Threshold - Spring 2004

From the Prioress
Mary Collins, OSB


"God is the One Who Gives Us What We Need."

I recently walked through rooms in the Administration Building where the auctioneers are working. For weeks they have been sorting and gathering similar things – electric fans here, statues there. Now there is a room full of beds, another room full of pianos, a room full of chests and desks and tables and chairs, a room of devotional items large and small. My walk around was an occasion for reflecting on what all this says about our lives together. In a Benedictine monastery, stewardship has a distinctive flavor because St. Benedict teaches us to see everything we have in the monastery in relation to God. God is the One who gives us what we need. We are also taught by the Holy Rule and the customs of the house to treat everything reverently, just as we treat the sacred vessels of the altar. The result? Old things that have had lots of use are amazingly unscarred and show evidence they were cared for.

In a monastery, there are no mere things, for whatever we have received was given and held for a good purpose. The good purposes connect us to the people who once used the items: our sisters, our students, our families, our friends and benefactors. We find ourselves wondering at times: will loosening our grasp on some good thing weaken our connection with the people? We believe not, for all our relationships are, at root, grounded in God.

An auction is an ecological venture of sorts. It involves household-to-household recycling on a fairly large scale. With the help of our professional auctioneers, we will exchange possessions we no longer need for cash that will recycle into our current operating and capital improvement funds. Our household, like yours, needs to be rebalanced from time to time.

Most recently, we renovated an under-utilized area of the monastery’s west wing for a new guest quarters, because the number of monastery guests continues to grow steadily. Guests tell us how bright, pleasant, welcoming and yet simple we have made the space. There are finishing touches still needed; one of them is a sign bearing the name Bethany. Why Bethany? St. Benedict tells us to treat all guests as Christ. It was at Bethany that Jesus was frequently a guest of his friends, Mary and Martha. (We had a naming competition in house, and it was amazing how many names drew on that gospel relationship!)

It is not only monastery guests whom Benedict singles out for special care and attention. He also tells us to care for the sick as Christ. Bethany being nearly completed, we are already looking into the reorganization of space in Dooley Center, with perhaps some expansion, and interior refurbishing. There is no doubt that the sick and the elderly thrive in bright, accessible and beautiful but simple surroundings, too. Dooley Center is a solid thirty-three years old, and we have lots of experience about what matters for the well-being of the resident sisters. Once again, we have some rebalancing to do.

So consider the wonderful rebalancing that is already underway this spring at the Mount. A chest of drawers we no longer need will find its way into someone’s house. A devotional object will find a new home in church or chapel. A lovely piece of glassware will be identified as a perfect gift. Perhaps a foot treadle sewing machine will find its way back into use! But the chain of reciprocal exchange does not stop when the auction is over, and the goods are gone from the Mount administration building. We will also have opened up large, pleasant spaces to welcome the 400 Atchison Middle School children and their teachers for the next academic year. All the moving and shifting and the advance planning that prepared for the children’s arrival have involved hard work, both spiritual and physical. The beneficiaries are another generation of young people.

Another kind of ecological balancing has also sprung up for residents of Northeast Kansas recently. It involves not simply our household, but the good care of the region itself. We are faced with the prospect of the construction of two additional coal burning energy plants on the Missouri River south of us. The builders propose to generate electricity on the banks of the Missouri River for sale on the East Coast. The plants, when they are built, will have an impact on the river, on the animal and plant life dependent on the river, on the land around, on the air we breathe. We already know that, left unchecked, mercury levels are guaranteed to rise. So the energy entrepreneurs, the local governments and local residents are faced with the challenge of balancing values on a scale much larger than the balancing going on in our monastery. How I wish St. Benedict’s lessons on the care of things and people were part of the process of public policy making. Then we could be more confident that the natural ecology of Northeast Kansas would remain beautiful, useful and welcoming for the next generations.

Mary Collins, OSB

A Postcard of the Mount St. Scholastica campus in 1904