CONVERSION TRAIL

This post is the text of a sermon I gave to the students of Saint Benedict's Prep on Ash Wednesday. You should know that well over half of the students had hiked on the Appalachian trail in Sussex County.

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I wonder if you heard the opening words of our first reading from the prophet Joel: “Return to me with all your heart.” That’s a pretty good summary of what this Ash Wednesday service is about. We sometimes use the expression “Be converted back to the Lord.” The word conversion is from the Latin word that means to turn around.

I’d like to tell you a personal story about conversion. It started one afternoon when I was hiking by myself in Stokes State Forest along the dirt road that runs along the bottom of the high mountain ridge that many of you are familiar with because along its crest the AT runs north and south.

I came to the trail that branches off to the left and it led me straight up the side of the mountain. When I finally got to the top I found those familiar white blazes that mark the Appalachian Trail. I planned to follow them back to Culver’s Gap, where I had left my car.

But first I sat down in a little clearing to rest, eat my lunch and read my paperback book. Well, after a while I dozed off. When I woke up, still a little sleepy, I shouldered my knapsack and began following those familiar blazes along the AT.

But before long, things started to get strange. The lake that I expected to see on my left wasn’t there, but there was one on my right instead. I ignored the mysterious surprise and kept on hiking. A little later the valley that should have been on my right appeared on my left. But again I just kept hiking on anyway, knowing that soon I'd be starting the long trek up what we Gray Bees call Jason’s Mountain.  I walked and I walked, and still no mountain. After a while I began feeling uneasy. Something wasn’t right.

Just then, a group of Boy Scouts came hiking toward me with their scout leader. Since they were hiking toward me I asked the leader, “You guys must be coming from Culver’s Gap, right?”

With a puzzled expression he answered, “No, that’s where we’re heading.” 

When the man read the horrified expression on my face he and I both realized at the same time what had happened: I had been walking in the wrong direction the whole time! He asked me, very kindly and matter of factly, “Did you get turned around?” 

Of course that was exactly what had happened. I had still been half asleep when I

stepped onto the trail after lunch, and it was an overcast day, so I couldn’t use the sun to tell which direction I was heading. So I had started out following the blazes, but I was going in the wrong direction. And so for the past hour I had been walking south, away from Culver’s Gap! 

The Scout leader was very kind. Instead of making me feel like an idiot, he nodded knowingly and admitted that that had happened to him once or twice. So I thanked him, and turned around to start retracing my steps, this time in the right direction. 

That’s a story of my conversion. I had to turn around and begin walking in the right direction.  

All of us are on the same journey to the Kingdom of God’s Love. When we’re traveling in the right direction there’s something that feels right: when we’re being kind or generous, or honest or humble or helpful. The landscape looks right -- like it does to a hiker who knows that lake he sees on his left is exactly where it’s supposed to be. 

But unfortunately we sometimes get turned around on our journey to the Kingdom and start doing sch things as putting our individual wants ahead of what the community needs, or being unkind or judging others unfairly. 

Luckily for us, the Lord in his mercy sends us help to let us recognize we’re heading the wrong way. Like that group of scouts who just happened to be coming down the trail toward me. Maybe it’s a few words from a friend, or a line in a song, or a verse of scripture. 

The season of Lent and our Ash Wednesday celebration this afternoon are opportunities for the Lord to ask us, “Hey, did you get turned around?” and for us to answer, “Maybe I need to do an about face and head in the opposite direction!”

So, the ashes you will wear on our forehead today will tell people “I know that I’ve gotten turned around at times, and haven’t lived up to what God had in mind when he created me. But now I’m back heading in the right direction.”

Today we get together and celebrate as a community: because we need God and we need others, fellow sinners, to help us to turn around and convert, to help us to keep heading in the right direction toward the God of love. Remember that Jesus is always walking with us on our journey.  He stays with us and forgives us no matter how many times we start to get turned around. 

Let us ask the Lord to bless us and help us to walk these 40 days of Lent with Jesus as his faithful followers. Wearing ashes as a sign that we’re committed to keep walking the right direction.

ARMCHAIR PILGRIMS

Lent 2024 begins on February 14, This post is meant to serve as a cordial invitation to join a group of us ¨armchair pilgrims" who each Lent read the assigned chapter of my book "Pilgrim Road" each day. The book is a series of reflections, one for each day of Lent, each set in a different locale in Europe or South America, that offer thoughts appropriate to the Lenten Journey. 

The metaphor of life as a journey seems to be part of most cultures, even very ancient ones. The Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures refer to important journeys that change peoples' lives. So, the framework of a forty-day journey to Easter appeals naturally to many religious people. The stories in "Pilgrim Road" are accounts of my experiences during a sabbatical year when I traveled as a solo pilgrim through Europe and South America. But This book held a big surprise for me.

After "Pilgrim Road" was published, it began to morph into something I hadn't intended when I wrote it:

it has become a literary vehicle that creates a bond among its readers, uniting them into a pilgrimage group, like those in the Middle Ages that made perilous journeys to Compostela, Jerusalem and other pilgrimage sites. There are evidently a lot of people who, like me, get the book off the shelf every Ash Wednesday and journey with it to Easter Sunday. 

So when someone tells me "I'm reading your book each day," I always tell the person "You have a lot of company! 

You're part of a big pilgrimage group that's been growing over the years. Welcome!" There's something about being part of a group of like-minded souls, especially if they are from all over the place. In a pilgrimage group, people would help one another along the road in lots of different ways, but I imagine that one of the most important ways must have been by simply encouraging one another by their presence.

In the last few years, I've heard about book study groups and even simply friends who get together regularly to discuss what they've been getting from "journeying" with the book. Those who can share their experiences with others certainly have the advantage over the rest of us who are reading it alone, with nobody to talk with about what we're reading. The difficulty of our particular pilgrim company is, obviously, that most of us never see one another, we don't even know who else may be on the road with us, or how many we are. But I draw encouragement every day from the thought that there are all these people that I know, as well as many, many more who I'll never meet, who are traveling with me and praying for me as I do for them.

I should say that I consider this book a gift from the Lord for which I can take only a tiny bit of credit. Each time I read a chapter I find something new in it, and I thank God for using me to put it into print.

I'm curious to know how many of the readers of this blog are part of the pilgrim company. If you're reading "Pilgrim Road" would you mind encouraging the rest of us by simply leaving a quick comment (and maybe where you are from) in the "Comments" box. (I won't put you on a mailing list or sell your email address, pilgrim's promise). I just think it could be interesting and fun for us. Nothing wrong with having a little fun during Lent, right?

THE SEASON OF NEWNESS

 

Our Judeo-Christian God is a God who acts in history. This is in fact how the Jews knew God: from his actions in their history on their behalf. Now, on the Second Sunday of Advent,we hear the message that the God of history is on the move again, acting to deliver his people. John the Baptist appears, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (Mt 3:1)

In other words, God is doing something new! Not only that, but we need to respond to this initiative by "repenting," by changing our lives. The verb "is at hand" is pretty much equivalent to "is present now." It has a sense of urgency about it.

CALL AND RESPONSE

A week ago I gave up  driving after an unnerving incident in which I stepped on the gas instead of the brake. No one was injured, and only my car took the brunt of my mistake. While thanking God that nothing worse had happened, I decided on the spot that at the age of eighty it was time for me to give up driving.

I've been asking myself for some months what the Lord may be expecting of me at this stage of my life. The decision to stop driving has underlined the fact that that the Lord is indeed calling me to something new.  So I opened my bible to the story of the call of Abraham looking fopr some insights:

The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. All the families of the earth will find blessing in you. Abram went as the LORD directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. (Gen. 1-4)

I discovered a footnote to this passage in the NAB: "The syntax of the Hebrew suggests that the blessings promised to Abraham are contingent on his going to Canaan." I read this note as a challenge to me personally at this juncture in my life's journey, namely that if I'm counting on the Lord to be with me and bless me, then I need to respond to his invitation to "go forth from your land ... to a land that I will show you."

The good news is that the Lord commands Abraham not to "come to a new place" but rather to "go to a [lace that I will show you." So, just like Abraham, I can set out without a clear plan and count on the Lord to show me the way I travel.

THE ADVENT CHALLENGE

So, during this holy season the Lord of History is on the move again, breaking in on your life and mine, wanting to do something new with each of us. So, let us be attentive, watching and waiting!

"Go to a land that I will show you."

FIFTY YEARS OF BEGINNINGS

 It's time to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the "re-founding" of our school, St. Benedict's Prep in 1972, after it had bee closed for one school year. As one of the central figures in  the re-opening, I'm being called on to retell the stories of those first days fifty years ago.. 

Each year our Prep Division presents and interdisciplinary project on some particular topic, involving presentations by the Departments of Art, Music, Theater, English, Science, History, and so on, culminating in a single evening of presentations for parents, friends and students. 

The topic chosen for this year is "Fifty Years of New Beginnings," the story of the resurrection of St. Benedict's Prep in 1972 and the ongoing story of what has been happening here in the fifty years since then. That's the background for this blog post.

Yesterday I visited two art classes in which the kids are beginning to look for ideas about "Fifty Years of New Beginnings" to represent in various forms of graphic arts.

I sat on a high stool in front of a room full of young men and retold briefly from my perspective the story of how our school, which had been closed for a year, suddenly stirred back to life. Retelling the story was, of course a moving experience for me in lots of ways. But a thought that kept coming up was this: God kept on supporting us, guiding us and shaping us through suffering into a community of monks that the Lord could use to bring about a miracle.

It was a humbling experience to sit there and rattle off the long series of decisions we had made, many of them leaps of faith into the unknown future, relying on one another and of course on the Lord. Looking back on the experience, I found that the emotions of worry and fear had faded away, leaving only an inspiring feel-good story about death and ongoing restriction. 

Our memory often does us the favor of slowly erasing the really unpleasant and fearful emotions  that accompanied past events. In the case of the closing and re-opening of St. Benedict's Prep, I'm particularly thankful that I can't conjure up the feelings of fear and sometimes even panic that were for me a very real part of the process of reopening our school.

So, here are three lessons I took away from my guest lectures to the students yesterday.

First, without the emotional side, the story is very flat and two-dimensional, so I have to be willing to provide some of that third dimension that brings the stories to life, even if this is at times unpleasant or painful.

Second, I was reminded once again that the Lord has been present to our little community at every step and every crossroads, and continues guiding us along the path we're supposed to take.

Third, I was reminded again how incredibly kind the Lord has been to us monks in letting us be his instruments over these fifty years of building a community of almost 1,000 students, of alumni, parents and generous benefactors. I'm always amused when someone says "You guys have done such a great job with this school, bringing it back from nothing and making it what it is today." I always say to that person, "Look around you at all these buildings, and this community of hundreds of students and this marvelous faculty. Do you really thank that a couple of guys in 1972 could be responsible for accomplishing all this? Clearly not.  This is all God's work; we just had to try to keep out of his way!"

Fifty years with my brothers, trying to keep out of the Lord's way -- Not a bad way to spend my life I suppose.   

 

LIVING ON THE BUS

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SEVENTEEN PASSENGERS

This morning's meditation in Pilgrim Road was based on my experience of riding a bus across Paraguay by myself. The gist of it was that I realized that all of the folks on the bus with me were all, like me, "citizens of heaven" despite being from different countries.

I started to think of our monastic community as being "on the bus" together. The current restrictions on going outside have made me more aware than ever that we seventeen monks of Newark Abbey are very much "in this together." As we try to find workable solutions to questions such as "social distancing" during our common prayers, I'm sure that we're going to get on each other's nerves from time to time. It's an opportunity for us to really live the provisions of Benedict's Holy Rule that call for us to live selflessly, more concerned about our brother monks than about ourselves.

The motto of "Peace" is fairly easy to live out in a community of like-minded brothers when life is running smoothly and according to plan. But the real challenge is to achieve "Peace under pressure," when expectations are dashed or people start getting on ones nerves. Well, we are surely going to feel the pressure over the next weeks.

ALL THE WORLD'S ON THE BUS

One truly unique aspect of this coronavirus pandemic is that it forces everyone on the planet to realize that we are all on the same bus, whether we like it or not. We're getting our noses rubbed in the fact that all of us on the planet share the same human nature, the same fragile hold on existence, the same basic needs and wants. And, borrowing the metaphor from Pilgrim Road, we're all on the same bus, and all heading to the same place -- our heavenly homeland.

This is, I'm sure, a hard saying for, say, a rabid anti-Semite: There will be Jews all over the place in heaven. Or for a rabid racist when he realizes that this bus is a microcosm of heaven: There will be black people in heaven. Depending on the seating  at the banquet, you may wind up sitting near one of them.

The kingdom of God, someone once said, is open to everyone who is willing to sit down with anyone.

HOW TO ACT ON THE BUS

Being crowded together on the coronavirus bus gives us, then, an opportunity to make the Kingdom a reality right now. For example, caring for those around us instead of concentrating on our own wants and our own fears. Offering a simple gesture of kindness such as a quick phone call to someone who lives alone, or offering a smile or a word of encouragement to someone I live with. These acts of love are building the kingdom on earth right now.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Our monastic family is rejoicing today (the Solemnity of St. Benedict) because two of our young members are professing their Solemn Vows at mass this morning. Please pray for Brother Simon Peter Clayton and Brother Asiel Maria Rodriguez, as they publicly declare their solemn commitment to live their lives in this community, under the abbot and following the Rule of St. Benedict according to their vows.

May the Lord send these two young me and all of us the fruits of the Holy Spirit
charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, forbearance, gentleness, faith, modesty, self-control, and chastity as we share this mysterious journey into the unknown.

THE TRAIL AND THE TRIAL

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My post this week is a video that I came across yesterday. This beautiful 14-minute film looks at the spring Backpacking Project that we at St. Benedict's Prep require of all our freshmen. It is packed with lessons for each one of us, and surely will reward you for the time you invest in watching it, which I urge you to do.

Enjoy it, and pray for us and our kids!

Click here to watch the film.

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HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

My Benedictine liturgical upbringing is pushing me to write a post about the beautiful liturgies I’ve celebrated in the last two days; another part of me wants to write about the experience of holding in my arms, on Christmas afternoon, three-week old Alex. But I can’t manage to just ignore the most powerful experience of the week.

Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call asking me to come up to the trauma center at UMDNJ Medical Center just up the hill. It seems that my friend’s mother, a 93-year old whom I’d been with at a wedding reception just two weeks ago, had injured herself so When I got to the rather spacious ER trauma center there were fourteen members of the family already gathered in or near the bay where the woman’s bed was located. (The nurses were bending all sorts of rules for us.) She was being kept alive by a respirator until her sister could arrive, and then, by agreement, the breathing machine would be disconnected.

They’re a very religious family, so it wasn’t surprising that at one point there were three priests there praying with them. We did some scripture readings, a psalm, the litany of the saints, all interspersed with chatting, and with various relatives whispering words of love into the dying woman’s ear. I remarked to my friends that we were “walking her home” as we stood there with her at her bedside.

It was one of those occasions where you know at the time that this is an experience you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

There was lots of crying, but it was like the weeping of Jesus at the tomb of his friend, Lazarus; not like the weeping of “those who have no hope.” Finally the woman’s sister arrived, and joined the husband at the bedside. We chatted, prayed, and spoke to the apparently unconscious woman. After a while we called the wonderful nurse and told her we thought it was time to remove the breathing tube. She said that anyone who was comfortable with the experience was invited to remain, so a few of us did. The privacy curtain was pulled around the bed.

I was not close enough to see exactly what was involved; all I knew was that within about three minutes a young doctor came in and put his stethoscope on her chest, and did a couple of other things, and then turned to the nurse and pronounced the words “six-thirty.” And that was it. Rita had always been in a hurry, in a good sense, and she was true to her personality when, as soon as the machine was disconnected, she was out of there to spend Christmas in heaven.   

Only two days later I had the privilege of celebrating her mass of Christian Burial  in her parish church in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, where she had been a parishioner for 93 years.  

I preached on the gospel passage from Luke 24, the appearance of the risen Christ to the

two apostles who were walking to Emmaus. I reminded everyone that this story was particularly appropriate because it spoke about Jesus walking these two men home. The risen saviour had appeared to these to men and had walked them home -- just as seventeen of us had done for Rita only two days before.

I know this wasn’t a Christmas story, but it’s about a beautiful gift that I received, and that’s close enough, right?

PENTECOST MOMENTS

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The second reading at Vigils this morning was from Karl Rahner, S.J.. Tomorrow is the solemnity of Pentecost,so the readings have been preparing us for the celebration. (When I Googled a sentence from this reading just now, I was directed to my own Pentecost post of two years ago!) I’m going to refer to the same couple of sentences again. Here is the paragraph from Fr. Rahner:

"The Spirit of Pentecost is the Spirit of holy unrest, of eternal discontent, the Spirit that again and again startles us with the cry: “You still have far to go,” the Spirit that makes even the saints dissatisfied with themselves, makes them their own accusers… It is the Spirit that renews the face of the earth, the Spirit of life ever new in new forms , on new roads, in new conveyances, on bold ventures, This is how he is and wills to be the Spirit of the Church."

CAPS AND GOWNS ON THE CORNER

The weather this week was good for walking around downtown. As I took advantage of the

opportunity I kept coming across college graduates from various colleges in caps and gowns surrounded by family and friends. The Prudential Center seems to be a popular venue for college graduation ceremonies, and the campus of Rutgers Newark seemed to be sending a constant stream of capped and gowned young people into the neighborhood. The young grads always seemed excited and proud; some of them relieved, I’m sure, and all of them wondering about the future. As they stared into the camera I could imagine them asking themselves, “Will I find a job? Can I afford graduate school? How am I going to pay back those loans?” This was a “Pentecost moment.”

"The Spirit of Pentecost is the Spirit of holy unrest, of eternal discontent, the Spirit that again and again startles us with the cry: “You still have far to go,” the Spirit that makes even the saints dissatisfied with themselves…."

BACKPACKS AT THE BUS STOP

Less numerous but just as incongruous downtown were the freshmen from St. Benedict’s

Prep who sometimes wore their backpacks as they walked down to Penn Station Newark or waited at the bus stop. They are leaving on Sunday for the 53-mile hike in the mountains of Northwestern New Jersey, and they too are wondering about the future: :Will we run into bears? What if I fall and break my leg? Will I be strong enough to keep up with my hiking team?” Another Pentecost moment.

The Spirit of Pentecost is the Spirit of holy unrest, of eternal discontent, the Spirit that again and again startles us with the cry: “You still have far to go,” the Spirit that makes even the saints dissatisfied with themselves

SPIRIT AT A DEAD END

On Tuesday evening I was hearing confessions at a Penance Service here in the abbey church. I was sitting in a chair in front of the tabernacle with an empty chair facing me. The first penitent was a man in his twenties whom I’d never seen before. “The guy at the desk told me that they were having confession here so I came.” His story of drug addiction and failed rehabs and despair and self-loathing overwhelmed me; I felt totally useless to the poor guy. What could I say to him? I just kept trying to assure him “God loves you right now, just the way you are.” But of course he had a tougher time than most of us do with trying to believe that. After all,how could God love a drug dealer? We prayed together and I gave him absolution and a blessing with the invitation to come to the monastery any time and ask for me. Then he vanished into the darkness of the city streets. This, too, was a Pentecost moment for me. And who knows, maybe it was for that poor fellow as well. 

Let's pray for him using Fr. Rahner’s prayer from the passage I’ve been quoting:

“Come Spirit, Spirit of the Father and the Son…. Come secret jubilation in the tears of the world, come, life victorious in the death of earth. Come, Father of the poor, bulwark of the distressed… Abide with us, Holy Spirit. And change us. Come, Spirit of God.”  

The feast of Pentecost marks the end of the Easter Season, the culmination of the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s redemptive suffering, death, resurrection and ascension. It’s good to see some Pentecost moments in the city. May the Lord grant us many more!

“Come, Holy Spirit, and change us!”
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NOTES FROM THE TRAIL

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I’m going to give three talks this coming week at Our Lady of Peace church in New Providence, NJ, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 8:00. (You're all invited.)

I’m used to giving retreats, days of recollection, and of course homilies. But that’s exactly the problem: It can get “old,” and I forget the great privilege and responsibility that’s involved in preaching and teaching. So the following random reflections are for my benefit, to help me get focussed for next Monday night. You may peek over my shoulder if you like.

Where does anyone get off giving others advice on spirituality? In one sense it takes a lot of nerve to get up and tell people how to live a more authentically Christian life. Doesn’t it seem to assume that I as the speaker have some sort of expert knowledge of the topic which I am imparting to my listeners? Frankly, if that were the case my job would be much less challenging because I could just amass a bunch of facts from reliable sources and present them as a classroom lecture.

There are lots of profitable ways of seeing my task next week, but “giving people information” is certainly not one of them. So what am I doing?

Here’s one way of seeing it: I’m not going there to offer people insights but to introduce them to Someone. Since every human being is a mystery that can never be fully fathomed, this mst be even more true of Jesus. Maybe I can suggest to folks some more ways to meet Jesus in their daily lives.

But if I’m going to talk about about our relationship to Jesus, doesn’t it assume somehow that I have a relationship with Him? And if I preach about imitating Jesus’ patience, how important is it that I myself be someone who imitates the Lord’s patience in my life? So there’s got to be more to it than being virtuous -- I know this because I’m well aware of how far I fall short in that department.

I came across an image just yesterday that might describe my situation better. It was in a book entitled AWOL on the Appalachian Trail in which the author describes via a daily journal his experience of hiking the entire AT from Georgia to Maine. I was attracted to the title not only because I’ve hiked along the AT with our students many a time, but also because of the theme of the journey, which matches the lenten spiritual pilgrimage I’m on right now.

Early on in his long journey the author describes coming to a trail shelter (a wooden lean-to closed in on three sides) where he would spend the night. The first thing he did was to read the “trail log” located near the shelter, to see what people ahead of him had written.  A backpacker who had spent the previous night in the lean-to had noted in the log that the lean-to was infested with mice, so you better take precautions to keep your food safe. He suggested that one might want to use the strings hanging from a beam inside the lean-to to tie your food bags out of reach.That was an important bit of advice considering that there were no grocery stores nearby where yu could replace ruined food. Was the hiker who wrote that entry posing as an expert? Obviously not. He was just sharing with the people coming behind him his own experience. 

Like that hiker, then, I can think of myself as someone writing in the trail log for people who are hiking with me on the same trail.

At the campsites on the AT in New Jersey you see large yellow signs  with big block lettering that warn: “YOU ARE IN BEAR COUNTRY!” They then give several steps that you need to take in order to avoid a potentially nasty encounter with a curious or hungry bear, -- or worse, with a she-bear who thinks you are threatening one of her cubs. You read some of these helpful directives and say “Wow! I never thought of that!”  

So, I guess I try to present myself as a fellow hiker who’s simply presenting some of my own experiences, hopefully in such a way as to help my fellow backpackers along the trail. I hope that some of my conferences have the ring of authenticity - like when we teach our backpacking freshmen “You have to keep your eyes on the trail right front of you. All it takes is one little distraction: you start to look around while you’re hiking and the next thing you know you turn an ankle on a rock.” Ouch! I’ve done that myself.

Maybe that’s part of why people who review my books often remark that I come across as "someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously." How could I dare take myself seriously when I’m describing how the mice in the lean-to ate my lunch, how I tripped on a rock on the trail and landed upside down in a laurel bush?

Oddly enough, though, my conferences can’t be about me at all. I have to always be pointing to Jesus and my relationship with him, including rough spots as well as the smooth ones.

Another thought: I can also point out humbly to my listeners the big yellow signs that have been posted along the trail to help us to stay safe - a way of thinking of Sacred Scripture.

In any case, luckily for me, the bottom line is that it’s not me who will be giving the conferences, it’s not me who will choose the right words or who knows just what certain people in the congregation need to hear at that moment.

But if you've read this far then I'll tell you that I’d certainly appreciate any prayers you may care to offer for me and for the folks who will come on Monday night expecting to hear a word from the Lord.

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WHOSE HISTORY?

RAPPING BLACK HISTORY

Our students put on a Black History Month multi-media presentation at a school assembly this morning. It was initiated, written and performed completely by the kids themselves. I was both proud of their work and deeply touched by the various messages they sent.

On the street where you live.

There were sad poems about police brutality and being afraid of getting shot on your own street. The names of Trevon Martin and others evoke strong emotions in urban Black teenage boys.

There were passages from speeches by Dr. King and Malcolm X, and slides and newsreels of Dr. King and the crowd listening to his “I have a dream” speech in Washington.

But my favorite was the rap contest. Two students faced off in a battle of brief rap poems,

Paul Laurence Dunbar

each trying to outdo the other with clever raps. What was unusual about the contest was that the raps were about famous figures in African American history. Each short poem offered some of the main accomplishments of an African American in that staccato, relentless rhyme that rappers do, and ended by revealing the person’s name. I think the cleverest one was the rap about Langston Hughes, but there were others telling about such people as Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X and Paul Laurence Dunbar (an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of a hundred years ago). It was a joy to hear hip hop shouted through the microphones to celebrate the stories of these great role models.

WRITE YOUR OWN HISTORY

When our Assistant Headmaster, a history major in college, took the mic at the end of the program to thank the students, his remarks caught me short. I figured that he would mention something that I think about a lot during Black History Month, namely that our young people consider Dr. King a part of ancient history along with Alexander the Great, and that they have almost no appreciation of the sacrifices that their grandparents made during the Civil Rights movement to make this country a better place for all of us to live.

But his message was very different. He did indeed begin by talking about history, but instead of looking back at history, he told them, they need to realize that each one of us is right now a part history, and that it’s our business to be consciously fashioning our history - the history of our school, of ur city, of our country and - why not? - the world. He mentioned that as we speak some of our our alumni of a few years ago are respected surgeons, civic leaders, attorneys and so on.

“So don’t sit around waiting for history to happen to you” he said to the 540 young men. “You need to be making history right now and preparing yourself to play your part in history, in making this world a better place.”

His idea about looking at history as present and not just past really appealed to me personally,and maybe especially during Black History Month.

HISTORY ON THE HOOF

After school I took a walk downtown. I was thinking about how I might write a blog post about that idea that history is not confined to the past but is part of who we are. I was still sketching out some ideas in my head when I began walking through the university neighborhood along King Boulevard. Within two minutes I bumped into an alumnus who had to introduce himself (he’s now in his early 40’s); he explained with some pride that he was on his way to class at Rutgers - he’d decided to finally finish his college degree. He and his three brothers are certainly part of our school’s history, of my history. I mentioned that one of his nephews will be starting his freshman year with us next year. After a brief conversation and a word of encouragement from me he went on his way. We’re certainly, I concluded, part of his family’s history.

A block or so farther along I ran into a young man whom I recognized easily. He had not made it through the four years with us; but told me that he had finished high school is now doing well at Essex County College. With real enthusiasm he told me how he is planning to transfer to Montclair University next year and major in graphic design.  He chatted easily, even eloquently about how much he liked school(!), and then about his career plans. After a brief conversation and a word of encouragement from me he, too, went on his way, and I continued my walk. I was so happy to see him looking healthy and focussed and enthused, and was sure that his years at St. Benedict’s had something to do with that.

My blog post about history was writing itself as I walked back to the monastery.  It was a

Monks writing history

mixture of my individual story and the history of the community of monks at Newark abbey and the community we’ve been creating at St. Benedict’s Prep since 1868. For me history would have to be mostly about community, about people living and working together.

Together we’re all writing the current pages of Salvation History, of God’s mysterious plan for our salvation. I hope we’re getting the story right!