The Celtic Monk

I just returned from a walk on the path which leads halfway around Lake Sagatagan on the campus of St. John's. It's how I began my time here on Friday morning of last week and now that the retreat is over, I took the opportunity to end as I began - in silence. Much has happened since I arrived here Thursday evening weary from a 15 hour commute on trains, planes and automobiles. The prayer times have been full, rich and moving. I've made new friends among the oblates gathered here for this special weekend. The teaching time stretched me to think about God's love for people of many cultures and whose expression of worship is different than my own. The solemnity and welcome of those making their final profession as an oblate of St. Benedict, signing their covenant on the altar, moved me beyond words. I was blessed. Yet all was not what it seemed. Picture if you will a glass beaker from your days in biology or chemistry class. You fill it with a liquid and perhaps add so...

Last week I sat amongst a group of bright and talented women as we continued to make our way through Joan Chittiser's book: CALLED TO QUESTION, A Spiritual Memoir. Though Sister Joan is a Catholic, Benedictine, nun and we are for the most part Protestant, married/widowed, career/retired women, it's amazing how similar the spiritual touch-points of her life and ours. Two things from our discussion are still with me. The first is that though life continues to unfold before us, our life is really the sum of the choices we make in response to what we find on our life's path. Secondly, we can make those choices from our own well of information, or we can make those life-forming choices from the depths of God's love for us and His life in us. Simply put, we choose to be God, or to seek God. For those of us reared and educated in the 20th century, in a country that reflects back to us the virtues of fierce independence and the right of might... the humility necessary to da...

"Grammie, I heard magic" was Lauren's response to the familiar chiming sound just as we entered the Magic Kingdom on Saturday. If Disney is even in any small way a part of your life, you know the sound. I don't know why it surprised me that Lauren was already well acquainted with it...maybe it was just the sincere conviction with which she said those words -- "I heard magic" -- never doubting for a moment that 'something' had happened, whether or not she could see it. We recognize the experience in our own lives, don't we, not doubting something has happened whether or not we see it. We call it grace. It happens invisibly in moments of our lives that feel like gifts. It happens in the sacraments of Baptism and The Lord's Supper. It happens when we ask God's forgiveness and something happens that we cannot see. Grace is ours when life, regardless of its circumstances is good -- is very, very good. It was this week, last year, that I l...

From afar over the past couple of years, I've watched an acquaintance building a rickety bridge. In the name of compromise or peace-keeping she's made leadership choices hoping against hope that they'd maintain the public good, yet decisions she would never have made left to her own conscience, thoughtfulness and prayer. Each decision brought her farther out into deep water. During this season, her life has been an uneasy peace on the outside and chaos and turmoil inside. That is until recently when she decided (as I've seen people do many times before) that life is too short to do something you hate... and she walked away from the situation leaving the many people she worked with and for scratching their heads. Seeing her after the announcement, you knew the elephant had removed his foot from her chest. I tell her story compassionately because as I reflect on her 'withdrawl from the battle' it reminds me of similar leave-takings in my own life. Whether with f...

I continue to work my way through my candidate year as a Benedictine Oblate of St. John's Abbey [Collegeville, MN]. While in the Rule of St. Benedict prayer is considered work the work I'm refering to is the more elusive work of discernment. One conclusion I've reached in my discernment process is that its a good thing at 56 years old to still be able to ask the parallel questions: "What do I want to do?" and "Who do I want to be?" when I grow up. That's preferable rather than slugging away for 20 or 30 or 40 years at a job or vocation one loathes (or even worse, the lukewarmness of what one will tolerate). This work of discernment asks us to look at our lives using criteria uncommon in the 21st century culture of America. Presently, I'm employing the lens of the Benedictine vow of stabilty. Should Benedict have meant by stability for his followers to dig a hole and stand in it... I would fail his criteria miserably. I now live more than 1...

CHRIST’S JOURNEY and OUR OWN We walked the path from Bethany on the top of the Mount of Olives, down to the old city wall of Jerusalem. Along the way we stopped at the Church of Pater Noster – the place on the Mount of Olives where Jesus taught the disciples the “Lord’s Prayer.” Here on the walls of the shrine, the Lord’s Prayer is printed on ceramic tiles in 115 languages. Next we stopped at the Church of Dominus Flavit – where it is believed that Jesus stopped to weep on His way to the Garden to pray. The architecture of the church is tear shaped and offers a perfect view of the Temple Mount. The Garden of Gethsemane hosts a 2,500 year old olive tree that still send out shoots. As we entered the old city, we came to the Church of St. Anne, mother of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The church has perfect acoustics. A highlight of the trip for me is as we sat and sang our songs of faith and echoed a song of some pilgrims from Poland. While the Via Delarosa is more well-known to our Ca...

We stood in the Garden of the Nations and listened to a Hassidic Cantor remember the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. He remembered them with the traditional mourning prayer, the Kaddish, which we had just said the day before together at the Western Wall for Glen Poston. As I read the opening remarks in the first exhibit of Yad Vashem, I could not help but draw similarities that would not be popular in the Israel of today. When I read about how the Nazi’s first began to segregate and then take away rights of the Jews in the late 1930’s and early 40’s I recalled the reduced options of those who live in Israel now behind fences and in segregated neighborhoods. I am not drawing any conclusion as to how the situation here might proceed. It’s just that when any people see other people or people groups as objects—often bad things happen. I will pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all Israel. We also visited the Museum of the Book... where the actual scroll fragments found at Qu...