If We Can Laugh At Ourselves, We Can Learn

Usually every Friday at the hermitage lunch is silent.  As monks we sit in the refectory, that is, the monastic dining room, and eat and drink, as we abstain from speaking, as we listen to one of our fellow monks read to us.  The text read is sometimes spiritual autobiography, at times Papal guidance, at other times from another spiritual writer.  Then we hear a brief excerpt from the Rule of Saint Benedict before the closing prayer.  

For weeks now, we've been listening to one of our fellow monks read from the book "Alive in God: A Christian Imagination" by Timothy Radcliffe, a Roman Catholic priest who's also a Dominican friar.  Once he'd been diagnosed with cancer, he threw himself into writing the book, which he had been postponing.  In it he explores what it means to be alive in God, and how to live fully.  

Yesterday as Father Isaiah was reading "Alive in God," I finished eating.  Rather than wait until after the meal, I decided to bring my bowl and silverware to the cart where the used items are placed.  Once Father Isaiah had finished a sentence, I dropped the silverware into its basin, so as not to be making noise during the reading.  Then I knocked the bowl against the side of the cart, it fell to the floor and shattered.  

After my effort to be silent, I ended up making much noise.  On top of the crash, I made a further distraction as I swept up the pieces.  I was struck by the irony of how, despite my aiming to be as quiet as I could, I created a disturbance.  We have aims, we make our plans, and then sometimes we end up sabotaging ourselves.  Yet also in ourselves we find opportunities to recognize the irony and humor in life.  

I'm reminded of how someone recently told me that, as a postulant in a Buddhist monastic community, she was proceedingly slowly, and, she thought, carefully, into the sleeping quarters one night when she knocked over the wooden apparatus that was used to correct beginners.  As she tried to be quiet, she made noise.  As she knocked into something, she upset the very thing used to correct mistakes.  

Rather than wait to be corrected, as she was making her mistake, she corrected herself.  Years later, as she recalled the mishap, she was laughing.  If we can laugh at ourselves, we can step outside the immediate circumstances.  Then we can see what there is to learn.  If we are able to laugh at ourselves, we are able to see the correction being offered to us.  

I'm Not Surprised

We like humor at the hermitage.  A joke that has been told here at the hermitage by multiple people countless times for years, including this month: 

At this one particular monastery which is especially rigorous with its practice of the discipline of silence, the new admittees to the monastery are allowed to speak two words each year.  At the end of this one young monk's first year, he goes to meet with the Prior, the head of the monastery.  

The Prior, welcoming the young monk's words, says, "Yes, my son."  

The young monk says, "Bed hard."  

The prior replies, "Yes, my son, thank you.  You may go."  

At the end of the young monk's second year, he sits down to meet with the Prior.  

The Prior greets him, "Yes, my son."  

The young monk notes, "Food cold."  

The prior responds, "Yes, my son, thank you.  You may go."  

At the end of the young monk's third year, he meets with the Prior.  

"I'm leaving," the young monk announces.  

The Prior retorts, "I'm not surprised!  You've been doing nothing but complaining the last three years!"