David Whidden, a Ph.D. student at SMU and a married layman, blogs about his visits to a Benedictine monastery in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He's there right now. Excerpt:
In Plato’s Dialogue, Cratylus, Socrates quotes the Greek philosopher Heroclitus, who said that you can’t step in the same river twice; between the first time you step into the river and the second time you step in the river, both the river changes and you change. If Heroclitus thought his world was always in flux, one wonders what he would make of a world where change is almost considered a virtue, where we get new fashions every three months, where new cars come out every year, where being a ‘change agent’ is part of the job description for some people, and where we change jobs, locations, and spouses with near breakneck speed.As I’ve prepared this week to return to the monastery for the third time, the question of stepping into the same river twice has been gnawing away at the back of my mind. What am I coming back to and who is it that is coming back? Part of the question is a function of the time between my last visit in 2004 and now and part of it is the interesting philosophical question about how we account for continuity in organisms that are constantly changing. So much has changed for both me and the monastery that I have wondered if Heroclitus was correct.
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It's so interesting to me that you get the most comments on your posts dealing with sex. Put up something about a monastery and there's 2 comments: one on the post, and the other discussing the lack of comments.
Well, it's hard to "exchange views" about this post, right?
That said, I'll say that this post hearkens back to the one last week (?) about the Benedictine vow of stability. If one returns to the same river, it's only to meet once again, right where you are, the waters that will wash you, once again, and then be gone. It's ironic, but my sense has always been that one gains a deeper sense of the evanescence of things when one returns to a place of stillness.
Going to choir at the Benedictine monastery where I am oblate - I've said this to the Prior, this is no secret - is like going to a Grateful Dead concert, back in the day, while Jerry was still alive.
At the Grateful Dead concert, for 25 years, you'd see half-clad, lovely 19 year olds, long hair, bright clothes, dancing. Except that over the years they were DIFFERENT 19 year olds, of course, since no one is 19 for 25 years.
When I go to choir I see about the same number of monks as I saw when I started going there in 1991. With a very few exceptions, however, they're not the same men. The turnover rate is ferocious. My residential neighborhood has ten times the stability of this place.
Talking about stability is one thing. Actually staying put is something else again. Apparently.
Although Kevin came close, it seems to me that everyone, including Mr. Whidden, missed the point. One shouldn't visit a monistary and be concerned with the ever-changing externals or ever-changing self.
Getting closer to God should be the theriputic reason for the visit, and God is always the same--yesterday, today and tomorrow--in this sea of change.
Someday I'll learn how to use this new system.
Please delete the June 26, 11:56 PM post.
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