The Gathering Begins

The Gathering’s blog is an attempt to condense space and reach you anywhere. Now it looks as though we might have to monkey with time as well because there is so much going on, - so while there will be an attempt to keep up in real time, it may fall behind real time only if there seems to be too much to say.

I arrived at the Convent just before two o’clock to find registration operating in full force and people gradually arriving. Those of us who are leading and facilitating small group discussion received some pointers in advance, - not the least of which was to review the purpose of the gathering;
• Reflection on the something more we are seeking – both personally and as sisters, associates and oblates of the order
• To experience the rhythm of the monastic life – so that prayer, study, work and relaxation contribute to what Joan Chittister once called Wisdom Distilled from the Daily
• To deepen our understanding of the work of SSJD and other orders
• To explore new directions for SSJD itself, - I was interested to learn that the ideas of increasing the use of volunteers and the creation of the Oblates actually came out of the visioning process of the gathering in 1995

There was also some housekeeping reminders – there were guidelines for the groups, outlines of the discussion topics with a general question or two and a reminder that were going to produce our own entertainment for Friday evening and we needed to start thinking about it in the groups. Most leaders and facilitators were meeting for the first time and I had an enjoyable conversation with mine – who probably wins hands down as the traveller of the greatest distance. She has come to us from Glasgow, Scotland.


I then went out, armed with a digital camera to snap a few pictures. Some participants were already walking the labyrinth, and reading quietly in the sun. Inside people were chatting in the conference room and moving toward the guest house to unpack. Before long it was time for our first evensong.

The organist, Dan Norman and Sister Anne played a prelude on piano and violin respectively. We were given booklets for Morning and Evening prayer – and a reminder card that there was a new response to follow the readings, “Listen for the leading of the Spirit”, - much more appropriate than the customary, “The Word of the Lord” that too often follows horrible accounts of violence in the Old Testament and often neglected in following the hard direction of the New. The first hymn had the familiar tune of “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord is Ended” and I wondered at the unfamiliar words, till I noticed that they were written some time ago by Sister Rosemary Anne.

Evensong was sung and for the first time we experienced the silence of convent – though I had to realize that once again, I had sung the psalm with enthusiasm and no memory whatsoever of the words afterwards – one hopes that simply being silent is enough for now. The next hymn was new in both setting and text - “Something More” written by Dan Norman in the key of F with one tricky E flat that kept our reading skills alert – and an appropriate text that used the poetic gifts of Sister Joan.

Its third verse read appropriately

And so we come together here
Our hands outstretched, our hearts ablaze,
To seek together something more,
Something to give us life always.

Then we were off to supper – entering with a no-nonsense squirt of hand sanitizer administered by Sister Constance Joanna, which also reminded us of the times. It was to be a silent supper – but that had to be gently re-established. Potted pansies decorated the place settings. Table dwellers lined up in turn and it was fun to realize that while the refectory is often full of individuals and groups, that in this case we were all present for the same reason. We sunk into the silent meal and I observed my favourite small statue of St. Fiacre in the quadrangle. At a previous retreat we had amused ourselves at each totally silent meal by watching him totally disappear during a snowstorm.

While the participants for The Gathering gradually assembled in the Chapel, other guests started to arrive – and we learned that Something More had a much wider appeal that we planned for. The place was packed with familiar and unfamiliar faces. More and more chairs came out of storage to seat a capacity crowd and the bustle to accommodate them created a real sense of expectancy. Margaret Silf was briefly introduced – (with some of the details outlined in the second post in this blog).

Margaret started with the image of the small Oliver Twist daring to approach the formidable Mr. Bumble with “Please sir . . . . Amusingly in the planning group we had worked hard to find a logo that suggested monastic hands instead of the pleading ones of small Oliver, – but Margaret did us one better by simply uniting them right from the beginning. She promised to provide a framework for those attending the Gathering but at the same time give the single lecture attendees something to think about. She accomplished both admirably by taking us through four stages of human development: infancy, adolescence, mid life and later life.

Her examples of infancy were taken from her new status as a grandmother. Other grandmothers like me could relate perfectly to her total delight in this stage of pure enjoyment, in comparison to the anxiety we had in raising our own children. She stressed the infant’s strong state of vulnerability and the demands it makes on us. If ego is part of God’s creation, the small person also knows how to exploit it and make demands to the full. At the same time, the sense of wonder is palpable where a small person’s curiosity allows her to find God in all things. “Where does the itch go when you scratch it?” Margaret’s own small daughter asked some years ago. The same small daughter reminded her of that life stage after presenting her with a card after a quarrel. It read, “Please be patient. God hasn’t finished with me yet”.

The next stage of adolescence brings new challenges. Someone suggested to her that the best new hire is a teenager, because after all he is sure he knows everything. The earlier sense of entitlement often grows into what seems like a permanent embattlement. At the same time the early curiosity evolves into a sense of wanting to make a difference. The sense of wonder unites with a new idealism

Mid life continues the dual pattern, Margaret says. We acquire jobs, careers, possessions, spouses, kids. It’s a long stage. Some years ago she thought that old age probably began at 43. It’s a moveable feast and now middle age might start as late as 70. Amid all those expensive possessions that one just has to have emerges a divine sense of discontent and the uncomfortable question, Is this all there is? The earlier sense of idealism morphs into a greater sense of a need to serve and give back. Bigger and better no longer has quite the same charm. Happiness is often assaulted by suffering or sorry and paradoxically becomes joy

Later life – a much kinder gentler term than old age – brings a new realization, Margaret says, that we no longer have to have it all. There is now a sense that everything is a given, that all comes from God. She remembered asking a monk many years ago what poverty really meant. He replied with a smile, “We don’t have money, - we just have the use of it”. This is the stage where we finally come to grips with the fact that we just have the use of everything. It is the time to come to terms with the fragility and dislocation of the lives that we thought were so secure. We have come full circle to the vulnerability of the infant grandchild that we now look on with such delight.

The strength of this stage, Margaret says is the final giving up of so many illusions of what really matters. The challenge is to discover the treasure within, to inhabit small places. She gave an example of a man confined to a smaller place who found more and more in less and less – so that in end one could almost say that he found everything in nothing. Physical diminishment finally sends the message that we don’t call the shots and allows us to discover the depth of wonder. Other cultures may do this better than Western ones, Margaret observes. We wait a long time for God to get through the cracks and hang on relentlessly to the control that we no longer have. At our best, though, we find joy in the simplicity of the present moment and give up the desire to succeed.

This final letting go of things we thought mattered so much is a preparation for our final letting go of life itself. Nature teaches us the real wisdom. A tree in its full beauty in autumn does not try to hang on to its leaves even when they have reached their most beautiful stage. It places its waning energy in the taproot so that new leaves can be reborn in another spring. After the many leaves of our own lives fall away, what is left is the core of our being, the true self that plays its own small part in the story of creation.

Margaret wondered where we really are in the human story now. Is our current world an example of the terrible two’s, where No and I Want It are the only message? Are we the know-it-all adolescent who can do it all and have it all? Are we in midlife crisis as we watch the bank profits tank and environment go to waste? Is our current diminishment actually good news and an opportunity to finally grow up?

If the glass is half empty, it is also half full. The odd manifesto of the Beatitudes offers blessings to those who get it. We could actually be on the cutting edge of evolution and start to learn that cooperation will be the key to the future.

Margaret ended with some observations especially directed toward the entire audience. She started by showing us one of the many layers Russian dolls – and was reminded of a trip to Ireland when a customs officer made her open a suitcase and asked what she planned to with a small collection of weird gismos and toys, “It’s for a retreat” she said. “Ah a retreat” he replied understandably, good Catholic that he was. One of our tasks in life is the examination of layers. Using the Russian doll, she showed us stages of removal. One that often comes is the loss of trust of friends as well as the loss of friends themselves, - though in the latter case, the best of them lives on in us. Another is the loss of dignity that infirmity of age or accident can bring. Another is the loss of trust in systems, - institutions, the media, the law, of faith iself. She cited the example of Jesus’s own agony and that of Mother Teresa, whose diaries revealed a loss of the consolation of God for the twenty years in which she bravely continued her work. Finally there is the loss of life itself. What is indestructible is the core of our being. Nature teaches us and the gospel reminds us that the seed must fall into the ground and die so that new life can be reborn.

A final icon was a small box of Alberta rocks. The samples give one sense of the Rockies. The vista of the foothills from a Calgary window gives another. Hiking one of the trails gives still another and at the same time gives an imaginative view of all the other trails – and all the vast area where no trail can possibly penetrate. All of them are images of the Rockies that go far beyond the box and we must not try to put a tape around it. All are valid. We were reminded to explore the infinite, to try the many walks, to avoid seeing any one of the images as the only or final answer to the question. All are images of God that are more than we can ask or imagine.