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Dear Covenant Family,
My favorite part of visiting old monasteries is walking the cloisters. Usually surrounding an inner courtyard with gardens or fountain, the cloister is a covered walk running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or even a circle. Monks or nuns who live the cloistered life have separated themselves from the world for the purpose of their vocation of prayer. A cloister gives them opportunity to walk and pray without worrying about interacting with those outside the walls or keeping track of one’s path. It is a repetitive form of walking, a moving prayer. Sometimes deceased members of the community are entombed beneath the cloister path, a reminder of mortality and the intertwined lives of the communion of saints. In other places Biblical scenes are painted on cloister walls to encourage reflection and remembrance.
Recently I’ve walked around several ancient but beautiful cloisters, which seemed sacred to me even though the monastics who built the walls and columns have long ago abandoned them, sometimes by circumstance, sometimes by force. How many stories have been told on those quadrangle paths, how many prayers have been lifted while meditatively walking?
During this past week it hit me how much of my ministry is a “cloister walk”. When I read scripture, I wander around in it meditatively, aware of the boundaries, the comforting repetition, the Spirit’s gentle leading. When I walk the hallways and sanctuaries of the Church of the Covenant, it is like a cloister walk, a moving prayer over familiar paths set apart from the world though situated in it, the ringing of carillon bells an accompaniment to my steps. But most of all it is in listening to the stories people share with me, as if we are walking together on cloister paths with images from scripture nudging at our consciences, and remembrances of the saints of light close at hand. I was particularly blessed this week to visit two of our oldest members in their living spaces, widening my understanding of the work of the Holy One, hearing their gratitude for the sheer gift of life, and all the people they have loved.
Author Kathleen Norris, in her book, The Cloister Walk, writes about a personal revelation:
"The great commandment, to love God with all your heart and soul, and your neighbor as yourself, seemed more subtle than ever. I began to see the three elements as a kind of trinity, always in motion, and the three loves as interdependent. It would be impossible to love God without loving others; impossible to love others unless one were grounded in a healthy self-respect; and, maybe, impossible to truly love at all in a totally secular way, without participating in the holy."
It seems that love is also a cloister walk, as we circle again and again around the Fountain of all being, as we give ourselves to God’s revelation in our lives, as we love God, and ourselves, and each other. May these paths become so familiar to us, our participation in the holy as regular as breathing, that love simply becomes the steps we take, one after another, in the path of Jesus.
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