Most people’s only experience of North Dakota is from the movie Fargo.
Most people’s only experience of North Dakota is from the movie Fargo. You betcha! Well, I’m a Californian, and never even saw the movie before I came here a little more than three years ago. Every once in awhile, when the weather is cold, my brother sends me alarmed-sounding messages warning me not to venture outside, stuff like “Harriet, you better not go out today, or you’ll be killed!” Ha! Little does he know North Dakota is not really cold at all, because the dryness tends to mitigate the chill. I’ve experienced much colder on the northern coast of California in winter because the humidity makes 25 above feel like 25 below.
Father Terrence (Kardong, OSB), scholar and bon vivant, and I talked a little this morning at breakfast (Father Terrence served as celebrant at Mass) about a new article in Cistercian Quarterly called “Can A Woman Be A Monk?: On Gender and Monastic Identity.” The article is by a Cistercian nun (monk), Megan Macrina Walker, OCSO, from Holland. The Dutch tend to be quite creative theologians and thinkers. Sister Megan argues (and I am greatly simplifying here) that women can be and in fact are monks because as Saint Paul says, there is no male or female in Christ, and because we are all made in the image and likeness of God, the human spirit is not gender-specific or gender-limited, but kindled by a divine spark which has no special affinity for either sex. According to Sister Megan then, a woman can be a monk to the same extent a woman can be baptized.
One of the really great things about monastic life is that we can talk about ideas like these, and share our disagreements and agreements and divergences freely, and at pretty much any time. My monastic life began in a Cistercian monastery, where we did refer to ourselves as “monks.” Monk was our identity and occupation. We were liberated in the sense we could pursue our contemplative lives in silence, which is the language of God, and in a community in which everyone shared the same goal; that is, to seek the face of God wholeheartedly with all our soul and mind and heart.
That’s monastic life in a nutshell, whether it is lived on the northern plains, the northern coast of California, or in waterlogged Holland.
Father Terrence (Kardong, OSB), scholar and bon vivant, and I talked a little this morning at breakfast (Father Terrence served as celebrant at Mass) about a new article in Cistercian Quarterly called “Can A Woman Be A Monk?: On Gender and Monastic Identity.” The article is by a Cistercian nun (monk), Megan Macrina Walker, OCSO, from Holland. The Dutch tend to be quite creative theologians and thinkers. Sister Megan argues (and I am greatly simplifying here) that women can be and in fact are monks because as Saint Paul says, there is no male or female in Christ, and because we are all made in the image and likeness of God, the human spirit is not gender-specific or gender-limited, but kindled by a divine spark which has no special affinity for either sex. According to Sister Megan then, a woman can be a monk to the same extent a woman can be baptized.
One of the really great things about monastic life is that we can talk about ideas like these, and share our disagreements and agreements and divergences freely, and at pretty much any time. My monastic life began in a Cistercian monastery, where we did refer to ourselves as “monks.” Monk was our identity and occupation. We were liberated in the sense we could pursue our contemplative lives in silence, which is the language of God, and in a community in which everyone shared the same goal; that is, to seek the face of God wholeheartedly with all our soul and mind and heart.
That’s monastic life in a nutshell, whether it is lived on the northern plains, the northern coast of California, or in waterlogged Holland.
posted by Witness Editor at
8:34 AM
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