LIFE IN THE ROCK TUMBLER

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These have been in a tumbler

This past Tuesday, one of the young monks handed me a small tin that he’d found while cleaning out Fr. Mark’s room. The round container that might have once held hard candies now held eight smooth pebbles of different kinds. They looked interesting enough to pass on to one of our school’s science teachers who, I knew, was an amateur mineralogist.

So, I showed them to John, and watched his reaction as he picked up the stones one at a time and easily recognized each like an old friend: “Oh, this is hematite. Nice!” Then he remarked, “This one’s been in a tumbler,... and so has this one,... and this one, too. See how nice and smooth they are? But this piece of iron ore is still rough.”

Hobbyist's rock tumbler

We spoke for a couple of minutes about rock tumblers, cylinders into which you place rocks and then rotate (usually with electric power). By knocking together, the rocks eventually give each other a smooth, polished finish.

As I left the science classroom, I realized that living in the monastery is like living in a rock tumbler: you knock against your brothers so often, in so many circumstances, that after awhile your sharp points and knife-like edges get knocked off or worn down without your even noticing it.

It occurred to me that this is why it’s so much better for a new monk to have classmates and agemates in the monastery -- they bump against one another and form each other into smoother monks. Then I suddenly remembered a final remark that John made about using a rock tumbler; as I was leaving his classroom he added “It takes forever!”

These guys must be novices!

Oops! I began to wonder how many edges and sharp points I still have after fifty-five years in the rock tumbler? I know there are a couple of brothers who help me to wear down those little points of pride and angles of impatience. It’s not, I concluded, just the new guys in the monastery that need to be smoothed out. I’m not yet as polished as the Lord wants me to be.

When I’m done, He’ll take me out of the tumbler and welcome me into the Kingdom. Meanwhile, we rock on together.

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Will our monastery ever look like this?