Oblates of St. Mary Monastery, Rock Island, Ill., blog about Benedictine values, prayer and life.
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 26th, 2009
Today brought a lovely fog (along with a month’s worth of rain). I like fog. It silhouettes the bare trees gorgeously. It lies caressingly on the skin. It envelopes one as one walks, offering an hospitably protective privacy and a stillness that is unaffected by motion. Fog absorbs sound as much as cold and snow [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 25th, 2009
A Reflection by Prioress Sr. Phyllis McMurray
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 21st, 2009
Walking in tempo with the Spirit: this is a refrain with me at least since my college years, when I felt after playing the harpsichord one day that the music even afterwards was communicating between my feet and the ground as I walked back across campus. Perhaps this memory is why the image of “walking” rather than dancing occurs [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 16th, 2009
Spring has paid us a delicious couple of visits over the past month. We all know that it’s not the real thing; neither do we care. We all seem to share a collective willingness to accept the gift and get out in it, most of us with some physical activity. I have taken Spring’s visits [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 15th, 2009
Ric has written of the Benedictine qualities of his canine companion, and the Psalms often depict animals gamboling about and rejoicing before God. And of all the many events of this past week in my own life, the one that stands out the most just now concerns another interspecies encounter.
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 7th, 2009
Though I sense I am a minority among Oblates on this score, statistically there are a great number of women and men over 30 who are not settled in a marriage, yet not called to a vocation of celibacy, and not always easily classifiable as “single.”