September 2024 WATERmeditation

with Cheryl Nichols

“Sr. Mary Lou Kownacki and Ryokan: Between Two Souls”

Monday, September 23, 2024

WATER thanks Cheryl Nicols for leading the September 2024 WATERmeditation on the work of Benedictine Sister Mary Lou Kownacki and Zen Master Ryokan. It was a chance to see two poets, mystics if you will, and active seekers side by side in their poetic expression.

The video recording can be found on YouTube here.

Cheryl is a longtime teacher, now tutor, and active social justice worker. She was gracious to share her notes and the poetry that we include here:

Introduction: For anyone who may not be familiar with Sr. Mary Lou Kownacki, she was a Benedictine monk, a committed peace activist, justice advocate, a journalist, write, poet. She died of cancer on the Epiphany, 2023.

How Cheryl got to know Mary Lou Kownacki:

  • Reading her poetry choices each week on Benetvision’s weekly newsletter, Vision and Viewpoints as well as her Old Monks’ Journal on Monasteries of the Heart’s website each Sunday (https://www.joanchittister.org/ )
  • May 2019 e-Course “Writing From the Heart” — poems and reflections
  • Advent 2020 retreat “Words Into Flesh” – poems (John O’Donahue’s “Blessings of Angels” for contemplative prayer)
  • April 2021 for poetry month, Mary Lou posted a poem every other day for our reflection
  • May 2021 retreat on “Holy Leisure” (again, I used a poem “The Red Brocade” by Naomi Shihab Nye for a WATER reflection on hospitality for contemplative prayer)

The poems she chose for these online experiences spoke to our everyday lives, our experiences, our souls.

Her book Old Monk (e-book)—a series of poems followed by reflections on what prompted the poem—I also have used for contemplative prayer. It was the only time I used one of Mary Lou’s own poem/prayers.

Between Two Souls—A conversation with Ryokan with an introduction by Joan Chittister

  • Wisdom—time and space coming together through these two contemplative poets and she compares them:
  • Ryokan “finds expansion of his soul in a Japanese forest. Here he loses himself and transcends himself…he sinks into solitude for days but emerges on a regular basis to play with the children of the village below him where he goes to beg poor farmers for food.”
  • Mary Lou, says Joan, finds the expansion of her soul in the midst of inner-city USA (Erie, PA). “She loses herself and transcends herself at the same time. She sinks into a solitude of the soul, but emerges regularly to play with the children of the ever-changing neighborhood where she herself grew up and now lives again as a Benedictine sister and administrator of programs in the arts for the inner-city poor.”
  • Truly, Mary Lou had the gift of finding the Divine in all things—a cup of morning coffee, a flower, graffiti in her city.

Kownacki, Mary Lou. BETWEEN TWO SOULS: CONVERSATIONS WITH RYOKAN. Eerdmans Pub Co, 2004 (191 pages, $21.56).

Here are some of their poems:

Ryokan
1.
When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd’s purse.

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent

2.
When I think
About the misery
Of those in this world.
Their sadness
Becomes mine.

Oh, that my monk’s robe
Were wide enough
To gather up all
The suffering people
In this floating world.

Nothing makes me
More happy than
Amida Buddha’s Vow
To save
Everyone.

Mary Lou
3.
When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I walk to the Neighborhood Art House
To teach children
Who are poor
To write poetry.

Like the purple johnny-jump-ups
Now playing hopscotch through the neighborhood
The children’s words humble me.
I, too, turn simple,
Open to surprise.

4.
I keep a copybook
Where all the sages of centuries past

Speak to me.
When I am adrift

With doubts
I open for a word of direction.

I have been a monk for forty years.
I have read a library

Of enlightenment and listened to
A legion of voices

On entering the void.
None captures the call like Ryōkan

“Oh, that my monk’s robe
Were wide enough to gather

All the suffering people
In this floating world.”

A new book of Mary Lou Kownacki’s blogs has just come out:
Everyday Sacred, Everywhere Beauty: Readings From An Old Monks Journal, edited by her sisters and colleagues Anne McCarthy; Linda Romey; Jacqueline Sanchez-Small, and Katie Gordon.
Read about it here on the Benedictine Sisters of Erie blog.
Order it here on Bookshop.org.

Participants, including some who knew Mary Lou, were delighted to use her brilliant, insightful, kind words for meditation. The silence was appreciated by several people as somehow it had a special quality thanks to the poems. The monastic way of life, lived by Mary Lou and many of her sisters, makes so much sense in our troubled world. They are in the midst of it, praying and working for justice, and knowing when, as Mary Lou wrote, to put the papers into the file case and go out and play golf. Old monks, indeed.

Thank you, Cheryl!