Not One Stone Left Upon Another

I have often pondered Jesus' lament over Jerusalem about there not being one stone left upon another (Luke 19: 44). This was the gospel passage read at today's Eucharist. It struck me more today, since we learned very recently that our former monastery in St. Louis, Missouri, which was sold to the Archdiocese in 2001, is to be sold and razed--or razed, and the property sold. I'm unclear which. But I'm very clear about my thoughts and reflections on this news and today's Gospel.

The monastery in St. Louis was one of my favorites. It had a courtyard enclosed on all four sides by the monastery and chapel. This was where I received my formation as a novice and where I made my first monastic profession. It is the place where we worked, prayed, played, laughed, loved and cried. It is the place where sisters lived and died. The chapel was a large rectangle with grey marble walls and a very high vaulted roof. It looked for all the world like a gymnasium. It had two sets of red-orange padded double doors which opened into the monastic hallways--doors which looked like they belonged more in a Chinese restaurant than in a house of worship. The clerestory windows on either side of the chapel did not match--a result of one side's having been blown out by tornadic winds and replaced with various colored panes. The walls and ceiling were singed with soot from votive candles, the odor of burned wick and wax ever in the air. Sisters either loved or hated the chapel, yet I found it beautiful in its stark simplicity, despite it's aesthetic flaws.

Six months after my first profession, as a junior sister, I was transferred to our monastery in Tucson, Arizona. For many weeks afterward, I dreamed vividly of the monastery and its grounds. Even in my waking moments, the monastery I had left was more real to me than the one I found myself residing in. It held for me a power I had never experienced, before or since. After five years in Tucson, I transferred back to the St. Louis monastery in 1999. Two years later, I transferred to our monastery in Clyde, Missouri. Unlike some of our sisters, I never went back to our former monastery after it was purchased by the Archdiocese. I never desired to. I didn't want to see what the Archdiocese had done to it. I wanted to remember it as it was, when it was ours, when it was filled with the life, love, laughter, tears, and prayer of my sisters.

I am not sad at its loss, our loss. I know this is the way of things. Nothing here is lasting. Nothing here is permanent. We are not meant to pitch our tent and remain on this or any other holy mountain. The Buddhists are right. Impermanence is the very nature of existence--and it is this very impermanence that gives life its glory. Yes, there will not be one stone left upon another. But the memories can never be dismantled. The life, love, prayer, joy, laughter, and tears can never be taken away. Even the place of my first monastic profession can never be taken away, for I have learned the true place of my first monastic profession was not in the midst of a building, but in the midst of a living community, built not by hands nor of stone.

We may lament and wonder what is happening in our times. Why so many closings of  monasteries, convents, churches, and schools? So few vocations? We see the signs of the times, but do not understand. Yet, I believe the Spirit is at work even in this deconstruction. This dismantling may be the very work of the Spirit. The old must go, to make way for the new. And the new is probably not what any of us think. Not the old brought back some how as new, but something truly new: Behold, I am about to create something new. Do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:19)