Learning From the Cistercians.

Last year I read an early book by Thomas Merton called The Waters of Siloe.  It is mostly a history of the Cistercian Order in Roman Catholicism.  (Merton is such a good writer that he makes this material not just interesting but positively riveting.)

The Cistercian Order is an organization of monastics, offering at a high degree of strictness three things that have historically never been wildly popular among the general public: poverty, chastity, and obedience.  But they do have an identity, what we might call today a “brand.”  And that is a deep dedication to silence, simplicity, and prayer.  

Cistercians know who they are and what they are about.  They know that this is not going to appeal to everyone.  Indeed, it is not a movement designed for worldly success in terms of numbers of adherents.

So when a new monastic house is established somewhere in the world, they send a few brothers to do this work and become a presence.  They do not site their monasteries in or near cities, generally; that would detract from the quiet they covet.  They do not do what we would call “outreach” except to let the local Roman Catholic communities know they are there.  But there is no sense in which they would even imagine advertising out to the world and inviting men to come and join them.

A monastery might thrive and attract novices, growing and building a facility and so forth.  Or a new foundation might gain no foothold at all, and have to be closed, the brothers assigned somewhere else.  A monastery that thrived in one century, might crash in the next.  The whole movement has seen relative booms and busts over the millennium of its existence.  Occasionally they faced persecution from various powers.  Sometimes they gain sponsors.  There are amazing adventures about new communities in wild, inhospitable places.  Sometimes great voices emerge, among them Merton himself.  But there are also dry, difficult, fallow periods that can last many generations.

At no time does it ever seem to occur to them that they need to engage in “adaptive change.”  There is no sense in which they have to “get with the times.”  (Except perhaps when they had to adhere to the reforms of Vatican II.)  They have zero sense of “marketing;” the very idea would be anathema to them.  When they have to close a monastery, they might mourn.  But they do what they are called to do; they are true to their mission whether it “works” by the world’s standards or not.  

They know they are out of synch with the culture; that is the whole point of their existence!  They are who they are and they are happy doing and being that, regardless of the response they get from people.  They are not appealing to people but to God.  And were the whole order to have to shut down, I am sure they would also take this in stride as part of God’s plan.

Finally, they are not trying to do everything.  They understand themselves to be a part of the larger Body of Christ which is the Church.  There are missionary orders, and orders that provide health care, and and orders that do social services.  There are orders specializing in education, and  at least one even stricter order that basically prays 24/7.  And they are part of a global Church with a vast network of dioceses and parishes.

So I get two take-aways from all this.  First, the Cistercians know who they are and what their mission is.  Second, they do not look to the world for affirmation or to set their agenda and provide their standards for success.   

We Presbyterians might learn something from the Cistercians.

First of all, we don’t know and fruitfully articulate who we are.  Secondly, we do measure our success by importing standards from the world.  Both of these are harming our witness.

I suspect we would be both more successful and happier were we to intentionally focus our mission on something we do well, and then rely not on society’s approval but God’s.

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