BEING BENEDICTINE

A Reflection on the Meaning and Significance of Benedictine Values at Saint Anselm

Gary M. Bouchard 2005

1 BEING BENEDICTINE Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

The World We Seek to Serve ...... 4

The Lives We Seek to Live ...... 9

The Work We Seek to Do ...... 12

The Community We Seek to Build ...... 17

The Wisdom We Seek to Learn ...... 23

The God We Seek to Know ...... 28

Reflections Questions ...... 32

Benedictine Resources ...... 34

About the Author Gary M. Bouchard, Ph.D.

Raised in New Mexico and Colorado, Gary Bouchard attended in Atchison, Kansas, graduating with degrees in English and communications in 1982. He received his doctorate in English literature with an emphasis in early modern poetry from Loyola University of Chicago in 1988. He has taught in the English Department at Saint Anselm College since 1987, serving as the college’s Executive Vice President from 1998 to 2003. Among recent scholarship, he has authored an article entitled, “The Shape of Song in a Flood of Words: Poetic Truth and Benedictine Education” forthcoming in the American Benedictine Review (December 2005).

2 BEING BENEDICTINE Introduction

Common the pealing of Remembrance the bells on Alumni Hall on Those who “When I remember who I am work and teach a glorious spring at Saint Anselm most deeply, I am at my best. commencement, College, and When Saint Anselm College and the tolling those who of the bells have come to remembers who it is most on the learn and study deeply, it is at its best.” Church on a day here are bound turned suddenly by common – Matthew Leavy, O.S.B. sad. remembrance. Reminiscence, In fact, the with its seasons on our accompanying campus fold into one another with such reveries and revisions, helps us to sustain a rhythm of beginnings, middles and our common story. For what college ends, that only official records stored worth the sacrifice of its ancestors in files can help us make order of our does not share and celebrate common shared recollections, from which we memories? Within these stories, however, recall the departure of one more summer, there is another kind of remembrance the too-early arrival of another autumn, whereby we remember who we are by and with it one more freshman class remembering who we are called to be. to keep us looking forward. And even This is the kind of remembering to which as we do, we recall the renovation of Abbot Matthew refers above, and to one old building, and the construction which the many voices in this document of another; the improbable winning speak, as they ponder and wrestle with the of a past championship, and a faded basic question: What does it mean to be musical triumph on the stage; the sudden, Benedictine? academic maturity of a student, and Common Identity the reluctant retirement of a legendary Sitting in his office with a stack of professor; the leaves aflame with color midterms on a late winter morning, while one October weekend, and the onset of his students are away on semester break, an early winter storm; the echoing song of Professor Bill Farrell of the Sociology the choir, and another stack of exams;

1 BEING BENEDICTINE Department considers the nearly half Common Purpose he has spent on this campus, Long past are the days when the and doesn’t imagine being anywhere imposing structure of Alumni Hall was else this morning. “In many ways, this Saint Anselm as well as Saint is my home,” he states simply, and to Anselm College. But the Benedictine understand the identity of this home, he monks who currently administer proposes the Confucian adage that “a Saint Anselm are the direct religious person should be what he or she is called. descendents of their brothers who A professor should profess,” he states founded the monastery and college, and simply, “and a Benedictine College should who are now buried in Saint Leander be Benedictine.” A statement so obvious cemetery behind the present monastery. that it requires no explanation, provided, Today the monks live their lives in of course, one understands what it means accordance with the same monastic Rule to be Benedictine. as their predecessors, the same Rule that has ordered the lives of for The purpose of this document is to fifteen centuries. assist us in that understanding. It is not, by any measure, a commentary upon Most of us who spend our days or The Rule of Saint Benedict. Neither nights working at Saint Anselm are not is it a systematic assessment of The monks, and therefore have not taken the Rule’s applicability and relevance to three vows of a Benedictine: Stability, Saint Anselm College, nor an attempt Obedience and Conversion through a to re-define the college’s mission. This Monastic Manner of Life. Nonetheless, document did not develop out of the rhythm of work and prayer that committees, focus groups or workshops. brings order to the lives of the monks It originated out of conversations, dozens who founded and still administer Saint of them. Conversations with Benedictine Anselm is a rhythm that many people at monks, administrators and professors, the College still seek to make their own. some of whom have spent the better Father Jonathan, who came to Saint part of their lives at Saint Anselm—men, Anselm as a student four decades ago, women, scientists, artists, humanists, and has served as its president for the past tradesmen—people who, in the classroom sixteen years, urges them to persist in this or not, share this much in common: effort: “Though The Rule of Benedict they dedicate their days, and sometimes was written for monks—for those who, the better portion of their evenings, to under the inspiration of God’s grace, working at Saint Anselm College, and chose to live their lives in a particular have, along the way, given some thought way–still there are principles which are to what the Benedictine identity of the ‘translatable’ to other ways of life, and college means to them and to their work. to the institutions and work with which From these conversations, we hope that Benedictines and their lay associates dozens more will follow. engage themselves.”

2 BEING BENEDICTINE Today, Alumni Hall is but the central says Abbot Matthew, “is that the thought building on a campus of 60 structures on in this document will permeate every part 400 acres of land. Even as the campus and of our life here.” its variety of academic and non-academic All those who receive this document facilities and programs have increased, are encouraged therefore to read it with the number of monks in a monastic the attention urged by Saint Benedict at population that was never regarded as the beginning of his Rule when he tells very large, has steadily declined. This the young monk to “Listen! Listen with reality, as much as any other, speaks of the ear of the heart.” Having done so, we the need for this present document, a may then join in a conversation about document that invites us to recognize the our Benedictine identity that we pray will values that have shaped our past, that shape Saint Anselm’s future, and remain remain part of our present and that can our common remembrance. help us forge our future. “Our desire,”

3 BEING BENEDICTINE I.

The World We Seek To Serve

ne has only to our culture have Osurf the seventy fostered more or more channels “Monks exist in part to be a neurosis than on a television nirvana. question mark to people.” to perceive the Former Dean moral confusion, –Father Peter Guerin, O.S.B. of the College ambiguity and and professor of ambivalence of , Father the age in which Peter Guerin, we live. There is O.S.B. has long been admired by confreres the rancor and hype of cable “news” and laity alike for his adherence to his programming, the voyeurism and monastic vows and responsibilities. He exploitation of so-called reality T.V., the first came to Saint Anselm Abbey in 1957, eroding boundaries to graphic depictions and when he considers the world then, of violence and sex, and the unapologetic and the one from which our students celebration of vanity in celebrity come today, he acknowledges that for mongering and material makeovers. All the person seeking a life of faith, the of it is subsidized by corporate marketing challenges are greater than ever. And yet, that alerts us to our many inadequacies. he notes, “the thorns” have always been We eat, worry, spend, and work too there. “I often think of Jesus’ description much; we exercise, sleep, invest, and earn of the seeds that fall among the thorns. too little. And there are pills to fix much What are the thorns? The anxieties of the of it. world. If we don’t take time to stop, we Is it any wonder that the Abbot of are buying into a culture that says work Saint Anselm Monastery stands fast 24-7. It’s a bad sign. If we cave into the against allowing a television into the expectations of our culture, we will be monastery? And yet the television is but a choked off.” window into our age of anxiety in which One office in any institution that the material comforts and excesses of deals routinely with the variety of such

4 BEING BENEDICTINE challenges is the Office of Human been, people seeking to anchor themselves Resources. Pat Shuster, who came to the in a life of faith have, perhaps, never been college in 1994 as the Director of Human more at odds with their world than they Resources and who now serves as the are today, when secular thinking and college’s Vice President of Administration behavior have become more and more notes that “reconciling who we seek to persistently the norm of our culture. In be as a community with the challenges his recent popular book entitled The of today’s society is daunting, and it is End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the getting harder.” Of the world of worries Future of Reason (Norton, 2004), author that students are bringing with them to Sam Harris declares that the “Iron campus, Dr. Connie Richards, Director of Age ” and “mountains of Health Services, who first came to Saint life-destroying gibberish” contained in Anselm as a student in 1965, observes books like the and the Quran mean that the past three years show a dramatic that “if religious war is ever to become increase in the use of our counseling as unthinkable to us as slavery and services.” She cites many national studies cannibalism, we will first have to dispense of college students that point to record with the dogma of faith.” Even those who levels of stress, substance abuse, eating would not go as far as Harris to advocate disorders, sexually transmitted disease the elimination of all religious belief, so- and depression, as well as the number of called religious moderates, whom Harris students entering college on prescription finds equally problematic for their defense medications. of ignorance, cannot be encouraged by the signs of our times: radical violence in the Sue Gabert, Director of Campus name of religion that characterizes much Ministry observes that the modern of the world today, anti-intellectualism technology to which students have and bigotry from certain sectors of become accustomed often leads them to evangelical Christianity, and closer to our also seek “immediate fixes to complicated home, the steady closing problems and difficult circumstances ... down of Catholic churches in the wake Medication is increasingly becoming a of an embarrassing sexual abuse scandal. means to cope, and there is little time to It is, we must admit, a rough time for step away and reflect. Even walking to religion all around, and not the least so in class turns into a phone conversation. the . E-mailing, instant messaging and the constant stream of quick media “God is missing,” Bishop Joseph blurbs displace the opportunity for Gerry, O.S.B., recalls hearing recently, self-reflection, and a quick cell phone “but not missed.” The former Bishop of call home often takes the place of Portland, , who joined Saint Anselm accountability, ownership and problem Abbey in 1947, two years after he came solving.” to the college as a student, and has served as, among other things, a philosophy Whether or not the challenges of the professor, Dean of the College and Abbot world are any greater than they have ever

5 BEING BENEDICTINE of the monastery, decries this kind of Church and religion began to practical atheism from the standpoint of lose certain functional roles in a philosopher as well as a practical man society. . . In their effort to control of faith. “As creatures,” he observes, “we the conditions of human living, are related to a Creator whether we know men have directed their vision it or not. We did not give ourselves being more and more towards, but not nor do we sustain ourselves in our being. above, the horizon of this world. Not to know that is not to know who Thus in a world which they we really are. Thus if God is missing in manipulate so efficiently many our lives because we are unaware of his people today find it difficult or presence or not paying any attention to impossible to experience the sacred Him, He is missed, whether we recognize and transcendent as these were it or not.” Bishop Joseph speaks of the explained in the past (19). many students who live lives without the Pauline Hyson, who joined the light of faith to guide them in making physical plant staff twenty-one years ago moral decisions. “They are left,” he says, describes this change in the culture in “to muddle along.” simpler terms: “I think people have lost Several years before he was either reverence for God . . . people aren’t in Bishop or Abbot, Bishop Joseph served awe of anything today.” Lack of reverence with several other Benedictine monks translates, among other things, into a lack around the country in authoring a of curiosity. Decades before the arrival document that sought to articulate on of the PC, the Internet, cable television, behalf of professed Benedictines the e-mail, voice mail and cell-phones, the meaning of monastic values in the modern authors of Renew and Create described world. The resulting document, Renew the dehumanizing paradox that while and Create (1969), constructed amidst technology was making people’s lives the cultural turmoil of the late 1960s, easier, it was also making their willingness is prophetic in its descriptions of the and ability to seek life’s ultimate, or even challenges faced by those who would more substantial meaning, more difficult: embrace and seek to live such Benedictine The rapidity, multiplicity, and values of stability, obedience and prayer. complexity of humanly induced Looking back upon “the process changes in conditions of human of technological concentration” and living have contributed to a “secularization” of the latter part of transformation in the way people the 20th century, Bishop Joseph and his experience and think of themselves. confreres observed that: . . This great concentration of mind and effort on technological know- As people began to achieve how has produced vastly improved by technology what formerly means for better human living. It appeared possible only by prayer, has also tended to draw attention miracles, or personal charity, away from more fundamental

6 BEING BENEDICTINE questions of purpose in human predicament. The increasing difficulty existence. Technological culture of our modern world in perceiving and makes it more difficult to cope articulating “ultimate meanings,” they with problems of ultimate observed, had aroused “in some sectors of meanings (17). society an almost desperate need to probe precisely those questions” (17-18). Hence As a lifelong student of this culture, they concluded of their own vocation: sociologist Bill Farrell laments the increased complexity of his world. The monastic witness provides Noting that when he came to Saint precisely what is needed to counter Anselm in the 1950s the world had certain deficiencies to which modern roughly 2.5 billion people in it and that thought and life are prone. For now it has over 6 billion, he observes: this witness asserts the primacy “We’re in such a different circumstance of God and the things of God, today. One of the things I think about embodies a heightened sense of, quite frequently, and one of the things and reverence for, the sacred, a that troubles me is reconciling a life of profound awareness of the sense simplicity and community with the more and meaning of one’s existence practical aspects of subsistence in the and a single-minded orientation larger material world.” Citing the cultural toward its achievement, and a strong historian and philosopher Max Weber’s affirmation of the value of prayer, observation that “we live in an iron silence, community, responsibility, cage,” Professor Farrell concedes, “there and perseverance” (73-74). is no possibility of getting back to the As the creation and primary work simplicity of a previous economic age.” of the monks of Saint Anselm Abbey, Nor, Professor Farrell’s colleagues in Saint Anselm College, all would agree, Student Services would add, a simpler ought to be an extension of this monastic moral age. “If it is happening out there witness. At the same time, however, in the world,” Father Peter frequently as a modern liberal arts college with observed as Dean, “it is happening on hundreds of complex academic, material, our campus, and it is naïve to think legal, financial, and social obligations to otherwise.” thousands of individual and institutional constituents, Saint Anselm College and Amidst a world marked by moral its population of faculty, administrators, confusion, intellectual skepticism, staff and students reside, unequivocally, material progress and spiritual poverty, in the very world whose deficiencies are there are, as there have been for over described above. 1500 years, Benedictine and convents. As Bishop Joseph and his The tension between serving the confreres pondered their world in 1969, world and remaining true to its religious they concluded that there was yet one founding and mission is one with which more paradoxical aspect to the modern every administrator at Saint Anselm is

7 BEING BENEDICTINE acutely aware from his or her first day largely been forgotten. Holding to its on campus, and with which individual religious identity in a world that does not staff and faculty members struggle every understand, value or support that identity day. In order for Saint Anselm College to as it once did will require a conscious remain true to its Catholic, Benedictine and determined effort on the part of all founding, daily efforts will have to be those affiliated with Saint Anselm. Such made on the part of all people in the an effort must begin with and be sustained community. One need not look far to by remembering what that identity is. The see the many and universities of remaining sections of this document begin all denominations in this country whose to help us do so. religious origins and heritage have now

8 BEING BENEDICTINE II

The Lives We Seek to Live

ut of the commitments. Ochaos of The rules we our lives— follow are by somewhere “What Saint Benedict is and large the within and offering us is nothing more rules of our between the households nor less than exactly what hundreds of and civic pulls upon our we are seeking: order in associations. time, attention, the chaos. His Rule is an The rituals intellect, we observe emotions and instruction manual for the are with the physical well- human creation that we are.” members of being—there is our families a yearning for –Bishop Joseph Gerry, O.S.B. and with our the stillness we friends. Even associate with so, for many of Benedictine life. us Saint Anselm College does represent something far more Though most of us have not professed than merely an employer, or a place to get vows in a monastery, we all seek, of a degree; for many it is a significant part course, a certain amount of stability of their own stability, and also represents in our lives, which we hope to find in much to which they are obedient; it has our families and our work. Likewise, even called some of us to convert things though not answerable to a religious in our lives that we otherwise would not rule or an Abbot, we are all obedient to have. many principles and people in our lives. And while we have not taken a vow of Whenever he thinks of Benedictine conversion through a monastic manner of traits, Professor Jeffrey Schnick, who life, we all desire to change certain things joined the Physics Department in 1988, in our lives, to grow positively in our says he “begins by imagining a monastery

9 BEING BENEDICTINE in an ideal, pastoral setting and then widely external things in our lives” says goes from there.” Looking over what Abbot Matthew. she regards as her “very un-Benedictine, Professor Barry Wicklow, an active cluttered desk,” the college’s registrar field biologist and founder of the college’s since 1996, Ms. Mary Ann Ericson, is Environmental Studies Program, came “put in mind of the monastic value of to Saint Anselm in 1986. Like all of simplicity, and how far I am from it; the us, he spends his life trying to balance lack of clutter in one’s life is a monastic the external and internal things in his virtue, and I have seen it manifest in many life. Unlike most of us, he pursues this places on campus.” balance with a particularly Thoreauesque The order and quiet, the balance of determination. When he is not on campus activity and contemplation that Mary Ann or wading in the waters of local rivers desires amidst the stacks on her desk, the and streams collecting data, he resides beeping of her e-mails, and the crowding with his family on several acres of land on her appointment calendar, are things to conservancy in rural Francestown, New which most people are drawn. Father Iain Hampshire. His progressive move towards MacLellan, O.S.B., artist, teacher and, the simplicity of a rural existence is as director of the Chapel Art Center came deliberate as Benedict’s retreat to the to Saint Anselm as a student in 1974, wilderness of Subiaco fifteen centuries and joined the monastery in 1982, after ago. His desire was and is, he says, “to three years as a full-time social worker. clear the clutter from my life, and to “Wherever I am, when I tell people I’m a realize that it is only stuff. I don’t know monk, they get that.” What they “get,” if that I would call the life I live monastic, nothing else is the choice of a meaningful but it is, well, deeply spiritual. I haven’t existence separate from the often-chaotic owned a T.V. for probably thirty-five ways of the world. years now. There’s just no room for it in my life. I find a great deal of strength in It is no accident that one of the best the natural world around me, but what selling books of this past year was written I am still lacking in my life is the time to by a Christian minister and entitled The simply be. It’s not as if most of the time I Purpose-Driven Life. What person who spend in the outdoors is in transcendental has considered his or her existence doesn’t wandering; it is mostly collecting data, so want that? It is what Benedict was seeking it too is driven by external purpose, not when he went into the wilderness of internal reflection.” Subiaco, and took up residence in a cave, living a life of severe austerity, devoting External purposes—making a living, himself to prayer. A purposeful life is also accomplishing our job, meeting goals what he had in mind when he drew up and deadlines—are what propel most a blueprint for monastic existence in his of us through our days. And yet, in a Rule: “The Benedictine tradition gives Benedictine environment one is daily us an anthropology of who we are from invited from external purpose to the the deepest and most internal to the most internal reflection by, for instance, the

10 BEING BENEDICTINE bells that toll the hours and the bells that Abbey church, behind a closed office door, summon people to prayer. “I appreciate on a noontime or walk, or, in Barry the monastic rhythm, the structure that Wicklow’s case, standing for hours in a the bells provide, says Mary Ann Ericson. local river. “What we need in life is the “Besides announcing the time, they tell us time to sit back and observe,” he says, that it’s prayer time. They’re a constant “the time to be thoughtful. Observation reminder that there is more to life than is the universal beginning of all study, work. The bells provide a structure and and the key to all academic disciplines. remind us that there is something more As a teacher or administrator, it means, to our lives. Whether or not you go over for example, being able to observe when to the abbey for noon prayer, you know our compassion is needed. What we want that that is what is going on. The noon to do is to understand what is going on bells may signal lunch, but they mean in the world around us and we want to something more than that.” be able to act in a way that is following “the Way” without being distracted That “something else is going on” is into despondency or materialism or perhaps what, consciously or not, draws consumerism.” people to work and teach in the Saint Anselm community. A self-described What we also need, of course, is to be “struggler,” who had pretty much rejected supported in that purpose by a community religion at an early age,” Professor Ann of people who respect it and are willing Norton of the English Department came to assist us. “Ask not for whom the bell to Saint Anselm in 1994 and admits tolls,” writes the seventeenth century “coming to a Benedictine community has poet, John Donne, of the death knell he changed me. Saint Anselm has changed hears from his bed in , “it tolls for my sense of how one lives a moral life in thee.” Insofar as the disharmony of our the world.” own days is characterized by a cacophony of various commitments, and does not What we seek is not a life absent of include “the time to be thoughtful” or suffering, but one filled with real purpose. the time to observe and to remember the What we know is that we cannot know ultimate purpose of our being, then the or understand that purpose without bells that toll on our campus—those that heeding our “most internal” selves. We mark the passing of time, and those that don’t need to be monks to do this, but alert us that “there is something more we need silence. We need the possibility than that”—toll for each of us. of quiet space and time separate from the external business of our days, in the

11 BEING BENEDICTINE III

The Work We Seek to Do

ork. wide variety of WSeldom responsibilities does this “Work is a good thing for and tasks necessary to four-letter humanity because through work word conjure help sustain up pleasing man not only transforms nature, the life of connotations. but also achieves fulfillment as the monastic community. Most of us a human being, and, in a sense, For all of us describe Saint our work Anselm College becomes more a human being.” may include as “the place – Pope John Paul II attending an where we evening board work.” And meeting, yet we know traveling to a conference, attending a better. The work that we do in our lives campus activity, helping a neighbor, or extends well beyond the boundaries of the devoting a weekend to one of the various Saint Anselm campus. For those who are communities we serve. parents it begins early—making breakfast and lunches, carpooling children to school It is no wonder that as cell phones, —and runs late—attending a myriad pagers, the Internet and e-mail encroach of activities, planning and providing into nearly every waking hour of our life, meals, banking, doing laundry, attending the word work has retained the negative to projects and the endless variety of connotations given to it by the popular errands required to sustain a household. culture. We all realize that besides keeping For teachers homework is built into the us busy, work is how we accomplish vocation, be it grading papers and tests, things and how we provide for ourselves preparing lectures, researching, reading, and those we love; yet only when we see writing, or communicating electronically people without the opportunity to work, with students. For monks there are the as in the recent catastrophe in America’s

12 BEING BENEDICTINE gulf coast, do we really appreciate the academic performance begins to improve. fundamental dignity that it provides us An admission officer invests dozens of as human beings. For Saint Benedict the hours in recruiting a student who turns value of work is not so much in what it out to be an outstanding campus leader. accomplishes, as in what is accomplished The Treasurer’s Office discovers a way in us. It makes us humble and more to save costs, allowing us all to benefit. human because it connects us to one A development officer spends years another, to the created world and to God. cultivating a particular alumnus who ultimately donates a gift to the college that “Work bears a particular mark of yields students scholarships for decades humanity,” writes the late Pope John Paul to come. A professor engages students in II in his Encyclical, Laborem Exercens, research that results in a published article “the mark of a person operating within a or book that enhances the academic community.” In the Robert Frost poem, reputation of the college. A monk pays “A Tuft of Flowers” a man comes into particular attention to a struggling a meadow to pick up cut hay that a student, who matures into a successful stranger before him has mown. He sees student and becomes an alumnus with that the mower has deliberately left uncut special devotion to the college. a patch of wild flowers that he too would have spared. In this tuft of flowers the These sorts of things happen every day poet recognizes the shared connection on the Saint Anselm campus, but since we he has with the worker who has come spend our days in separate departments, before him, and he observes: “Men work we typically recognize our connections together, I told him from the heart / to one another only when work is not Whether they work together or apart.” accomplished as we would have liked, and we tend to give voice to more complaints And so it is on the Saint Anselm than praise. Not everyone, after all, who campus. Some six hundred employees comes behind us, will be a poet who sees labor at various jobs, all to the same the virtue in leaving un-mown a certain ultimate end: providing the very best, tuft of flowers. Fortunately Saint Benedict complete, Catholic and Benedictine offers more instruction on humility than education possible for our students. Most any other virtue. “Let no one follow what often, however, we do not recognize the he thinks useful to himself,” he insists, labor that has come before us by another “but to another.” Even a partial adherence worker in another department whom to this ideal would significantly enhance we have never met. Such labor does not the life of any working community. usually come in the form of a spared tuft of flowers, but perhaps in a well-cleaned The belief that our work brings us chalkboard, a well-mopped floor, a well- closer to God’s creation is an idea that is prepared hot breakfast, a middle-of-the- at least as old as the agrarian life of early night technology repair or a daunting monasteries. A more surprising discovery snow removal. A coach successfully for many is the Benedictine belief that mentors a student athlete and her not only is our work to be prayerful, but

13 BEING BENEDICTINE that the elements of our work are to be says Professor Jim Chenoweth, who has reverenced. In his Rule Saint Benedict spent most of his life working among would have “the community regard all Benedictines, “is the guts of Benedictine utensils and goods of the monastery life.” as sacred vessels of the altar.” This For Abbot Matthew attaining instruction calls the monk, or all who this ideal balance is really a matter of would share in Benedictine values, to be recognizing what is most important in our good stewards of the resources in their lives. “Chances are,” he says, “it won’t be care. “It’s not uncommon for people to what we accomplish in our work.” Taking think of monks as considering material a break from his own work in the quiet things unimportant,” observes Jeffrey of the monastery , he recalls the Schnick, whose life study is devoted to familiar example of Martha and Mary, the the physical universe. “It’s clear from sisters in Luke’s Gospel who are hosting the quality of the campus that such Jesus in their home. Martha is the one is not the case. Rather, the members doing all of the work. She prepares the of the monastery view stewardship as meal, sets the table, and attends to the including responsibilities for building details. Her sister meanwhile sits at the and maintaining a high quality physical feet of Jesus, listening to him, enjoying his plant.” company. When Martha can take it no The well-tended campus of Saint longer, she finally complains to her sister, Anselm is both a product and a reminder hoping that Jesus too will recognize her of our shared reverence and respect for unjust predicament. Instead of scolding created things. But for Abbot Matthew Mary, however, Jesus gently admonishes such stewardship is all part of “a Martha the worker, telling her: “Martha, sacramental economy” that involves Martha, you are anxious and worried conserving more than just buildings and about many things. There is need of budgets. “Stewardship includes caring for only one thing.” These latter words, more than just material things. The goods says Abbot Matthew, became a common of a monastery include not merely tools Latin phrase in the Church: “Unum and material things, but also perhaps necessarium. The one thing necessary. even more importantly the intellectual, Love of God, acknowledging and being moral, cultural and artistic assets that in his presence, this is the one thing are available to the community. We need necessary. Our work needs to flow from to steward the “goods” of faith, hope, that. Work, after all, is nothing more nor charity and the worship of God.” less than the giving of ourselves.”

So central to Benedictine teaching is It is no accident that the word ora is the idea that one’s work be connected to contained within the labora. It is a good the work of God that it is expressed in a reminder of how completely integral these phrase that defines the ideal balance of two ingredients are to Benedictine life. monastic life: ora et labora, prayer and “You cannot have one without the other work. “This ideal of work and prayer,” and live the monastic life successfully,”

14 BEING BENEDICTINE observes Father Jonathan. Neither can “one of the most important lessons taught they be completely separated from one to him by the Benedictines and one that another. “Ora et labora is not a call to ought to be fundamental to a healthy pray and then to work, or to work and academic environment.” Many members then to pray, but rather to do one’s work of the college community share this in such a way that it becomes a kind sentiment, and while it may never have of prayer,” says Father Iain, “and this occurred to them to embrace monastic applies to even the most menial of tasks.” life, most deliberately chose to pursue the Hence, the other familiar instruction from life of the mind, the vocation of teaching, Saint Benedict’s Rule, to work “so that in or simply the opportunity to work within all things God may be glorified.” an academic rather than a corporate environment as a way of balancing the That work can be accomplished in a work they do with the more sacred reflective, prayerful and joyful way is, to things in their lives: time with family, Father Mark Cooper, “one of the most conversation with like-minded colleagues important lessons we can give to our and friends, time spent in cultural centers, students.” A member of Saint Benedict’s in nature or in solitude. “What does it Abbey for more than three decades, mean for all of us to share that motto of and the college’s Chief Financial Officer prayer and work?” asks Professor Kuehne. for more than a quarter century, Father “We have not yet had this discussion on Mark finds the struggle to maintain a campus and I think we need to.” balance between work and prayer harder than ever. “With regard to our work, the In order to continue its essential work easiest thing for all of us to do,” he says of educating students in a manner that “is to be swept and pushed and driven is different from the thousands of other along with the rest of society by data and colleges and universities in this country, deadlines. Whenever we buy into a more Saint Anselm College must steward its efficient way of doing things, we also economic resources, physical environment, need to consider what we are giving up. and its various rudimentary and If we don’t find a way to do our work technological tools. More importantly, that leaves us time for true leisure, prayer, it must steward the goods that these and mental and spiritual renewal,” he material enterprises exist to support: cautions, “then it doesn’t matter what we the intellectual life, the arts and culture, preach to our students. If they don’t see us scientific knowledge and exploration, living in balance, they won’t get it.” health and medicine, civic responsibility, and human and moral understanding. Like many of us Professor Dale And most profoundly, it must steward Kuehne’s work as political scientist, what Abbot Matthew refers to as “the teacher, ordained minister, husband goods of faith, hope and charity.” It can and father leave him “a long way from do this only as a community of individuals achieving the balance of work with a life working in service to one another. And of prayer and study” which he sees as such a community necessitates that we

15 BEING BENEDICTINE pause and reflect daily upon our work. pause from our routines can we possibly This is why Saint Benedict made prayer begin to recognize that the work we are the primary work of his monastery, doing is not only important, but perhaps requiring his monks to stop for prayer even sacred. several times a day. Only in prayerful

16 BEING BENEDICTINE IV

The Community We Seek to Create

he first the varied ways in Tact of which God reveals stewardship in “The most important thing himself, not the any Christian for us as a Benedictine least of which is community ought the relationship to be our care of College is the value of of one person to one another. This community.” another.” is especially true How the value for Benedictines –Professor Bill Farrell of community who, just as Sociology has manifest they strive for itself beyond a balance of the monastery work and prayer, place great emphasis through the past half-century has of upon care of the individual within course changed as Saint Anselm has the community. “Benedict offers us grown in size and complexity. Recalling a profound appreciation of what it his first years as a faculty member when means to be a human person,” says he arose early each morning to attend Father Jonathan, “and this includes the mandatory daily Morning Prayer with the recognition that in the practical living students, Professor Bill Farrell reflects, “at of life we are bound to one another one time the sense of community was so and to God in an inescapable and obvious.” The dramatic increase in the redemptive relationship. For Benedict, size of the campus and its population, the and consequently for Anselm, respect for move to co-education, and the dramatic persons is therefore central. These men increase in programming and lay faculty not only acknowledged the obvious fact necessarily displaced this simpler time. that differences exist between people, but Nonetheless, the sense of community took seriously the fundamental conviction described by Father Jonathan remained that each person is capable of coming to intact. Professor David George, Chair of know and love God fully in and through

17 BEING BENEDICTINE Department was raised in the Many who have experienced the Baptist tradition, but has a very high grief of losing a loved one, the joy of a regard for the Catholic and Benedictine new child or the trauma of illness are values of the college. He began teaching at acutely aware of the significant spiritual Saint Anselm in 1986 and recalls: “Those support for the individual that the Saint of us who came here a couple of decades Anselm community can provide. Some, ago actually joined a community when we however, express concern about the came here. All of us” he believes, “even college’s ability to retain its spiritual those who don’t know it, have our faith center and sense of community amidst lives here.” the pressures from a profit-driven world. “We need to remind ourselves that the Professor Denise Askin joined the amorality of corporate and business type English Department in 1972, and served thinking,” notes David George, “is not as the college’s Executive Vice President Benedictine.” Among other things, he for over a decade before returning to notes, fostering a Benedictine community full-time teaching. Of her experience of requires a particular kind of patience. “It community for nearly four decades, she means coming to community consensus observes: “We come here as professionals through the long, often difficult, process to do our job—but at the center of of argument.” And “respect for the the institution is not a professional individual,” he notes, “requires that we be structure, but a spiritual core. This willing to tolerate a kind of eccentricity.” affects what we do and how we do it.” Noting that for many decades the college That our “point of reference is faith over-emphasized “its own peculiar in God,” she says, has two results: “a identity” rather than external industry high standard of integrity overall and an standards, Professor George, as well as impact on how we treat one another.” others, cautions against an over correction To Professor Askin the spiritual center that would de-emphasize care for the of the Saint Anselm community is more individual within the community. substantial and important than the superficial distinctions that divide us: Don Moreau traces his own origins “Underneath our professional titles and at Saint Anselm to the early 1970s, hierarchal structure, there is a radical when his father, the legendary “Blackie” egalitarianism—we are all children of Moreau came to work at the college. As God. So we can have role distinctions, a teenager he worked the college grounds but there is a compelling degree of respect with his father. He graduated from the that we share for one another. I see it in college in 1980, and returned to work at the building in which I work. Custodial the college as the Assistant Director of staff and secretarial staff and faculty and Physical Plant in 1987. As the college’s students celebrate one another as people. Director of Physical Plant since 1989, he It’s actually very liberating to be able to has observed more directly than anyone be a professor and a person.” the increased growth and complexity of the institution. “When I consider how

18 BEING BENEDICTINE much newly developed space the college that this charism has upon the Saint has added since 1990 in proportion to Anselm College community is varied and the amount of workers whose job it is significant. to care for that space, I don’t know how Properly understood, the charism the same respect for the individual in the of stability is not an invitation to resist community can be sustained.” He worries change or indulge in complacency. On the that in a drive to keep pace with other contrary, the individual monk is called to institutions the college will become more constant conversion. Stability ought to inclined to make corporate style decisions, give an individual and a community the rather than considering real Benedictine ability to grow and develop in dynamic values. “We need,” he cautions, “to be ways, knowing that its foundations are careful that bureaucracy does not replace secure. “Stability,” says Pat Shuster, the Benedictine value of simplicity.” “should provide us the courage to go out “There is a distance always between and tackle what we have to do—to reach what we perceive to be the ideal and what and to change and to make mistakes.” we experience” observes Dale Kuehne, One way to witness the college’s “but if we are to call ourselves a Christian foundations in a profound way is to community and a Benedictine community, make the short walk from Alumni Hall it ought to be reflected in how we treat to the monastery cemetery. Here the lived one another. Do we and can we in our human history of the college, from its day-to-day work regard one another founding to the present, can be traced in lovingly?” This fundamental aspect of the names on the simple grave markers. community is echoed by Father Peter who One person who does so more frequently observes: “The one thing necessary to than most is Walter Gallo, who first Benedictine life is a common witness of came to the college as a student in 1954 charity to all and, for the monks at least, and has served the college in a variety of flowing from their common life of prayer capacities. A person who has cultivated an and work and spiritual reading.” enormous number of relationships with Two particular hallmarks of Saint Anselm graduates, Walter, though Benedictine community familiar to many officially retired, remains the college’s on campus are stability and hospitality. ambassador to its Golden Anselmians, The oldest religious order in the church, those who graduated from the college fifty Benedictines are also the only religious or more years ago. “You’d be amazed,” who take a vow of stability, to live out he says, “on reunion weekend I bring their lives in the community in which members of the class of 1938 out to the they have professed. The implications monastery cemetery to visit, and they of this vow for the professed individual carry on conversations with the teachers and for the monastic community as a and prefects they knew as students.” whole are such that it is a distinctive part Bob Collins who graduated from of the Benedictine charism. The effect Saint Anselm in the 1930s and went on

19 BEING BENEDICTINE to become the college’s first Director of work and to the larger community in Development and its first lay Executive more substantial ways than if they were Vice President, visits the cemetery just passing through.” regularly. “I know all of the monks out Chair of the Education Department, there expect for the first five. They were Jim Chenoweth and his wife have lived, all my friends and I still go out there and learned and taught among Benedictines make the rounds from one to another. for virtually their entire lives, beginning, Stability is the anchor that has kept this in his wife’s case, in grade school and in college what it is. If it meant so much to his own with high school. Both graduated these men, it certainly did to me too. It’s from Benedictine College in Atchison, what I sought and found in my marriage Kansas, and have taught alongside of sixty years.” Benedictines for four decades in New Even some faculty members confess to Jersey, South Dakota and now New making occasional trips to the cemetery Hampshire. Jim recognizes that stability “to check in with departed colleagues and implies a large obligation for all who friends.” But certainly stability is about are part of the Saint Anselm community. much more than graveyard conversations. “We need to recognize that unless there As much as anything, it means that a is a major change, twenty years down Benedictine community can afford to the road, the people responsible for cultivate a longer look at things. “Stability Benedictine thought and teaching at Saint means that we do not just attack a Anselm and elsewhere will be lay people problem, but live for the long term who have come through institutions like solution,” says Bishop Joseph, “it means this.” Many others echo this observation. that a fixer-up mentality cannot replace “The stability in the community and the generational effort.” To David George Catholic identity of this place in the future “stability is the key to our community will have to come from those who plan because it implies long term relationships. to spend their lives here,” says David This has real implications. If people George, citing in particular “the tenured make professional decisions based upon faculty. The real value of tenure,” he the next few years instead of a lifetime, notes, “is the stability that it provides the they will make very different kinds of institution.” choices, few of which will be good for While tenure is part of what has our students.” Father Augustine Kelly, formed the commitment of many faculty Dean of the College, who came to Saint members to the college, this is common Anselm as a student in 1979, says that to nearly every college and university. one of the aspects of a stable community Perhaps less common is the longevity that he emphasizes in conversations with of many administrators and staff who prospective faculty is accountability. came to the college with the intention of “When people live or work within a only staying a few years, and who find community that is not just transient, they themselves one or two decades later more are accountable to one another, to their

20 BEING BENEDICTINE dedicated to their work and more a part with ora et labora, but hospitality is one I of the community than they ever would have really worked to develop.” have imagined. “The Benedictine values at While those who “open the door” to the college have definitely had a bearing campus visitors may be members of the on my being here as long as I have,” says admission or public relations staffs, a Pauline Hyson, who began her work at person’s first contact on campus is just as Saint Anselm tending to the grounds, likely to be a professor, a monk, a coach, and has cleaned nearly every one of its a member of the dining or custodial staff buildings. “I think these values are one or a student. Hence, hospitality is not only of the things that hold people here.” If something that is ideally extended to all this is the case,” says Dale Kuehne, “then visitors; it is also a responsibility that is we ought not to take such dedication shared by all members of the community. for granted. We need to consider what And while the college does not have a stability means to people who are not “Hospitality Department,” the members part of the monastery. Since as laypersons of Dining Services and Physical Plant offer we don’t take a vow, what do we want the clearest examples of how welcoming stability to mean for us and how are we strangers like Christ is essentially a going to foster that?” sacrificial rather than sentimental act. Simpler to understand, but no less There are legendary stories, everyday easy to practice is the familiar value practices, and hundreds of unrecorded of hospitality that originates in Saint incidents that exhibit the successful Benedict’s instructions that a guest of practice of hospitality on the Saint Anselm the monastery is to be treated as if he campus. At the same time, hospitality is a were Christ himself. The treatment of value at the college that is threatened by a guest of the monastery has long been the increased complexity of the campus, understood to extend to any visitor who and the greater number of “guests” at the comes to the campus, and while some door. “We are still trying to do hospitality, visitors may occasionally be overlooked, but if we spread too thin we will lose our far more common are the many stories capacity to do that.” says Don Moreau. of strangers, guests speakers, prospective “As the campus seeks to use the physical students, parents, returning alumni, plant to generate revenue it needs to be performers and political campaigners careful to protect its primary mission of who report the unusual friendliness and hospitality to our students.” generosity with which they were received It is Saint Anselm students of course at Saint Anselm. “To treat every person as who occupy an ambiguous place as both Christ himself is tremendous,” says Dale “guests” of the college and members Kuehne whose job it has been to welcome of the community. While their stay world dignitaries as well as hundreds of at the college is necessarily limited, strangers to the campus, “It’s probably they are simultaneously encouraged to the most important thing that I have immerse themselves fully in the life of incorporated into my life. I come up short

21 BEING BENEDICTINE the community, to carry their experience Farrell, who notes that true hospitality with them into their lives, and to return means, among other things, “listening and to campus as guests as frequently as hearing what another person has to say.” possible. Thus, how the college treats The community we seek to create, students is a profoundly important aspect in fact, depends upon the practice of of hospitality. “Part of hospitality is genuine hospitality not just to strangers, welcoming students into the intellectual but also to one another. Regarding one life,” reflects Monte Brown, a professor another as “guests at the door” of our in the Philosophy Department since classrooms, our offices, our minds and 1986. “We don’t stand off and impart our hearts, leads invariably to the kind of knowledge in a prideful way; rather “radical egalitarianism” of which Denise we invite students to come into the Askin speaks. “How do we relate to one intellectual life, and we welcome them another?” asks Bill Farrell, “By function? into it.” Recognizing “the dignity of By purpose? Or as brothers and sisters the individual and treating our students under Christ?” with courtesy” is a basic manifestation of Benedictine hospitality to Professor

22 BEING BENEDICTINE V

The Wisdom We Seek to Learn

uring their alone. But have Dfirst year in the you ever seen a College’s “Education answers goldsmith form program, students ‘What is?’” his leaves of gold read the story of into a beautiful the frustrated 12th –Bishop Joseph Gerry, O.S.B. figure by blows century abbot who alone? I think not. complains to Anselm How then does he about the students in his charge, young work? In order to mold his leaves men whom he describes as incorrigible of gold into suitable form, he first ruffians. “What is to be done with them?” presses them and then strikes them he asks his fellow Benedictine and would- gently, and then even more gently be saint, “We beat them day and night raises them with careful pressure and and they only get worse.” Centuries gives them shape. So it is if you want before any educational debate over self- those in your care to be adorned by esteem and the effects of positive and good habits, you must adapt yourself negative reinforcement, Anselm asks the according to the strengths and abbot what he expects these young men to weaknesses so you may win them be like when they grow up if he continues all for God—so far, at least, as your to beat them. “Stupid brutes,” the abbot efforts can. replies. “You have certainly spent your Upon hearing this, the newly energies well,” Anselm tells him, “from enlightened abbot, Anselm’s biographer men you have brought up beasts.” assures us, promised to mend his ways. Leaving behind the irony, Anselm then goes on, by way of a simple metaphor, to Two fundamental lessons are recommend a pedagogical alternative to contained in this wisdom offered by our corporal punishment: college’s patron. And as with the process and product of the goldsmith, these two You wish to form in them good lessons are not only closely related, but habits by beatings and chastisement

23 BEING BENEDICTINE interdependent. The first lesson affirms we teach, and the reasons that we teach the fundamental value of each person the way we do. who enters our classrooms or sets foot A core that is centered upon our campus. In Father Jonathan’s around a Humanities Program places words: “If there is anything that should an emphasis upon what it means to characterize a Benedictine approach to be human. This is quite different than education it is the profound regard for indulging in a study of the Liberal Arts as the dignity and worth of every human an end in itself. Saint Anselm students are person.” Recognition of this human reminded in various ways that they have dignity and worth then leads one to a responsibility to be attentive to what is acknowledge, just as the blacksmith does around them, not just to what they learn, with his leaves of gold, that each person but to the way in which they learn and the has a purpose whose fulfillment requires reason why they learn. The Saint Anselm much more than merely the memorizing curriculum and its faculty communicate of information or the earning of an to students in a variety of ways that . Says Father Jonathan: they have both the capacity and the “We need to acknowledge our own responsibility to come to a deep awareness ultimate worth and that of the other, of the meaning of their lives. The desire to not as a collection of possessions or awaken such awareness and responsibility talents assembled, but as a being created in students has undoubtedly caused more with an eternal destiny.” Perhaps this than one frustrated Humanities instructor is why, in Professor Farrell’s words, to briefly reconsider the value of beating, “Teaching sometimes seems antithetical but has much more often persuaded to the normal measures of success which teachers of the need to raise their students emphasize material gain.” “with careful pressure and give them Since the beating of a Saint Anselm shape.” student by a professor has not occurred Just as imitation is the most primitive any time in the past eight decades or so, form of learning, so too good modeling is we may perhaps disregard the first lesson the most fundamental form of teaching. of this story as unnecessary. We may do Hence the wisdom of Saint Anselm is so, however, only if we believe that the applied with greatest effect if all people full humanity of all our students is being who are part of the Saint Anselm affirmed in all of their academic and community recognize in themselves not non-academic activities, and that they just their capacity as goldsmiths, but as themselves are conscious of their own gold in need of being shaped. “The image dignity and worth. The information in of leaves of gold applies most easily to Section I of this document suggests that students,” observes Father Jonathan, this is likely not the case. And since such “but the image really applies to all who an ideal is as difficult to attain as it is to are involved in education—teachers, assess, it is worth our while to remind administrators, and students. All are ourselves constantly of both the reasons

24 BEING BENEDICTINE participants in the process of forming among other things, that there is a right from a common humanity the object and a wrong way of proceeding through of beauty that the Creator intended. life; that there is in fact such a thing as This endeavor cannot succeed without good and bad thinking and behavior, and all parties appreciating the value of the that it is therefore the place of education ones engaged in it.” What we ask of our to help students discern the difference students, in other words, is something and fashion their lives accordingly, to, in we must be willing to attempt ourselves. Anselm’s words, help them be “adorned “If there is to be no disjuncture between by good habits.” theory and practice, the craftsmen of Certainly this is not a popular Benedictine education must make the notion either in higher education or in synthesis in their own lives and have the broader culture today. Nor has it the will and the skill to communicate it been for some time. The monks who effectively to others.” authored Renew and Create in the The willingness and ability to make 1960s recognized that the attacks on such a synthesis is, says Father Augustine, human dignity in the twentieth century— what the College seeks in its faculty. modern warfare, the holocaust, atomic “Beyond the expertise that one has annihilation, racial discrimination--had cultivated in his or her discipline, there caused past ethical systems (moral, is that other expertise we seek that is religious, political an social) to appear not merely technical. It is, in Anselm’s “static” and “discredited” in the eyes terms, a sense of what is needed to form of many. “In reaction,” they observed the object of beauty, of when strength “personalist and existential currents of is productive and when tenderness, and thought stress the historically conditioned of how to distinguish the usefulness of character of each human situation and different approaches to the same material. make an impassioned appeal to the values It is what in the Benedictine tradition has of authenticity, honesty, and freedom of been known as discretion.” conscience; in place of a system of abstract moral principles, they encourage an ethics The second lesson contained in considered more responsive to the human Anselm’s analogy is both more difficult demands of each concrete situation” (21). to apprehend and to teach. It is the idea that each person has an eternal destiny. This evolution in ethical thinking may Destiny, of course, is not the same thing be characterized at its worst by the kind as fate. The latter depends upon one’s of experiential relativism that students fortune or luck. The former depends frequently bring into their first year upon on the choices one makes and upon Humanities seminars. “To recognize that God’s grace. Fate, in the world of classical there is a moral component to all human antiquity is simply what happened. behaviors is a new thing for many of our Destiny in Judeo-Christian teaching is students,” says Professor Askin. At the the fulfillment of what God intended to same time, the emphasis upon authenticity happen. The recognition of this implies, and freedom of conscience has introduced

25 BEING BENEDICTINE the opportunity for more lively moral 1887, one of the college’s founders, debate, both in and out of the classroom. Father Hugo Paff, O.S.B., noted that “The willingness to engage in moral while other institutions labor to fill their argumentation, to discern what is right students with knowledge, “they neglect from what is expedient,” notes Professor the moral man, they do not educate the George, “is a Benedictine trait, and heart.” His college, he hoped, would something we should not only cultivate in be different: “Mind and heart both cry our students, but expect of ourselves and out for nourishment,” he insisted. The all decision makers at the college.” mind was often “crammed,” while the “heart received only a stinted allowance, ’s recent perhaps no allowance at all. I hope selection of Saint Anselm College as one that we Benedictines, while pushing the of 81 institutions in the nation that it intellectual development up to and even calls “colleges with a conscience,” is a beyond the standard of the children of the tribute to the college’s active cultivation world, may be able to show that we do of volunteer service, engagement in civic not neglect the moral education.” life, leadership, and responsibility to the less fortunate. This designation implies, As to how this education of the heart among other things, the existence of a gets accomplished, it again may have collective conscience, which would of more to do with how we live than what course necessitate a shared understanding we say. “It’s not as if we stand in front of what is good. Standing alongside of our students and say, ‘do what I tell the many non-sectarian institutions on you to do and you’ll be moral,’” says this list, however, Saint Anselm must Denise Askin, “Our teaching is in the recognize that a shared understanding of way we live, the way we treat our subject the good is, well, not good enough. As a matter and one another. We attempt to Benedictine and Catholic college, Saint live visibly moral lives; we make moral Anselm would not just have its students choices, and we attempt to grow in our do good works, but understand why own understanding.” The strength to live they do them, and why they are called to a good life is something, Barry Wicklow persist in a life of good works long after says, “that can be taught to our students. they have graduated. Monte Brown, a The strength to be humble, the need to moral philosopher with children attending be compassionate towards others, the three different institutions of higher wisdom to not let your ego take you away, learning, insists: “we have a mission to the commitment to really care about our culture—to graduate students with people and the things that are important, a spiritual sense who demonstrate real the things beyond your self-interest.” kindness and cooperation with others. Of the best teachers and mentors he Most colleges and universities cannot be ever had, Barry recalls “they taught relied upon to do that.” me more outside the classroom than in the classroom, and I hope most of my Comparing the enterprise of Saint teaching is outside the classroom as well, Anselm to that of other colleges in

26 BEING BENEDICTINE where you can teach by example, not a faith can be accompanied by reason huge, showy example, but to our students remains a real insight to me.” every little thing we do is teaching. We For Monte Brown the monastic vow need to recognize that, and make every of obedience extends into his life as a small action count.” philosopher. “Obedience for the lay The desire to live well, to make person means obedience to the truth, every “small action count,” and the to the good, to the beautiful, and the accompanying desire to understand the humility that comes from that.” relationship of what we do to what we “The most important thing we can believe are traits of an active Benedictine do,” says Denise Askin, “is awaken our community. Saint Benedict, after all, students to the fact that their lives are called his monastery “a school of the absolutely full of choices, something that Lord’s service,” which implies a place they frequently do not recognize. They not just where people are continually can choose to be kind, to hold a grudge, learning, but where they are pursuing or to forgive.” wisdom by steadfastly searching out the ultimate meaning to life’s most enduring Ultimately, the success of the and profound mysteries, contemplating, goldsmith that Saint Anselm describes in Bishop Joseph’s words, “what is.” may, like wisdom itself, be remote or even intangible. For the imparting and the Jeffrey Schnick recalls that people attainment of wisdom, which is the most from outside of the college have often important work that any teacher can do, presumed that his own research and is not a simple thing to measure. “We teaching as a physicist must be inhibited need to be careful about overemphasizing by the college’s religious ethos, “but assessment,” notes Monte Brown, that,” he says, “has never been the “because if too much emphasis is placed case. In fact, the opposite is true. I have on assessment, we can get in a found that the Benedictines see science grind of measurement that is antithetical as another viewpoint, which along to the development of the intellectual life. with philosophical and theological How, for example, do you measure the viewpoints, is important to develop in success of the spiritual life?” our students.” Coming to Saint Anselm from a mostly secular background, Ann Measurable or not, “the ultimate Norton recalls, “the emphasis on morality goal of Benedictine education,” says and the thinking through how to live a Father Jonathan, “is to assist men and moral life in the world were truly novel women in their search for God. We persist to me. It was amazing to me to meet towards this goal, not by sifting through people seriously devoted to the Christian a scattered or aimless collection of doctrine. I had to step back and think: knowledge, but by confronting the reality ‘Very intelligent people think this—Why? of humanity in all of its aspects.” Maybe they see something I don’t.’ That

27 BEING BENEDICTINE VI

The God We Seek to Know

eeking our most SGod? Isn’t unexpected joys, that something “When we are pursuing the and the smallest monks are bits of wisdom supposed to do? truth or pursuing beauty, we discover, all originate in and In fact it is. But we are pursuing God.” lead back to an insofar as this – Professor Monte Brown Incarnate God. question implies Department of Philosophy Ours is not a that only monks task of seeking, are supposed so much as to do so, and recognizing. that they should come and let the rest of us know when they have found Him, it “If we believe that we came from God offers a simplistic and false perception and are going back to God,” says Abbot both of monasticism and of life itself. Matthew, “then for us to conclude that For while seeking God may express the our life in between has nothing to do with essence of the monastic vocation, to God is absurd. If our origin is in God and view this pursuit as one that belongs our destiny is in God, then our life is in exclusively behind monastic walls, is to God.” abdicate our responsibility for—not to A life in God is the very kind of mention our joy in—living a spiritual expression that causes people to want life. This not only puts an unrealistic to localize the spiritual stuff of life in a expectation upon monks, it offers a monastery. It sounds too “deep,” or too fundamentally flawed notion of God’s “heavy” or simply too metaphysical to relationship with humanity. From the be really understood. In fact, however, Benedictine perspective, the lives that we Benedictines derive from the fact of all live, the community and work in which Christ’s incarnation what Professor Kelley we all share, our greatest sufferings, Spoerl describes as “a very practical

28 BEING BENEDICTINE approach to the material and the spiritual history of Saint Anselm College is God’s world, one that acknowledges all of creation. If we start to look for answers creation as sacred.” Professor Spoerl, to our problems that take us beyond Chair of the Theology Department, and the Benedictine and Christian way of a specialist in early Christianity, began regarding one another, then we’re in teaching full-time at Saint Anselm in trouble.” 1996. Her admiration of Benedictine In the best art, literature, science, spirituality has increased with her service and philosophical thought that familiarity. She finds it to be “a very sane we share as an academic community it is way to practice Christianity. Benedictine easy, perhaps even natural, to recognize life,” she observes, “has a great the presence of the divine. However, appreciation of the incarnational God. we are much more likely to miss the This means that we not only meet God presence of the divine or the opportunity in our Abbey Church, but everywhere for spiritual growth in the ordinary on campus, as well as beyond campus. daily struggles that we confront—the It is in other people that we encounter growing stack of un-graded papers, the Christ, and so there is a great regard for nagging personnel issue, the broken water individual persons. You also see regard pipe, the technology glitch, the reckless for the material world in the fact that our behavior of a student, the homesickness of campus is an orderly and beautiful place; a freshman, the irreconcilable lines in the you see it in everything from the way we budget. For Abbot Matthew, the failure to treat the material that we teach to the care recognize God in such ordinary challenges with which food is prepared and served, is not a failure of vision, so much as in the various balances we try to achieve, memory. “When we remember who we and in our stewardship of one another.” are most deeply—children of God—we The Benedictine motto “Ut in are at peace. When we forget, we find omnibus glorifectur Deus”—So that ourselves among the unnecessary conflicts in all things God may be glorified—is of life.” One of the benefits of working in not so much a call to do holy things a community is that we can continually as it is to recognize that the things we remind one another. For one faculty do are holy. “All of material reality is member the recognition of the sacredness sanctified by the incarnation,” insists in the mundane came “at a remarkable Kelley Spoerl, “and that material reality moment” when she drove onto campus includes human history; it includes the early one morning and saw a monk, who history of Saint Anselm College and it happened to be a senior administrator of includes our own personal histories.” the college, picking up empty beer bottles No scholar of spirituality himself, Bill and other garbage in the parking lot. Farrell is as casual as he is certain as he As with the recognition of God in looks around at furniture and the shelves the small things in our lives, so too must of books in his office and declares: “This we recognize God in larger decisions we very office is part of God’s creation. The must make as a community. “I can’t think

29 BEING BENEDICTINE of an issue that comes up that doesn’t what I need to do and the desire to be in require us to reflect on our mission and community with others.” For Professor identity,” says Pat Shuster. Bishop Joseph, Spoerl, the Holy Trinity—one God in who has spent a lifetime reconciling day three persons—represents the perfect to day issues with professed ideals insists reconciliation of these two desires. “We that “every decision we make should be live in the hope of one day being drawn based on holiness. We need to ask ‘Does it up into that perfect communion where assist us in seeking God? Does it assist in all these tensions will be resolved, and making me radically human?’” we will be at one with God and with one another.” Radically human is another one of those phrases that people might prefer Meanwhile, however, we are, to leave inside the monastic cloister, but Professor Spoerl acknowledges, “stuck in “the radical human,” explains Bishop this world,” and one of the best guides Joseph, “is anyone who is committed to we can turn to is Saint Benedict’s Rule the idea of the transcendent—the person because it acknowledges and offers who is responding to God as God makes us practical guidance in our struggle. Himself known to him.” One way God “The brilliance of Benedictine life,” she makes Himself known, he says, is in the says, “is that it understands and affirms strangers who knock on our door, whom our individuality and our desire to be Benedict says are to be treated as Christ. in community. Benedict acknowledges To Bishop Joseph, the students who come the necessity of balancing the needs to study at Saint Anselm are the strangers of the individual with the needs of the of whom Benedict speaks. “Not to leave community.” an imprint on our students of what it Being Benedictine therefore is fittingly means to be radically Christian and both an individual and a communal radically human is to have failed them. If enterprise. “For Benedictine education there is any impact we should have on the to be truly so, the practitioners must be lives of students, it should be to help them competent human beings,” says Father seek God.” Jonathan. “They need to be active Another emphasis of Benedictine themselves in their relationship with God, spirituality that assists us in the practical carefully attentive to God’s presence in living of life is its emphasis upon the the world and in those around them, and importance of the individual within capable of leading others to see beyond community. “In human life,” says Kelley apparent good to the reality of God’s own Spoerl, “we are all struggling to balance goodness.” our desire to be in communion with Few people realize that the motto others with our need for autonomy. We of Saint Anselm monastery is “Deum experience this struggle as a source of Quaerere” or “To Seek God.” This distress and tension, and there are built-in is a search, says Abbot Matthew, “in tensions between these two impulses—the which all who are associated with this solitary and communal—the need to do

30 BEING BENEDICTINE monastery take part, and one in which the insists, “The monks have to help us all broader Saint Anselm community shares explore the Benedictine ethos. It will help significantly and often intimately.” us. It will offer comfort and clarity to us. As a college community we need to Looking back upon his nearly seventy understand our own charism, not only year association with Saint Anselm, Bob to enrich our own lives, but to better Collins observes, “Ora et Labora has carry out the project that is Saint Anselm been the basis of my own life. I start College.” each day with a prayer. I end it with a prayer. And God knows, I pray a lot “In the end,” says Dale Kuehne, during the day. All that I have done in echoing the words of Father Hugo Paff life is traceable back to the Benedictines, from twelve decades ago, “we need to and quite honestly I wouldn’t change five recognize that the world really needs a minutes of it.” Benedictine college, and the world will support it.” As for the association that we all share with Saint Anselm, Kelley Spoerl

31 BEING BENEDICTINE Preliminary Questions offered as a starting-point for personal reflection and group discussion

Common Identity II. Our Lives

 In your experience does Saint Anselm  Which Benedictine values and beliefs College share a common set of beliefs do you desire most? and values that make it unique from  How does the rhythm of the other schools and work environments? Benedictine life affect the rhythm of  How have those beliefs and values your life and work on campus? been part of your experience at the  Does the Saint Anselm environment college? help you to foster a purpose driven life? I. Our World

 Do you agree with the observations III. Our Work made by the Benedictine monks in  Does your own life allow for a balance their 1969 document concerning the of work and prayer? Do you desire it ways in which technology and modern to? culture have disrupted the human search for ultimate meaning?  How do you understand your responsibility for the stewardship of  Do you believe that it is the mission the goods of Saint Anselm College of Saint Anselm College to see and to within your work on campus? help others see “above the horizon of the world?”  Is your daily work affected by the Benedictine motto “Ut in omnibus  How do you in your department glorifectur Deus” – So that in all address the tensions between the things God may be glorified – which modern world and remaining true to recognizes that the things we do are the religious founding and mission of holy? How so? the college?

32 BEING BENEDICTINE IV. Our Community VI. Our God

 How do you understand the value  Does your work here at the college of stability in terms of your own call you to live a spiritual life? commitment to Saint Anselm  Do you really experience God in the College? In terms of Saint Anselm’s people you encounter on campus? commitment to you?  Do you experience tensions between  How important to you is the value your work and the spiritual nature of of hospitality? Is it a value that the college’s mission? characterizes your work at Saint Anselm?  How in your work at Saint Anselm are you encouraged or discouraged from V. Our Learning being “radically human”?

 Do Benedictine values and beliefs  Do you believe that the monastery’s inform the way you teach, mentor, motto of “Deum Quaerere” –To administer, manage, or fulfill the Seek God—is one that is or should various tasks of your work here at be shared by the entire Saint Anselm Saint Anselm? community?

 Is the art of discernment modeled at Saint Anselm College? Should it be?

33 BEING BENEDICTINE Some Resources on the Benedictine Life

• A Life-Giving Way: A Commentary on • Saint Benedict for the Laity by Eric the Rule of St. Benedict by Esther De Dean; Waal, Benedict Regula; • Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict • Asking Benedict: A study program on by Esther de Waal, Kathleen Norris; the Rule of St. Benedict: for classes and • Spirituality for Everyday Living: An private use by Adaptation of the Rule of St.Benedict by Terrence Kardong; Brian C. Taylor; • Day By Day With Saint Benedict by • The Benedictine Handbook by Anthony Terrence Kardong Marett-Crosby; • Doing Business With Benedict: The Rule of • The Benedictine Rule of Leadership: Saint Benedict and Business Management: Classic Management Secrets You Can Use A Conversation – by Kit Dollard, et al; Today by Craig S. Galbraith, Ph.D and • Engaging Benedict: What the Rule Can Oliver Galbraith III, Ph.D.; Teach Us Today by Laura Swan; • The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris; • Listen My Son: St. Benedict for Fathers • The Family Cloister : Benedictine by Dwight Longenecker; Wisdom for the Home by David • Living With Contradiction: An Robinson; Introduction to Benedictine Spirituality by • The Rule of Benedict for Beginners: Esther De Waal; Spirituality for Daily Life by Wil • Medieval Women Monastics: Wisdom’s Derkse, Martin Kessler; Wellsprings. Editors Miriam Schmitt • The Rule of Benedict : Insights for and Linda Kulzer; the Ages (Crossroad Spiritual Legacy • Preferring Christ: A Devotional Series) by Joan Chittister; Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict • Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living by Dom Robert Hale the Rule of St. Benedict Today by Joan (Foreword), et al; Chittister; • Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love by Lonni Collins Pratt, Daniel Homan;

34 BEING BENEDICTINE