That One Time I Went to a Monastery Instead of Home for Christmas
Calling all spiritual misfits
Welcome to Recasting Religious Trauma! Today’s post is more of a story — a little peek into my quirky psyche, I suppose. This little newsletter space is a place for spiritual misfits and wanderers, the doubters and questioners, and the ones who don’t feel the need to abide by the status quo. Know someone else like that? Forward this email to them and get them to subscribe to join this community!
It’s totally a normal thing to skip your family Christmas gatherings and go to a monastery on a silent retreat instead. While in your 20s. Right?? Ok, maybe the distinct lack of other young people there was a clue that was not super normal. But there are times when your family dynamics and your disappearing faith collide, and spending Christmas with just you and your silent thoughts sounds like the best arrangement.
“Normal” and “acting my age” aren’t things I do particularly well. I’ve frequently found myself in the company of people anywhere from several years to half a century older than me. My hobbies and interests didn’t align with what a 20-something was “supposed” to be interested in. I often felt like I didn’t belong: not with people my age because I usually couldn’t figure out those dynamics or didn’t want the superficial connections. And not with people way older than me, because of so much generational difference. So, I learned to appreciate my own company and be grateful for the human connections that felt real, when I found them.
Now that I am married and have two small children, it’s become harder to pursue the quirky interests that feel like they make me, me. Perhaps this is why I regularly feel I am living a life that is not mine; that I am merely pretending at this life I find myself in. I wonder when the two sides will fall in on each other and I will fully be in this one life that I have.
Christmas felt fraught growing up. It’s taken a while to shake off these feelings as an adult with my own kids now. There was the ever-present tension around which parent’s house we would be at and for how long. The inevitable letdown about gifts from a parent who was more interested in reinforcing evangelical indoctrination than in what we might like. And the stress of Christmas Eve services at a church where everyone put on their fancy clothes and the gospel message was preached with warnings about hell (to try and get those Easter-and-Christmas Christians to get serious, I suppose).
So this particular year, I did my visit home during Thanksgiving. But for Christmas, I decided instead of flying 3 hours home to feel conflicted, stressed, and guilt-ridden, I would drive 3 hours to the Abbey of Gethsemani -- of Thomas Merton lore -- and sit with my inner conflicts, stress, and guilt by myself.
Just prior to leaving on this retreat, I had realized I was falling in love with my seminary friend and decided to let him know. My retreat was therefore also spent in a constantly distracted state wondering if he would requite my love or not. Evangelicalism had drilled into me that romantic relationships were a distraction from God, so this was a rather dramatic rendition of that old theme during my spiritual retreat. Whoops. (Spoiler alert: we’re now married.)
I’d been to Gethsemani numerous times before and in many ways, coming here felt safe and homey. Gethsemani is a Catholic monastery, and at times in its history has vacillated somewhat from more exclusionary to more inclusionary Catholic. Retreatants are encouraged to fully participate in the spiritual life of the monks’ seven daily prayer services, but no one is keeping track of attendance or making you do anything. In this way, it’s great for people in spiritual limbo, who want solitude and peace while being in the company of other spiritually inclined people.
The first service starts at 3:15am. No, that’s not a typo. One of my favorite routines was to peel myself out of bed at 3:05am and stumble down the hall for the first prayer service of the day, Vigils. As long as the psalms of the day weren’t too long, I found the monks’ lyrical chanting soothing. Then I would grab a blanket and empty thermos from my bedroom, fill the thermos with hot coffee, and go outside to the walled garden to find a place to sit and look at the sky.
Honestly, the prayer service was merely a reason to get out of bed. I found far more spiritual fulfillment sitting outside, wrapped in a blanket and either meditating or laying on my back on the cold sidewalk. Searching the Kentucky sky for constellations, searching for meaning, searching for God, searching for myself.
By this point in my life, I chafed at any spiritual leader trying to tell me what to do. Or perhaps I’d always been a bit this way, which is why I started questioning the theology I’d been spoon—errr, force-fed as soon as I escaped the home of my faith of origin. I didn’t want a pastor telling me what to believe (so I found a lovely Quaker meeting to be part of). I didn’t want professors telling me either (luckily, I found a lot of room and intellectual freedom to pursue paths that felt most meaningful to me at seminary). And I sure didn’t need some random abbot at Gethsemani telling me what my beliefs should be.
But as I mentioned, I’d brought my conflicts, stress, and guilt with me on the retreat. Much as I didn’t want people telling me what to do or think, I carried a lot of guilt that I was supposed to be doing particular things on the retreat. I “should” spend time meditating, journaling, and reading. I “should” show up for the prayer services. I “should” stop freaking running away from myself, and by extension, connection with God.
A passage I wrote on my retreat might sum it up best (December, 2015):
I have noticed when I do the things I think I “should” do but do not really want to do, I feel stifled; I want to climb out of my skin.
I sit, squirmy, through Christmas Eve mass, having forgotten everyone else here is Catholic and these things mean more to them than to me. I count down to when they will go forward for the Eucharist and I sneak out the back to have a snack, go outside in my blanket, and look at the moon. Finally. When will I learn to listen to myself and stop obeying all the things that I think “should” be done and rather listen to the One deep inside me who knows what I need? When will I stop allowing guilt to run my life?
I already am on this path.
I go on a Christmas hike instead of a church service, and it is the best Christmas morning I could give myself.I finally sat down and meditated today. I did not fall asleep once. I sat with the sense of Self inside me that I’m trying to learn to listen to. Maybe it was because I was actually alert. Maybe because I had read enough Thomas Merton to get in the contemplative mood. Maybe because I ran out of running away.
In this season, whether it is fraught, joyful, lonely, loved, or a mixture of all the things, I wish you the best Christmas season available to you. Tender love to you all.
Have you ever been unconventional in your holiday celebration? If there were no “rules” about what you were “supposed” to do, how do you imagine yourself celebrating and/or relaxing this season? Have you struggled with knowing how to make connection to the Divine or yourself in the midst of a faith transition? Hope to chat about all the things in the comments.
Thank you so much, Christine! I'm glad to be in the company of you and other "spiritual misfits". My marriage to a paramedic who often had to work on Christmas, freed me from rigid adherence to holidays on a calendar (although it was cool that he did his first baby delivery on Christmas). However, I've alwasy been a spiritual misfit, but kept trying to force myself into the constraints of the faith I grew up in until... Everything changed when my husband died 29 years ago, right before Christmas, when his life was too painful to continue. My whole view of life and death changed, as the veil between this world and the next was so amazingly thin and I experienced somewhat frequent contacts from my late husband for several years. Christmas and other holidays were excruciatingly painful for a number of years after my husband's passing. Since then, I've come to cherish the love in my life in new ways and to appreciate Christmas and other holy days for the love embodied in them, whether it's a "holiday" or a holy day sitting with my Dad when in a hospital, or playing cards with my grandkids, or laughing at my boyfriend's ridiculous jokes, or being alone during which I often experience the love of God and a cloud of witnesses. May all who read this find blessings in this season and in 2023.
So nice to journey with you too, Christine, and to enjoy your writing with which I resonate so completely.