Become Like Little Children
What does it mean to become simple?
Kathleen Norris poses this question in her book The Cloister Walk. One answer lies in the embodied poetics of the Benedictine charism.
Margarita Mooney, an Associate Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, unpacks this subject in her review of “The Mission of St. Benedict,” an 1858 essay by theologian and philosopher John Henry Newman.
“… at times, our tendency to analyze, measure, and manipulate needs to be foregone,” Mooney writes, “in order to return to a childlike, simple state of perceiving reality that opens up a sacramental way of living—seeing in visible things the invisible grace of God.”
She’s talking about a way of seeing or knowing, a mode of perception, that leads to salvation. As adults we typically need to retrain this capacity which we had as children. A Rule, or structured way of life, can make this process easier, as Mooney explains:
The Benedictine vision reminds us that to see the totality of things and to live a contemplative life in the ordinary work of manual labor and repetitive daily routines requires an attentiveness to the present moment and commitment to particular people and places.
A Benedictine monk lives in one place, works a trade, and owns no property. This simplified existence helps him do the deeper inner work, to respond to his vocational call. Newman describes his embodied poetics in this way:
The monk proposed to himself no great or systematic work, beyond that of saving his soul. What he did more than this was the accident of the hour, spontaneous acts of piety, the sparks of mercy or beneficence, struck off in the heat, as it were, of his solemn religious toil, and done and over almost as soon as they began to be. If today he cut down a tree, or relieved the famished, or visited the sick, or taught the ignorant, or transcribed a page of Scripture, this was a good in itself, though nothing was added to it tomorrow. He cared little for knowledge, even theological, or for success, even though it was religious.
In a world obsessed with economic growth and technological progress, the countercultural spirit at the core of the monastic traditions speaks to me. Perhaps because I never married, I have a desire to profess vows publicly, to invite loved ones and strangers to witness my life, and to make commitments that focus my attention.
The monk “does not analyze, he marvels,” Newman says.
I’d like, with others, to train a way of looking that transforms moments of misery into crystalline beauty.