Monastic Chanting: Monks of the Desert
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I came into choir one day. I had already been a monk for over 47 years. Someone had asked me about how it felt to chant. That question had never crossed my mind. In our tradition, a monk or a nun chants whether he or she feels well or ill, whether he or she feels good or bad, whether he or she feels anger or happiness. A monk simply chants. If a monk gives himself totally to the chanting, then all feelings begin to take second place.
Neither monks nor nuns always give themselves completely to the chanting and so there is a spiritual struggle that happens — or worse, no struggle at all and one gives in to letting the mind wander. If it is struggle, then the monk has to keep drawing his mind back to what he is chanting. The goal of chanting for the monk is communion with God, but a communion expressed in his singing and being aware of what he is singing.
Although rarely adverted to, this is the goal of all communication, with one another and with God. We want to be in communion with one another. That simply means that we want to be in union with one another in order to understand one another and communicate in such a way that each of us is both understood and understanding.
...read the full article, and others like it at: http://edgemagazine.net/2012/05/monastic-chanting-monks-of-the-desert/
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