Strangers to the City

by Michael Casey

  In celibate communities attention must be paid to encouraging generativity. This means that it is not only those in leadership positions who are seen as responsible for expressing the charism and transmitting it to the next generation, but each person in the community. This is probably why we see Benedict modifying the autocratic abbacy envisaged by The Rule of the Master and making provision for the abbot’s ministry to be complemented by that of deans, the prior, the senior in charge of novices, the cellarer and “the spiritual seniors” who act where he cannot.

  1. A Generative Community

  In some avian species the paramount leader, the alpha male, is distinguished by its brightly-colored plumage and by its appropriation of all the females in the group, thus ensuring total paternity of the next generation. This is not the ideal that Benedict envisages for the leader of the monastic flock. The arduous task of leadership is not about the abbot, but about those whom he is appointed to serve. His task is to be of use to them rather than to claim privileges for himself: prodesse magis quam praeesse (64:8). Auctoritas, deriving from the verb augere, is named for its task of facilitating growth. Benedict’s abbot is not intended as a fine-feathered father of the next generation, but as one who encourages a wider flowering of generativity, in the officials, the deans, and the spiritual seniors, and through them in the whole community. In the text that stands at the head of this chapter, the abbot is instructed to share his paternity with officials in the community—in this case the cellarer. It is a principle that has a great importance in preparing for the future of the community. Beyond the simple vertical relationship of father and son, master and disciple, teacher and student, there are other relationships in a community that facilitate growth in the upcoming generation. These are specific examples of that general mutuality which is typical of a dynamic community. They are instances of the “horizontal relations” noted as a characteristic of Benedict’s Rule.77

  Just as mutuality is not to be equated with equality, so generativity exists in more than one mode. Generativity takes a variety of forms, each with its own nuance. There is, for example, an important distinction that needs to be made between mentoring and nurturing. Mentors can play a significant role in the transition to full adult maturity by accepting younger colleagues as apprentices and bringing them to a level of equality. There can be an implicit expectation that the younger person will not surpass the older, nor deviate too radically from the parameters the mentor has accepted. To breach these boundaries often leads to a painful rupture of the relationship. Nobody likes to be surpassed by one who, only yesterday, was a beginner.78 Perhaps hidden in the mentoring relationship is an element of co-dependency: one needing to exercise control and the other welcoming it. This is an imperfect generativity in so far as it often consists in remaking another person in one’s own image and likeness rather than sowing a seed and allowing it to grow to its own limits.

  Necessary mentorship has a limited life and, if it is faithful to its purpose, must come to an end. Nurturing, however, because it is a purer function of love, goes on forever. Handing on a tradition in a way that transcends one’s own embodiment of it is a very self-sacrificing task that necessarily involves a renunciation of control. It involves not only bringing others to a par with myself, but encouraging them to surpass me, to become better than I in doing what I do well. Nurturance is a road to redundancy. Far from being a way to create a personal empire, it is the willingness to step aside so that others may develop their talents and help to redefine the community’s future in a manner that goes beyond my particular vision.

  Making provision for a broader generativity in monasteries seems to me one of the urgent issues that needs to be confronted creatively. I am not alone in this belief. This is what Abbot General Bernardo Olivera writes on the topic as it applies in monasteries of the Cistercian Strict Observance.

  As we all know, the kinds of service that allow one to feel like a “leading actor” in some area are few in the monastery: the abbot or abbess, novice director, cellarer, cantor or chantress … This means that many monks and nuns of generative age find no place to channel their potential, which may lead to a sense of frustration affecting themselves and others. We might make a distinction here according to gender, even though not everyone will accept it. In nuns’ monasteries, it would appear that the generative capacity is the exclusive domain of the Mother Abbess, or, by remote extension, of another sister in her immediate orbit. In monks’ monasteries, other fathers (with a lower case “f”) are allowed, even though there is only one Father Abbot…. To put it more concretely, there is not always sufficient room or outlet for the generative capacity proper to adult professed monks and nuns, understood in general terms as the role of affirming and orienting the following generation. Not uncommonly, this is a source of crises and setback on the way to human and spiritual maturity. Even celibacy and virginity for the sake of the Kingdom can end up being lived out in a castrating way. Frustrated generativity causes withdrawal into oneself, obsessive search for intimacy, invalidity at an early age, excessive worry about oneself. On the contrary, a positive living-out of generativity opens horizons, provides mutual enrichment, increases vital human energy, all of which brings with it an appetite for living.79

  Part of the problem of a lack of generativity is its invisibility. The abuses to which it leads can be seen and deplored, but sterility itself cannot be directly perceived. Who knows whether an external quiescence is not the counterpart of a hidden interior fruitfulness? Or whether the tree is merely wintering or in an irreversible march towards death? The voices of the ungenerative are rarely heard; they tend not to participate in meetings and chapters. They are often regarded as a dead weight that retards the progress of “the community.” Even though they are less interesting people to deal with than the talented and enthusiastic, perhaps these dying branches should become a significant focus of pastoral zeal, not merely to comfort and console them, but to challenge them to put forth buds, to flower and yield fruit. It is not merely a question of palliative care but of summoning into life the latent gifts that have long lain dormant. The abbot “should be aware that he has undertaken the care of weak souls and not a reign of terror (tyrannidem) over the healthy” (27:6). Bernard of Clairvaux develops this thought in one of his letters, written to a former disciple who had himself become an abbot.

  Souls are the burden we carry—weak souls. Those who are healthy do not need to be carried and so they are not a burden. But when you find any of yours who are sad, fearful or grumbling know that it is of these that you are the father, of these you are abbot. By advising, exhorting and rebuking, you do your job, you carry your burden, for it is by carrying that you heal those whom you carry…. Knowing that you have been sent to help and not to be helped, understand that you are there as the representative of him who came to serve and not be served.80

  Superiors who are anxious to cultivate, maintain, and secure their own generativity may easily forget their crucial role of acting as a catalyst for the creativity of others. This omission can have serious negative effects in the long term. What is encouraged is more easily guided and kept within community parameters, whereas what arises in the teeth of opposition or indifference is often a wild growth that may, in the last analysis, deny any benefit to the community and contribute little to the general vitality.

  It is important to insist that this pastoral care is more than keeping people calm and apparently happy—drugged to the eyebrows with superficial solace and sympathy. Sometimes genuine concern involves upsetting their peaceful existence; urging them to break out of the cast-iron frameworks in which their lives are lived, to take risks, to cast their nets in deeper waters. This might mean, in the first place, withdrawing the occasions for self-medication by escapist hobbies, entertainments, and substance abuse, and then giving them jobs beyond what they believe they can manage, supporting them as they struggle to acquire new skills and patiently feeding back to them the elements of a new self-image.

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sp; There is a further complication. Fostering creativity needs to be universal. Selective facilitation of generativity may be little more than the favoritism that Benedict rejects (2:16, 2:20, 34:2). It is easy to encourage those who are responsive to our interventions and who are willing to accept our patronage (69:1). It is a much more demanding to recognize the gifts of those who are churlish or somewhat hostile, to cherish them and to provide possibilities for their development. The task of generating generators often demands a good measure of self-forgetfulness.

  A final cautionary note: In encouraging others to use their talents discretion is always necessary. Benedict recognizes that the primacy of monastic conversatio must never be displaced by the exercise of particular talents or skills (57:1-2). It is particularly important to remember this today, when many communities have large gaps in their middle ranks. Prematurely placing competent young persons in positions of responsibility may inhibit their monastic formation, prevent their normal growth into the fabric of a particular community, and even be a threat to their perseverance. In the early years of formation, of course, it is forbidden by canon law as well as by common sense. But sometimes local urgencies seem to overrule both. As with everything else, there is a time to receive and be formed and a time to be generative. Mostly the period of generativity coincides with mid-life and beyond—it builds on the foundation of the formative experience of growing into monastic life and slowly being imprinted with the character of the particular community. These are slow processes that cannot prudently be hurried in order to cater to external demands.

  2. Monastic Subculture

  One of the fringe benefits of monastic community is that it encourages a certain refinement in those who are attuned to its subtle rhythms. In interaction there is an expectation of civility and politeness, even a little formality. Sensitivity to others, thoughtfulness, and good manners are viewed as concrete means of expressing and reinforcing charity. Scurrility and obstreperous behavior are ideally excluded. The roughest of diamonds cannot avoid acquiring some degree of polish if they last long in a monastery. There are, of course, blatant exceptions to this rule.

  Monastic life, as we have seen, stretches one’s intellectual boundaries by its insistence on wide and regular reading. It expects of all a certain finesse in liturgical participation and, generally, tries to cultivate good taste in music and aesthetic appreciation. It is possible that this sophistication is no more than an elegant patina adopted to disguise an empty life. Most often it is not. There is a change in personal style as monastic life takes hold of one. In entering a monastery we move into a different world with its own subculture.81

  We should not think, however, that the monastic subculture is just a matter of conversion of manners. It goes deeper than that. The external forms that express the distinctiveness of monastic living have an important function in conserving and transmitting the values they embody. Domestic rituals and local customs are important for groups—they provide insulation for the group’s particular values, they support identity, and they play a positive role in the development of good morale and esprit de corps. Common activities do more than merely sustain individuals while the process of internalizing values continues; they also express in a wordless way some of the priorities by which a community lives. Formation of newcomers is more than accompanying them while some inner seed comes to maturity: There needs to be an active interchange of elements between the community and the individual, a fusion of horizons. Nor can the communication of a charism take place only by teaching and dialogue: Participation in the practicalities of community life is essential, whereby the powerful magic of good example provides models according to which newcomers can re-imagine their own future and so grow into something different.

  There are three stages in the emergence of generativity. The first is when a person becomes productive, joining in the work of the group and filling a slot in its assembly line—achieving an acceptable result that approximates the norm. This may be followed by varying degrees of being creative, in which the work done is more or less enhanced by individual flair. Instead of just delivering a product, the doer of the task accomplishes some level of self-expression. This addition, which is deeply satisfying to the one responsible, need not be intrusive or offensive to others. Think of an organist who passes beyond competence to a level of expertise that pleases everyone, or a cook who transforms monastic meals from merely edible to delicious.82 This middle phase can be a source of great joy to all in so far as the “self” that is expressed is not the chaotic and individualistic self of everyday experience but the “deeper self” that comes to the surface only through years of ascetical practice. It is, however, self-denial in the form of self-transcendence, that leads to the final stage. Generativity is not a riot of individualistic self-expression, but a stepping aside so that the charism and the tradition that I have internalized may find expression through what I do. True generativity is a matter of transmitting the life I have received and made my own to the next generation. What I give is something truly my own, and yet it is larger than I. The one who receives it from me receives it whole and will translate it into forms that are beyond my imagining. The gift I received, I have passed on. I cannot control what it will become. This is the mystery of tradition—the hidden transmission of life to the next generation. True generativity is not the exaltation of the ego but its deference to the contagious energy of a charism that leaps from one person to another in ways often concealed from the participants.

  The continuance of the monastic charism is one of the prime functions of a monastic community; that is why when there is no one to receive the gift communities often lose vitality to the point of seeming dead, even though the previous generation is still officially surviving. Handing on the charism is not an optional extra, reserved perhaps to some formally designated functionaries. It is an essential, though not necessarily self-conscious, part of living the charism. The more the members of a community become aware of their responsibility to hand on to the next generation what has been received from the past, the more effectively formative the community is. A community is fully alive when all its members continually receive the tradition into themselves, appropriate it interiorly, and then, in a harmonious way, express it exteriorly through their actions so that it becomes communicable to others. It is by this recycling succession of moments that a monastic culture is generated.

  The most visible aspects of culture are its artifacts. We who live in a consumer society are beginning to forget what it is like to make things: to define a need, to design a process or a product that will meet that need, and then to create a suitable object. If we need something we go to a shop and buy it. Most of us would be completely lost if we were marooned on a desert island or forced to survive the destruction of urban civilization. We would not have a clue about what to do once our credit cards stopped providing us with the necessities of life. One of the aspects of medieval monasteries that fascinates me is the ingenuity exercised by monks and lay brothers in working things out, harnessing nature, inventing gadgets, and developing skills to make life livable. I am always delighted when I find a similar attitude to life in modern monasteries—perhaps it happens only when money is short and time is ample. But maybe something else is needed: a mind that sees problems, asks questions, and is not afraid to seek solutions. How good it is to see people applying themselves to practical problems and using head and hands to fix it. A monastery becomes a very special place when many of the objects one sees around or handles in daily use are of local design or manufacture. This is a basic level of objective culture. Arts and crafts also add something to the common life, although they demand more specialized skills. The fact that the products are “homemade” should be considered a benefit that ought not to be sacrificed at the altar of globalized slickness. There are more important issues at stake than keeping up with the Joneses.

  Whether it is a question of bread, rosary beads, or perfume, objects that have been produced in monasteries are o
ften regarded as special because of the manner in which they are made. Monastic men and women are presumed to have a passion for excellence, good taste, and a non-exploitative attitude. Between ourselves, this is not always the case. There are also monastic hucksters who are out for every cent they can squeeze out of the market, but let us pretend that these are the exceptions. Such romantic expectations are, however, good reminders of how we ought to act when we do what we do, whether it is bookbinding, cheese-making, teaching, writing, or serving a liturgical function. The ideal is that monastic workers are not mindless robots but fully engaged persons who leave the imprint of what they are on what they produce, whether it be for internal consumption or for sale. Their work is not merely a necessary occupation or a hobby, but something that flows directly from the center of their being.

  Objective culture is the outcome of subjective culture. That is to say that all the various components of a culture have their origin in fully alive human beings. The more vital the generators of culture, the livelier the fruits of their efforts. Following in the wake of the Vatican II decree On the Church in the Modern World that identified culture as one of five key areas of concern, Pope John Paul II has often emphasized this humanizing aspect of cultural dynamism: “Culture is that by which man as man becomes more man.”83

  The experience of the various eras, without excluding the present one, proves that people think of culture and speak about it in the first place in relation to the nature of [the human being], then only in a secondary and indirect way in relation to the world of products.84

  There is no doubt that the first and fundamental cultural fact is the spiritually mature [human being], that is a fully educated [human being], one capable of educating himself and educating others.85