Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Die
Dear Celine, Accounting for variables is what we mean by the spirit of the law.
Celine -
I have been writing all morning and will see how far I can get with this letter before I shower and get on with my work day. I should probably eat something besides a chocolate protein bar, too.
Last time I said we had the map to a well-rounded holy human life in the convent. Of course all that information was also available outside the convent. When I said I entered the convent to find answers, I was expecting the information to be curated for me, not implying the texts were locked up in secret vaults. I expected it to be like joining a college course, not a secret society. I expected the professors to be living their research in the laboratory of the cloister. In a sense they were. Because the community was built from scratch and not transplanted from an experienced successful community, all of us ended up being guinea pigs. And yes, that is true for all humanity throughout time. The idea of evolution is precisely nature exploring what works and what doesn’t throughout all the variables of a shifting environment. It never reaches stasis and perfection because no sooner does the species tweak itself enough to cope with a variable than that very tweak tweaks the environment and sets a whole new cascade of consequences into action. Multiply this across every species and the mere numbers make your brain shut down. I sort of digress but this is why I have learned to be slow to judge and reluctant to scream about the existence of evil especially as some sort of proof for the non-existence of divinity. I think reality is about development toward survival and the freedom to develop. People are allowed to change, allowed to experiment. Destruction catches up with those who do not figure out the game. You can refuse to change, or you can change too much. Both will be your demise. The map, the instruction manual to the game is partly in words of wisdom, and partly in flesh. What was more lacking in my experience at the convent (and frankly most of my social encounters up to then) was the fleshly part.
Words have to be interpreted. They tend toward abstraction. They are imprecise. We had the Rule of St. Augustine of Hippo to read every day. I just read the full text again, it has been at least two years since I did that, and some of it I find shocking even though I had it memorized before. It is more of a political constitution while it reads like ancient life coaching. If I had not studied it so much I would reject it now as so far out of touch with modern life and sensibilities (it was written about sixteen centuries ago). The essential elements of it, and what I admired so much about it, were the Servant-Leader, the non-judgmental recognition and service of individual bodily needs as opposed to some artificial standard of equality or asceticism or unbridled indulgence, mutual trust, readiness to forgive and realistic acceptance of everyone’s status as a work-in-progress, the mandate to constructive criticism and a sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, and the focus on the interior effects of all practices rather than outward appearances. It is a political constitution for a people sharing the purpose of seeking God, its vehicle is a community of friendship based in love and respect for all, empowering each member to be responsible and mature spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually, even financially. While it prescribes common property, it is not a dictatorship, socialism or communism, because the members of the community are all members of the governing body and have some voting rights in the manner of distribution.
The words of his Rule must be read in the context of St. Augustine’s life. His autobiography, the Confessions has successfully crossed all cultural boundaries and had deep impacts on multitudes, but contains more of the story of his life before he became a religious founder. The desire to have a community of friends seeking true wisdom is there but not yet realized. His later works, letters and the biography by his friend Possidius tell more about the vibrant and warm humanity behind the Rule.
The problem with examples and heroes is that we often try to emulate them exactly, not accounting for all the variables and evolutions of our situation compared to theirs. Monkey see, monkey do. This is literally disastrous. In the 1960’s many religious communities were pushed to change too much, too fast. Most of them are now extinct species. Communities like my convent started springing up around the 90’s trying to replicate the Golden Days of before 1960, the full numbers of the 1950’s sometimes coupled with the asceticism of the 16th century mystic religious reformers. They seemed to overlook that the 1960’s turmoil happened because the 1950’s status quo was untenable, abusive and stagnant. They failed to realize that the situation of the human race had changed more in the last century with the advent of technology than it had for the last couple millennia combined. The regulations had to be completely overhauled, the spirit of the law had to be divined in order to give it new expression. The monkey could not just imitate, it had to grasp the essentials.
This post is the third of the Dear Celine Series on Grasp The Essentials— letters to an imaginary friend about what 16 years inside a cloistered monastery taught me about the world outside, and why neither one has quite figured out how to treat people like people.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Essie Bourke is a certified massage therapist specializing in craniosacral therapy (Upledger Institute) in Orange County, CA. She is the owner of Chaos To Clarity, LLC, a private manual therapy business. She spent her early adulthood as a cloistered nun before leaving and rebuilding her life from scratch. She now works with the nervous system professionally and writes about what she notices — inside institutions, inside bodies, and inside a culture that keeps wondering why everyone is so exhausted.
Fascinating!