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

The world today needs most the witness of people who show how they love one another by upholding one another in their difference, and reveal the enrichment, the variety that springs out of that.

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WHAT DOES AN ARTIST BRING TO COMMUNITY?

Sister Galen:    When you say “impoverished” you are saying the negative of a definite gift that the artist brings. How would that community be impoverished? What is it that an artist brings to a community?

Bro. David:    The first thing that an artist can contribute is that the artist is a real test to the patience and to the love of everybody. There is no one harder to live with than an artist. Therefore an artist is a real gift because he or she raises the sanctity of everyone else in the community. One simply has to face that. It is a difficulty, a stumbling block. But if that is creatively met by the rest of the community, it will become that much richer.

Of course, there is something much more constructive, and again I am speaking mostly about monastic communities because that is my perspective, but in a sense it applies to other religious communities, too. Our great task in monastic communities is to create an environment, in the widest sense that supports and helps in this quest for single-minded awareness of the presence of God. That is not an easy thing. And the artist by vocation — by his or her very special talents — has the ability to create an environment with her art. A poet will always be that person who in many other ways of being and living creates a much stronger, much more clearly crystallized environment. Artists must be the leaders in this. If that element is lacking it would almost be as if you were going about building a house without bricklayers. It is an essential function, namely, the creating of the environment.

Sister Galen:    It is a sadness, but I think that the artist has been thought of as the person on the outside of that task, of the tasks that matter in the religious life, monastic life. Here it depends greatly on what you choose to call the essence of monastic life. You are defining the essence of monastic life to be the single-hearted search for God. But it would change with what you said the essence was. Now if you said that the essence was “community” and this person was not lockstep with the rest of the community, was not physically present, or was not seeming to be a good community member in the way that “community” was defined, then the artist would by definition be on the outside. Then that which she has to give — living for that search, following the rhythms that would take her to God — will be thought of as inconsistent with “community” and the artist will be pushed out one way or another.

TWO MODELS OF COMMUNITY

Bro. David:    That happens frequently. The reason for that is, as I see it, not so much the emphasis on community, but the emphasis on the wrong notion of community — the notion of community that is in a way self-defeating. I think that there are two basic models of community. There’s the one model that says you can be a member if you conform, and there conformity is the premium and the price you have to pay for being a member. There is another community in which the very community is formed in order to support each member in their differences, not in their conformity. That is a very different direction. In my mind nothing is more urgently needed and more in line with the authentic tradition of religious community than this second model of community. Historically, religious communities were most of the time of the first type. But that is not in line with the liberty of the children of God or with true love, which is unconditional love. Abstracting from what are strictly religious aspects, it is not what the world today needs. The world today needs most the witness of communities that uphold people not at the price of giving in and conforming, but a community of people who show how they love one another by upholding one another in their difference, and reveal the enrichment, the variety that springs out of that.

Sister Galen:    It seems as if in going the safer way we may have lost that risk.

Bro. David:    Don Juan in Journey to Ixtlan says, “Your safe ways will be safe as long as everything is quiet, but when the crisis comes you’ll see that your safe ways were not that safe at all.”

Sister Galen:    I think the crisis is now. The crisis is that we are beginning to discover that there is so much to know that is essential to know, not just optional, that we will never be able to learn in our life-times. So if you have “one mind” in a house all you know is that one thing. But if you have all the variety of the way God works in people, and they know many different things, what a richness!

Bro. David:    That is another important argument in favor of religious community — that today in this special time of crisis there are people with one heart, but with so many different minds who feed so much different information into that one heart.

Sister Galen:    That richness is needed so much today because different knowledge can fragment people. But if people within this community have found their center, then they are linked by a very deep bond because that center is the same for all of them, and then they are in touch with God in that deep way. But it is not a way that is so superficial that you have to think the same way. You are free to follow the Spirit. It strikes me that that is the only safe way to follow. Otherwise you are saying we believe in a God, but we ultimately control this. Then how would you be following God?

Bro. David:    That is the crisis for many people today. It is true that there must be something people have in common in order to form a community. And it will probably be a great task to find out what is that necessary minimum that will hold us together as a community. If a group of people come together to create an environment in which no more than the necessary is laid down in the form of rule for the purpose of mutually sustaining and upholding one another in that search for the presence of God and the fulfillment of one’s personal calling, it would seem to be enough, but that minimum would have to be there.

Sister Galen:    It would also depend on how many people you have. If you had a very large group you would have people at so many levels that it might be difficult to arrive at a common perception of what is that essential minimum. How do you keep the balance of risk, which means that every person has something which is a unique perception to say, without getting formless and chaotic?

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