Where would you hope to encounter God? Carmelite spirituality says that God is always sending us invitations to deepen our relationship with him and those invitations can come in many forms.
Through sacramental encounters of say Eucharist, or other church structures,
through prayer or meditation, through encounters with others in the routine of daily life
(the washing of pots and pans) , through the wonderful, created world that surrounds us.
The rule of Saint Albert which guides the Carmelite way of life, is short,
with only 24 chapters and fitting onto an A4 page. Four of those chapters are concerned with the cell,
[6] Next, each one of you is to have a separate cell, situated as the lie of the land you propose to occupy may dictate, and allotted by disposition of the Prior with the agreement of the other brothers, or the more mature among them.
[8] None of the brothers is to occupy a cell other than that allotted to him, or to exchange cells with another, without leave of whoever is Prior at the time.
[9] The Prior’s cell should stand near the entrance to your property, so that he may be the first to meet those who approach, and whatever has to be done in consequence may all be carried out as he may decide and order.
[10] Each one of you is to stay in his own cell or nearby, pondering the Lord’s law, day and night and keeping watch at his prayers unless attending to some other duty.
So, the cell is of some significance in enhancing our relationship with God.
It is a safe space, protected in some way from the outside world and from enhancement or betterment by changing it.Despite a communal lifestyle it is a place given as a private individual space not designated primarily for work or rest but for pondering the law of the Lord. The message God is trying to communicate to us.
For me, word cell, is a strange word especially as a place of hope.
In an earlier reflection, a prison chaplain, hinted that the cell was a place full of noise, made day and night, by unhappy individuals, trying to draw attention to their needs, of loneliness, frustration and fear. They fill the emptiness of their lives, hearts and minds with noise to forget. They think that external noise will absolve them from reflection and change, the transformation they crave.
Kees Waaijman, on the other hand reflects on how Titus Brandsma, when he was detained in the Amersfoort concentration camp, gave an impressive witness. Deprived of his Carmelite lifestyle, he reinvented his Carmelite identity by rearranging his spatial-temporal habitat, his prison cell. By working in silence, he became holy, becoming more Carmelite in a very destructive and anti-religious situation. That thought is confirmed by a Third Order member in prison, who uses tapestry as a meditative way of coping.
So that a confining restrictive cell, a place of austerity, and isolation, can with the right attitude become a place of hope and transformation.
Edith Stein’s cell of the heart is a place where the heart recuperates and reenergises for the future.
A place where much of the time is spent asleep!
But the cell in the scientific sense is a place of immense activity. A cell is the fundamental building block of life,Cells provide structure and convert nutrients into energy. They are complex and they specialize into various functions (like nerve, brain, bone, muscle or blood) and in their various combinations provide all the richness anddiversity that life on earth provides. The powerhouses which make us exist and function. A never-ending dynamism. A constant cycle of death, regeneration andactivity.
The source of life and hope.
So perhaps for a Carmelite the cell is a place
to take the gifts of the world, the daily experiences, the sorrows, the joys,
the relationships and to reflect on what God is asking us to do
But this routine, this rhythm, needs to allow for the unexpected,
the surprise that God is always springing.
Who, for however long they pondered, whether in cell or not,could foresee that Friday’s tragic events would lead to an empty tomb on Sunday and who expected that the absence of a body would lead to such an outpouring of energy and conviction about the Risen Christ?
A cell needs to be a place that enables recouperation, an integration of all that has happened, open to the unexpected and another way of seeing so that on leaving it, we can enable God’s presence to be more clearly visible in the world.
To rebirth one small step at a time and so transform our world.
Paul de Groot O.Carm
