A pause that rejuvenates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2009 (5956 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Amid the flurry of packing lunches, signing permission slips and organizing backpacks for her children, Lilli Williams takes a few minutes each morning just for herself.

“I need to be aware that there is time to stop, that I can breathe (deeply), and that I’m aware of what’s going on,” says Williams, a part-time student and stay-at-home mother of a toddler and two schoolboys.

Taking a break, no matter how short, in the midst of a busy day is part of the contemplative life, says Mary Coswin, director of St. Benedict’s Retreat and Conference Centre.

“One of the aspects of 21st-century living is we’re very mobile and we have the amenities that allow for 24-hour living,” says Coswin, a Benedictine sister who lives at the Masters Avenue monastery just north of the Perimeter on Highway 9. “How do you bring a contemplative perspective (to that)?”

One answer is to give busy people the principles for contemplative living within the Christian tradition and show them how to adapt monastic practices to their daily lives, says Coswin, who has organized a series of one-day retreats designed to do just that.

The series opens Wednesday, Sept. 16, with reflections on hospitality, a practice at the heart of Benedictine monastic life, says Coswin, who took her monastic vows in 1965.

“St. Benedict has a chapter in the rule on the reception of guests,” she says, referring to the writings of the sixth-century Italian saint. “There he says anyone who presents themselves to the monastery as a guest is to be welcomed as Christ.”

The monastic community of 28 women practises what it preaches, currently making room in its adjoining retreat centre for a family of Salvadoran immigrants recently evicted from their Winnipeg apartment.

Although hospitality includes sharing a meal with a friend or making room for a stranger, it extends well beyond taking care of others’ physical needs to examining how we deal with change, says Coswin in an interview over lunch in the monastery’s well-lit lower-level dining room.

“There’s an aspect within us that’s a stranger to us. When we get older and lose some abilities, can we welcome that stranger?”
In addition to hospitality, other topics on the contemplative life include solitude, silence, recognizing the sacred and the healing power of chant.

A form of music most often associated with monks, chanting is a soothing, relaxing and prayerful mode of music, explains Joan Mormul, director of liturgy at St. Benedict’s.

“It’s startling, it does something to our soul,” says Mormul, who also works part-time as a church secretary at a North End Catholic parish. “It brings peace to our inner being.”

The beauty of chant, sometimes referred to as Gregorian chant or plainsong, is that it brings voices together in a communal contemplative act.

“In any relationship, you have to think of the other,” says Mormul, who celebrates the golden anniversary of her vow-taking in 2010. “Chant is the way you are called to that in an audible sense. You have to listen and blend in.”

Just as chant is not an individual activity, neither is the contemplative life, says Coswin, who hopes the eight daylong retreats will gather a community of those interested in being more deliberate about the way they live.

“I don’t think we have a lot of supports for the kind of living we do,” she says. “The spiritual journey to be a pilgrim requires support so we have to look for connections with people who are (also) seeking.”

For Williams, acknowledging and reflecting on the challenges, struggles, and joys of her daily life helps her achieve a contemplative routine in the midst of a household filled with homework, meal preparation and three exuberant boys.

“I’ve been learning to hold how I’m feeling and be with it,” says the Wolseley resident of how she faces the ever-shifting reality of family life.

“Be aware of it and not fighting it. That’s what I understand the contemplative life to be.”

brenda@suderman.com

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