Cassidy Hall death, social justice, solitude, Thomas Merton, Uncategorized

“One need not be a contemplative monk in a remote monastery to be overwhelmed by a sense of human inter-connection.”

Jim Forest was an activist and author, but more than anything he was a man of relationship and ritual. To know Jim was to know his family, his partner Nancy Forest-Flier, to feel his friendship, and to see the countless ways he saw and loved the world with great wonder.

Jim looked and listened with great attentiveness everywhere he went. On his daily walks, his museum visits, his time with new friends, and the vigor with which he reminded so many of us to pray.

His work was continually centered by his heart and faith. He worked with Dorothy Day as the managing editor at The Catholic Worker, he was a part of the Milwaukee Fourteen (a group of peace activists who burned draft cards during the Vietnam war), he corresponded and was friends with Thomas Merton, he was friends with at times lived with Thich Nhat Hanh, he co-founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, he named Henri Nouwen his “spiritual father” amid a difficult time in his life, he was longtime friends with Dan Berrigan, and more. But somehow, even amid this list of spiritual giants–including Jim, it was impossible to not count yourself among his friends immediately after meeting him.

Writing this now, after the death of Jim and Thich Nhat Hanh only days apart, I think about these two friends reconnecting in the infinite mystery. One of my favorite stories of Thich Nhat Hanh and Jim Forest’s friendship comes from The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975), by Thich Nhat Hanh:

In the United States, I have a close friend named Jim Forest. When I first met him eight years ago, he was working with the Catholic Peace Fellowship. Last winter, Jim came to visit. I usually wash the dishes after we’ve finished the evening meal, before sitting down and drinking tea with everyone also. One night, Jim asked if he might do the dishes. I said, “Go ahead, but if you wash the dishes you must know the way to wash them.” Jim replied, “Come on, you think I don’t know how to wash the dishes?” I answered, “There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.” Jim was delighted and said, “I choose the second way – to wash the dishes to wash the dishes. From then on, Jim knew how to wash the dishes. I transferred the “responsibility” to him for an entire week.

Jim and I last connected via email in December of 2021. I had the pleasure of spending time with Jim in-person on two occasions, first with friends at a Peace Conference in Toronto called Voices for Peace, and last at his home in the Netherlands in 2018. I joined he and Nancy in their evening prayers by the icons, walks, we spent time looking through stacks of books and papers, we climbed to the top of their local cathedral, and we navigated digitizing his tape cassette recordings of his friends including Thay and Joan Baez. At that time, Jim was compiling and working on his book about Thich Nhat Hanh: Eyes of Compassion: Living with Thich Nhat Hanh

The deep legacy of Jim’s life lives in personal relationship and the ways he taught so many of us to see. “What we see and what we fail to see defines who we are and how we live our lives,” he shared. “Shape your life on truth,” he shared, “live it as courageously as you can, as joyfully as you can. And count on God making some good use of it — what you do is not wasted. But you may not have the satisfaction of seeing the kind of results that you’re hoping for. Maybe you will, maybe you’ll be lucky but you can’t count on it.”

Memory Eternal. Rest in peace, Beloved Jim. Your memory and your light live on in the way we see, the way we pursue peace, and especially the way we love.

If you’re new to Jim and his work, I encourage you to take a look at Jim and Nancy’s site: https://jimandnancyforest.com/ where you can learn more about their writing and books.

A piece I wrote about Jim back in 2018: The Tireless Pursuit of Peace

Jim’s interviews on Encountering Silence:https://encounteringsilence.com/jim-forest-silence…/https://encounteringsilence.com/jim-forest-silence…/https://encounteringsilence.com/jim-forest-silence-and…/

(Photos of Jim and Dan Berrigan, and Jim and Thich Nhat Hanh are from Jim’s collection other photos are taken by me)

“One need not be a contemplative monk in a remote monastery to be overwhelmed by a sense of human inter-connection.”

–Jim Forest
Cassidy Hall Art, podcast, solitude, Writing

Spark My Muse Interviews Cassidy Hall

Today I had the honor of being on the Spark My Muse podcast with host, Lisa Colón DeLay. We talked about what it means to tend the fire within, the place of infinite possibility within each of us. The space we must protect, guard, feed, and learn to share in a way that offers love and creativity to the world––as opposed to violence or destruction. 

Later in the interview Lisa asks about my pilgrimage to the seventeen Trappist/Cistercian monasteries of the United States, my current role as a seminarian at CTS pursuing ordination, my thoughts on the need for more voices/faces in the contemplative world, and my thoughts on being a queer woman in these various spaces.

“Those drawn to the contemplative path… We are the feelers. We feel everything. We feel the whole world… It’s a good home for the sensitive, at least for me.”

Cassidy Hall, Spark My Muse

Listen on the Spark My Muse website here.

“…frustration is due precisely to the incapacity for positive, constructive, creative activity. Creation in this sense is then nothing else but frustration failing to express itself freely and normally, calling desperately for help in a way that fails to be heard or understood…When everything is creative, nothing is creative. When nothing is creative, everything tends to be destructive, or at least to invite destruction. Our creativity is in great measure simply the expression of our destructiveness, the guarded, despairing admission of destructiveness that cries for help without admitting it. The only positive thing left in our destructiveness is its bitter anguish. This, at least, can claim to be. This has creative possibilities.”

Thomas Merton, Theology of Creativity

 

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook

 

“First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak.”

Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart 

 

“…There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it, all that passers-by can see is a little smoke coming out of the chimney, and they walk on.

All right, then, what is to be done, should one tend that inward fire, turn to oneself for strength, wait patiently – yet with how much impatience! – wait, I say, for the moment when someone who wants to comes and sits down beside one’s fire and perhaps stays on? Let him who believes in God await the moment that will sooner or later arrive.

Letter from Vincent van Gogh tohis younger brother Theo van Gogh, July 1880 at the age of 27

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Cassidy Hall Art, friendship, pilgrim, podcast, reminders, solitude

The Tireless Pursuit of Peace

Looking up, I knew this was a moment to behold. Across the living room from me sat Jim Forest, laughing among friends while in Toronto for the first annual Voices For Peace conference. The 76-year-old peace-activist, author, storyteller, and lover of humanity was frozen in a moment of pure joy. I grabbed my camera to capture the glance of a life dedicated to peace, love, and a deeply rooted adoration of God.

Many know Jim by way of his friends: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Dan Berrigan, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Henri Nouwen –– to name a few. But having spent a few days with Jim, it’s hard to not count yourself among the list. His humility and sincerity pointed time and time again to a new way of listening, truly seeing, and deeply caring for my fellow human.

Throughout the week I had the honor of sitting down with Jim for meals, conversations, and laughter. We arrived in Toronto amid the backdrop of the van massacre that killed ten people just a day prior. Diving head-first into a pre-planned peace conference felt like apostolic work in a city mourning such a tragedy, but questions kept pressing me. How is the accumulation of information truly accompanying my neighbor? How is knowing the immorality of the weapons economy disarming my nation? How am I really helping the kids in my life and the land I stand on to see another day?

“Who is a peacemaker?” Jim asked in his keynote address, “Anyone who is acting peaceably to protect life and the environment… Peacemakers are engaged in a war against war, with the goal not that war should be made less frequent or less murderous or more humane but that war should be eliminated. War should be made unthinkable. Otherwise all of us are losers. As Merton put it, ‘There is only one winner in war. The winner is war itself. Not truth, not justice, not liberty, not morality. These are the vanquished.’”

Jim was editor of the Catholic Worker and co-founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship. He was arrested numerous times while protesting war and jailed for burning draft cards. He’s an award-winning author. But a list of achievements isn’t what Jim is about. His passion for peace is entirely rooted in relationship. His centeredness goes beyond those friends in the living room. Jim has created a lifetime around loving all people, enemies included:

“Love doesn’t exclude outrage. Love and outrage are sometimes as woven together as a strand of DNA. Dan’s [Berrigan] many acts of civil disobedience were animated by, as he put it ‘outraged love.’ For Dan ‘outrage’ was an adjective; the key word was ‘love.’ Love opens the way for conversion. But outrage without love is a blind alley.”

The days we live in are bleak and barren without love. Every news feed, each source of media, and conversations that surround us — are drenched in outrage untethered to love. Why is it that as soon as we can reconnect our outrage to love we see another headline that tears them apart again? “Fear is the great force that restrains us from acts of love,” Jim said in his second keynote address. “Fear is useful only when it serves as an alarm clock, a device that wakes us up by briefly ringing… When fear takes over, it tends to rob us creativity, resourcefulness, and freedom.”

As fear engulfs us, I wonder, are we debilitating ourselves from action that could better serve the world? The way of peace is as urgent as my next breath, and this is a literal statement for many, so why is it not for me? How can we navigate peace in the spirit of urgency? Is the response of a peacemaker not more important than the springboard of reaction born of urgency and conceived in the bowels of fear? How can I transform my fear-riddled flailing into a life of protest that is steeped in outrage and love?

“That’s the message we’re supposed to receive,” he told me, “’What you’re doing is a waste of time.’ But the truth of the matter is, it does make a difference. It doesn’t happen fast, and it sometimes doesn’t even happen in our lifetime. Sometimes it’s so slow, the iceberg is so big, so much of it is so hidden, so much of it is beneath the water line, watching it shrink is not easy for us. We live 60, 70, 80, even 90-100 years, but you know pick up a pebble on the beach, it’s 100s of millions of years old, it’s a different time scale.”

I was particularly struck by Jim’s tirelessness in these efforts of peace. At the age of 76, he’s flying six time-zones to share these messages with generations of activists. He’s zealously waking up to speak at a nearby church (Church of The Redeemer, Toronto) the day after offering two keynote addresses and countless interactions with strangers the day before. I quoted some of Jim’s own poignant words back to him amid asking for some advice for those of us navigating the ever present waters of activism today: “In your book, The Root of War is Fear, you said, ‘At the core of what is sane in our society I think you will find the pacifist movement, constantly reminding the populace that life is sacred, that justice–not vengeance–is our job.’ How would you advise the wearied activist among us today?”

“Shape your life on truth,” he told me, “live it as courageously as you can, as joyfully as you can. And count on God making some good use of it — what you do is not wasted. But you may not have the satisfaction of seeing the kind of results that you’re hoping for. Maybe you will, maybe you’ll be lucky but you can’t count on it.” 

Or, as his friend Thomas Merton once wrote to him in February of 1966:

“…Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, as you yourself mention in passing, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”

JimAndCassidy
My friend, Jim. (Photo by Paul Pynkoski)

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Cassidy Hall Art, busy, Creativity, Uncategorized

Loving to Love

Today I set out walking to walk. Visiting a new city fills me with childlike wonder and awe—each nook a new treasure to behold, every turn an adventure. I’m in Toronto, Canada just two days after a terrible tragedy that took the lives of ten fellow humans. And while wandering in the wet morning, the rain poured down like holy water attempting to wash away the pain so many are feeling. As my eyes looked up on Bloor street I couldn’t help but be captivated by a local bookstore begging for my attention, despite the 100s of books resting unread on my bookshelf at home.

Much like my routine at any bookstore, I navigate the poetry, hunt for the Thomas Merton books, and explore the sections where my friends’ books might be. This time, a particular Merton book caught my eye: Road to Joy: The Letters of Thomas Merton To New and Old friends. With just having had the pleasure of dinner with Merton’s friend Jim Forest, the night before, I promptly picked the book up and hunted for Jim’s name in the index. Instead — homosexuality pg. 344 — stuck out as if it was written in bold red among the black and white I was holding. Homosexuality, I thought, but Merton never really wrote about that. Though I’d heard my friend, Dr. Christopher Pramuk discuss this in the past, I wasn’t prepared for the violent language I was about to encounter. I took a deep breath while considering what I might read on the page the reference linked to and was sure enough not shocked but painfully disappointed with the words that corresponded. Words that continue to deeply wound and haunt LGBTQ+ Christians everywhere. Among these words in a note titled “Letter to an Unknown Friend”:

“…In other words, the pitch is this. Homosexuality is not a more “unforgivable” sin than any other than the rules are the same. You do the best you can, you honestly try to fight it, be sorry, try to avoid occasions, all the usual things… Maybe psychiatric help would be of use.”

Though reading nothing surprising, my body tensed up and shuddered with the deep despair I once felt about my own personhood because of such lies being told to me that there was something innately wrong with me, there was something “sinful.” To compare homosexuality with sin is not unlike telling me being a woman in sinful. It is of one’s personhood. One’s very being. In the bowels of that bookstore, I took a moment to thank God I no longer have this way of thinking and resolved to buy the book so no one else would read these wounding words that, to me, are incredibly theologically unsound.

In this city of great acceptance, I was flanked on either side by rainbow flags at every turn. Despite that, this small moment stirred up years in which I sat in self-hatred because I was told a part of my precise personhood was a sin. Looking back, I can still easily weep for my younger self and those who might still be thinking like this, speaking like this or receiving such hateful words. Knowing how deeply that struck felt like a bolt energy to share my truth, my love, my personhood with those that think theirs is somehow damaged.

LGBTQ+ friends, listen to me: There is nothing wrong with you.

Parents, there is nothing wrong with your LGBTQ+ child.

Church, there is nothing wrong with your LGBTQ+ parishioners.

The damage we do when we insinuate one’s loving personhood is sinful or faulty is nothing short of hateful, dismissive, and ignorant thinking.

Last month I had the honor of co-hosting Fr. Jim Martin (most recently, author of Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity) on the Encountering Silence podcast. The work he’s doing is undeniably opening the minds and doors for many, many people. The conversations he’s having and the work he’s doing is changing many lives for the better. I sincerely believe that when it comes to inequality, the elevation of a group must be done so that they can be seen. And it is not until this seeing becomes a part of our lives on a regular basis—for all of our differences in love—that we can come to a place of seeing our common humanity and embrace a vision of unity. Without this sight how is it possible for us to come together in a loving way?

“Peacemaking begins with seeing, seeing what is really going on around us, seeing ourselves in relation to the world we are part of… What we see and what we fail to see defines who we are and how we live our lives…” Jim Forest, The Root of War is Fear

Of course, I don’t agree entirely with Fr. Jim Martin on a number of things. But that didn’t prevent us from having a loving conversation, it didn’t stop us from both discussing the LGBTQ+ community in a way that elevates its ability to be seen and loved. And, although conversion begins with conversation––conversation with the intention of conversion is a limited space to come from. In a Message to Poets essay Merton said, “We believe that our future will be made by love and hope, not by violence or calculation…a hope that rests on calculation has lost its innocence.” With this in mind, I speak to my fellow human in a way that is true to love itself for that is all I can do, that is all I can bring. And for my fellow LGBTQ+ friends who may not be able to have such conversations because of the pain it brings—I will continue to speak. I will continue to have these hard conversations that point to the destruction and violence this kind of language creates, the ways in which we’re limiting the spirit’s flow within people because we name their personhood as sinful instead of seeing the beauty, joy, and spirit’s flow within their lives.

There is a penalty in admiration when we only seek how it serves us. As much as I admire Thomas Merton and Fr. Jim Martin, I cannot agree with them on everything and certainly have never claimed to. Though people change and thoughts evolve in their own ways in accordance with their own personhood—who am I to say that a given stance is more evolved, lest for the these kinds of stances that directly point to lack of equal humanity, as the aforementioned rhetoric suggests. Merton’s untimely death (1968) will leave any of his current thought on this as a mystery. But, I must interject my own assumption based on the fact that most of Merton’s life was based upon love.

In 1966, Thomas Merton wrote young peace activist Jim Forest a letter that has since become referenced as the Letter to a Young Activist. In it, Merton addresses Jim’s frustrations with his work in the peace movement during the Vietnam war. Jim was working tirelessly at the Catholic Worker house after having left the Navy. He co-founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship in 1964, and served countless conscientious objectors during the Vietnam war era. Both Forest and Merton were doing unequivocally important work, despite just how different the work was. These words that he wrote to Jim wouldn’t have been written without Jim’s initial letter of frustration and agony. In fact, many of Jim’s letters allowed Merton’s own thoughts on things like war and pacifism to change, grow, expand, and evolve (see The Root of War is Fear).

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

It is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything. 

Everything.

Whether or not one chooses to see the LGBTQ+ community does not eliminate its existence. But it is not until we truly open our eyes to one another that we can begin to stop diminishing one’s personhood as sinful. And the LGBTQ+ community will go on loving. After all, it is the centerpiece to our personhood. It must become the centerpiece to everyone’s personhood. And it’s a beautiful centerpiece to sit at the table of. To have a conversation around. To create a personal relationship over.

It is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

Everything.

I could have let these few words I read today ruin my day. I could have chalked them up to Thomas Merton not being admirable. I could have minimized his words as a sign of the times. But that’s not what any of this was about. I set out walking to walk. And, I believe that when we set out loving to love, miracles can happen. We can begin to see one another. Truly see.

Toronto is assuredly not the same after this terrible tragedy. Beyond the rain, there is a dreariness that sits over the city as people discuss just what happened and how it could possibly happen here. But people are going on talking, they are going on being kind, saying sorry, greeting and smiling at one another. This city is truly a space of personal relationship.

And, now, as I sit across the table from my new dear friend Jim Forest, I realize the deep legacy of his life pouring forth in personal relationship and loving to love. Many know Jim by way of his friends including but not limited to Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Dan Berrigan, Thich Nhat Hanh, and so on. But having spent a few days with Jim, it’s hard to not count yourself among the list—his deep humility and sincere way of being has already taught me so much about listening, truly seeing, and deeply caring for my fellow human. Tomorrow, Jim will speak at a conference in Toronto titled Voices For Peace.

Between Toronto and Jim, I think I’m finally starting to truly grasp what Thomas Merton meant when he said to Jim in that 1966 letter: It is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

Everything.image007.jpg

 

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Cassidy Hall Art, busy, Creativity, goodbye, Intention, listening, monastery, pilgrim, reminders, solitude

When Letting Go Is Holding On

“My dishonesty with myself and others hinders the honesty of all humanity, hinders the progress of all people.” Journal entry on 2/12/12

In 2012 I made the decision to let go of some certainty in my life for the sake of exploring something unknown. I quit my job. I quit my salary-paying, insurance-giving job full of security and certainty so I could travel to the seventeen Cistercian monasteries of the United States. As someone who isn’t Catholic, this was a surprise to everyone I knew. I would say that this decision surprised me too, but as I went on doing what I was supposed to do each day, I only felt myself dying a million deaths. It doesn’t surprise me I took on such a drastic measure to keep on living.

So much of my life at the time was wrapped up in what other people thought of me and meeting the expectations meant sticking to the script. Quitting a secure job with a salary and benefits wasn’t just an unwelcome improvisation—it was dangerous one. And thrill seeking was absolutely not a part of those predictable characters’ make up.

Yes, I was open about my sexuality, but only quietly, only where I felt safe. Sure, I was open about my spirituality, but only to the degree that it blended in a room. Yes, I loved my job and the amazing people who crossed my path while working it, but it became mostly an uncomplicated way to pay the bills.

I thought I was “doing all the right things”, but as I did them, I couldn’t shake the nagging; the blatant certainty that there was more to this life and that it wasn’t reserved for the few, and that it might even extend to me. Fitting everywhere but belonging nowhere—it was no longer enough, and something inside me sensed my restlessness could only be calmed by letting go.

Quitting my job to pursue that which was pulling me from the center of my heart made me feel exhilarated in a way that I hadn’t experienced since the beginning of these piling expectations. The monasteries, their silence, their mystery, their unique provision of solitude felt like they could be an exception to the lack of belonging I sensed at every turn. As I gave more and more thought to this longing within me, the unknown abundance of mystery that was before me, a unique way of exploring my interior spaciousness, I knew I had to go.

And when I stepped inside these sacred places, overcome with a sense of belonging, I knew instantly I had not made a mistake. It was in these moments away that the focus sharpened and I could sense my place in the world more clearly. It was a space where the noise of any perceived audience’s approval or disapproval literally and metaphorically cleared from my life and I could hear the voice of my heart instead.

So, I poked my head into seventeen spaces bathed in prayer and talked with monks and nuns about silence, solitude and contemplative life. I didn’t realize until the pilgrimage began that part of this expression of my true-self was bound up in my existential and spiritual curiosity that had been a part of my meandering thoughts since childhood. We further explored topics related to social justice, the true-self, acedia, mental health, and community. My joy and curiosity could not be contained.

This strange pilgrimage was spurred on and then validated by Thomas Merton’s words in New Seeds of Contemplation, “Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves… They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. …They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else’s experiences or write somebody else’s poems.”

This idea of spending my life on the things that aren’t of me is something I have had to navigate in my own way. It’s a lesson that is never over once it is over. It certainly isn’t easy for me to be true to myself. I have to learn and then relearn nearly every single day.

I know, for example, that in my writing life there are many topics I’ve avoided for reasons I’d rather not admit. Reasons that ultimately declare the comfort of others and myself as more important than the truth and freedom of all humanity. Reasons that shun my inner spirit and remove dignity from my identity. I learned long ago on my pilgrimage that the danger in not being my true-self had a ripple-effect that was larger than just me. My self-expression, being true to who I was, affected other’s ability to do the same.  After all, we belong to each other. I knew then it was time for a change. It was time to let go of the world’s agenda for my life. And, it’s just as true now as it was then.

“Trust is very much about going beyond the guarantees; engaging into the future that is beyond what is known and seen.” A Monk of Mepkin Abbey

When I arrived home after nearly a half year on the road, I had no extreme revelations or clear-cut certainties to reveal. I only emerged with a new sense of listening to the heart of who I am and an openness to the silences and the stillnesses that speak into that true identity. I began to let go of those preconceived notions the world had seared into me for years, I began to let myself unfold and go off script. 

“I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.” Rainer Maria Rilke

All of life is loving as much as it is a constant letting go. Sometimes that letting go is an initial step away from the noisy world into finding out more of who we are. And, sometimes this requires a grieving. A grieving of a narrative we’ve clung to or been told, or grieving a sense of certainty or ownership. But we cannot begin to meet ourselves without this letting go. We cannot begin to reunite with the wholeness of who we are until we strip ourselves of assumptions, predictions, and expectations. We cannot hold on until we truly let go.

“There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.” Thomas Merton, “Christian Humanism” in Love and Living

Cassidy Hall is a writer, photographer, filmmaker with a MA in Professional Counseling. Cassidy’s writing is featured on The Huffington Post, Patheos and her website, www.cassidyhall.com. You can find her on twitter @cassidyhall | instagram @casshall | and Facebook cassidyhall77

Cassidy’s forthcoming book, “Notes On Silence,” co-authored with Director Patrick Shen can be pre-ordered here.

Originally posted on The Sick Pilgrim Blog.

 

 

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Cassidy Hall Art, Creativity, Heart, Intention, listening, pilgrim, Writing

Creating From The Wound

I live in Los Angeles, the epicenter of self-defining artists. And, like most people in this city, I consider myself an artist. However, unlike most people living in Los Angeles — I believe we’re all artists in some form or another. I’m in constant awe of the way people create, perform, produce, and refine their skills. I see this in the visual arts, parenting, writing, cooking, teaching, care-taking, and most avenues of life.

In LA, I’m constantly bombarded with things that take me away from my ability to create — the time in traffic, the busyness of a day’s work, the notifications on my phone, the amount of people. Because of this, I try to hike a couple times a week. Hiking seems to be an activity where I process through things in my life — often to the point of talking aloud as strangers walk by me curious about my babbling. More often than not, it’s reworking a conversation and my place in it, sometimes it’s prayer, and other times it’s just a subconscious dialogue I’d yet to consider. This personal jukebox seems to flow most easily in a natural setting; the safety of nature guides me into letting it all out. This sense of safety is not only ingrained in our genetics but is also evident in our psychological interaction with uniting our bodies with the earth.

“We’ve learned over hundreds of thousands of years, that when the birds are singing, we’re safe. It’s only if they suddenly stop that you get a really bad feeling.” Julian Treasure of The Sound Agency via In Pursuit of Silence

While hiking the other day, I unknowingly lifted my right hand to the left side of my face, holding it ever so tenderly, like a lost lover would. I stopped, closed my eyes, and began to weep. After a few seconds of embracing this deep grief, I finally gathered myself enough to keep walking, continuing to cup my own face as if I wasn’t alone, as if I was someone’s beloved, as if she was with me. And, as these moments turn out, I was indeed alone, on a trail, walking by strangers as I held my own face. And just how many times have I found myself grazing my own hand, twisting my own rings, comforting myself? More often than I’d like to admit, but less often than I’d like to feel. 

This alienated agony we all face reminds me of the bottomlessness of my need to belong. A human need that we all know so well. That the depth of my longing is quite simply a part of my being, a part of how I was created, a part of my insatiable thirst for finally feeling home.

“…The normal way never leads home.” John O’Donohue

I’ve often considered one of the few certainties of our lives (as if there were any actual certainties in life) to be found in our relationships. Because, let’s face it, this woundedness demands a sense of tangible security. A security that no human ought to be made responsible to carry for us — both because it is beyond human possibility, and as we well know — the pain never dissipates. The cracks never fill. Belonging feels momentary. Home is never really found. It is eased, comforted, soothed — but it is the precisely the agony of these stirrings that call us to our work. And that is the artist’s response. That is the response of the creative that leans into her image as being made in the image of her creator. That is the moment where we become the artist and create our work. The work so deeply intertwined with eternity — the work that meets the infiniteness of our fellow humans because it comes from the infinite broken-heartedness of our own being.

“We all have wounds. We all are in so much pain. It’s precisely this feeling of loneliness that lurks behind all our successes, that feeling of uselessness that hides under all the praise, that feeling of meaninglessness even when people say we are fantastic—1that is what makes us sometimes grab onto people and expect from them an affection and love they cannot give.” — Henri Nouwen

Our hearts are bottomless pits that no human can fill. But, that is a gift. A gift that must be poured out in the creative work. A gift that requires constant courage and vulnerability of the self. The artist points to eternity because she creates from an eternal emptiness, woundedness, and ache.

These are the things that keep the artist alive. Tenderness. Intimacy. Love. Connection. Community. There are certainly times a friend’s touch can reignite us. There are moments a companion’s gaze can reinvigorate us. And there are seconds our own hand on our face might remind us that we do indeed belong, if only to ourselves. These are the moments that must be recalled time and time again so that we might stay afloat and keep creating.

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.” — Audre Lorde

“…But I believe that loneliness is something essential to human nature; it can only be covered over, it can never actually go away. Loneliness is a part of being human, because there is nothing in existence that can completely fulfill the needs of the human heart.” — Jean Vanier

This piece was originally posted on the Sick Pilgrim Blog.

 

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Cassidy Hall listening, monastery, solitude, Writing

When Doing Nothing is Doing Everything

As originally posted on Huffington Post and Patheos:

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving.” Bell Hooks

This time, after jumping in my car, no maps were necessary as I navigated my way towards New Mellerary Abbey for the 10th time since 2011. Maybe I had gone enough times to know my way, maybe something beyond myself was helping to guide me, or maybe there was nothing mystical to the experience other than the way I chose to view it.

As soon as I arrived and settled in my room, that familiar piercing silence rang in my ears. I slowly meandered to the guest library to borrow 10 books: a handful of familiar authors, half of which I’d read, half I hadn’t. I skimmed through the pamphlet the monastery gives you upon your arrival – scanning for any new rules or suggestions for my time there, nothing new. I busied myself seeing if there might be wifi, navigating where I might have cell service and doing everything but precisely what I came there for.

This is nothing new. I go to get away from everything I chase as soon as I arrive because I live in a society that tells me I should never be alone. I live in a society that tells me I should always be connected, I should always be doing something, and even in being there for a retreat – I should have something to “show” for my time there. Alas, I know better. Every second of my aimless searching and grasping only reiterates to me just how ingrained these societal shoulds are. And, as we all know, when we finally come to terms with being in our solitude the guilt piles up of everything we should and could be doing.

“Going nowhere … isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.” Pico Iyer

Solitude’s paradox comes in to play when we realize that, despite what others may say, silence and solitude are some of the most productive things we can give ourselves. Studies* demonstrate just how far we’ve gotten from true productivity (a relative statement as we all define productivity differently). Our fear of boredom (a root of creativity and imagination) has hypnotized us into screen hungry zombies. We wake up and check our emails, our social media, the news, and everything BUT checking in with ourselves; we’ve lost touch with what it means to know who we are. And in this convoluted state, we continue to reach for the quick fixes: the retreats or trips we can’t afford, the social media fast or cleanse, the “less screen time,” a cut back on work, and so on. Then as we emerge once again to be bombarded by society’s expectations alongside the needs of friends and family, we’re left confused. Almost as if an addict fresh off of rehab, our ensuing relapse only deepens us further into our modern day addiction.

“The inner fire is the most important thing humankind possesses.” Edith Sodergran

photoWe’re tired. And the cycle continues as we try to figure out how to marry what we feel is best to what the world seems to need and expect of us: in what situations do we bargain it all and dive in, what places do we let go for good, in what realms can we stick to a practice that allows us to truly and regularly hear ourselves? In the same breath, we’re so concerned that if we let go anywhere we’ll miss something – we won’t have enough money to pay rent, we’ll lose our friends, we can’t go to all the activities, we won’t make enough money to feel okay, or we’ll be off everyone’s radar because we’re no longer “involved enough.” Then, we once again come to the end of our days and moments struck with the reminder that we’ve lost touch with who we are, what we want, and what we’re doing.

“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.” Oscar Wilde

We’ve become so busy that our days are mapped out to the second, our sleep is forced off rhythm by lack of time, our solitude is planned out to the minute, and we’re expecting ourselves to do it all. Another paradox to explore is that solitude was birthed in community; as we cannot know summer without winter, we lose sight of solitude when we isolate ourselves from community. Do the people around me truly know my needs in and out of solitude? How can we encourage one another to find those crevices of ourselves to love and explore more. How can we truly go away from commitments and people to come back more full of love, understanding, and compassion towards ourselves and others.

“The mystery of love is that it protects and respects the aloneness of the other and creates the free space where he can convert his loneliness into a solitude that can be shared.” Henri Nouwen

Once I finally settled into the rhythms of the monastery, I was able to let go of some of these things society has poisoned me with. I breathed into my time alone – allowing my thoughts, both negative and positive, to arise, listening to the silence, and grappling with those challenges and fears we all face in our silences. I was again reawakened and reopened to my vulnerabilities, my aimless clinging, and my continued awe for the mysteries of life.

I needed no map to navigate my way home, I needed no radio for company. The peace of knowing I at least spent half of my time basking in the solitude reassured me that I was in touch with the natural rhythms of my life, if only just a little. Perhaps there’s something different this time and I’m more open to listening to the solitude; allowing it to speak silence, truth, and rest into my life. Those moments I can finally say okay to letting go of the world in order to deepen my awareness. Those moments I reach for nothing and engage with who I really am. Those moments, I listen.

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Studies and articles on silence, boredom, solitude, etc. Many thanks to these authors for their inspiration and dedication to the topic:

Cassidy Hall Uncategorized

To Be OK with the Blank Page

Originally posted on my HuffPost BlogIMG_7807

“You can’t anticipate a garden. Stuff won’t grow until it’s time to grow and when the season’s finished, it’s all over.” -Father Anthony, OCSO

My friend Dave told me once that to be ok with loneliness, you have to be ok with the blank page. Most of us can’t stop thinking or doing when we finally sit with our blank page; we just have to fill in the blanks spaces, the silences, and the quiet moments – covering their richness.

While looking back recently at how I ended up living in Los Angeles and working as an Associate Producer of the documentary film, In Pursuit of Silence, I’m able to see how I listened to myself in the quiet moments that I sat with the blank page.

In the midst of my career as a therapist in 2012, much of my time was spent talking to my clients about goals in their lives, encouraging them in their passions, learning what makes them come alive – while I sat on my own passions.

During that time I developed a growing fascination of monasteries, the lives of monks and nuns, and the words of various authors including Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen. Little did I know I was beginning to not only sit with my blank page, but also engage with it’s vast and often undisclosed mysteries. Less than a month after quitting my job in 2012 I set out to all of the Trappist Monasteries of the United States from the Nuns in the Redwoods of California to the beer-brewing Monks of Spencer, Massachusetts.

The loneliness and aloneness while traveling alone were some of the hardest and most rewarding mysteries of this journey. It’s the blank page I found and still often find myself running from in order to do as opposed to be. It takes enormous practice and courage to be able to sit in front of that page and rewrite oneself, listen to the often terrifying truths of oneself and strip away the layers the world places on our senses.

My restlessness in these quiet and often silent monasteries was something I knew I needed to sit with and learn from. During these moments, I encountered many negative thoughts and feelings of which I had no desire to see, hear, or listen to. I once asked a nun if the inner noise ever goes away in these quiet times alone, and her response was that perhaps the more important question is why do I want to get rid of the noise in the first place? Even though they’re dark and often gross parts of me, they are parts of me. Living in total hatred of these dark parts of me only creates an unnecessary act of self-violence, just as potentially getting rid of it or hating it might create an unnecessary form of violence in a direction away from myself.

There was nothing pleasurable about thoughts of hatred and sadness within myself, but it was still an opportunity for greater love of myself and ultimately others. There was nothing joyful about sitting through dreadful emotions of the finality of life, the certainty of death, the unattained dreams, the wars of all forms of violence in the world and within myself, my weaknesses in loving others, the forgetfulness of kindness, the inconvenience of gentleness and generosity. Yet, selfishly, as I grew to know more of myself and came to greater self-acceptance, my love for others was deepened alongside my deepening understanding of others.

I once viewed the monastery as a museum – an aesthetic location of a tradition that’s been upheld for nearly thousands of years; a place where people can go to see monks or nuns as if they’re some sort of monument to religion or life. I began all of this with that view in part but certainly ended with a great reverence of not only tradition but more importantly, relationship. Each person I spoke with seemed to provide a pure and humble space where the ground was level, a place where I was truly present with someone, a place where despite our differences we could speak of our darkness and understand one another’s pains.

I used to just see silence as a place of recharging, breathing room, a quiet away from the noise, or even just a peaceful place. Silence has always served one of such feelings to me until I eventually end up getting to the anxieties of my every day life: the unending to do lists, the racing feelings of being unproductive, the worries and concerns of all I cannot control, etc. From my experiences at these various monasteries, I found that it wasn’t until I sat through these things in silence and space that I could reach a much deeper and often darker place of self-discovery, which led and still leads me to more of my true self.

There are no resounding truths or revelations to my pilgrimage in 2012. There are no seeable results or clear-cut facts, and no healed anxieties or depressive states. Instead, I returned in 2012 and still sit in 2014 with more beautifully unanswered questions, more curiosities of mysteries and more reverence for this life that I am able to live.

Now, I no longer have to look friends, family, or clients in the face and encourage them to pursue their dreams and passions while sitting on my own. Now, I can sit with a blank page and be ok.

“…The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful….” Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

 

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Cassidy Hall Uncategorized

The Abbey of the Genesee

Genesee Abbey is in New York near Buffalo and Rochester – with the background of  some beautiful rolling hills and even more beautiful people. Piffard, NY is a very small town, which seems to have allowed the Monk’s Bread (the primary source of income for the monks) to be a popular item amongst the entire community. While I was there I saw numerous people in and out for their weekly bread, bread for their congregation or community, bread for their friends or family, etc. It is very apparent that this particular item has really brought the community of Piffard together in some way.

In my true fashion of uncertain living, I arrived early and was welcomed immediately by every person I met associated with the monastery and community. Genesee is known by some from the work of Henri Nouwen, an author and scholar, who called Genesee his home for a 7 month stay (where he wrote the book, The Genesee Diary).

One of the physical things that struck me most at Genesee was the structure of the church itself – it was in a triangle of sorts, with both the guests and monks on the same level truly allowing for a centered altar. I was particularly touched by this architecture because it allowed for an aesthetic sense of oneness and unity – not to say this isn’t a part of each location, but that the visual provided such a blatant reminder.

The provision of silence and solitude in such a place makes me feel as if my senses are clothed and stripped as I go from monasteries back into the ‘world’, from silence to the ‘world’, etc. “By living in silence you live closer to reality… there’s no room for inauthenticity… humility is truth.”

Humility is truth is a phrase that has stuck with me because of the density of truth it reveals. From the layers upon layers I pile upon my senses – scents, sounds, tastes, textures, color, others’ agendas for my life, and everyone’s marketing scheme – it’s not that easy to live in the reality of humility, the reality of authenticity, the truth of who I am at the very core level. Each of us could blame our lack of authenticity on the world we live in, the people who aren’t authentic, etc. But that leaves out the real work of the heart – the struggles, the anguish, the pain, that allows us to truly cherish the good – to truly see the light amongst the darkness.

Much of my time along the road has provided ample opportunity to live in such a way that allows me to be me; the world, however, is in the business of covering that truth with false needs, at the cost of continuing to confuse my true self. This often leads me to a standstill of sorts which causes a sense of panic. Lately, however, it’s been a soft reminder to turn my gaze inward to keep the silence and stillness within. Nothing comes easy, and this is quite possibly one of the most difficult but rewarding practices I’ve tried to tend to.

Finally, a quote was passed on to me that seems to really give way to what direction I am attempting to go: “You know you’ve found your vocation when you’ve found the way in which it’s easiest for you to love.” I think the same could be said of nearly anything in our lives: we find our niches when we find the places where love comes the most natural, where love unfolds, where the well of love from which we give is always full. Not to say that love is always easy, but if the source from where it comes is such a natural and intuitional space – then I’d assume that is the right space to be, at least for that time, moment, day, year, life. With that being said, I also realize that this takes constant work of the heart, not playing hide and seek with my darkness or despair, not running from the truths that I’ve been lucky enough to see.

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“When we know love in our own hearts… at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the newness, the emptiness, and the purity of vision that make themselves evident – provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.” Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“…or in something as simple as watching children at play, or in something as intimate as knowing love in our own hearts – we’re interiorly quickened, we’re interiorly awakened to a deep visceral realization that this is holy, that this is real, that this is precious, that this is the way that every moment deep down really is. These are moments that disclose to us the inherent holiness of life itself. The already perfectly holy nature of the present moment just the way it is.” James Finley

Abbey of the Genesee

The Abbey of the Genesee

Cassidy Hall Uncategorized

Assumption Abbey • Ava, MO

It’s interesting how complacency draws us away from a place or position. I’ve found in my own life that complacency can be a friend or an enemy (in which case my lack of contentment may not be due to complacency — ugh, semantics). I often wonder and look back on times in which what I thought was complacency was quite simply me hitting something like ‘the wall’ in a long run or on the brink of something great but unsure I want/deserve/desire it, etc. I’ve been continually struck that I’m doing the right thing, but feel so aimless in my approach. Because of this, I’ve been humbled, and asking (more importantly hearing) the advice of monks, strangers, and friends. My vulnerabilities in asking and sharing, have only deepened my sense of community and oneness with each person I’ve been lucky enough to speak with.

I found a new home at Assumption Abbey – the smallest of the monasteries I have been to so far, where an older member of the community wheels in your meals and you sit around the table with your new (at least for that night or day) family.

This journey has begun with much uncertainty alongside much clarity. It seems as though I’m doing what I was made for in the midst of not knowing what I’m doing. Luckily, I have been able to voice this with fellow retreatants and monks, only to be reaffirmed in my clarity with still no clear guide as to how.

Assumption Abbey is a smaller population of monks, rich in hospitality and love. I was able to meet with a monk the day I left, in order to discuss the following topics: silence, solitude, contemplation, and any wisdom for my journey. While other topics naturally came up, it seems as though these are the ones to discuss with each of those I am able to meet with.

The main thing I received from my conversation here was this: There is a monk in each of us. Each of us is naturally drawn to God because we were created in God’s image… Another thing that was said to me by someone to further instill this concept: “God created the world, alone.” (Clearly we all may have varying thoughts and/or opinions on this but it implies the idea that we may be drawn to aloneness because it is an innate part of God and therefore (being created in the image of God) an innate part of us).

What in the world did this mean to me? First, it’s important to note what in the world ‘monk’ even means… basically it means ‘single,’ ‘solitary,’ ‘alone.’ There is nothing new about this desire to seek solitude as this concept dates back to the 3rd century when the desert fathers and desert mothers began seeking God in the desert (eventually this led to desert communities which were informal gatherings of these hermits, which further in turn led to monasteries and the monastic way of life). So, does that all mean – how can one ‘follow God’ while being in the desert alone? That is where the beauty of contradictions comes in to play (something I’m becoming well acquainted with). It’s hard for us to imagine that by disengaging, we can better engage – or that by withdrawing, we can better serve or help or love others. The way in which we love others best can only be discovered by being our true selves. For some, being their true self means ‘going to the desert,’ while for others being their true self may mean the exact opposite. I’ve encountered the undeniable conviction of both monks and nuns that by their pursuit of this life (or rather, acceptance) they are loving others the most. This has been described to me in numerous ways, but there very clearly seems to be a common certainty that their choice (which often times is a continual choice, as things are for most of us) is the most exhaustively loving choice for their lives.

***PLEASE forgive my terribly muddled and ridiculously brief synopsis of the monastic history – I’m certain I have gotten some things wrong and POSITIVE I have left out countless (and very important) details.

“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.” Henri Nouwen

“The desert may be understood on several different levels. The actual Egyptian desert to which these monks fled in the fourth and fifth centuries was, of course, and actual place. But the desert may also be understood as an inner geography of desolation and abandonment; it is the place, perhaps even in the midst of others, where we are the most alone. It is the valley of our deepest solitude. Father John tells us that anyone who has experienced some aspect of destered-ness, loneliness, brokenness, breakdown or break-up — whether emotional, physically or socially — will connect with the profound humanity of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.” Barry McDonald in the preface to In The Heart of The Desert, The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers By John Chryssavgis