Five leadership secrets of the Trappist monk
In the 07/20/2010 issue of the “Washington Post.”
Over the last thirty years I have had the good fortune to have visited and stayed in various monastic communities in Australia, the USA, the UK, Thailand, Nepal, India and Tibet. My monastic friends have come from such communities as: New Norcia’s Benedictine Monastery in Western Australia, St Benedict’s Monastery at Arcadia near Sydney, The Trappist (Cistercian) communities at Snowmass, Colorado and at Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, Camaldolese hermitages in Arezzo, Italy, at Big Sur, California and at the late Bede Griffiths’ ashram at Shantivanam, near Trichy in South India. I am an honorary member of ancient Dhe-Tsang Buddhist monastery in the remote Gyalrong Region of Eastern Tibet, and have completed a month-long meditation retreat at Kopan Buddhist monastery in the mountains around Kathmandu, Nepal. As a young man I sat in vipassana meditation at Suan Mokkh Forest Monastery at Surat Thani in Thailand, and at Bodhinyana Forest Monastery in the hills around Perth. I often have stayed with the yogi-monks at the Divine Life ashram in Rishikesh on the River Ganges. During the years I gave lectures on the Western Contemplative tradition in Dharamsala, in the Himalayas I was guest of the Tibetan communities at the Nechung and Namgyal Monasteries, and at Geden Choeling Nunnery.
I have learned a number of lessons from the monks and nuns who live this way – according to the Rules as set by their various founders. Though living a far less ‘active’ life than me, I can say that the values and practices that inspire, underpin and motivate their lives have informed much of what I do and how I do it – and above all how I imagine the type of leadership I offer – to myself and others. Stephen Martin, who wrote the following article in the Washington Post, succinctly enumerates and describes five ‘secrets’ that point to their success as members of communities that have thrived, somewhere in the world, continuously for many centuries.
Stephen Martin, who explores leadership as a speechwriter and as a business columnist for the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, has written for America, Commonweal and U.S. News & World Report.
Trappist monks live apart from the world. But their rich and ancient traditions also offer vital lessons on leadership for those of us living in it. The Roman Catholic order, founded in Citeaux, France, has practiced prayer nonstop for nearly a thousand years. Responsible for supporting themselves, they have been entrepreneurs for just as long.
As times and market conditions have changed, Trappists have kept up by reinventing their businesses continually. Since the founding of Mepkin Abbey near Charleston, S.C., in 1949, for example, the monks there have sold cinnamon buns, ventured into logging, run a large egg farm and, most recently, started selling native plants. How have Trappists thrived through the centuries? Here are five of their secrets:
1.Get (really) disciplined. As in waking up at 3 a.m. every day for the rest of your life. That’s when Trappists rise for Vigils, their first community prayer of the day. They will gather for worship five more times before turning in at 8 p.m. In between, they work, study and pray some more. Their schedule almost never varies. Their meals rarely change. They talk as little as possible. Everything about their lives is ordered toward their mission of praising God.
On the surface, this routine seems like a soul-killing exercise in boredom. But tremendous focus paves their path to salvation. “The monk has a feel for the stark and the spare,” writes Michael Downey in his book, Trappist. “Fasting, abstinence, and keeping vigil are disciplines embraced so as to stay alert, awake for the coming of God.”
2.Throw away the key . At Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Va., where I recently made a weekend retreat, the doors to the guest rooms lock only from the inside. When you go out, there’s no way to secure your laptop or Blackberry or car keys. It’s a rather discomfiting reminder of what makes the Trappist world go round: trust, in God and your brothers. Spiritual growth doesn’t happen when we’re holding back or playing defense. It takes openness.
“Anytime you get put together with 15 or 20 people you don’t know, you’ll find things about them that are objectionable, and they’ll find them about you,” said Daniel DeVoe, the guest master at Holy Cross Abbey who is seriously thinking of becoming a Trappist himself. The trick is learning to appreciate the strengths of others, to give them the benefit of the doubt, to acknowledge your own shortcomings and work to fix them. It’s all about building trust, the ancient glue that, against all odds, holds together monastic organizations to this day.
3.Know your customer. During a retreat several years ago at Mepkin Abbey, I found myself alone in the gift shop with Brother Stephen, an elderly, startlingly fit, lifelong monk. He rang up a few items, swiped my credit card and asked how I was doing. I asked customers the same thing all the time when I clerked at a grocery store in high school. Unlike me, however, he actually cared about the answer.
I confessed, frankly, to being tired with a busy job, grad school, a young son and another child on the way. There wasn’t a lot of time for prayer, which was what I probably needed most. He nodded and remarked that perhaps helping raise my family was a form of prayer in itself. We talked for another 10 minutes. More insights, tailored just for me, followed — and I shouldn’t have been surprised.
As Michael Downey explains, the work of monks “is not to be understood primarily as a product for consumers in a marketplace. …The fruits of the monk’s labor are sold as a means of livelihood, but they are sold to persons, real people with deep needs, not bottom-line consumers.”
4.Shut up. A monk’s life is a study in humility. It’s about setting aside personal plans and ambitions for the good of the community, saying goodbye to worldly pleasures and doing highly repetitive work with few tangible rewards. It’s a daily exercise in probing your flaws and coming to terms with your own insignificance. This adds up to a perpetual assault on pride, and it starts with quieting down and listening to what your brothers have to say.
“We’re all so impressed by what we know,” said DeVoe, the Holy Cross guest master. But rather than overestimating our own abilities, he said, real knowledge comes from paying attention to those around us. Monks have a longstanding tradition of turning to spiritual directors for guidance in the contemplative life. The feedback they get gives them a better sense of their strengths and weaknesses and serves as a spark for change. “You learn things about yourself that you wouldn’t know otherwise,” DeVoe said.
5.Live in the margins. In his book Leaders Make the Future, futurist Bob Johansen notes that “true innovations are likely to come from the margins that are stretched, rather than from the mainstream.”
Trappists make their home in the margins. They labor in obscurity, their chosen path makes little sense to most people, and they’re criticized, sometimes even by fellow Christians, for closeting themselves away when they could be out in the world helping people with urgent problems. They have Web sites and use e-mail judiciously, but they take care not to swamp themselves with information and distraction. They remain, in other words, as counter-cultural as ever, and therein is their strength.
Over the centuries, as Downey writes, monasteries around the world (and not just Trappist ones) have served as “renowned centers of peace and refuge, the focal points of culture and education.” That’s surely because they have stood beside the mainstream and observed it carefully but never immersed themselves in it. Their perspective is always a bit out of step with the times and refreshingly original as a result.
“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men,” Thomas Merton, America’s most renowned Trappist monk, wrote in his landmark autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain.
More than 60 years since its publication, and centuries since their founding, Trappists still go their own way, focused and unhurried, free of the need for the world’s approval. By training, they’re too modest to say their experience with leadership can teach us anything, but we’d be wise to learn all we can from them anyway.
If you wish to have more information about Meath Conlan’s spiritual tours to India and beyond, please view my TOURS page here, or email Meath at: meath@diversejourneys.com
Deir Mar Mousa: A positive voice in a desert of anguish
From the New York Times: Modern-Day Pilgrims Find Interfaith Bond in Ancient Syrian Monastery by Robert F. Worth
DEIR MAR MOUSA, Syria — As darkness falls over the vast Syrian desert and the first winter stars emerge, a trail of modern-day pilgrims is slowly climbing the stone steps of this remote cliff-top monastery.
They are a motley crew of religious seekers and backpackers from a dozen countries, some hoping for divine wisdom, others merely curious. But all are hoping to meet the Rev. Paolo Dall’Oglio, the burly and dedicated Jesuit priest who has made this ancient sanctuary a center of Christian-Muslim dialogue.
“Some say this church looks like a mosque,” said Father Dall’Oglio, as his guests warmed their frost-stiffened hands over a wood-burning stove. “We are very proud of that.”
Father Paolo, as he is known here, presides over a group of 10 monks, nuns, and volunteers who welcome guests year-round and struggle to build harmony around a religious fault line that has only grown more volatile since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His passion for interfaith dialogue — he recently published a memoir titled “Believing in Jesus, Loving Islam” — has helped draw ever-larger flocks of visitors up the mountain to sleep in the monastery’s stone huts and take part in its multilingual prayer services.
Father Dall’Oglio, 55, is a big, ebullient Italian who seems constantly in motion. He is almost single-handedly responsible for restoring the monastery of Deir Mar Mousa, which is set in a craggy hillside 50 miles from Damascus, the Syrian capital.
When he first came here in 1982, he found only an abandoned Byzantine ruin, with faded 11th-century frescoes open to the wind and the rain. He spent 10 days praying and meditating here, he recalled, and conceived the idea of building a new house of worship that would help to address the region’s religious conflicts with an emphasis on manual labor and common spirituality.
“At the time, the Lebanese war was on, the Israeli-Palestinian problem was getting worse, the Islamic movement was growing,” he said.
Father Dall’Oglio set to work at once, and has lived here full time since 1991. Today, the frescoes and church have been painstakingly restored. Stone guest houses blend seamlessly into the hillside, along with offices, a library, and a broad esplanade where guests gather and eat. Recently another monastery was refurbished 30 miles away, along with some ancient caves where hermits once took shelter. The monastery draws thousands of visitors a year, many of them Muslims, who often come during religious holidays to pray. Father Dall’Oglio also works with local Muslim leaders on educational and environmental projects, and convenes conferences on theology.
In a sense, Deir Mar Mousa is one of the last outposts of a shrinking faith. When monks built the original monastery in the sixth century A.D., this was the geographic center of Christianity. Today, Christians are a minority, and many feel increasingly beleaguered, with the rise of militant Islam and the violent persecution of Iraqi Christians.
But Deir Mar Mousa’s rituals emphasize mutual understanding rather than Christian preservation.
“We try to be a positive voice in this collective scream of anguish,” said Father Dall’Oglio.
That voice can be heard in Deir Mar Mousa’s prayer rituals. On a recent winter evening, candles provided the only light in the chapel — a cavelike structure whose walls bear inscriptions in Arabic, Greek and Syriac, an ancient Aramaic language that is still used in the liturgy of Syrian Christianity. Two dozen visitors sat meditating for an hour in silence, a standard feature of the prayer ritual. A fresco showing the Last Supper glimmered on the wall opposite the altar.
Then Father Dall’Oglio entered and donned his robes. Gazing out cheerfully at the visitors, he explained the Syriac liturgy, like a college professor giving a familiar lecture. He recited prayers in Syriac and Arabic. Later, he cheerfully asked visitors to contribute their own prayers and thoughts, shifting easily from fluent Arabic to English to several European languages.
Afterward, the visitors slowly trailed out the church’s tiny door, and filed into a makeshift tent where supper was served: a hot lentil stew, with bread and olives spread out on the floor of a makeshift tent. Meals at Deir Mar Mousa are a cooperative affair, with guests helping prepare the food and wash the dishes. Accommodation is free, but visitors are expected to bring food or make contributions.
“As you see, our dinners go back to the Eucharistic tradition of the Lord,” Father Dall’Oglio said.
Part of Deir Mar Mousa’s tradition, Father Dall’Oglio added, includes manual labor as a spiritual exercise. Guests cook and clean, and help collect trash from surrounding hillsides.
As dinner ended, visitors huddled around a wood-burning stove, drinking tea and discussing theology. They were a remarkably diverse group: Indians, Japanese, Palestinians, various Europeans. As always, they plied Father Dall’Oglio with questions.
“If you hold one belief about God, and I hold another, aren’t we bound to come into conflict?” said one earnest-looking American.
Father Dall’Oglio weighed the question, rubbing his thin beard and looking a little tired after a long day. “I don’t claim to know the absolute,” he said. “I consider it a road, a path, that we are on together.”
Notes for travellers to Deir Mar Mousa:
The ancient Syrian monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian (Deir Mar Musa el-Habashi), also called Abba Moses The Robber (he died in 375 AD), overlooks a harsh valley in the mountains east of the small town of Nebek, 80 km north of Damascus, and about 1320 metres above sea level. A monastery on the top of a mountain in the middle of the desert. Ten christian monks and two nuns stay here. All visitors are welcome – please click on the link below for more specific directions and instructions. Interfaith dialogue is important here. The new foundation of the monastic community started in 1991. On a social level, the community of Deir Mar Musa works to develop services which facilitate inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue and harmony.
http://www.deirmarmusa.org/page/howtovisiteng.HTM
Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi
P.O. Box 178
Nebek — Syrian Arab Republic
Tel. (00963) 011 7280137
Fax. (00963) 011 7230335
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Saint Basil The Great’s Description of the Ideal Place for a Monastic Hermitage
Monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, France
Basil (330 – 379 AD), Bishop of Caesarea in Asia Minor, gladly withdrew into the wilderness. But before he went, he wrote to Gregory Nazianzen to try to persuade him to join him. His idyllic description of the place he had settled on says much of his character and his sensitivity to places. This was not just any beautiful spot, after all, but one closely connected with his family.
Basil’s Letter 14. To his Friend, Gregory of Nazianzen.
Basil: Gregory wrote that he had been meaning to visit me for a long time, and he added that you also wished to come. But I have been disappointed so often that I find this hard to believe. I think it would be silly for me to wait here counting on your coming. In any case, I have to go. … I went to the Pontus to look for a place to live, and there, finally, God showed me a spot. …
Picture a high mountain. It is heavily wooded and on the northern side has many cold, clear streams. At the base of this mountain is a sloping meadow, made green by the water from above. Around the meadow trees of every kind and colour form a natural forest, almost a wall encircling it. Homer admired the beauty of Calypso’s island more than any other; but beside this spot that is nothing at all. As a matter of fact, it is practically an island for it is defended in all directions. There are deep ravines cutting it off on two sides and the river, on a third, drops from the overhanging cliff to provide a completely impassable barrier. With the mountain itself on the fourth side … the approaches … are walled off. There is only one way to get there, and that I control.
Beside my house there is a sort of narrow neck of land with a high ridge at the end of it. Below it the meadow lies before one’s eyes. And from there you can see the river. … Flowing faster than any other I have ever seen, the river suddenly plunges over the edge of the rock, then rushes around in a deep pool. Not only is it a beautiful sight, as all who see it agree, but innumerable fish also breed there and provide in plenty for the needs of all who live in the area.
I need not mention the delightful odours of the land or the breeze on the river. As for the flowers or the songbirds – and there are plenty of both – let someone else speak of them. I have other things on my mind. I can say nothing greater about this spot than that, besides producing because of its remarkable location all sorts of fruits, it also provides what is to me the most delicious fruit of all: solitude. …
So now you can see what an idiot I was even to think of exchanging this place for Tiberina, the mud hole of the world. You will pardon me if I hurry to get there.
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If you or your friends would like to receive my periodical newsletter, which contains articles of human interest and spirituality, as well as information about forthcoming seminars and retreats, and journeys to India, Nepal, and Bali then please kindly send word to me: meath@diversejourneys.com