Kilian McDonnell obituary<\/a><\/p>\nIt is thirteen years since I arrived on a sub-zero January day\u2014President Obama\u2019s 2009 inauguration day, in fact\u2014at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Collegeville Minnesota for a semester-long sabbatical as a resident scholar. The experience changed my life; I have spent the subsequent years, including more than nine on this blog, exploring and discovering the ways in which these changes have and continue to worked their way into my day to day reality.<\/p>\n
One of the many friends I made while on sabbatical was a Benedictine monk named Kilian McDonnell (who celebrated his 100th birthday last September).\u00a0 In the 1960s, he was the founder of the Institute where I was a resident scholar; at that time, Kilian was a young, rising theologian who, over the next three decades became somewhat of a rock star at St. John\u2019s Abbey just up the road from the Institute, an internationally recognized and respected scholar. When I met him in early 2009, he was in his eighties but was still full of energy and Irish wit\u2014he looks a bit like a leprechaun and took a very strong liking to Jeanne when she visited me at Easter. I once misspelled his first name with two \u201cl\u2019s\u201d in the middle\u2014he corrected me and said \u201cKilian has only one \u201cl.\u201d Maybe when I get to heaven, they\u2019ll let me have another one.\u201d Another time, he told me that \u201cVance, sabbatical is God\u2019s best idea, and getting old is God\u2019s worst idea.\u201d I have been back to the Institute and the Abbey many times in the decade since my sabbatical; every time Kilian sees me at Abbey prayers, he hugs me and says \u201cWelcome home.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are Kilian\u00a0stories in every corner of the Institute, the Abbey, and St. John\u2019s University where the Institute and Abbey are located; my favorite is about Kilian\u00a0and the helicopter. Some years ago, Kilian\u00a0arrived at evening prayer with a packed suitcase. Shortly after prayers began, the monks were interrupted by the deafening sound of a helicopter landing on the large green directly in front of the Abbey, in order to whisk Kilian\u00a0off to yet another important event requiring his presence. He hopped on board and the helicopter lifted. Prayers then resumed, only to be interrupted yet again by a descending helicopter. Kilian had forgotten his suitcase; once he was united with his luggage, the helicopter lifted again, carrying him to distant parts, while evening prayer picked up at the point where it had been so rudely interrupted\u2014twice.<\/p>\n
For the last decade or so Kilian has lived in retirement, landlocked at the Abbey where he has spent more than seventy years of his life, Kilian is in the retirement wing of the monks\u2019 residence; I saw him when I was in Minnesota for a writers\u2019 conference last summer. He\u2019s forgetful now, but some things he doesn\u2019t forget\u2014after giving me a hug, the first thing he asked me was \u201cWhere\u2019s Jeanne?\u201d About five years before I met him, in his late seventies, Kilian had started writing poetry\u2014his third volume of poetry had been published just before my arrival: \u201cSwift, Lord, You are Not,\u201d \u201cYahweh\u2019s Other Shoe,\u201d and \u201cGod Drops and Loses Things\u201d (two more have been published since). Kilian\u2019s poetry is very much like the man\u2014to the point, often humorous, and always from an unusual angle.<\/p>\n
I wandered through these three volumes over the past few days as I wrote the sermon that I gave a week ago at the Episcopal church I attend, looking for a poem to use for \u201cMary Sunday,\u201d the last Sunday of Advent. I cornered Kilian after noon prayer one day and had him sign each of them\u2014I had forgotten what he wrote. In one book he noted that the Abbot had commented that my daily prayers attendance put some of the monks to shame. In another, he remarked on the similarities between my life as a professor and his as a man of prayer. His inscription in the third volume particularly caught my attention.<\/p>\n
To Vance, a man who dreams but never wastes time.<\/strong><\/p>\nNow that\u2019s something worth aspiring to.<\/p>\n
I suspect that the reason Kilian\u2019s inscription did not stick with me at the time is because I didn\u2019t think it was true. In the manner of Hillary Clinton\u2019s memorable, somewhat oxymoronic description of herself as \u201ca progressive who gets things done,\u201d Kilian\u2019s inscription connects two characteristics that, stereotypically at least, do not play well together. I have always been time-efficient in my work life, well-organized and planning ahead. That doesn\u2019t carry over seamlessly to my non-work life, where I can procrastinate and waste time with the best of them.<\/p>\n
The real challenge in Kilian\u2019s inscription, though, both then and now, is the \u201cman who dreams\u201d part. My father was a dreamer and a visionary of sorts, but impractical in many ways. I\u2019ve always thought of myself as my mother\u2019s son, introverted, practical, the person to turn a task over to once the dreamers are done dreaming about it in order to guarantee that something actually happens and the dreams come to fruition. My administrative tasks during my academic career have been executive\u2014I was the guy asked to make the vision happen once the legislative sausage-making in the faculty senate and various committees was finished. I\u2019ve been the person to organize and lead people, often resistant to being organized or led, as we collectively find ways to make a vision into a reality. This often requires letting the visionaries know that large parts of their dreams are impossible to do, others can only be done with significant revisions on the fly.<\/p>\n
So I ask myself now, as I read this inscription that a trusted friend, just as I wondered when he wrote it more than a decade ago: What did Kilian see in me that I don\u2019t see in myself? I\u2019ll be thinking and wondering about that as we proceed into the New Year. For starters, my New Year\u2019s resolution is to balance task orientation with reflection, nose-to-the-grindstone with deep breaths. Dreaming certainly has something to do with hope, and hope is both a commodity without which we cannot live fully human lives, as well as a commodity that seems to be in short supply these days. My New Year\u2019s resolution is to find reasons to be hopeful each day, then to find practical ways in which that hope can inch toward reality.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Father Kilian McDonnell OSB died last week at the age of 103. His funeral this Tuesday will fall on what would have been his 104th birthday. Kilian was a very important part of a transformational sabbatical semester sixteen years ago that changed my life. I will always remember his smile, his great sense of humor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":35396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,21,23,35,39,40,50,56,62],"tags":[1276,242,271,317,448],"class_list":["post-35384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-benedictines","category-christianity","category-collegeville","category-faith","category-friends","category-god","category-humor","category-jeanne","category-liturgy","tag-collegeville","tag-god","tag-humor","tag-kilian-macdonnell","tag-st-johns-abbey"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>Father Kilian McDonnell OSB died last week at the age of 103. His funeral this Tuesday will fall on what would have been his 104th birthday. Kilian was a very important part of a transformational sabbatical semester sixteen years ago that changed my life. I will always remember his smile, his great sense of humor, his leprechaun-like looks, his insights, and his deep faith. Here is an essay I wrote in January of 2022 that describes some of the reasons he became so meaningful to me. Rest in peace, good and faithful servant.<\/strong><\/p>\n