Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 May 2005 22:30:32
Tonight 9:00 pm, a dilemma - what to watch. Not often these days you get a clash of new things with decent reviews. In the end I plumped for The Monastery .
The reviews in the weekend listings magazine had indicated that it was kind of Big Brother in a Monastery, but nobody gets booted out and it actually makes some interesting viewing.
They were right. 5 "average" people enter a Benedictine monastery for 40 days & nights. During that time they have to learn to observe some basic parts of the rule (although they are introduced to different aspects over the time), have some spiritual direction and get to know themselves a little better.
First thing that struck was really shallow - I didn't know you could get modern monasteries. It looks like it was built around the late 1980's or so and seems quite modern.
Seriously though it was interesting how it illustrated how hard most of us find it adjusting to silence and how we fill silence when we have to observe it.
It was a really enlightening idea when they were talking about the bible that the monk leading it said that the bible is poetry for the soul and you have to enter into the rhythem of it to interpret the bible. The Word of God is in the poetry not in simple answers or dogmas. I like that idea of having to learn more scripture to get more into the flow.
As a programme it also illustrated that Christian spirituality still has something to offer people, the opportunity to face their lives and start to accept themselves through being accepted by others. This was summed up by a bloke who had was a former paramilatry and one of the five.
It seemed to me that this was one of the most interesting and honest pieces of religious broadcasting in a long time. It showed, in a vivid way because of the situation it is set in, that Christian spirituality holds an amazing tension between the very every day and normal and the completely different, unworldy without it turning into the great production that many of us make it.