With this image of the moon rising over the Sacred Heart Chapel at Saint Benedict's monastery, MN on New Year's Eve we greet you at this turn of the year. By gracious powers wonderfully sheltered is a much-loved hymn by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that is widely sung in German speaking lands at this threshold. May it comfort you walking into the new....

Dec 30

Dec 30 The Sixth Day of Christmas: Collecting the Year

Almut Furchert

12 Days of Christmas 2017

Are you tired of bucket lists and New Year's resolutions? We would like to invite you for a time of recollection instead. You can do this by walking in silence, by looking back on the reflections of this journey so far, or by taking some time to look with kindness on your life using the practice we provide below. For this the writer Søren Kierkegaard offers us two guides from beyond.

Dec 29

Dec 29 The Fifth Day of Christmas: Towards the Threshold

Almut Furchert & Chuck Huff

12 Days of Christmas, 12 Days of Christmas 2017

We have been doing some difficult work on this journey, with what seems like nigh-impossible goals: to cultivate a virgin heart, to sit in perfect silence, to reach that inner room where God meets us. Even under the best of conditions, it would be easy to lose heart. Even in a quiet room, with a candle for focus, and time for concentration, the thoughts keep intruding, insistent: undone tasks, unchecked lists, repressed sorrows, old embarrassments, new fears. We are imperfect pilgrims.

Dec 28
Dec 28 The fourth Day of Christmas. Walking inside yourself

Almut Furchert

12 Days of Christmas 2017

On the fourth Day of Christmas snow drifted ever so quietly down to earth, tenderly covering the landscape with a white veil. Every year I am afraid of winter. Every year I am, again, taken by surprise to watch the beauty of the first snow falling, to listen to my silent steps in the thin blanket of snow. The whole world is washed clean and hushed into a peaceful rest.

It is often just so in the spiritual world. We get afraid when, in our lives, the last colors of Fall vanish and our life is put on hold under an icy layer of cold. Yet still, we know, somewhere below those cold layers there is life waiting to burst into bloom again in spring.

Dec 27

Dec 27 The Third Day of Christmas: Sit in your cell

Chuck Huff

12 Days of Christmas 2017

A brother came to Scetis in the Egyptian desert to visit Abba Moses and asked him
"Father, give me a word." The old man said to him
"Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."

Dec 26
Dec 26 The Second Day of Christmas: The Virgin Heart

Almut Furchert

12 Days of Christmas 2017

Dec 25
Dec 25 The First Day of Christmas: A Mighty Wind

Chuck Huff

12 Days of Christmas 2017

Dec 24

Dec 24 Christmas Eve: Entering the road to silence

Almut Furchert

12 Days of Christmas 2017

Is your heart, now, at the end of the day, on the Eve of Christmas, also longing for that silent night? When the hustle and bustle fades, the people are gone, the lights are off? And we are alone before the flicker of a last candle, wondering, even doubting, what this is all about?

Dec 23

Dec 23 The 12 Days of Christmas

Almut Furchert

Have you ever wondered what to do about the 12 days of Christmas? We have.
An unexpected sick time of quiet and reflection reminded us of the many who arrive at Christmas with a deep longing for wholeness and healing and hope. To those who share this longing we want to invite you to a quiet, new venture: 12 Days of Christmas. We will walk from Christmas Day, towards the threshold when the old year fades and the new begins, and on to the dawning light of Epiphany.

Apr 4
Apr 4 Why should we care about virtue?

Chuck Huff

Perhaps because our normal listing of them, like any classification system, obscures their deeper meaning for our lives.

Saint Martin of Tours, a 4th century saint who was drafted by the Roman military, is famous for using his sword to cut his military cape in half to give to a beggar in the cold of the northern French winter. The virtues of Saint Martin are many, and one might say the episode with the beggar is evidence of great charity, or of compassion or kindness or mercy, or even of courage.