Bucko Adam - The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living

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Copyright 2015 by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko

All interior art is the work of Deborah Koff Chapin. We extend tremendous gratitude to her for making her art available for our use. The drawings were produced with an original methodology called touch art, most of them during presentations on New Monasticism during the international conference Dawn of Interspirituality. For more of Deborah's work please see: ww.touchdrawing.com/.

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Library of Congress Cataloging -in- Publication Data

McEntee, Rory.

The new monasticism : an interspiritual manifesto for contemplative living / by Rory McEntee and Adam Bucko.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-62698-126-3 (pbk.)

1. Monastic and religious life. 2. Monasticism and religious orders. 3. Spiritual life Christianity. I. Title.

BX2435. M396 2015

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The spiritual or mystical journey is the heartbeat of humanity, always present even if hidden beneath the surface. It is the most primal calling of the heart, the song of the soul going back to God, from the outer world to the formless Truth that resides within each of us.

Over the centuries this journey has been woven into the fabric of our history, imaged in icons, written in prayer books. It has taken on different forms, been followed by Zoroastrian priests and Sufi dervishes, Christian nuns and Buddhist monks. Each pilgrim makes the solitary soul's journey from the alone to the Alone, and yet also in the company of fellow travelers, of others who have been called by Truth, by the heart's desire for what is endless and eternal. Each form of this journey, whether that of the Desert Fathers or the Beguine women mystics, of a Himalayan yogi or a Zen monk, is colored in the images of the time and the place: the austerities of the desert, the mystical passion of medieval women, or the empty begging bowl of the monk. In the following pages we will see this journey told anew, in the colors and images of the twenty-first century, full of freedom and joy as well as the simplicity of the heart's calling. Always it is a journey from words to silence, from images to emptiness and yet at the same time it needs to speak to us in a language we can understand, a call to prayer we can hear and recognize.

Adam and Rory have responded both to their heart's calling and the need of the time. With the sincerity of true pilgrims, they have shared their map of the journey with fellow travelers. Here is the path from separation back to union with God told once again, in a language both ancient and modern. It speaks to the present day, of a new monasticism without the walls and regulations that are too limiting to most of today's seekers, but with the same spirit that sounded in the cloisters of earlier centuries. It is interspiritual, referring to a contemporary movement that looks beyond any one form to a sharing of the wisdom that lies at the root of all religions, to the mystic heart, to quote Brother Wayne Teasdale. It celebrates the single human family to which we all belong, and the unity that lies at the root of all our diversity.

Reading their words one can hear God's call to the soul and our response. They show that this journey is always alive, that it is as essential and needed in the cities of today as in the monasteries and hermitages of an earlier time. Their new monasticism is not an escape from life, but a celebration of what it really means to be alive. It comes from the deepest core of our beinghumanity's need to experience the Divine.

This spiritual calling is like a primal stamp within all of humanity, and yet for each of us it is unique, and nothing is more intimate than our relationship with God, our partnership with the Divine. It is our own innermost being that speaks to us. The authors state that the new monasticism is about honoring one's own unique path, cultivation of one's unique relationship to life, to God, in trust, fidelity, and partnership with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. One of life's wonders is the uniqueness of everything that is created, every bird and every butterfly, every cloud and every raindrop. The Great Artist has made everything differentno two brushstrokes on life's canvas are the sameand each moment is new and never repeated. On the spiritual journey this uniqueness is embraced and livedit is the journey from the alone to the Alone. No one else can make this journey for us: it is our heart that cries out, our feet that bleed. And yet this unique path takes us into the realization of the oneness that is at the core of our being and within all of life. All is one, and each cell embodies and reflects this primal onenessthe unity of being. The journey home, of the soul back to the Source, is a journey back to unity, to the mystical realization that we are the Divine Oneness.

And so we discover that what we thought was our individual journey, is in fact just an expression of the one great journeythere can never be more than one. The real story, in fact the only story, is that of the Divine awakening within the soul. Within the heart of every pilgrim is this calling to return home, and yet we are already home and there were never two. The relationship to God is this secret of divine onenesslover and Beloved are onethere is no other. And this intimacy is always alive, even if hidden deep within the heart, as the Sufi mystic Rumi exclaims:

It is he who suffers his absence in me

Who through me cries out to himself.

Love's most strange, most holy mystery

We are intimate beyond belief.

Every moment the Divine is coming into manifestation, and every moment the Divine is returning home. Each breath sings the song of being and nonbeing. We head to the mountain and we return to the world, only to realize the simple truth that there is neither mountain or worldthere is not even a journey, just the unfolding mystery of the Divine.