Good habits.

Sometimes I forget I have a blog. Well that's not entirely true. For the last 6 months I have felt I literally have had nothing good to say. I don't feel particularly different today. I just miss writing. There's something about being able to create something, a new combination of words no one has ever put together quite the same way, even if it's just a period in a different place, that is slightly addicting. I suppose lack of inspiration could be a product of learning nothing new, or maybe being overwhelmed from too much learning. Either way, I hate to just blog about my mind, I feel vain. So I will blog about a monastery.

This weekend I had the opportunity to spend a weekend in silence and solitude up in Eureka Springs at a retreat center run by a monastery. On Sunday I got to go to mass at the monastery and was given a little history and tour of the place. I will tell you honestly I was floored. I've never quite experienced something like that. The monks and nuns were Franciscan but also Benedictine. They were so accepting and hospitable. And real. There was an awareness of reality, the importance of also being in the world, not just in their community. So their community consists of the monastic community up in Eureka Springs or other monasteries that have opened, and also the domestic members, who live all over America... and 3 or 4 other countries. And they had a grasp on something I see go misunderstood in my own denomination too often: non-denominational Christians do not have a monopoly on salvation. They are ecumenical and stand with wide open arms to begin healing the divisions that have formed in the church... not claiming they have everything right, but with humility and brotherly love. I was speechless (well mostly I was anyway because I had a weekend of "silence") at the beauty of their community. They had it right. We ostracize our celibates. We push our singles into marriage. We push our married couples to have children. And we put the families in our churches on a pedestal. They live together, all of these: celibates, singles, married, families. The celibates have families in their brothers and sisters, down to having a community kitchen with their singles brothers and sisters, because cooking and eating together fosters more community than anything I know in domestic life. The children in the community (in the words of Sister Carolyn) "are everyone's children... they have no idea how lucky they are to be loved by so many people." They don't. They are provided with more support and investment than most children. Their family lives will be complete. And the celibates, who will never have children of their own, get to nurture and parent children. It's beautiful.

As much as I wanted to stay, here I am in my dorm room. What I saw and experienced provoked questions that need answers. The more I look at life, the more I live life, the more I see that we all want reform. There is something in us that wants something better. We are to bring the Kingdom of God now. Praying the Lord's Prayer at Mass 3 times this weekend was a precious reminder that we are the answer. And, the inspiration for a new kind of life continues as God forms a picture of how He longs for His church to love in my heart and mind.

Writer's block conquered. Inner blogger back, fed for now, soon to be longing to write again.