God calls the same

But now we listen differently.

I never have an answer when I’m asked about my “call” to monastic life. Though I’ve heard many in religious life describe their “call” in detail, I never got a “call.”

What is “a call” in this sense, and might there also be a “call” to participate in bringing to consciousness the emerging idea of a Fifth Kind of Monk?

My context is twofold: First, my own monastic life as a cenobitic monk, and secondly, the work of psychologist and philosopher William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902.

A brief conversation with a sophomore at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, jump started my thinking. As we walked, I asked him about his field of study—finance, he told me. Practical and popular—forty two percent of majors at St. John’s in 2024 were in a business-related field according to their website. Curious, he then asked me about my writing residency at the Collegeville Institute, and I told him about the Fifth Kind of Monk. He volunteered that he had considered the possibility of becoming a monk—the university shares the campus with St. John’s Abbey of Benedictine monks—but it really wasn’t the life he wanted. I confided to him that I’m a monastic, and that the life does have its pros and cons—which drew a smile.

Something in this young man’s consciousness had moved him to consider becoming a monk and I began to wonder about what it was. Where did the idea arise in him, and why would he entertain it, even if only remotely?

I doubt that God communicates differently now than in previous generations, however one thinks of God. Rather, I think it is we who have changed. Which is why we need more kinds of monks: the “call” still comes as it did for this young man, but he saw only one way to be a monk and that way did not fit for him today.

William James explains that our brains hold some information at the forefront in daily consciousness, the things we are currently engaged in or processing. There is much more held in the recesses of the brain (unconscious) that surfaces only when called or triggered. He calls the conscious thinking “centres of personal energy” and notes that they shift as our attention shifts and light up “new crises of emotion” with “…the phenomena as partly due to explicitly conscious processes of thought and will, but as due largely also to the subconscious incubation and maturing of motives deposited by the experiences of life. When ripe, the results hatch out or burst into flower.”

And there I found a simplistic understanding of traditional interpretations of where the “call” arises and maybe why fewer young people feel this “call” to religious life today. The “experiences of life” of the eighteen-year-olds who entered monasteries in 1960 were vastly different than the “experiences of life” of young people today. Therefore the “subconscious incubation and maturing of motives” that would eventually “burst into flower” in a sense of call in 1960 are quite different—or even non-existent—today. The young man with whom I spoke felt a spiritual yearning, but without the external wrapping of life experiences to bring it to inner fruition as a full-fledged “call” to be a cenobitic monk, it eventually left him.

Those wrappings that enveloped the young women and men of the 1950s and early 1960s who entered religious life will not be returning. Laity were at the bottom of the ladder of holiness with religious women a bit above and clergy and bishops at the top. Scripture, ritual, and spiritual authority were solidly the realm of the Church hierarchy (if you’re Catholic). Choices for women were limited, and the general expectation was that they would settle down as faithful and obedient wives and mothers. Catholic young women could also enter a convent or monastery—the latter being the “higher” vocation. Today different realities are incubating and maturing our thinking and therefore different results and choices are prevalent where once religious vocations lived.

Could there be another way to nurture that pull toward the spiritual, toward a tradition grounded in gospel wisdom, toward values that are often sorely lacking in our greedy and power-hungry world?

I entertained the possibility that if this young man’s spiritual inclination were to experience a monk option that was not the all or nothing variety of the vowed cenobitic community, he might nurture it rather than dismiss it as impractical. Would he let it shape him for his future in finance and guide his living through all the times and places of his life? Would he find support in others who shared his “call” in networked as well as in person communities? If we saw the world as the primary monastery in our movement toward wholeness, and the Fifth Kind of Monk as a monk in that world, then wherever the Fifth Kind of Monk is, the wisdom of our tradition could be the catalyst for more compassionate decisions and actions in our places of life and work. How do we make such a call possible for any spiritual seeker in a world where the institutions of the church (and the churches themselves) do not carry the same moral weight or overall importance in the life of society as they once did?

Maybe we are called to broaden our experience of call itself to new kinds of calls that have the potential to be life-changing, sacramental, connected to life’s deeper meaning. If so, may we be open to new ways of both hearing and responding to the call of God/Universe to wholeness.

Think about the calls in your life. Then talk them over with close friends. Which ones did you nurture? Or ignore? Any you need to listen to right now?

Photos:
ID 266813758 | Answering Rotary Phone © Pippocarlot7 | Dreamstime.com
Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash