be better to live in the desert or the corner of a rooftop than to live in luxury with one.  Finally, as the book closes, we have the picture of the wife one wants to have.   Bible study groups – both men’s and women’s – often focus on it, and for many women, it’s an inspiration and a model.  Family members often choose this passage to read at funerals. In fact, I first heard this passage when a minister chose it for my own mother’s funeral decades ago.

What does this worthy wife do? She is no sluggard, nor lacking in initiative.  Not only does she distribute food to her household, but she also plants vineyards and makes things for market.  She “enjoys the sucess” of her dealings, working at them willingly.  This good wife is a worthy and equal partner in the marriage: she has charge of her own small business ventures, re-invests her own money, and shares in the dignity and status of the household.

This sounds a bit like praising an overworked person to keep her going. But we hear, too, that she is prized for the wisdom of her counsel (31:26), reaches out to the poor and needy (31:20), and has charge of the conduct of those in her household (31:27).  For this, both her husband and her children extol her.

What is it that lasts? Proverbs warned repeatedly against falling for good looks, and it does so again – but thistime by comparing the fleeting nature of beauty to the enduring value of a wise and virtuous woman.

Charm is deceptive and beauty fleeting;
the woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her a reward of her labors,
and let her works praise her at the city gates.
(Proverbs 31:30-31)

Anxious (Month of Proverbs)

Image by etrusia_uk (Away for a while) via Flickr

The wicked man flees although no one pursues him;
but the just man, like a lion, feels sure of himself.
(Proverbs 28:1)

There is a deep reality about the inner life at the center of this proverb: our fears are not about punishment or penalty, even when our minds return to that possibility constantly.  Our minds are pointing us to something deeper.

“The wicked” are never fully identified in Proverbs; they are not defined by particular actions.  We do know that they are selfish; their first thought or action is to get their own way.  Centered on their desires, all those around them – and God – become enemies who might stand between them and the fulfillment of their wishes.  While they seem to have everything they want, they are vulnerable to losing it at any moment. At a deeper level, they know that they were made for relationship with God, whose gaze of love they can feel in their inmost being.

In the spiritual plane, this is the source of much serious anxiety.  We worry over a variety of concrete problems, but feel relief when we come up with a plan of action. Others feel a deep anxiety that goes beyond one or another problem in their lives.  None of their actions bring them calm. They run away, figuratively in games and entertainment and frantic activity or by changing jobs, friends, homes, even families.  They flee when no one pursues.

Unfortunately, “the wicked” are not a class of people who have cornered the market for selfishness.  Each of us, for a shorter or longer time, has been one of the wicked.  We know what we are called to do, the right choice – but we choose against it. From that moment on, our uneasy conscience weighs us down, and we do anything to get out from underneath.

The just man – the one who is centered on God – is described as sure of himself.  He can count on himself – as a lion cn – because he knows the source and extent of his strength.  The bonds of community strengthen him as well as constrain him; God’s commandments written in his heart guide his actions and choices.  His certainty is, paradoxically, not grounded in strength to get what he wants for himself, but confidence in working with God and with the human family.

He who trusts in himself is a fool,
but he who walks in wisdom is safe.
(Proverbs 28:26)

 

Texting while … flying???

Image via Wikipedia

According to several news reports, including one from Minnesota Public Radio (Pilot distractions raise concerns | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ) the two pilots who flew past their destination, forgetting to land the plane, were not drunk. Nor were they sleeping. No, they were … well, having screen time with their laptops, perhaps the pilot equivalent of texting while flying.

Just a few weeks ago, surveys showed us that most people think texting while driving is not entirely safe – except when they do it.  MPR interviewed folks who bore out the data. One said,

“If I’m in a rush or have a lot of things on my mind, I’ll definitely do it,” she said. “But I try to be more conscious about it. I have a pretty good feeling that most, a lot of people do it, even though, like me, they know they shouldn’t.”

The pilots were not supposed to be using their laptops while flying – they may lose their jobs over this.  It is certainly compelling evidence of the seductive power of readily-available internet and interactive devices.

I’ve experienced this first-hand in the few weeks since getting my first cell phone – a BlackBerry.  The same things that make it a useful tool – the ability to reply to email from students in spare moments, for instant – also make it a terrible distractor.

My mind wandered while I was in a lecture recently – they were going over something I already understood – and, somehow, I instantly had the thought to check my email. Why? I never had that thought in class before – and I did not expect any earth-shattering news.  The simple fact that the device was there and ready to go made it possible.  The psychogical pay-off, the sense of having accomplished something, lures us in.

I’m glad we have laws about texting while driving – but for all the rest of life, we still need to exert control over ourselves – before we fly past our friends and family, leaving them behind with our eyes glued to little screens.

Sharp! (Month of Proverbs)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

As iron sharpens iron,
so man sharpens his fellow man.
(Proverbs 27:17)

One of the common explanations of monastic spirituality is that, living together year after year, our faults become so visible to each other that, eventually, each of our sharp edges is worn down.   The sharp edges are, I think, our abrasive side, and the part where we look out for ourselves and our self-interest.  Gradually, over time, we learn to look out for each other – and perhaps be less prickly.

What to make of this proverb, then?   In ancient Hebrew technology, only iron was strong enough to make a sharp edge on another piece of iron.  And those sharp edges were important – knives, saws, axes, nails!  To get a sharp edge required heating and pounding with another iron implement.  Quite a different perspective than the monastic gradual filing down.

Yet both deal with shaping us to be better – to remove any rough edges that catch things up, but keep a sharp edge.  Most important, the saying s agree: it is not something one can do alone.  Without the rough and striking encounters with my fellow human beings, I will never become the useful tool in God’s hand that I am designed to be.

As one face differs from another,
so does one human heart from another.
(Proverbs 27:19)