In the kitchen in the monastic enclosure there is a stack of salad plates. Actually, there are two stacks of salad plates. One stack, about ten deep, is of clear glass. The other is a stack of four or five white ceramic plates. One or more of my brothers believes the plates, being of similar size, should all be in the same stack, either the glass on top of the ceramic or the ceramic on top of the glass. Another one or more of my brothers believes the plates, being of different materials, should be side by side on the already crowded countertop. I suppose, given my less than neutral description, you can see where my sympathies lie.
You might think the challenges of living in a monastic community had to do with deeply spiritual or theological issues. Mostly you would be wrong. Mostly, the challenges of monastic life have to do with the salad plates. To stack or nor to stack? Some days, I’ll walk into the kitchen and the plates are stacked. Five minutes later, I’ll pass through again, and there they are, side by side. Later in the day, they’re stacked. And so on. At least, in our community, we don’t resort to the passive aggressive note: PAX. Dear brothers, we all know that the plates, being of different materials, should be side by side (cf. Lev 19:19). Of your charity, please follow this principle. Yours in Christ.
The plates present me with a particular challenge. First of all, I’m a quasi-minimalist. If it were my house alone, there would be nothing at all on the countertops, much less two separate stacks of salad plates. More than that, I have trickster blood running through me–what the Native Americans would call cayote medicine. My greatest desire, when I witness the ritual stacking and unstacking of the plates, is to intersperse the ceramic plates among the glass plates, to drive everyone nuts.
I have always had a keen sense of buttons. I see them, and then I want to push them. Sometimes I’ve even justified this urge as the desire to help others grow by pointing out where they are uptight, compulsive, controlling, or self-righteous. That is, after all, the benefit of trickster energy in our lives. It really can affect change by bringing first dismay, then embarrassment, and finally healing laughter to those areas in our lives where we need to let go.
For example, a few weeks ago I washed my hiking sandals and put them in the drier. When I came back, the drier door was open. I was instantly angry, convinced that one of my brothers didn’t like the sound of the sandals rattling around in the drier and had opened the door to stop the noise. The clothes were still wet. I put a note on the door–certainly not a passive aggressive one–saying DO NOT OPEN. SHOES ARE DRYING HERE. When I came back half an hour later, same thing. The door was open again. Now I was really mad. I fumed as I folded my now dry clothes. About ten minutes into my fit, something clicked. One of the sandals had been on the floor outside the drier. No one had opened the door. The force of the shoe flying around the drier had knocked open the door, and because shoes can’t read notes, it happened a second time. First dismay, then embarrassment, then healing laughter. My own sense of grievance, my assumptions about my brothers, my self-righteousness–all were exposed for healing and release.
It’s all well and good when the trickster enters our lives impersonally. But it’s a different thing altogether when I know what I’m doing and choose to play on what I see as someone else’s uptightness or compulsion. I used to be proud of that streak in myself. I thought I was righteous and moral. Really, I was smug. I was, however unconsciously, trying to assert my superiority, never seeing the log in my own eye. There was no love in my actions, only the will to dominate.
It’s so easy to see another’s sins, so hard to show mercy. We’re used to thinking of mercy as a grand gesture, something like picking up the wounded person on the side of the road and taking care of them. But what about the wounded ones all around us? The ones who, yes, maybe are uptight or compulsive or self-righteous (as are we all, by the way). Maybe mercy looks like leaving the plates to stack where they may. Or, knowing my brother likes the chairs in a certain alignment, taking the time to move the chair back after I use it, so that he is spared, for a brief moment, the burn of his anxiety. Or choosing, against my strongest inclination, to assume the best possible motivation when someone says something I think is unkind.
It’s no mercy to point out someone else’s faults to them. Certainly not when they haven’t asked us to do so. That’s assuming we can even accurately assess those faults, which we probably can’t. Sometimes, though, we can make life a little easier for our brothers and sisters, by ignoring the plates on the countertop, or the stinging tone of voice, or the neglected dusting. Maybe we even smile a little and allow these so-called faults to stir up our love for those with whom we share our lives. Maybe we leave the tricking to God, who does seem to love a good joke, and learn to laugh at our own foibles and obsessions and leave those of others alone. There’s so much space. Why fill it with more dismay, more bitterness, more shame? Why not laughter, instead? Why not mercy?
A Little Fire 
Bro Aiden, this has to be one of my favorites of your messages. On point and timely. May God’s blessings continue.
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Thanks, John. I really enjoyed writing this one.
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A few years ago in the guesthouse, someone had put a new roll of toilet paper backwards on the holder.
So I fixed it. Then they turned it around the wrong way again. So I fixed it again, and they….well, it went on all day. Either they left or chose to use a different bathroom.
(And I’ll put the lawn chair back where I found it when I’m done sitting in it)
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I’ve been there, too, Carol! And thanks for putting back the lawn furniture. I think you’re the only one who does that…
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Welllll….I made a comment about it one day about how ‘my’ chair kept being moved back to where I took it from and I learned then that I should have put it back. I said that I wasn’t finished sitting in it where I’d moved it to. After the guesthouse reopened I reread the rules in case there were new ones and it did say to move the chairs back to where they were. Maybe it always said that. Maybe no one reads the rules. Maybe I ignored that rule/never noticed it. 💁♀️
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HAHA! I’ve had an insight of my own based on your comment, Carol. I often see the lawn furniture moved around and think “Gosh, why didn’t they just put it back?” But the answer (and it’s not a bad one), may be that they weren’t finished with it yet.
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Such a good reminder! I was at a quilting retreat and “someone” kept leaving their cords strung everywhere. Of course, my leaving the cutting board up in the middle of the table was Ok—– We have been sewing together for 50 years and we were able to laugh together when we saw it happening yet again. it is good to step back and your entry today is so good at reminding me of that value, with people I love and others I may not know well yet.
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That’s just it, Merri! I’ve had so many moments of thinking “Why is so-and-so such a busybody?” And then I think “Oh, you mean, like YOU, Aidan?” I think Jesus has something to say about taking the speck out of our brother’s eye…
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when i go to PT, i like to fold their towels. it makes me feel heroic. i hope everyone notices. then one PT scrunches them up into a pile. he says “that’s me!” i’m always looking for something in the Container Store to solve life’s problems…
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I think the Container Store can help, but it will never fully solve our problems. Thanks for reading, Rose.
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And all this time I thought they were dessert plates. I’ll stack them differently now 😉
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Oh, Bernard. How long have you been Episcopalian? 😉
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And all the time it was about the shoes, not the people! Mindfulness! Silence in the face of otherness.
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I love that, Adam: silence in the face of otherness. What a lovely phrase, and so valuable.
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This is so funny! “Someone has STOLEN my socks!” was the standard cry of a certain man I know when he looked in the wrong drawer. Assumptions.
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I love that!
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Thank you, Br. Aidan, for another wonderful and deeply human reflection. If only more of us – no, all of us – could read your words, stop, and reflect on them. I still struggle to understand why I and so many of us need to “fix the plates” or the toilet paper, or the towels? Or remove that speck? What is informing all of that?
Even if you have no immediate answer, thank you for giving us these meditations to help us find the answer ourselves.
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Thanks for reading, Pamela. I can’t speak for others, but for me I think it comes from two places: a natural desire for tidiness and order and, when I’m not in the best of places, the urge to control whatever I can.
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Loved this. Gives great insight into Monastic life.
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Thank you!
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Wonderful post, made me laugh this morning when I needed a laugh. And I can so relate to this – it is always the little habits we come into relationship with that are the killers if we’re not careful! It’s a lifelong task – just when we take a little pride in having overcome one obstacle “someone” does something else that irks us! Hah!
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Thanks, Becky. I find that laughter usually helps keep the little gremlins of self-pity and self-righteousness at bay.
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I. Love. This. Talk about hitting buttons! This hits a bunch for me, and reminds of every day mercies. Thanks, Brother Aidan!
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I’m so glad, Alex. Thank you for reading!
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