Oblates of St. Mary Monastery, Rock Island, Ill., blog about Benedictine values, prayer and life.
Posted in Benedictine values on Nov 29th, 2008
Walking home today, it struck me that Advent is the most audacious season of the church year. Even Easter invites us to witness to a past event–one we strive to witness as present as well: the resurrection of Christ, and all it signifies both backwards and forwards in time. But in Advent, we remember the [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 22nd, 2008
Perhaps this happens to you, too. You are going about whatever you are going about doing, when suddenly the image of a very particular person, place, or moment pops into your mind. The person, place, or moment may or may not be of deep emotional significance to you–and the image of the person or place [...]
Posted in Benedictine prayer, Benedictine values, News on Nov 20th, 2008
Over the past few months and weeks I have been alternately thankful and dismayed to read, on the one hand, articles and letters calling for unity of spirit, even when we cannot agree on specific issues, and, on the other hand, writing which underscores, and at times even seems to increase, the deep divisions in [...]
Posted in Benedictine values on Nov 20th, 2008
It was a sunny day today and not too cold. There were new faces among the volunteers and there were many, many new faces in the line of those asking for a bag of food at the Clare House Food Pantry. I especially see in my mind and heart two women in their early twenties who [...]
Posted in Benedictine prayer, Benedictine values on Nov 15th, 2008
Ever since my days of reading the chilren’s nature magazine, Ranger Rick, I have responded to the sweeping love of creation found in Psalm 104: the rain fleeing the thunder of God’s rebuke by pouring down to earth, the rock badgers hiding in crags, thirsty wild donkeys, the stork nesting in the highest branches of [...]
Posted in Benedictine values, News on Nov 12th, 2008
A few summers ago I met two hermits when I went to a Monastic Institute in Collegeville, MN. Both are women, one in her mid-fifties, the other, Sr. Jeremy Hall OSB, is now in her late 80s and probably could be called a “retired hermit”. By that I mean that she is back living communally [...]