"When you get what you like in life," one of our old nuns was fond of repeating to the novices, "Jesus smiles at you. When you don't get what you like," she went on, "Jesus reaches down and kisses you."

It's not a theology I'd teach with much gusto today, but I got her point. There are things that look very bad for us–in fact, that are very bad for us–that confuse us and anger us and depress us, but which, in the end, do more for us than sunny days and endless fortune and limitless luck can ever do. John Lennon put it another way. He said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."

And who doesn't know the truth of that one. You plan to go back to college and the recession comes and there's no money for that kind of thing anymore. Now what do you do?

Your mother-in-law is babysitting so you can go on working and she gets cancer. Now what happens to the baby?

You're already beginning to look for the retirement condo in Florida and your spouse dies. There's no one to retire with anymore.

Now what happens to the rest of life?

Indeed there are no answers at the end of the book of life. No quick fixes. No ways around the tough parts. Instead, life is what we learn as we live it. And what we learn as we live it, is what tests and shapes the mettle of our souls. There is no way to comprehend how to go through grief other than by going through it.

There is no way to practice foregoing the hot rage that comes with feeling ignored or dismissed or found to be "essentially disordered'—for any reason.

There is no way to plan for the sense of abandonment you feel in a society that thinks differently from you, when even the person you thought was an eternal friend abandoned you: because your child is gay, maybe, or because you're a woman and so automatically considered deficient for the work, perhaps.

Those things we need to figure out for ourselves, one situation at a time.
But then, once we have been through those dark and raw moments in life, we discover a newer, better kind of sweetness. We not only find out who other people are, we find out what we are, too. We find out not only how weak we feel but how strong we can really be in the face of endless pain or mockery or bigotry or the shallowness of self righteous morality.

Then, we discover that life is not a terminal disease. On the contrary. It is always, and at best, a time of endless development, of choosing to be either more or less than we thought we could be.

Then, we know not only the answers to the hard periods of life, we know that no question can ever defeat us, can ever make us less than the best of ourselves again.

Tuesday, September 1: "There's no way out but through," the wag said. What the wag didn't say, however, is that there are some things which, without having gone through them, not even we will be able to know the full truth of ourselves.

Wednesday, September 2: There are some things in life that are not meant to be answered. They are meant to be tasted to the full, however tart, however sharp.

Thursday, September 3: It's not important to answer every question in life. Most of them aren't worth struggling with. They come today and disappear tomorrow. "It is not every question that deserves an answer," the Roman philosopher Syrus wrote. Let them go.

Friday, September 4: Beware those who never suspect that there may be answers beyond their own. They can be very dangerous for the rest of us. "Great evil," Lynn Andrews wrote, "has been done on earth by people who think they have all the answers."

Saturday, September 5: It can often be far more difficult to identify the real questions we face than it is to find spurious answers to the superficial ones.

Sunday, September 6: It takes a great deal of strength to refuse to answer anything of importance too quickly. It is often better to let a newly emerging question answer itself over time than to insist on dealing with it from perspectives too old to be useful to the present situation.

Monday, September 7: We grow in life to greater emotional and moral stature, not because of what we think we know but because of what we know we don't. "Life," Florida Scott-Maxwell writes, "does not accommodate to you, it shatters you. It is meant to. And it couldn't do it better. Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition."

Tuesday, September 8: Life is about doing the best you can in the moment in which you find yourself so that, eventually, you can find yourself even wiser than you now are.

Wednesday, September 9: There is a value to watching those who are older, wiser and more experienced than ourselves. From them we learn that everything really is possible. If they survived better for the stresses of life rather than being destroyed by them, so can we. The trick is to do it well.

Thursday, September 10: To look at life's problems—the nuclearization of the planet, the pollution of the seas, the oppression of women, the starvation of peoples—as if they belonged to someone else other than ourselves, is the greatest of all moral immaturities. "As long as we are unquestioning," writes Rosalie Bertelle, RSG, "we are part of the problem."

Friday, September 11: There is no similarity whatsoever between being accepting of difficulty and being re-signed to it. Where injustice or pain or oppression exist in my life, I must struggle to free those who come after me from what I myself could not avoid.

Saturday, September 12: Life is not meant to be perfect. It is meant to be perfectly capable of challenging us to be everything we are meant to be.

Sunday, September 13: Life is one long list of instructions, none of which are ever eternally true. Which means that sometimes you simply have to trust yourself.

Monday, September 14: The problem with life is not that we find ourselves in one challenging situation after another. The problem comes when we face no challenges at all. Then we never exercise our mind and soul enough to equal the growth of our bodies.

Tuesday, September 15: Don't expect to be given a blueprint to lead you through life. We all create our own. "Life," John W. Gardner wrote, "is the art of drawing without an eras-er." That's what makes every life a work of art.

Wednesday, September 16: It is not what we've been taught that makes the difference as we go through life. It is the choices we make for ourselves when we are finally forced to choose among them.

Thursday, September 17: Life does not get easier as we go along. It only gets to be a question so great that we have no choice but to trust that its answer will be as profound as the problems it poses. Albert Schweitzer said of it, "As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious."

Friday, September 18: It's not a matter of going through life; it is a matter of growing steadily deeper, always broader, forever wiser.

Saturday, September 19: Do not aspire to know it all. Aspire to listen to it all and to respond with compassion. It is only compassion that makes life livable for anybody.

Sunday, September 20: Once upon a time, within the last 75 years, life was considered a question to be answered, a series of steps to be defined. Now we know that life is at best an invitation to begin and begin and begin—all over again. It's when we cease to begin that we cease to be fully alive.

Monday, September 21: Discovering our purpose in life is never complete unless we discover it in relation to the rest of the world around us. Anything other than that leaves us with a very small purpose in a very small world called "me."

Tuesday, September 22: Discovering ourselves is often a very slow, a very accidental process. People study all their early lives to become one thing and then, along the way, be-come something very other. Then, we know that the self has trumped the straightjacket of other people's "expectations."

Wednesday, September 23: To be an eternal learner is to live every moment of life fully alive. We never know it all. We can never know too much. We can never be happy by becoming static. When we stop growing, we stop being really alive. "Life," Tolstoy wrote, "consists in penetrating the unknown and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired."

Thursday, September 24: Folk literature explains the need for challenge both succinctly and poignantly for those who are denied the opportunity to be anything they feel they are called to be in society. "Old lady," the young woman asks, "what is a woman's greatest burden?" And the old woman answers her, "Young woman, the greatest burden in life is to have no burden to carry at all."

Friday, September 25: Very little of what we learn now will still be considered current knowledge ten years from now. Which means that none of us can rest on last year's information. "In times of change," Eric Hoffer wrote, "learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Saturday, September 26: Don't be afraid of the unknown. It is, in fact, the doorway to the future. "The illiterate of the 21st century," Alvin Toffler said, "will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn."

Sunday, September 27: Life in our times demands new respect for creativity. We must now begin to earn our bread differently, live differently, learn differently and imagine the future differently. It's time to strike out and make life what we want it to be.

Monday, September 28: Don't wait for someone else to tell you what you should become. Become it a piece at a time. Follow your interests and inclinations and watch your life become what you always wanted it to be.

Tuesday, September 29: Never despair of life. It does not depend on what you get in life; it depends on what you do that makes you happy. The artist Pablo Picasso tells us, "I am always doing that which I can not do in order that I may learn how to do it."

Wednesday, September 30: Life is not a burden to be bemoaned; it is an adventure to be trusted. As Shel Silverstein says: "Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."

LET’S SHARE OUR THOUGHTS
The following discussion questions, Scripture echo, journal prompts, and prayer are meant to help you reflect more deeply on The Monastic Way. Choose at least two suggestions and respond to them. You may do it as a personal practice or gather a group interested in sharing the spiritual journey.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. On September 23, Joan Chittister writes, “To be an eternal learner is to live every moment of life fully alive. We never know it all. We can never know too much. We can never be happy by becoming static.” How does the idea of being an “eternal learner” sound to you? Are you ever eager for answers instead of enthusiastic about life’s many twists and
turns?

2. Which daily quote in The Monastic Way is most meaningful to you? Why? Do you agree with it? Disagree? Did it inspire you? Challenge you? Raise questions for you?

3. After reading The Monastic Way, what is one way that you can put Sister Joan’s teachings into practice in your own life?

4. Joan Chittister uses other literature to reinforce and expand her writing. Find another quote, poem, story, song, art piece, novel that echoes the theme of this month’s Monastic Way.

5. Joan Chittister argues that some things in life have no meaning at all, except that they are to be experienced. Do you agree with this idea? Or do you think that every experience comes about to teach us something?

JOURNAL PROMPTS
Prompt 1: Here are a few statements from this month’s Monastic Way. Choose one that is most helpful to you and journal with it.
• We grow in life to greater emotional and moral stature, not because of what we think we know but because of what we know we don't.
• Life is one long list of instructions, none of which are ever eter-nally true. Which means that sometimes you simply have to trust yourself.
• Don't be afraid of the unknown. It is, in fact, the doorway to the future.

Prompt 2:
Spend a few minutes with this photograph and journal about its relationship to this month’s Monastic Way. You can do that with prose or a poem or a song or....

SCRIPTURE ECHO
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. But when I became an adult, I put childish ways aside. Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. My knowledge is imperfect now; then I will know even as I am known.
- 1 Corinthians 13:11-12


PRAYER
You who are over us,
You who are one of us,
You who are also within us,
May all see you—in me also.
May I prepare the way for you,
May I thank you for all
that shall fall to my lot,
May I also not forget the needs of others.
Give me a pure heart—that I may see you.
A humble heart—that I may hear you,
A heart of love—that I may serve you,
A heart of faith—that I may abide in you. Amen.
- Dag Hammarskjøld