Embracing Solitude: Women and New Monasticism

Embracing Solitude

Women and New Monasticism

Bernadette Flanagan

with a contribution by Beverly Lanzetta

and a foreword by Rev. Dr. June Boyce-Tillman, MBE

EMBRACING SOLITUDE

Women and New Monasticism

Copyright © 2014 Bernadette Flanagan. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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ISBN 13: 978-1-60608-337-6

EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-002-7

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Flanagan, Bernadette.

Embracing solitude : women and new monasticism / Bernadette Flanagan ; with a contribution by Beverly Lanzetta ; foreword by Rev. Dr. June Boyce-Tillman, MBE.

xxvi + 154 p. ; 23 cm—Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60608-337-6

1. Monastic and religious life of women. 2. Solitude—Religious aspects— Christianity. 3. Spiritual life—Christianity. I. Lanzetta, Beverly. II. Tillman, June. III. Title.

bv4509.5 f52 2014

Manufactured in the USA

Scripture quotations come from the New Revised Standard Version Bile: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Lost, by Ian Adams, is reprinted from Adams’s 2010 book, Cave, Refectory, Road: Monastic Rhythms for Contemporary Living, with permission from the publisher, Canterbury Press, an imprint of Hymns Ancient and Modern.

In memory of

Sr. Columba Regan PBVM

d. 20 November 2009

A woman who loved to embrace the new movements of the Spirit

All one need do is go into solitude and look upon God within oneself.

—Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection 28:2

Foreword

Rev. Dr. June Boyce-Tillman, MBE Professor of Applied Music, University of Winchester

Sometimes a book drops into your life at just the right time; and so it was for me when I received a draft of Embracing Solitude. I suspect it will be same for many others who in the light of the current developments in Christian spirituality share my hopes. I have read a great deal of this book in Winchester Cathedral during performances and rehearsals of Chronicles of Light. It was as if the ancient monastic voices came alive in a new and exciting way on these pages, and were in tune with today’s music.

At the same time as reading the draft of Embracing Solitude I received a novel by the founder of Sacred Life-Arts,¹ Dana Reynolds—Ink and Honey—which explores a similar vision through the medium of a novel that documents a fictional new sisterhood of visionaries, healers, and mystics: the Sisters of Belle Coeur. The exploration of the same theme in two different forms indicates how much it is the spirit of our age. Indeed a third event, when I was given the poem below about Queen Boadicea, who inspired and led the largest revolt against Roman rule in Britain, also seemed to summarize the themes of courageous, heart-based women’s leadership in this book well:

I am the Voice dispossessed of the tangible,

The truth that sees the whole of history outstretched;

I tell of past events long since put out of mind,

Of woes, tribulations, ingratitude and guile,

Of strength and valour in the face of oppression,

Of wickedness that repeats through history,

For people change not, thus the events that they fashion

Reflect inevitably things past. So beware!

Be on guard! Perils wait! Be vigilant and watch!

All those that have ears to hear, learn and understand

That covert webs of power shackle a hapless world,

Spun by Mammon’s avaricious, ruthless, hard spawn,

The men of mendacity, the engineers of fate:

A wise sage said: O Death, where is thy victory?

Boudica’s reply: There is no death for the brave.²

For all intentional spiritual seekers this is a vital text, for it provides a myriad of insights to enrich their practice with helpful questions at the end of each of the introductory inspirational chapter. The increasingly common usage of the nomenclature spiritual seeker for people who wish to challenge the worst effects of an increasingly secularized marketplace has, however, resulted in a number of losses. Not the least of these is a sense of community belonging. Carrette and King have pointed out that individuality in the models of spiritual seeking is so rooted in the archetype of the essentially solitary heroic journey that it effectively defends contemporary society against corporate assaults on its injustices, such as those mounted by the Church in former times against such violences as slavery.³ This book sets out a variety of ways that this sense of community may be retrieved. It critiques many of the givens of our culture—the centrality of work to our identity, the discrediting of a vow of chastity, and the centrality of the natural family to the fabric of society.

Spiritual Seeking

Much of today’s faith seeks understanding and transformation through a widening out of the search to a variety of spiritual traditions, here explored through the development of the Interfaith Seminary in the final chapter. This approach to faith longs for a personal holiness and desires to creatively make new contemporary rituals of belonging and trusting, a subject about which several texts have been published in the last twenty years.⁴ This book links spiritual seeking effectively with the history of spirituality through the rediscovery of the diverse forms of the feminine quest for God. The insight of feminist theologians about the becoming nature of God, the presence of Sophia at the heart of everyday living, and the deep desire within humanity to journey into God and incarnate the Divine is the weft of the woven tapestry of contemporary spiritual seeking: all are subliminally in evidence in the text.

Community

This book, written by a member of a religious community, suggests how structured, trustworthy spiritual companioning can be reestablished in new ways in contemporary secular society. I first met this idea when Mother Mary Clare of the Sisters of the Love of God⁵ wrote the short easy-to-read book The Contemplative in the World.⁶ At last one did not need to withdraw to lead the contemplative life! This was a huge relief for a young, spiritually aware girl like myself, who felt called to a contemplative life, but who also had the obligation, as an only child, to bear the grandchildren. I developed, as suggested here, an inner monastery, which has always served me well, even when more recently technology has threatened to invade the quality of solitude.

The spiritual life has always set up a variety of complex, mixed images for women (more so than for men), as the vocation to family life has not been laid so heavily by the church on men as on women. Leaders of women’s religious orders such as Mother Emily of the Sisters of the Church,⁷ when they were reestablished within Anglicanism, were critiqued for drawing women away from their main calling of bearing children and caring for a family. But here we have the stories of women from history who have had both a spiritual life and a married life, and of contemporary women who are also finding ways of combining the two.

This book makes three significant contributions:

• A creative engagement with the increasing decline in church attendance

• New ways of pursuing a spiritual search within the context of a dispersed community

• A history of the monastic archetype from a feminine perspective, which has, in general, been missing from mainstream church history

Women

At the heart of the suppression of the feminine by the churches is the fact that stories of women have been neglected, systematically deleted, ridiculed, and ignored. In Embracing Solitude women’s involvement in works of charity and spiritual education is, by contrast, celebrated and honored. I loved, in particular, the rediscovery of transformative weeping, evident also in the life of Margery Kempe, as an established part of women’s spirituality—an effective antidote to its portrayal by the much later school of psychiatric medicine as hysteria. The gendered dimensions of concepts such as rules of life and pilgrimage are exposed through the histories of religious women presented here.

Women’s Communities

Developments within communities of women are historicized and contemporized—the availability and vulnerability of women throughout history whose lives have been consumed by a passion for the infinite—developments that have seldom formed part of the grand narrative of the churches. The marriage between solitude and community runs through the entire text like a leitmotif, as the life and rules of hermits and anchoresses are noted and compared with people choosing to live out a life of contemplation in the world of the everyday and to discover the mystery within the complexity of contemporary life. However, the theme of solitude not as a failure to find a partner but as an inner resource is an exciting one for those of us who have chosen to live our lives this way as a conscious choice, rather than as an enforced necessity. This runs counter to most contemporary advertising, which now sees partnership (both heterosexual and homosexual) as essential to full humanity. Silence, solitude, simplicity, solidarity, prayer, and the dilemmas of obedience run as recurring tropes throughout the text. I delighted in the idea of developing a connected solitude; a number of spiritual practices to enable it are set out in Embracing Solitude. The idea of belonging without boundaries is an effective antidote to the narrow perspective of the contemporary emphasis on the enclosed nuclear family with its narrow intimacy and its potentially sordid secrets.

The need for companionship in the midst of the journey into solitude is differently expressed in a variety of stories, and many contemporary expressions are helpfully explored. Indeed as a survey of contemporary monasticism alone, Embracing Solitude is outstanding. I now see developing around me the idea of soulful conversation in a companionship of friends, which for me started first in the groups of women meeting for worship in hidden and private groups in the 1970s.

Intuition

The solitude movements of contemporary spirituality—a rising tide in many different parts of the world today—is often, to use the Foucauldian terms which I explore in Unconventional Wisdom,⁸ an attempt to recover ways of knowing subjugated in contemporary Enlightenment-governed society. A critical way of knowing in these uncertain times is intuition, given especially its role in religious experience. This is very carefully explored as a recurring theme in this book, particularly in the history of women religious from various ages and traditions. The fragility of spiritual awareness and its vulnerability to patriarchal oppression is beautifully described.

I particularly liked the linking of Evelyn Underhill’s work on mysticism—phases of awakening, enacting and simplifying, illumination of purpose, and impasses and suffering (a pain often too deep for words)—to the autobiographies of women. This provides an extremely helpful and insightful overview of these narratives, which have been proliferating over the last twenty years. The development of mystical solitude as a type of imaginal space, particularly as related to Nano Nagle’s ultimate establishment of the Presentation Sisters, I found very informative; as I did also the notion of a mystagogic reading of texts—which opens up new ways of academic research.

If some of the spiritual seeking of the last fifty years has portrayed mystical experience as something like a finding celestial Smarties, candies scattered from heaven to make people’s lives better, spiritualities based in a notion of nonattachment to the world and deaf to the cries of the suffering are heavily critiqued through the lens of the stories of women of the past and the present in this collection. This book throughout its course seeks to reinforce both in the past and today the link between transformative inner solitude and innovative social action, providing ample illustration of the position of Dorothee Soelle in her seminal text, The Silent Cry.⁹

The monastic archetype is set out in a myriad of different forms in history which are interrogated and critiqued as a way of finding new expressions for it, in a world where the creation of vibrant spiritual communities is a deep challenge on a number of fronts.

The Arts

As a composer and performer, I find it wonderful to meet others exploring the place of the arts in emerging spiritual movements such as the new monasticism. There was a loss in women’s music-making when the great religious houses were dispersed, since these communities were centers where figures like Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602—ca. 1676–1678) had found their creativity; the notion that the arts as media for spiritual exploration is being rediscovered with the Internet’s Abbey of the Arts offers exciting new possibilities for artistic spiritual creativity. The metaphor of the dance is used for the development of these new impulses, and there is helpful debate about the embodied nature of women’s spirituality and where asceticism might fit in women’s narratives—whether as spiritual practice or as part of Weight Watchers. The expression of women’s spirituality as intimate relationship with Christ explored in visions and expressed in writing and song is an ongoing possibility that is little explored in contemporary literature.

This book speaks to the deepest longings of spiritual seekers today. It answers many of their questions, places them in an historical context, and most of all encourages them on their pilgrimage into the heart of God through a mysticism embodied in a shared spiritual solitude that can be maintained in the midst of the ordinary and the everyday. Just as Christian seekers moved from the city to the desert in the third century, now the move is back to finding contemplative solitude in the midst of the commerce of the city.

1. Online: http://sacredlifearts.com

2. Shute, Boudica the Great, 1.

3. Carrette and King, Selling Spirituality.

4. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice; Apffel-Marglin, Subversive Spiritualities; Drane, Spirituality to Go.

5. Online: http://www.slg.org.uk/.

6. Mary Clare, The Contemplative in the World.

7. Online: http://www.sistersofthechurch.org/.

8. Boyce-Tillman, Unconventional Wisdom.

9. Soelle, The Silent Cry.

Preface

Simple events can reveal to us how rapidly our world is changing. I write this preface in the middle of the most severe occurrence of snow and ice ever experienced in Ireland. News bulletins have become the lighthouses providing guidance through the ever-changing landscape. However, these news bulletins presume that the average person seeking to make his or her way to any of the major ports of life—work, family, doctor, church, or shops—has the technology available to access the information being provided to the public so as to get out and about safely. Tweeting, texting, and web-browsing are the vernacular of this emergency situation. We are asked not to travel to the airport until we first check the website of our air carrier, and the bus company tweets its latest updates. A change of consciousness is dawning. We have crossed a digital rubicon and to choose to opt out of digital communication is becoming equivalent to choosing to live without electricity.

In a similar manner, we have crossed a spiritual rubicon in Western society, one that has had a particularly intense expression in Ireland. Wave after wave of revelation of clergy misconduct, of the abuse of children in religious-run institutions, of the disregard for society’s laws by religious leaders, and of the gross mistreatment of adult women in Magdalene laundries has stripped away the comfort of former spiritual blankets. As a nation Ireland has come to the threshold of a new spiritual consciousness, an event that in other parts of the world may be more locally or individually circumscribed. In traversing this unknown place Ireland has unique resources to call on because of its spiritual history.

In this book I intend to reflect on the themes, trends, and metaphors that underpin a discussion of solitude as a creative response to the unknown, and to outline practical expressions of the contemporary turn. I also aim to present the unexplored resources of guidance and support in these challenging times available through the lives and writings of those who embraced the monastic enterprise across the ages as a journey into personal authenticity. I focus on women because forgotten, neglected legacies may have a freshness that overused resources may lack at this time. In a similar vein, the abbot of the Benedictine community in Glenstal Abbey in County Limerick has suggested that it is artists who may lighten the way in the undrawn spiritual landscape that now presents itself. In his evocatively titled book Underground Cathedrals,¹⁰ Abbot Mark Patrick Hederman, OSB, has sketched how the imaginative legacy of prominent figures in the Irish arts world, such as Brian Friel, Louis le Brocquy, and Seamus Heaney present subtle hints of the spiritual sensibility of our times. I turn to monastic voices old and new to light a lantern for traversing the dark alleyways of the Spirit in which we now find ourselves: Moninne, from the Celtic tradition, and her companions in Spirit; Syncletica, from the early Egyptian-desert spiritual initiative; Marie d’Oignies, who pioneered lay spirituality eight hundred years ago in Belgium; Angela Merici, who created innovative spiritual community in Italy; and Nano Nagle, who forged a pathway of the Spirit in the context of unfavorable sociopolitical circumstances in eighteenth-century Ireland. I finally turn to contemporary women who are embracing solitude in new ways today and again allowing its fruits to enrich the land of the Spirit in our midst. One innovator, Beverly Lanzetta, has provided a personal account of the contours of her journey, a contribution for which I am very grateful.

10. Hederman, Underground Cathedrals.

Acknowledgments

It is a privilege to thank all those who made this book possible. This publication reflects conversations with many women who have shared with me their sense of living at the end of one season of spiritual time and at the beginning of another season of time. I thank Ian Adams, Bernie Baker, Kathleen Barrett, Iva Beranek, Margaret Benefiel, Carmel Boyle, Mary Brennan, Elaine Burke, James Clarke, Cyprian Consiglio, Sandra Curran, Amanda Dillon, Isoilde Dillon, Anne Marie Dixon, Anthony Grimely, Kieran Hayes, Geraldine Holton, Suzanne Kelly, Jean Kilcullen, Michael Hayes, Margaret Mulcaire, Michael Murray, Joan O’Hare, Briege O’Hare, Helen O’Keeffe, Mary Quinn, Barbara Raftery, Veronica Ryan, Joshua Searle, Ray Simpson, and Phyllis Zagano.

I owe much to an attentive listening presence in the person of Gertrude Howley, who has shared my journey through its changing seasons since 1976 and has provided an abundance of encouragement, perspective, humor, and hospitality throughout this writing project. When providing all this generous support, she has often included me a wider circle of kindness provided by Chris Mulcahy and the community of Presentation Sisters at Youghal Road, Dungarvan, Co Waterford. For all the warm hospitality provided I am truly grateful. Bernadette Purcell, Una Trant, and Kathleen Meagher, who have been my dispersed community of