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
Like a door or hallway is the space between rooms, night stands as a transitional space between days. We step into it and the old is gone but the new is not quite there yet. Life is in suspension. Today, at the Eve of the new year, when the old is not yet gone and the new is not yet visible, we approach another important night…
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.
Little babies rest a lot. They do not care where they are or what is appropriate etiquette. They sleep when they need to. As it belongs to our human condition to rest in order to grow, the same is true for our spiritual life.
What if you, like the shepherds, kings, and other visitors long ago, were able to be there at the manger in Bethlehem? Today we invite you to walk into the story with child like curiosity…
What if Christmas isn’t a fuzzy feeling but a birthing process we must give in to? Today we invite you to see things with a “beginners mind,” like a child, like you see them for the first time.
On this Second Day of Christmas we invite you to become present to “God with us” and “within” us.
What I most long for at Christmas is silence. When the hustle and bustle fades, the people go home and the lights go off. Left alone before the flicker of a last candle, wondering, even doubting, what this is all about…
For some, mother's day comes with a bittersweet undertone. No happy children posting happy messages. Some have lost their children before they could birth them, some lost them later, to death or to life. All mothers are also daughters, some cherishing, some mourning, some still struggling with their own mothers.
Spring break is a good time for doing all sorts of things: cleaning up, writing articles, having a vacation. For many it is also just work as usual. But being called to mourning is an existential task. No religion can do it for us. It cannot be mere theater that we watch. But religion can help us to be reminded and can provide for us an occasion. There is no resurrection, no new beginning without the deep mourning of the old, without letting go what we loved so dearly, without mourning our losses.
What if Christmas is not about building walls but creating space, sacred space where the Divine can dwell? We all are called to be Mary, to conceive the Divine, to walk pregnant with it and to birth it into our night.
Work is sanctified in the light of Christmas, and is judged to be of worth, on a shockingly different scale than how economists value it. The work that we often value least, service work, women’s work, is valuable because it is done for others. If we see our work this way, we can bring Christmas into our lives all year.
Tending to our weaknesses isn’t what we learned at school. Still it is part and parcel of our spiritual journey. From the monastic infirmary we learn that weakness needs its room, that we must come to terms with, and even welcome, our vulnerabilities, our brokenness and our need for healing.
This is the lesson one draws from the Abbey guesthouse: that we should welcome guests in our lives as we would welcome Christ. But today, after our walk, and the evening prayer, I have become aware of so many more levels to this hospitality.
It is an historical accident of sorts that in the very season when we remember the birth of the holy one among us, we also celebrate the birth of the new year. On this day of new beginning, then, we will investigate another monastic room as we have done before: this time, the Novitiate, the process by which a person becomes a monastic.
