Consolations

 

What do monks have to teach us by their lives of poverty, silence, and solitude?  Monk’s lives go against the grain of our culture of striving, accomplishment, and accumulating.  They forgo consolations of intimate relationships, children, money, entertainment, and vacations to become quiet and still enough to feel God’s presence. Each of day follows the same slow rhythm of prayer and work, alone and together. 

 

When we face loss, difficulties, and pain, our lives naturally become more “monk like”.  What offered consolation no longer suffices as grief brings waves of emptiness and heaviness. We become numb to what had previously given us comfort like food, work, relationships.  We are pulled into aloneness because of the burden of grief that cannot be shared. We are separated from the known world and unable to participate in life in the ways we had before.      

 

Monk’s lives bear witness to value and depth of a simple, unadorned, and unfettered life.  Cut-off from outer consolations, we are in our grief given a chance to abide with our inner selves in simplicity, authenticity, and compassion.  In our depravation, our senses come alive to more subtle patterns and waves of color, sound, smell, and touch.  In our poverty, we find gratitude in simpler everyday things.  We like monks are purified by living in a slower less cluttered way for the time of our grief.