Welcome to our “little cloister”
where we
EXPLORE MONASTIC WISDOM FOR EVERY DAY LIVING
Drs. Almut & Chuck with little one
Home of
+The Hildegard Seminar,
+Kierkegaard Masterclass,
+Bach Passionweek Consolations,
+The 12 Days of Christmas Contemplations &
+The “Little School” of Spiritual Formation
All tagged discernment
Mindful obedience sets us free because it balances the heart on the eternal. Never finished, always imperfect, always getting up again, always needing sound advice from others, always desiring, or wanting to desire, the eternal.
The practice of Lent often distracts us from its point: to return to the eternal. Proper action based on discernment is central to regaining our balance. This is one lesson from the Desert Elders’ idea of obedience.
For one quarter of the day, every Benedictine is supposed to do reading from the monastery library. But here is the crucial insight. The point is not to have the reader go through the book. It is instead for the book to go through the reader. How different would we read the Christmas story, if we do not just go through the story but let the story go through us?
When our will bumps up against the will of another, we can discern the desires of the true self.
I have always thought of humility as simpering and self-effacing – silent because of fear or weakness. While reading the Sayings of the Desert Elders, I was stunned by the image of a fiery humility. Where had that been hiding?
Today I want to introduce you to a central practice of the Desert Elders: conversation. This is not a conversation to meet the other, it is a conversation with another in which we meet, and come to know, ourselves.
How do we know the proper value of work? How do we decide its role in our lives? In a monastic community the value of work is not measured in how much someone will pay to have it done. It is not seen in narrow economic terms. The value of work is instead measured in the contribution of that work to all the aspects of daily, shared, life. For monastics that means daily shared spiritual life – because ALL of monastic daily, shared life is our spiritual life. In the gospel, all life is seen through the ultimate lens of love of God and love of neighbor.
