The Artist at the Crux of Community by Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B.

We are makers, “mindful makers,” and within each one of us that realm of the artistic mediates between daily chores and religious aspirations.

Sister Galen: The basic question I would like to ask you is: “Do you feel that the artist is important to the religious life, or does the artist in some way fragment the fabric of religious life?”

Bro. David:    The way I see it is that there is within each one of us, personally, a realm of the artistic, in whatever way this might express itself — poetry or painting or music or in many less conspicuous ways. We are makers, “mindful makers,” and within each one of us that realm of the artistic mediates between daily chores and religious aspirations. So if each one of us, by strengthening and cultivating in the widest sense the artistic realm of our psyche, if we can integrate our lives and prepare ourselves for the mystical, deep religious experience —which is, of course, in the last analysis a total gift — how much more so in a community of people who are dedicated to the mystic life, and to openness towards it.

Sister Galen: The part that is difficult is that in many cases religious communities are also dedicated to certain works which sometimes seem to siphon off so much energy from ever being able to make art, that the people who are dedicated to creating it feel that their center is being crowded out. So they finally leave to go and create art, when it seems religious life would be the very place where art should flourish because it cultivates the center where God lives and art grows.

Bro. David :    It is important to make this distinction. There are monastic religious and there are non-monastic religious. Monastic religious are monks or nuns, people who have no particular work, who do not join this religious community because they want to do this or that work. But they join the monastic community for nothing else but to cultivate mindfulness. In the strict monastic community the prerequisite for being accepted is that you do not have a particular work in mind; neither being a teacher, nor a poet, nor a musician. Many Benedictine communities nowadays are truly Benedictine because they are in the Benedictine tradition.

This is a historic development. But they are religious; they are not monastic. And what is happening today is that they are rediscovering a monastic dimension. I think they deserve to have monastic houses within their communities. Just as other religious are founding houses of prayer, all the more so, Benedictine religious houses should found Benedictine monastic houses within their communities.

THE ARTIST AS BRIDGE

Sister Galen:    Do you think it is possible that the artist might be the bridge back to that concept? Because the artist is cultivating mindfulness of God, out of which flows the making of art. And that’s work. But at the heart of it is the single-hearted mindfulness.

Bro. David:    Exactly. That is a very interesting term which I had not at all anticipated, but that is very true. Historically one of the things that is happening is that within a community that is dedicated to this or that work, there are now some who say, “Yes, but there is something pulling within us in another direction,” and they come together not because they have some preconceived notion about a monastery, but because they want to fulfill their artistic vocation. It happens to be, then, one monastery within that religious tradition. And then others will look at it and say, “I’m not particularly a musician or artist in any sense at all, but that idea appeals to me — that either for a long time or for a short time you can go to a place where you cultivate mindfulness, and where the whole environment promotes and helps you to cultivate your single-minded attention to God and purity of heart. And when I have refreshed myself I will go out and I will be a better teacher for that. I will remain a Benedictine religious with a certain time spent in a monastic environment.” I could see this as a very interesting historic development.

Sister Galen:    What I am very concerned about is the people who do feel this hunger right now — whether it’s for art or just straight-to-the-heart wanting to find God, no matter what work one does. I am concerned that these people somehow feel out of step with the rest of the community. Their hunger is for something different from the doing and making and teaching and work-oriented or product-oriented society that the religious house has begun to be. If we lose them, we lose the people that will begin the new colony or the new community after this form has been dissolved. I see the artists as people who are somehow intuitively conscious of the fact that there are going to be new forms. They are not saying that consciously; they are simply following their hearts, but that’s how God leads them.

Bro. David:    I see that very clearly, and it’s a very sad thing, which we see happening everywhere. You have on the one hand the hermits — whether they’re called to a permanent hermitage, or for just a year or two, or an indefinite period of time in solitude. You see them being edged out of communities where they have a right to belong because they have dedicated twenty-five or thirty years of their lives to this community. I would say the community owes them the opportunity to go out now and have a vacation or sabbatical if it can at all be arranged economically. Or at least let them be full members of the community and not make any fuss about “leave of absence” or “exclaustration” or anything like that. Just say, “Yes, now she has reached a stage in her development where after teaching for twenty-five years she wants to go into solitude. Let her go.”

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