The Journey and the ordinary

When I first entered the monastery we were given classes on many topics, most especially: theology, the history of monasticism, spirituality, and scripture. I hadn't thought much about what made this life 'work'. I knew it was what I wanted, I knew that for me prayer mattered and I believed I could grow and thrive in our communal search to serve God. 

One of the first things that was talked about was the very ordinariness of the life. It was described in terms of  the day-after-day sense and indeed reality, of apparent sameness. It was a highly structured life repeated day after day; very ordered and yet... I found I was never bored, the days were never long and empty. The day-long silence at first very difficult became healing.  I can only describe each day as an odd sort of adventure in which each of us was  seeking to serve our God in one particular way out of the  thousands of possibilities in our world.

One of the most important parts of this 'ordinary' routine life was, to my mind, the 24/7 daily living together with a group of women many of whom I might not have chosen to live with. I have never in my life experienced such a real and committed effort on the part of a group of people to live in loving care for one another. Because of the continual daily close proximity there was no escape from the normal (or otherwise) human differences and conflicts that happen to everyone: no TV to turn to, no pub to drown in, no shopping spree to distract with. So, however fraught some relationships might have been, however contrary the personalities, however different, even, the ideas each had of her faith and her vocation, each really tried to be-friend and love the other. When there was failure to do so, efforts were almost always made to find a way to reconciliation. It might take days, weeks to find a way through, it might take a third party to help but everyone tried. It seemed to me that no one just let another fall by the wayside.  To the best of my knowledge, there were no real enemies. You might not be best friends but you were sisters in a community seeking to be a tiny spark of loving light in an often dark world. This, it seemed to me, is what makes the ordinary everywhere, 'work': the daily lighting of a tiny spark of love in whatever it is we do.  More about this another day.