Photo by Sr. Rosalind
Keep Some Room in your Heart for the Unimaginable¹
Claire Sokol, OCD
Creative Hope for the future of Contemplative Life
Published in LCWR Occasional Papers, Winter, 2022
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some quiet days of retreat near Lake Tahoe on the Truckee River. Each morning as I walked the frosty, forested path along the river I noticed a kind of ‘hush’ came over me as I approached a particular grove of trees. Scattered among the green pines were many others that had long since died; their large, bare limbs giving evidence of a once-vibrant life. Some lay on the ground while others fell leaning upon other trees. So still was the river at this spot it seemed to be a motionless pond. But walk only a short distance and behold! Gentle rapids were flowing. Could this serve as a symbolic metaphor for contemplative life today? Many of our ‘great’ ones have gone before us, yet are still among us. The liminal space we find ourselves in today feels, in some sense, motionless. But if we were to ‘keep some room in our hearts for the unimaginable,’ might we discover gentle rapids just ahead?
For most of my forty years as a Carmelite there has been an unspoken assumption regarding the future. New members would come, new leadership would arise and life as we knew it would continue. However, for many among our contemplative and apostolic sisters, this is no longer the case. Due to aging and a lack of vocations, many of our sisters have recently been uprooted from their monasteries and relocated, leaving behind a rich legacy of prayer and relationships with the local community. The change has come at a huge, emotional cost – especially for those who remained convinced to the last that things would change. In some cases, congregations of apostolic sisters have graciously opened their doors, softening the transition for our sisters in loving hospitality. For others, the community dispersed to different locations. A sense of profound displacement has been the inevitable outcome of such an uprooting.
In some ways this time mirrors the history of our first Carmelites who, for their own safety and the future of the Order, left Mount Carmel at the end of the 12th Century when violence was erupting all around them, and relocated to Europe. For years they struggled to adapt to a new culture, discerning what was essential to the charism and what needed to be let go. Their courageous choice to adapt to new historical circumstances assured the survival of the Order into our time. We never expected to face similar circumstances.
Today, this experience of displacement is echoed in the lives of millions of people in our world who have been forced to flee their homes due to violence, poverty and climate-induced calamities, among others. The universality of displacement combined with the pandemic have connected us in prayer with “the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time”² in ways we could never have foreseen. Like our ancestors who left Mount Carmel, and so many who face the experience of exile today, we are unsure how to navigate a new frontier. But while this time may feel as motionless as the still pond, I believe there are many signs indicating that the gentle rapids are just ahead.
Recently I read LCWR’s What We Are Seeing, An analysis of Conversations about Religious Life as it Moves into the Future.³ I resonate with the exploration of ‘common call’ as an alternative term for ‘religious life.’ It bridges the traditional categories between contemplative and apostolic, lay and ordained and includes many people living a deeply spiritual life today who would not label themselves as ‘religious’ with its implication of vowed membership, but who share a deep desire to be part of communities of hope4 called to witness to the authentic, inclusive love of God in a world (and sadly, all too often, a Church) fractured by harsh judgements and intolerance of differences.
At the heart of our ‘common call’ is the summons to contemplative practice, which alone is capable of moving our world to the next stage of human transformation. Sr. Constance FitzGerald writes, “When the emptiness of the memory on the level of affectivity and imagination becomes a deep void of yearning, it is hope that opens up the possibility of being possessed by the infinite, unimaginable, incomprehensible Mystery of Love that is so close.”5 If, through contemplative practice, we could let go of the memory of our individual and communal identities and allow them to be re-woven in Christ as the Center of our identity, I believe this movement into deeper communion with each other could become an even more powerful force of transformation and healing in our world.
If we remain faithful to contemplative practice, our ‘common calling,’ and receptive to the quiet inflow of Wisdom, I believe through our united, silent presence to the Divine, we can become even more vibrant communities of hope, harnessing the transformative energy of Love together to become a cultural force for change in our world. The risk inherent in the invitation to let go of everything in contemplative prayer is the same risk we face in this Spirit-blessed moment in history: “We cannot discover new oceans unless we have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”6
[1] Mary Oliver, “Evidence,” Beacon Press/Boston, 2009
[2]Gaudium et Spes, Preface, 1965
[3]LCWR, Discerning Our Emerging Future, Feb., 2021
[4] My reference to ‘communities of hope’ is inspired by Maria Cimperman, RSCJ’s book “Religious Life for our World, Creating Communities of Hope”
[5] Constance FitzGerald, “From Impasse to Prophetic Hope,” 31-32
[6] André Gide, French author, Nobel Prize in Literature, 1947