Benedict, Gregory, and we

View from a Hermitage

There is one word omitted from a sentence in “Learning to pray while cloistered: Benedict, Gregory, and me” by M. Craig Barnes (Christian Century, June 3, 2020, 13). The sentence reads: “We join 1,500 years of cloistered monks who brought the world’s laments before God in search of a vision of salvation.” The missing word is “have” - have brought. 

Don’t count us out! A few years ago the Camaldolese community celebrated our first thousand years since the founding of the original monastery in Italy. (The American first foundation was in 1958.)

Benedict, Gregory, and we, contemporary contemplatives, carry on the monastic contemplative prayers begun over 1500 years ago with Anthony in the Desert, Benedict in Nursia, … in Tours, Enda in Ireland, Columba in Scotland, and so many more. 

What is different today is that the cloistered monks are joined by hundreds of friends, associates, and Oblates, in a rhythm of daily prayer and practice, including witness, hospitality, and contemplation. 

Before reading the article I had been in a monthly call with fellow Camaldolese Benedictine Oblates. After the call I received an invitation to the annual gathering of oblates, this year to talk about “new wineskins” - how we were part of a new monastic adventure outside the walls, or as Suzanne Guthrie has put it, “at the edge of enclosure.” 

Some years ago, before that thousand-year mark, my wife and I were on retreat at Incarnation Monastery in the Berkeley hills. After a week or so, she remarked that the psalms were chanted particularly slowly. Fr Thomas replied, “Yes, someone else mentioned that - in the 13th Century.”  Each. word. carried. weight. “By the end of the retreat,” my wife observed, “I could hear the prayer running constantly in my heart.”

Now, in the current situation, she and I are in a community of two: contemplative continuity helps us turn enforced isolation into elected solitude.

The Rev. John R. Leech, Oblate OSB Cam.

June 13th 2020.

Keeping the Faith: Elected Solitude

The Rev. Dr. John Leech, Oblate OSB Cam.

Keeping the Faith: Elected Solitude

I'm an Episcopal priest, affiliated with St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Armory Park, Tucson, Arizona, and a Camaldolese Benedictine Oblate (that is, an associate of a contemplative monastic order headquartered in Camaldoli, Italy), as well as a friend of the Iona Community. [My spiritual director forwarded me an essay by a nun from New Jersey on her long-learned practices of "social distancing", which got me thinking. Here are some of my own thoughts.]

As the coronavirus approached I began to think more about the resources monastic practices have to offer us, and as an associate member of a contemplative monastic order myself, some of them, blended with my work as an Episcopal priest, came to the fore. My thought is that we can - with help - turn from forced isolation to chosen solitude. At least to some extent. As we do in Lent - or Ramadan, or other fasting periods. This happened to me this year: my doctor had me begin a no-carbohydrate Mediterranean style diet last summer, which I got serious about once I heard of a family member's cancer treatments. But this was not elected solitude.

Camaldolese Benedictine Hermits have over a thousand years of practice with 'social distancing' - and more important with balance. The Camaldolese Threefold Good of community, solitude, and witness, will play out differently for people outside monastic enclosures. We connect with friends and neighbors at a distance, sometimes through electronic means, telephone, or letter, and sometimes en paseo, that is, as we pass each other on our evening walks. Witness takes so many forms. Care for each other, however expressed, is one of them. And of course Camaldolese Benedictines are much more concerned with solitude than isolation.

Perhaps we can learn, through newly adopted very old practices, such as sacred reading, contemplation, and prayer, how to turn simple isolation into something more profound.
What I am doing now, in this time of pandemic isolation, are the intentional practices of solitude of many intentional religious communities: daily prayer, weekly Eucharist and annual retreat. God willing I'll be able to go to New Camaldoli this summer for the retreat...

As for weekly Eucharist, I can commend "Spiritual Communion" and the prayer of St Alphonse of Liguori:

O Lord, in union with the faithful at every altar of your Church where your blessed Body and Blood are being offered to the Father, I desire to offer you praise and thanksgiving. I believe that you are truly present in the Holy Sacrament. And since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, I pray you to come spiritually into my heart. I unite myself to you, and embrace you with all the affections of my soul. Let me never be separated from you. Let me live and die in your love. Amen.


For the Arizona Daily Star, "Keeping the Faith" section in Home and Life. Published May 3, 2020.

https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/keeping-the-faith/article_148ecede-751c-5182-9aec- 7050e3cfb27b.html 

— The Rev. Dr. John Leech, Oblate OSB Cam. Leech is an Episcopal priest, affiliated with St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Armory Park, Tucson, Arizona, and a Camaldolese Benedictine Oblate (that is, an associate of a contemplative monastic order headquartered in Camaldoli, Italy), as well as a friend of the Iona Community. 

sociable solitaries

"They are sociable solitaries..." 

Just now I was reading the Economist magazine's lifestyle quarterly 1843 and discovered a brief but pungent article on the place I go for my annual retreat, the Immaculate Heart Hermitage at Big Sur, known as New Camaldoli. It is the westernmost outpost of the Camaldolese Hermits, a contemplative Benedictine order. After a visit, observing how their mostly solitary days of work and prayer are punctuated by common prayer at lauds, matins, mass, and vespers, the author describes these monks as "sociable solitaries." Fairly accurate about some things, service times, for example, the article does not give as distorted or sensational an account of contemplative life as we might some times find. Vogue once covered an extended retreat I was on, and I've wondered if they did as well. 

What we find in the "postcard from Silicon Valley" is enough to cause us to want to inquire more deeply into a life of balance, of community and solitude, witness and prayer. 


Nat Segnit, "Postcard from Silicon Valley, Some of our critics call us the hot-tub monks", 1843, April/May 2020, 31-32.
https://www.1843magazine.com/upfront/postcard-from-silicon-valley/some-of-our-critics-call-us-the-hottub-monks accessed March 27, 2020.

And here is where I get down to it a bit more: 

Camaldolese Benedictine Hermits have over a thousand years of practice with 'social distancing' - and more important with balance. The Camaldolese Threefold Good of community, solitude, and witness, will play out differently for people outside monastic enclosures. We connect with friends and neighbors at a distance, sometimes through electronic means, telephone, or letter, and sometimes en paseo, that is, as we pass each other on our evening walks. Witness takes so many forms. Care for each other, however expressed, is one of them. And of course Camaldolese Benedictines are much more concerned with solitude than isolation. Perhaps we can learn, through newly adopted very old practices, such as sacred reading, contemplation, and prayer, how to turn simple isolation into something more profound.

My thought is that we can - with help - turn from forced isolation to chosen solitude. At least to some extent. As we would in Lent - or Ramadan, or other fasting periods. This happened to me this year: my doctor had me begin a low-carbohydrate Mediterranean style diet last summer, which I got serious about around Labor Day. So I made it into a Lenten practice. But this was not elected solitude. 

What I am doing now, in this time of pandemic isolation, are the intentional practices of solitude of Camaldolese Benedictine Oblates: daily prayer, weekly Eucharist and annual retreat. God willing I'll be able to go to New Camaldoli this summer for the retreat... 

In my home we have a community of two and say daily prayers together. As for weekly Eucharist, I commend "Spiritual Communion" and the prayer of St Alphonse of Liguori:

O Lord, in union with the faithful at every altar of your Church where your blessed Body and Blood are being offered to the Father, I desire to offer you praise and thanksgiving. I believe that you are truly present in the Holy Sacrament. And since I cannot now receive you sacramentally, I pray you to come spiritually into my heart. I unite myself to you, and embrace you with all the affections of my soul. Let me never be separated from you. Let me live and die in your love. Amen.

A contemplative nun from Summit, New Jersey, offered her own thoughts on how we can turn to resources of chosen solitude at a time of forced isolation. "First, you need to establish structure.... Second, be intentional and love others.... Third, use this time for self-reflection and relaxation.... Stop. Be still. You can either waste this period of social-distancing and be frustrated, or you can choose to make it the best it can be."  (Sister Mary Catharine Perry)

https://www.nj.com/opinion/2020/03/im-a-nun-and-ive-been-social-distancing-for-29-years-here-are-tips-for-staying-home-amid-coronavirus-fears.html