The new monasticism, part 2

This CT article mentions rightly that it is hard on a community to have people come and go too quickly. “Inner-city hopelessness is so deeply rooted that ministry takes years of building one-on-one relationships before it is effective.” says Don Stubbs. The Fourth World Movement tries to maintain some stable team members in each location, and limits direct contact for very new volunteers. In an article in the August 2005 issue of Friends Journal, the memoir of a woman’s work with AFSC among the Cheyenne in 1968, the author also refers to this practice.

An important part of the discipline of monasticism (and marriage) that wasn’t discussed in this article is that traditionally it’s not easy to get out of these commitments. The usual implication is that it’s a lifetime commitment. And sometimes (maybe not so much nowadays) it’s that sense of “Well, I promised, so I’m sticking around” that gets us through the dark tunnels of life and out into the brighter light on the other side. I think this is a good thing.

“Since God is the author of love, no couple [or community] can without God make good their promise to love one another for the rest of their lives. … Love must inevitably change and mature, and every relationship has its times of stress as well as its times of renewal. But there are periods in some [all?] married [or monastic] lives when all that can be done is to go on trying to love and to
continue to believe in the elusive and unique quality for which we gave ourselves to our partner [or community] until death should part us. …

What a triumph when old love is transformed into deeper, surer new love which can accept more fully what each has, and the pair [community] find a rebirth together in those things which are eternal and through this a renewal of their everyday living.”

from London Yearly Meeting, 1959, as quoted in Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire, 2001. [additions mine, 2005]

This is important to me because living in any community is hard work. One of my recent insights is that having children prepares us for when our parents and then our partners get old. We practice changing diapers, setting limits, forgiving weaknesses on our babies, who are in fact cute and we know that they can’t help it, so that we know what to do; we’ve developed the spiritual and intestinal fortitude to be able to wipe up someone else’s vomit and change bandages for people who aren’t cute, when it’s harder to remember that they really can’t help it, when we are thrust into roles we never asked for. In religious orders, this work still has to be done for their aged and disabled brothers and sisters.

What will the new monastics do with people when they have given all they can, and need to be taken care of? Will they still be around? It is a blessing to be able to care for these elders, but will the communities still serve the outside or have all their resources absorbed by old members?