A Few Things: Early Cistercians, Ryan Beatty's "Calico," Upcoming Conferences
What I Am Currently Enjoying And Thinking
After a few months on Substack (and with the semester finally over), I thought it was time to diversify my posts with some more off-the-cuff snapshots of what I am currently enjoying or thinking about, any plans and projects I am working on, etc. I intend on posting these every other week or so, but of course, that is subject to change! So without further ado…
Early Cistercian Texts
Lately I have been working my way through an anthology: In the School of Love: An Anthology of Early Cistercian Texts, selected and edited by Edith Scholl.1 I am not usually one to pick up an anthology of quotes—I prefer to read the original sources themselves—but my love for Cistercian spirituality won me over (and the fact that it was in the clearance section for $2).
The quotes are drawn from sermons and treatises written by the first generation of Cistercians (Bernard of Clairvaux, Aelred of Rievaulx, Wiliam of Saint Thierry, Guerric of Igny) and those from later generations (Gilbert of Hoyland, Isaac of Stella, Baldwin of Forde, Gertrude of Helfta, and Beatrice of Nazareth) spanning from the 11th to the early 14th centuries. They are organized into chapters by theme, and Scholl once in a while offers a line or two of commentary to make them flow together more easily.
M. Basil Pennington wrote an introduction to the volume, “Lectio and Love: An Introduction to the Cistercian Tradition,” in which he makes an interesting observation about the changing role of reading and the written word in the pivotal time shortly after the first generation of Cistercians:
Historically, just after the era of the Cistercian Fathers, a great shift occurred in the way people read. Letters began to be organized by a visual arrangement that allowed meaning to be conveyed to the mind directly from the page through the eye. No longer did understanding depend on pronouncing the words aloud and hearing them with the ear. The full incarnational involvement of the person in the process of reading was significantly lessened…Instead of letting the Word with all its mythopoetic power form into us and expand our consciousness and more and more extend the boundaries of our attentiveness to the Divine, instead of pondering these Words of Revelation in our hearts, we began to ‘think them over’, to fit them into our pre-established conceptual system (16).
Pennington draws from this a distinction between being informed by the words of Scripture and being formed by them—and suggests that an emphasis on the former entails a loss of “the contemplative dimension of the Christ-life” (17). He points to the early Cistercians as masters of this lost art of lectio: “spiritual reading”. In describing these authors, he highlights some of the things that captivate me about Cistercian spirituality. He writes:
We know that the Words of Revelation, cast in a rich mythopoetic mode, are meant to convey far more than their literal and historical meaning. At the allegorical dimension, the words carry many levels of rich meaning. They call us to a personal and a communal response. They point us to the fulfillment that will respond to but go infinitely beyond all our aspirations…Where the mind leaves off, the heart goes yet further (17).
This distinction between reading the Bible for information and reading it for formation was already on my mind, as I had been pondering what it might look like for a sexual or gender minority—who has often experienced the Bible being used as a weapon and consequently used it as a shield in response—to come to love it again. My fuller answer is still coming into focus, but at least part of it has to involve coming to see the Bible as reading us—God using the Bible as a tool for our transformation, an invitation to communion. This is the very point some of the early Cistercians themselves make. Take, for instance, this bit of advice from Gilbert of Hoyland:
Reading should serve prayer, should dispose the affections, should neither devour the hours nor gobble up the moments of prayer. When you are read you are taught about Christ, but when you pray you join him in familiar colloquy. How much more enchanting is the grace of speaking with him than about him (83).
Or this from Guerric of Igny:
From these gardens [of the Scriptures] the Bridegroom will lead you, if I be not mistaken, into others where rest is more hidden and enjoyment more blessed and beauty more wonderful…For if the devotion of those who sing psalms or pray has something of that loving curiosity of the disciples who asked: ‘Rabbi, where do you dwell?’ they deserve, I think, to hear: ‘Come and see’. ‘They went’, we read, ‘and saw and stayed with him that day’ (85).
This is just one theme one could find woven throughout the anthology, and while I am only about halfway through (it was slow-going during the school year, which has just ended) I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far.
Ryan Beatty’s “Calico”
Last month, Ryan Beatty released his third studio album, titled “Calico,” and it has been on my regular rotation ever since. Beatty’s first album, “Boy in Jeans,” was an instant favorite of mine; its exploration of intimacy and isolation formed the soundtrack to my second adolescence (and later on, to much of quarantine). His second, “Dreaming of David,” took repeated listens on several long walks before it grew on me. I suspected the musical evolution in “Calico” would feel more like his second, which gave me a bit of momentum as I listened the first few times through.
Beatty’s lyricism has always been solid, but it especially shines on tracks like “Cinnamon Bread” (“you galloped on the piano keys like a Liberace fool, / you hummed a little out of tune and somehow you sounded cool”) and “Hunter” (the phrase “cardinal red” in the first verse becomes “cardinal chorus” in the second chorus, and the alliteration builds into “quilted in calico cream” and “kissing clay from Caleb’s cartridge” later). But I also appreciate his relatively unadorned melodies which are more powerful for their simplicity, as in “Bruises Off the Peach” (he sings softly, “I cut all the bruises off the peach / not as beautiful but still as sweet”—a line which feels quietly devastating), “Andromeda” (“what stops me from sending the call / in a midnight paranoia, hey / that’s love after all, isn’t it?”), and “White Teeth”.
Upcoming Conferences
I have agreed to lead one breakout session and speak on three panels at two separate conferences over the course of three days in June (happy Pride!)—a decision I assume I will regret periodically until I am finished with the last of them, after which I will feel grateful and satisfied with a job well done. At least that’s the hope! The first two will be at the Revoice conference (more information here) and the last two will be at the Outreach conference (more information here). Here is more information for each of them:
Panel: Stewarding Attraction (June 15th). The description on the website: “Many of us have spent much of our lives running from every feeling we have—including our attractions. As we experience freedom in Jesus, we are empowered to steward those attractions well, putting lust to death while still finding life-giving relationships and deep intimacy. Join us for an in-house discussion with members of our community sharing honest and empowering ways they steward their own attractions while honoring their chastity.”
Breakout Session: Being Read By Scripture (June 15th). From the description on the website: “For many sexual and gender minorities, the Bible has often felt more like a weapon used by people to beat us down than a tool used by God to build us up. Although many of us have chosen to submit to its authority at great personal cost, sometimes we may still see the Bible as a list of rules to be followed or as a grand story in which we never appear. How can we cultivate a love for Scripture again? How can we enter into the story again, and be transformed by it? How can we come to be read by Scripture?”
Panel: The Bible and Homosexuality (June 16th). Each of the panelists have contributed articles to the Outreach website, which were then collected and compiled to form “The Outreach Guide to the Bible and Homosexuality” (you can find it here). I suspect that our conversation will be guided, but not necessarily constrained, by those articles.
Panel: Living a Life of Chastity (June 17th). Each of the panelists are celibate and have been drawn to the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding sexual ethics and chastity for various reasons; the conversation will involve sharing our stories and exploring chastity through each of our perspectives.
I would appreciate your prayer, encouragement, and general good vibes!
Edith Scholl, OCSO, ed., In the School of Love: An Anthology of Early Cistercian Texts (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2000)