About a decade ago, right after I’d graduated from college, I went on a retreat to a monastery in Michigan for a few days. I’d been with a group on a retreat to this monastery before, and I’d loved the solitude and the rhythms of prayer.
Now, I was looking for some grounding during a time of significant transition, and without having many specific memories of my stay there, I do remember those few days were peaceful, prayerful, and restful.
My most vivid memory is of a mealtime. Guests were invited to eat with the monks as long as we observed the silence they kept during meals. One of the monks was assigned to read out loud during the meal, and everyone else would listen and eat in silence.
I assumed the reading would be some sort of spiritually edifying text or Bible story. So imagine my surprise when I sat down for lunch and the reader began, very seriously, the beginning of a chapter in the middle of a book that, it quickly became clear, was entirely about conspiracy theories.
I managed to keep a poker face as this book described, in detail, the theory that global politics is run by shape-shifting alien lizards. Internally, though, I was getting very worried. I didn’t have a lot of experience in different religious communities, and I couldn’t figure out if they were reading this ironically, for information, or if they were really into conspiracy theories. I couldn’t ask anyone because of the rule of silence.
So I ate my bowl of lentils, growing more and more concerned, until I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye one of the monks a few seats down from me silently shaking his shoulders in laughter as he stared at his lentils. I watched this very silent laughter spread across the table, until even the monk who was reading the book couldn’t fully keep his steady reading tone.
Why has this memory stuck with me so clearly? It was very funny in the moment, but of course the prevalence of conspiracy theories is much more concerning and sad than it is funny. The more I think more about it, though, I believe it stayed with me because it was so unlike what I had expected. At twenty-one, I couldn’t imagine a holier vocation than being a monk. I’d conflated my ideas of holiness both with seriousness and with a very narrow version of “spirituality” that left little room for anything outside worship and prayer.
While at the monastery, I was reading the sayings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers, as translated by John Wortley in Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In the first centuries of Christianity, the Desert Mothers and Fathers abandoned their worldly status and possessions and fled to the wilderness to live lives of simplicity and spiritual discipline.
Twenty-one-year-old me was looking for straightforward rules to follow. While there certainly is a lot of wisdom in this collection of the sayings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers, there is also plenty of conflicting advice.
Abba Arsenius heard from God and fled into the desert to maintain silence: “When [he] had retired into the solitary life he prayed again, offering the same prayer, [Lord, guide me as to how I can be saved,] and he heard a voice saying to him: ‘Arsenius, take flight, keep silent and maintain hesychia, for these are the roots of sinlessness.’”
Abba Antony, on the other hand, lived in the desert but was reminded there are other holy ways of life: “It was revealed to Abba Antony in the desert: There is somebody in the city like you, a physician by profession, who provides those in need with his superfluous income and is singing Holy, holy, holy with the angels of God all day long.”
Amma Syncletica, perhaps, strikes some sort of balance between the two, saying, “Many who are in the mountain behave as though they were in towns—and are lost. It is possible to be with many people yet to be alone in one’s thought; also really to be alone and yet to be among many in one’s mind.”
Turns out reading preserved oral tradition from more than a thousand years ago as a to-do manual is difficult. But there is a gift to reading it as a narrative of different kinds of holiness, different kinds of calling, and the reminder that God has always been present in all kinds of work and all kinds of ways of life.
I no longer make the mistake of conflating holiness with seriousness, or of thinking that there’s a particular kind of life that is “most” Christian. The people I know who follow God in ways I hope to grow towards do all sorts of things: social work, stay-at-home parenting, administration, teaching. And as committed as they are to the serious work of living in the world today, I believe they’d say that part of that serious work is remembering to laugh, and knowing that their way of living in the world is not the only “right” one.
When I need time for reflection and prayer, I do still occasionally go on retreats to a monastery, or out to the middle of a forest. Those spaces of solitude are a gift, and I’m particularly thankful for the many religious communities who offer hospitality to all who seek it.
And I am grateful, too, for the goodness found in all different kinds of lives, and the wisdom passed down that reminds us this has always been so.
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My cousin married into an ultra-conservative reformed denomination over forty years ago. The reception was a few weeks after the wedding, which began with devotions. The emcee proceeded to read a lengthy selection from a prophet about a wicked and adulterous generation needing to repent of their damnable deeds, followed by an even longer prayer to do the same. It was completely out of step with the joyful nature of the gathering. My wife and I were sitting with my adult cousins at a long table, and we all had to work hard to suppress our giggles at how ludicrous this was (much like your monks at the meal). Our table was shaking with people trying not to laugh aloud. I had recently been ordained and begun my first pastorate, but I could not muster any seriousness on this occasion. Jesus turned water to wine at a wedding; the emcee managed to turn water into a bitter drink.