It's one thing to be talented; it's another thing to consciously use that talent for the sake of the world around you. Alexander Borisov (1866-1934) was one such person. He was born in one of the most northeastern regions of Russia-65 degrees latitude, 45 degrees longitude–far above St. Petersburg, adjacent to Finland and directly across the Barents Sea, almost off the map of the world, the Arctic Circle beckoned in all its mystery, all its frozen wasteland.

A more rejected sliver of the globe would be hard to imagine. Mountains are steep and forbidding, yes. Oceans are deep and wild. Deserts are hot and steaming.

But in each of these there is some space for human relief. In each of them is the hope of shelter–an island here, a cave there, an oasis beyond the next dunes. In each of them are enough of human resources to enable a person to stop and stay awhile, to appreciate the life of the place and to make a living on it. But not in the unforbidding frozen Arctic.

And yet it is to the Arctic that Borisov, the young artist, was drawn. A realist, a landscape painter of unbelievable detail, Borisov turned his attention to the place no one had seen, the place no one had gone, the top of the world that, given its distance and climate, precisely for all its inaccessibility, was totally remote, completely unknown, entirely forbidding.

Borisov took his talent to the very place no one knew anything of much depth about. What he wanted to do was to be of service to service. He wanted to make the Arctic known to those who could evaluate it, analyze it, speculate about its meaning and its use. What he really did, however, was to show those who followed his work, to anyone, in fact, who saw only one of his paintings, that even in the bleakest areas of life, there is some kind of raw and barren beauty, something to learn something to reflect on, something to become in the midst of our own pain and isolation.

Borisov showed the world that what we reject in life may be exactly what we need to know. For all its unfamiliarity, it is what we do not know that we may need most to contemplate in precisely those moments when we find ourselves estranged from our standard brand existence. Then, perhaps, is the first time we may begin to understand things about living that nothing familiar and common can teach us.

Nothing is ever to be rejected. Only explored.

Sunday, November 1: Psychologists tell us that the very things we reject in life may be exactly the parts of ourselves that we reject, too. But if that is the case, then why we reject what we reject is at least as important as the issue or person itself.

Monday, November 2: Being willing to explore the unknown in life is what can give us the courage to explore our own internal motives and hopes. 

Tuesday, November 3: Rejection gives us the gift of new possibilities. Learning to venture into the topics or with the people we would ordinarily avoid can be the biggest and most meaningful adventure of life.

Wednesday, November 4: When we find ourselves outside the circle of our commonplace—beyond our old friends and once-desired circumstances—then we are really able to begin to live, to explore ourselves and our responses, to begin again.

Thursday, November 5: Rejection is one of the most difficult, most hurtful experiences of life. We find ourselves outside where we want to be with no clear way to find our way back home to where there is security and acceptance. The effect is one of pure vulnerability. At the same time, it is a call to self-reliance.

Friday, November 6: Never reject any of your own talents simply because they are unacceptable to those around you. Alexander Graham Bell says, “Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.

Saturday, November 7: To be rejected is to be forced to turn in a direction we did not want to go. And yet, it is the turning that will, in the end, give us a new view of life. Ask yourself sometime what rejection has done for you. You may be surprised by the answer.

Sunday, November 8: It’s what we are not allowed to become because others will not permit us to do it, will not take us into the circles where it happens, or will not welcome us there, that forces us to do something else. It is also in the turning that we begin to see all of life differently. As Bob Bennett says, “A rejection is nothing more than a necessary step in the pursuit of success.”

Monday, November 9: When life is at its most barren, look for the beauty you’re being offered. You can be sure it’s there, even though it may take years to see it.

Tuesday, November 10: When we’re not able to do a thing because others don’t want us to do it, that’s oppression. When we do what we want to do, regardless of what others want, that is the beginning of the flowering of the self.

Wednesday, November 11: Don’t worry when people reject you. Think of it this way: You have just been freed of exactly the kind of people you would not want to be associated with anyway.

Thursday, November 12: Everyone goes through the pain of rejection at one time or another: the application is refused; the relationship goes sour; the project is denied. The emotions that come with it—humiliation, anger, loss—threaten to overwhelm us. But at the end of the day, rejection may be exactly what saves us from our own worse judgment. As the Irish say, “Be careful what you pray for; you may get it.”

Friday, November 13: There is no single road through life. “Rejection” is one of the road signs that is meant to lead us to the best of ourselves. “You will meet a lot of rejection,” Michael York writes. “Life is not always a straight path, there will be detours—so enjoy the view.”

Saturday, November 14: One of the most difficult social moments comes when we discover that we think totally differently from every other person in the room. The family disowns us; the neighbors avoid us; our coworkers snub us. But we can know one thing with certainty: We made them all think again about what, to that moment, they thought was obvious.

Sunday, November 15: Being rejected for what we think before everyone else thinks it, can be very isolating. It can even lead to serious self-doubt. But it should not lead to despair. After all, if the river of history is flowing in your direction, you will be proven right in the end. Or as Mignon McLaughlin explains, “Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”

Monday, November 16: To be rejected for thinking differently than the mob is one of life’s greater compliments. After all, it says that a person is intent on being a thinking human being rather than a social rubber stamp. Any institution—governments, churches, corporations and social clubs—can use a lot more of them.

Tuesday, November 17: No matter what the crowd thinks you ought to think, don’t be afraid to try out thoughts of your own. As Dr. Seuss teaches children, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

Wednesday, November 18: Know what you think and why you think it. Christopher Morley counsels: “Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.”

Thursday, November 19: When what you think brings you enemies instead of good, thoughtful conversations with deep-thinking friends, realize that these are enemies worth making. Winston Churchill was clear about the situation. He wrote, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something in your life.”

Friday, November 20: As life goes on, some of the old ideas wear out, don't seem to fit anymore, grow dim and doubtful. That is the great grace of time. If we are willing to rethink every thought we've ever had, we will die smarter, wiser, younger of soul than we ever dreamed possible.

Saturday, November 21: The price of growth is change. Unless we have the strength, the faith, to believe that God is in the present as well as the past, life can only become too much to bear, to accept, to enjoy.

Sunday, November 22: If you yourself want to grow in mind and soul, try this: Take every side of every argument before you decide to take a position on any major issue. That way you will not only know what you think but you will know why everyone else what they think too. That can be the greatest contribution to peace, understanding, and eventually, consensus.

Monday, November 23: Before you set out to change a system—any system—realize that the immediate answer to any major change is resistance and rejection. Why? Because change discomforts two kinds of people: those who profit most from the present system and those who understand it least and so accept it without question. The philosopher Voltaire writes of it, “Our species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.”

Tuesday, November 24: Thinking is a painful process. It requires us to put down our unquestioned assumptions and to risk rejection from the very persons we most want to have support us. It is the cost of growing a soul.

Wednesday, November 25: It’s more comfortable to go with the majority, yes; it is more mature to be where I am, no matter how few are with me there. The only problem then is being able to get up the courage to admit that I was wrong when I was there, too. But as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

Thursday, November 26: To be “different” does not mean to be bizarre. It simply means to be able to take responsibility for my own ideas rather than to swallow the unexamined ideas of others.

Friday, November 27: To get a new idea—and to say it—is to challenge the status quo and so to upset the keepers of the system. That takes a great deal of courage because it puts us out of the mainstream where success and acceptance and approval lie. Clarence Darrow, the great trial lawyer who supported those who argued for evolution, wrote, “Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand people will march to the mouth of the cannon where one will dare espouse an unpopular issue. 

Saturday, November 28: They laughed at the Wright Brothers and they made it anyway. So why not you?

Sunday, November 29: The problem with ideas—both old and new—is that once we get them we cling to them with a certainty that can only be reserved for the indisputable notion that everybody dies. The fact is that there are not many ideas—if any—with that kind of certainty. It would be a good idea, and make for a lot fewer arguments, either old or new, if we could all remember that when we champion an idea, either old or new.

Monday, November 30: The idea of being willing to be, think and do things differently than other people is of the essence of being alive. As Elizabeth Kübler-Ross concludes her great work On Death and Dying, "Our concern must be to live while we're alive...to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are."

Discussion Questions

1. Have you experienced rejection as a major part of your life story? How have you understood it or explained it to yourself? Have you found it liberating, as Sister Joan suggests that it can be?

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.  Do you agree that “What we reject in life is what we most need to know,” as Joan Chittister argues in the introduction? What truths do you find yourself rejecting at this point in time?

Scripture

“Jesus said to the crowd, ‘Truly I tell you, prophets are never accepted in their hometowns.’” –Luke 4:24

Journal Prompts

1. Here are a few statements from this month’s Monastic Way. Choose one that is most helpful to you and journal with it. 

• Rejection gives us the gift of new possibilities.
• Don’t worry when people reject you. Think of it this way: You have just been freed of exactly the kind of people you would not want to be associated with anyway.
• The price of growth is change.

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.... 

Prayer

Hail, Holy Queen

Hail, Holy Queen, mother of mercy,

our life, our sweetness and our hope.

To you do we cry,

poor banished children of Eve;

to you do we send up our sighs, 

mourning and weeping

in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate,

your eyes of mercy upon us,

and after this, our exile,

show unto us

the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus.

O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.