Dear Monks / In One Voice |

Dear Monks,

I arrived at Saint John’s on New Year’s Day 2009, as “wife of” a scholar at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research, afraid I would either freeze to death or die of boredom! I came not knowing what “the Hours” were and not knowing much about monks or why monks exist. But soon I was walking to the abbey church in minus-20-degree weather to pray with you. I returned day after day, not knowing why, but I simply could not stay away. You were always there in the choir stalls; I came and you took me in. You gave me hope.

At daily Mass I listened to homilies that were from the heart. Some were inside the box, some outside—but they were homilies that have and are changing my life. I prayed prayers that were no longer just words, but truths that caused me to question and to make commitments.

After five months at the Collegeville Institute, my husband and I returned to our home in Washington, D.C., but you were still with me. I trusted that my heart, the one you helped to heal, the one that is learning to listen, would be a heart that gives to others and helps bring healing and love to the wider world. If and when that happens, it is because of you.

We returned the next fall for a full year at the Institute, and have stayed. I know that you held me in prayer when I was at the point of death. In the summer of 2011 my family asked for your prayers when I was suddenly struck by meningitis and encephalitis and not expected to live. I believe your prayers were heard and brought me back to Saint John’s. Thank you! I thought prayer was only for the pious and holy, but you made it available to me and for me.

While praying with you I found an old friend in myself, someone whom I had forgotten. You have provided me a place where I could write, a place where I could survive a Minnesota winter and enjoy it. A monk taught me to accept prayer as community and as joy. When praying the Hours I lift my voice and listen to the voices of others. I become one voice in the choir of many voices.

Prayer is beyond my understanding, but a place where I now must live, a place where love resides, a place where fear is so powerful that I want to run, and run fast, but which calls me back and won’t let me run. It is both talking and listening. Talking I know; listening is difficult.

We have opened the Michael Sattler House across the road from the monastery grounds, where we now live. Inspired by a sixteenth-century Benedictine prior who was martyred for social justice, we provide hospitality to others involved in social justice, offering them what we have been given at Saint John’s. Our door is open to all, as Saint John’s has been to us.

Yours in thanksgiving,

Lois Kauffman

In One Voice

Lois Kauffman

The monks at Saint John’s pray
the hours in one voice
A difficult task for the
untrained and the hurried

The monks at Saint John’s
pause between lines
Between stanzas
Between prayers
They speak together
Speak to the unseen

The silence gives space
The space is prayer
Prayer happens

Prayer is more than noise
More than people
Prayer happens in the silence

The silence is uncomfortable
The silence is long
Nothing to hear
Silence

Saint Benedict’s first rule: Listen
Listen in the silence
Listen to the words
Listen to the prayer
Listen to God
Listen with the ear of the heart

How does God talk?
How does prayer talk?
How does silence talk?

I listen: I hear
I listen: I know
I listen: God speaks
In the silence

May 2009