Students experience monastery life or wilderness

 

Some of Samantha Miller's colleagues take Whitworth students to Europe for a "Jan Term" experience, but she has takes groups to a monastery or into the wilderness.

For January (Jan) Term 2024, eight Whitworth students made applesauce, shelled walnuts, shoveled snow, washed dishes, did housekeeping and shared tasks with Benedictine sisters at the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, Idaho.

The students followed the sisters' daily routine. When a bell rang, they went to eat or to prayers. They listened to the stories and insights on the life the sisters shared. They also played with the sisters—snowshoeing and sledding.

One 85-year-old sister told them her secret for calming herself when she gets nervous. She keeps a pill bottle filled with M&Ms.

"They are my courage pills," she told the students. "When I am anxious, I take out the bottle and take two 'courage pills.'"

During college, she became interested in monasticism and the third-century desert fathers and mothers who went into the wilderness when Christianity became the legal state religion of the Roman Empire. They went to figure out how to be a committed Christian when Christianity was the religion of the empire.

At Hope College in Holland, Mich., Samantha took a course on ecological theology and ethics and discovered the power of immersive experiences in the wilderness. Her professor led a May-term eight-day backpacking trip in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.

"We were based at a Reformed Church in America camp, Camp Fowler. The next summer, I worked a week for a children's camp there. For six years in seminary and doctoral studies, I worked there as a wilderness guide, teaching groups through immersive trips in the wilderness."

Samantha earned a bachelor's degree in religion and history from Hope College in 2008. She earned a master of divinity degree at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., in 2011.

After completing doctoral studies at Marquette University in Milwaukee, she taught at Anderson University in Anderson, Ind., from 2016 to 2020.

In the fall of 2020, Samantha began as assistant professor at Whitworth University in Spokane, teaching church history and introduction to the Bible.

In her second year at Whitworth, she led a wilderness spirituality Jan Term course that Jerry Sittser, professor emeritus of theology, started at Tall Timber Camp near Leavenworth.

For Jan Term 2023, she taught "Backpacking with the Saints," taking students backpacking in Arizona, staying a week at an inactive monastery, backpacking a week and returning to the monastery to debrief.

Last January, after building relationships with Benedictine sisters during frequent retreats at the Monastery of St. Gertrude, she led a Jan Term class there, immersing students in the life, community and rule of the sisters.

"The sisters loved the students, and the students loved the sisters," said Samantha.

Although she's Protestant—a United Methodist who attends Salem Lutheran Church—she values her retreats with the Catholic community at St. Gertrude's.

"There, students were drawn by the simplicity and single-mindedness of the sisters' lives, as they focused on becoming closer to God and becoming who God made them to be," Samantha said. "The sisters' life is a stable rhythm of prayer and work.

"They have a solid structure to every day, week, month and year. That structure sustains everything," she said "Prayers happened, and we showed up. It's solid when the rest of life feels unstable, as it does for many."

To help the students enter the rhythm of life in the monastery, Samantha took their phones away for three weeks so they could immerse themselves in a simple life and learn to be present to themselves, each other and the sisters.

"Last spring after returning to campus, the students competed to have the lowest screen time," she said. "They came back as a community. Five graduated but they keep in touch and still discuss what the sisters told them."

"They gained perspective from older women, instead of just being influenced by being around peers," Samantha said.

During Jan Term, she read them a bedtime story, two chapters every night from the book "My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry," by Swedish author Fredrik Backman. It is about a seven-year-old girl delivering her grandmother's letters to neighbors and discovering what community can be.

When the participants graduated, she gave each a copy.

Samantha took the Jan Term 2023 group backpacking in the wilderness near St. David, Ariz., and stayed a week at Holy Trinity Monastery, which is no longer a monastery, but a retreat center where oblates lead daily prayers. The students had classes there.

Samantha also took their cell phones and computers, assigned them to each read a book on a monk and to handwrite reports.

While they hiked and backpacked for a week in Paria Canyon, there was a rhythm to each day, waking up, eating, walking, eating, walking, making camp, eating and going to bed. Each carried only two shirts and two pairs of socks.

"The canyon landscape is stark with red rock cliffs rising up beside the river. Looking up, we saw the blue sky where the rock cliffs stopped. Being in the wilderness is humbling," she said. "We realize our limits. The world is wild and untamed. God is wild and untamed. We think we can control our lives and think we can control God."

During the week backpacking they had evening campfires, using twinkling lights rather than a real fire, and reading a bedtime story.

"Wilderness is a spiritual practice. Our days are full, busy with things that are not our normal responsibilities," she said. "Meals take longer to fix. Water has to be filtered, so it takes time.

"There is no multitasking," she said.

They returned to the monastery for a few days to debrief and then flew home. Two who went backpacking took the monasticism class the next year.

Samantha believes the monastery and wilderness immersion transform lives.

"The monastery is a place where we can depend on community, being present to each other, listening and slowing down, breathing and playing, being open to awe and wonder. We can't do theology without awe and wonder," she said.

"Students need space and structure, even if they are not called to a vocation of being away in community to pray," Samantha added. "They need stillness rather than multitasking by watching TV and doing homework."

In three weeks at the monastery, they learned they needed the pace there. That's why St. Gertrude's has guests come for retreats.

Samantha still loves going to the Adirondacks, which are old, rounded mountains with trees up to their bald tops, where hikers can look out over a green and blue carpet.

She still goes to Camp Fowler as a cabin counselor or chaplain, often arriving two days before the camp just to rest and be in the space.

"My faith is interwoven in everything I do. I chase God all the time, or God chases me. I study what I study and teach what I teach, because I am in wonder and awe of God," she said.

"The book and musical, 'Les Misérables' talks of a bishop being dazzled by God," she said, "I invite students to come to the monastery or wilderness to be dazzled by God," which she likens to inviting someone to watch a sunset with her.

"I bring them tools and resources they can use to follow their faith journeys and be present," she said.

On campus, Samantha often sees students walking and holding their phones as if they are attached to their arms. When she sees students who have been on the Jan Terms with her, walking with no phone, being in reality, not virtual reality, she is gratified.

For information, email samanthamiller@whitworth.edu.