Thoughts about the Monastery
Over the past few weeks, I have been asked for a way to articulate the ethos and background underlstanding of Suburban Monastery, one of my most important responsibilities at Westside King’s Church. This is what I wrote for a denominational group looking to encourage more prayer within their churches:
Suburban Monastery is a place, not a program. We say that we are not into the latest thing, but the oldest thing. We believe that the Christian church is rich in good tradition, in true experimentation, in worthy literature and exemplary saints, and that we ought to go back into the attic and rediscover what is ours.
We value and practice a bridge between evangelical and contemplative forms of Christian experience. We do this by taking time to consider the life that Scripture calls us to, understand how the church has reponded to this life in the past, and seek to experience this life right now through creative and engaged prayer. We believe that as we each learn to pray, we begin the path of transformation. Our prayer life is not purposefully one of intercession, but we have come to learn that as we pray the “our father” we inevitably pull others into our prayer.
We have come to understand that formation is related to form, and that a good and solid liturgy assists our experience of God. So we embrace anchor points – Scripture and tradition, respect for the whole church of Jesus, the push away from sectarianism and the embrace of the radical middle of the whole church. We carry deep respect for voices and ways much older than us.
Our name, Suburban Monastery, says two things. First, it speaks to our cultural context. We say that suburbia is not just a place – it is profoundly a state of mind. We fully admit our present condition as postmodern, technologically savvy, relationally broken, consumerist, entertainment driven, suburbanites. Our need is to find a different way of life, a slower and quieter life and more attentive life, one that is capable of the deeper change we need. And second, calling our place a monastery speaks to the alternate way of being we rehearse for 75 minutes on a Wednesday night. We call our place a monastery because the monastics saved culture by contrasting it. We want to be different (the old word here is holy), so that what is truly valuable in human life can be saved.
We do very simple things together. We come together in silence. We learn to listen to readings from Scripture and significant writings. We attempt a real engagement with Scripture so that we can discern the form of life we are called to. We share in conversation. And we respond to God with prayers and practices that open us to God as living presence. We do things that Christians have always done, the ways that Christians have learned to know God as living presence.
Our form of spirituality is a move away from spectacle and the spectacular (we are not loud or boisterous). It is a move towards noticing what is intrinsic to the common and everyday, in which of course, spectacular things happen on a regular basis – if we are able to see them.
