Page 2                                                   Mount Michael Oblates                               January-April, 2003

Finding Community As an Oblate

  (Editor’s Note: This article was written by Beatrix for the Oblate Forum, which can be found on the internet. She lives in California.)

 Years back I used to build Japanese natural gardens for my friends, free!  They provided the plant material, of course.  It was a lot of effort, but I loved working with the earth.  But one day I decided that I was getting too old to do this kind of work.

  So about two years back I found myself in a situation where I was going to overcome myself -- or at least the “thinking” of myself, of what I could or could not do. I bought into an old Craftsman house, small but just right for two retired ladies: my half-sister and me.

  Though never raised as a child with my sister, in later life (when we discovered each other) we came to really love and enjoy one another. Oddly, not knowing one another at the time, we both focused on religious/spiritual studies.

  She married a Catholic, raised her children Catholic, and retired as the vice-principal of a parochial school. But she got me!  An old  Anglican.

  My sister is my best friend.  We can bare our hearts to one another. That's rare, really!  I never had anyone before that I could do so with. So God was good allowing us sisters to find one another.  So here we are now, in a once dilapidated old Craftsman.

  We spent months fixing this old house, rehabilitating it.  I kind of built a cloistered place. Only towards completion did I realize that I actually had built a cloister. It  astonished me, that I had unconsciously done this. 

  I don't know if you folks ever read about that "monk archetype" in Raimundo Panikkar's Blessed Simplicity or not, but over several past decades I always knew this monk archetype dwelled within me. That's why I was drawn to become an oblate, I guess.  But I've always struggled with this, because I never felt worthy.  All through my years, I walk other paths "seeking  God" that rarely are institutionally blessed.

  This monk within me drew me to a Benedictine abbey where I became an oblate, almost a quarter-of-a-century back.  I had the good fortune of a fine abbot and spiritual director who somehow understood both my "ins" and "outs."  But he died.  That was years back. I've kind of been on my own ever since.  Religious organizations and  institutions still gave me a lot of trouble.  But I realized they were “carriers” of the Good, and I attended to them -- though usually from a distance.

  I'm pretty much an introvertish scholar, so I guess I engaged far more in "distance learning" when it came to Benedictine formation.  Other than my good late abbot, I was never able to find anyone to connect with me.  Even monks are often too busy, alas!  But I could “read,” and I did. 

    So here I am now, behind my new fence, in my park and gardens, still musing and wondering whether I am really living “true” to that monk within me.  Maybe I'm more a hermit than a Benedictine. Still, as always, I struggle for Community with a capital "C." 

  Having moved to California, I have found more a sweet Christian community here at my local parish than I ever experienced before. So I hope, though simultaneously my hearing grows more dim. 

  So now I seem even more cut-off from much human interaction. But God's grace comes in strange ways.  He has allowed me to be content, happy, in my cloistered place.