From cloister to nature's sanctuary: notes on my spiritual journey

From cloister to nature's sanctuary:
notes on my spiritual journey - Roman Verostko 2009

Grand Canyon, January 2000, photo by rv

When I graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1949 I had been reading Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain. My interest turned to spirituality and the history of western monasticism. Weekend visits to the monastery at St Vincent Archabbey led me to a deep interest in monastic life. On my 21st Birthday in 1950, I entered a scholastic program at St Vincent as my first step to becoming a fully committed Benedictine monk and a priest. My spiritual formation there grew from my interest in medieval art and spirituality as it had been shaped by Benedictine traditions. At St Vincent I was interested in working towards a rebirth of spirituality and art in the 20th Century. Those were fruitful years filled with spiritual, artistic and academic challenges. Eighteen years later I withdrew from monastic life. Since that time some friends have wondered about what caused me to make that change and where it has taken me.

For several years leading up to 1968 I went through a spiritual struggle confronting myself with what I believed or thought I believed. . My work as an artist was fraught with ambiguity. My experimental audio-visual presentations posed evocative texts about our experience of life without pointing to answers. My "Psalms in Sound and Image" celebrated nature and the "marvelous" aspect of commonplace life. Those works tuned me more acutely to the mystery underlying common daily experience. Those experiences led to more questions without giving answers. My innermost beliefs became disturbing questions that were not in synch with the official creed of the church. The core of the faith I professed as a priest, especially belief in divine revelation, had begun fading some years earlier. For some time I had hung on to a wavering faith with subtle rationalizations. More and more I came to experience myself emerging as an existential contradiction, an "unbelieving" believer or, the opposite, a "believing" unbeliever. In effect a kind of "fence sitter" unable to face the consequences of being true to my inner self.

My work as a monk and a priest included teaching and weekend parish work. Disturbing moral questions tugged at my conscience. “How could I continue guiding others in a 'faith' that was no longer believable to myself?” Faith holds the trump card claiming precedence over reason and consequently over "doubt". In facing "grave doubts" traditional belief teaches us "to hold on to our faith at all costs as it is our most valuable gift ". In January, 1968, following a lecture tour with my Psalms in Sound & Image, I came to see more clearly that truth to my inner self and my own conscience trumped all else. I would follow my conscience.

Leaving the monastery was a “push – pull” experience. Sharing my decision with my blood family and leaving the monastery was painful. The monastery had also become my family and my home with my artwork imbedded in its walls. I soon learned that the life I had with the community continued to be a part of me but the support was no longer there. My spiritual life would have to take root now in the context of earning money, paying taxes and doing all the practical things of daily life. Within a few months I married Alice Wagstaff and we moved to Minnesota where our mutual support would blossom into a healthy spiritual growth.

Leaving the monastery turned out to be a liberating experience. The restraint of unwieldy “creeds” was gone. My mind embraced the freedom to explore and ask questions without twisting answers to fit inherited beliefs. And it turned out to be OK to embrace life as a mystery without having an answer.

Freed from the time consuming repetition of prayers and religious ceremonies I could now spend more time in my study and my studio. More importantly, regional nature preserves became my frequent sanctuary for meditation and reflection . Coupled with the study of world cultures these meditations nurtured a growing interest in our human relationship to nature and ecological ethics. For me our nature preserves emerged as precious "sanctuaries" of our time, cathedrals of nature and life.

Gradually the awesome mystery of life and the immensity of cosmos seeped more and more into my consciousness. This new life has gradually altered and heightened my inner experience of "being here", awakening me to the binding interconnections to each other, to other life, and to the earth. This experience has charged me with a spiritual strength and peace that I had never known before. By doing so it has brought me to experience the awesome nature of cosmos without any fear of the unknown.

My links to reason in science, religion & culture